LOADED, SMOKIN' PISTOLS DIRECTOR SKILLFULLY CAPTURES BAND THAT ALTERED ROCK HISTORY.

Byline: Fred Shuster Music Writer

``Practically everyone was unemployed, there was a garbage strike going on for months, and the three TV channels would go off and on randomly. It was just a miserable time.''

That's how Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones remembers Britain in the mid-'70s, when the notorious and short-lived punk band rose from the litter-stacked streets of the nation's capital to spark chaos in record company hallways even while remaking the pop scene in their own safety- pinned, working-class image.

Painted against the political, economic and cultural backdrop of a depressed London, Julien Temple's ``The Filth and the Fury'' captures the essence of the Pistols movement with footage of live performances, rehearsals, promotional events, interviews and candid moments with the four original band members. The 105-minute documentary is playing at the Nuart through April 27.

``I think everyone who saw the Pistols in the beginning, even if they hated them and walked out in the middle, knew this would change things,'' Temple said from his home in pastoral Somerset, England. ``As Jones says in the film, when the band was starting out, they'd see a few more people at each gig with short hair and ripped T-shirts. It was a movement that grew from the grass roots, bit by bit.''

Temple, who directed the well-received 1986 rock 'n' roll musical ``Absolute Beginners,'' was the perfect choice to make ``The Filth and the Fury,'' which used footage that was part of a 1986 lawsuit brought by the band members against the Pistols' former manager, Malcolm McLaren.

The disputed footage was originally shot by Temple for his 1980 free- form documentary ``The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle,'' which told the Pistols' story largely from McLaren's viewpoint.

``Swindle'' put forth the idea that McLaren, a former art student, London boutique owner and self-proclaimed revolutionary, used the band as a sort of art project to subvert the system, make money and cause headlines.

``The Filth and the Fury'' takes the opposite view, suggesting that singer John Lydon (Johnny Rotten) was the real driving force within the infamous punk group, whose most famous songs from their 1977 album, ``Never Mind the Bollocks Here's the Sex Pistols'' (Warner Bros.), include the anthemic ``God Save the Queen,'' ``Anarchy in the UK'' and ``Pretty Vacant.''

Jones, now living in Los Angeles and working as a record producer, agrees with the movie's assessment.

``John had the look, he had the fashion sense, he was the singer and he wrote the lyrics,'' Jones, 44, said. ``He was an anti-star, but he was the focal point. McLaren didn't do nothing.''

The Pistols lasted just 26 months and recorded only one album, forming in 1975 and breaking up bitterly immediately following a concert at San Francisco's Winterland in January 1978. But in that short time, Lydon, Jones, drummer Paul Cook and the late Sid Vicious (who replaced original bassist Glen Matlock) altered rock history, opening the floodgates for the alternative-rock movement that reached its commercial zenith two decades later with Nirvana.

``The Filth and the Fury'' alternates between archival scenes of the Pistols and present-day interviews alongside some of the band's notorious TV appearances that shocked Britain, such as a visit to a nationally televised tea-time talk program that quickly degenerated into a drunken, expletive-filled free-for-all. That appearance prompted the London Daily Mirror headline that gives Temple's documentary its title.

Even today, the Pistols' story still has the power to inspire and amaze. At a recent screening for the London music scene, Temple said Liam Gallagher, front man for rock's current bad boys, Oasis, told him that compared to the Pistols, he felt like he was part of a ``boy band.''

Temple believes the time is especially right for his film because so many young people have no sense of a time as remote as 1977.

``When we screened it to teen-agers in London, about a quarter of the audience thought it was fiction and the Pistols were being played by actors,'' he said. ``I found that hard to believe.''

One element that comes through in ``The Filth and the Fury,'' which was made for less than $1 million, is the humorous side of the band, something that's often missed in light of Vicious' stabbing murder of his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, and his subsequent death from a heroin overdose in New York while awaiting trial in 1979.

``We were young people basically out to have fun,'' Lydon has said. ``They didn't realize that's what young people do; the world was - and is - a horrible place, but you'll never change it by being miserable.''

Temple first stumbled across the Pistols as a first-year film student in summer 1975. While walking in London's then-desolate East End on a Sunday, he heard a racket coming from a warehouse. Following the noise to a second-floor rehearsal room, he found Jones, Matlock and Cook warming up until Lydon arrived.

``I was intrigued,'' he recalled. ``I'd never seen or heard anything like them. They invited me to a gig and I got to know them. They let me shoot all kinds of stuff for years afterward.''

For the new film, Temple shot interviews with the band members in silhouette. The reason: He wanted to maintain their mystique.

``The last thing the world needs is wrinkly rock stars talking to the camera,'' the director said. ``We wanted to keep it in the past. Also, by keeping them in darkness, it suggests those Mafia interviews you sometimes see on TV. Like these guys are so notorious they have to remain anonymous.''

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1) Sex Pistols Paul Cook, left, Sid Vicious, Johnny Rotten and Steve Jones are the subject of a documentary, ``The Filth and the Fury,'' which includes live concert footage, rehearsals, promotional events, interviews and candid moments with the English punk rock band.

(2) `I think everyone who saw the Pistols in the beginning, even if they hated them and walked out in the middle, knew this would change things.'

Julien Temple

director of ``The Filth and the Fury''