Sex Pistols add two more London gigs to meet demand

LONDON (Reuters Life!) - British punk rock icons, the Sex Pistols, added two more comeback concerts onto their schedule on Friday after a planned one-off show sold out within 10 minutes and the price of tickets was more than doubled.

The band said this week they would reform for a single gig at south London's 4,900-capacity Brixton Academy on November 8 to mark the 30th anniversary of their seminal album "Never Mind the Bollocks."

But due to overwhelming demand for the tickets, the venue on Friday said the Pistols would also now play the November 9 and 10. Tickets for the concerts are now on sale for 85 pounds ($170) after originally going on sale for 37 pounds.

To coincide with the Sex Pistols reunion, music paper NME.COM said it had started a campaign to propel their song "God Save The Queen" to the top of the charts when it is reissued on seven-inch vinyl in October.

It says the single, banned by radio stations in 1977 because it risked offending the monarchy during the Queen's Jubilee year, was unfairly denied the top spot.

The Sex Pistols were one of the best-know British rock bands to emerge from the short-lived punk revolution in the mid-1970s.

Loathed by the establishment but an inspiration to a generation of bored teenagers in the 1970s, the Pistols spat and swore their way into the history books, perfectly capturing the malaise sweeping Britain.

On Thursday, Sex Pistols singer John Lydon, 51, formerly known as Johnny Rotten, slammed 1970s band the Police as a bunch of "soggy old dead carcasses" for reforming.

In his typical sneering style, he referred to singer and bassist Sting as "Stink" in an interview with Virgin Radio.

"You know listening to Stink try to squeak through 'Roxanne' one more time that's not fun," he said.

Celebrated for their spikey, soaped-up colored hair, torn clothing and bondage trousers, the Sex Pistols spearheaded the British Punk Rock movement.

They boasted they had made "cash from chaos" helping to launch hundreds of similar bands in Britain and the United States.

"Never Mind the Bollocks - Here's the Sex Pistols," has been credited with having revolutionized popular music.

Post-punk bands like Joy Division, the Smiths, Nirvana and later Brit Pop's Blur, Oasis and Pulp have all said they have drawn enormous influence from the band over the years.

The band split acrimoniously in 1978 after a disastrous U.S. tour and before the death of bassist Sid Vicious from a drugs overdose in New York.