Guitarist Steve Jones talks 'Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol'

NEW YORK (WABC) -- Punk music was once described as the "sound of chaos," and its reign on the charts was very brief. But punk's influence still resonates today.

A new book by Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones offers tales from that time that will shock even the most jaded fan.

Almost four decades have passed since the band broke up, but we're still talking about punk and the movement they helped to start. It's not bad for a group that released just one studio album.

"The Sex Pistols were born to crash and burn," Jones writes in the book. "And that's exactly what we did."

It's called "Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol," and it's a walk through musical history.

"We didn't plan on shaking things up, it just happened," he said. "It was just one of them short, little periods in space and time that was meant to happen and dissolve."

Jones will be the first to admit there is much he doesn't remember.

"Too fast to live, too young to die," he said.

Some of what happened to him is too painful to forget, though, including being sexually abused as a child in London.

"When you're 10 years old, it's very confusing, you know," he said. "And you don't know. You have no tools on how to deal with that. You just keep quiet, and you have a lot of anger."

Anger is what fueled his band, so it makes sense its quick demise left a void in his life.

"Massive hole, it just made the hole I already had a bit bigger," he said. "Always uncomfortable in my own skin, and it's only until I got clean and sober where that started to change, 26 years ago."

The change came after sex, drugs and rock and roll left him low and living in Los Angeles, and though band mate Sid Vicious died soon after the break up, Jones and lead singer Johnny Rotten lived to play another day.

The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame a decade ago, but true to the philosophy of punk, the Pistols didn't show up.

"I still don't have me statue," Jones said. "I want to get it. I want to get me statue and sell it on eBay."

At the age of 61, Jones remains a contrarian and true to the spirit of anarchy that punk celebrated. He may be less angry, but he remains an iconoclast, determined to challenge the status quo where he may find it.