MixedThe Washington PostIt’s long been part of Pistols lore that Jones outfitted the band with his heists. What wasn’t so clear before this book is that the wannabe musician was, in part, trying to steal his way into his heroes’ lives (if not their hearts) ... Most of the revelations in Lonely Boy are in its first third. This chronicles the period before 'Kutie Jones and His Sex Pistols' — a phrase on a T-shirt for sale at a shop then called Sex — became an actual band whose frontman was Lydon, not Jones. But there are pungent anecdotes throughout the book ... Lonely Boy reads as if it was dictated and then sculpted by co-writer Ben Thompson. Still, the conversational prose would have benefited from being pruned of cliches ... Lonely Boy is unlikely to charm people without any affection for the strange and sometimes ugly outburst that was British punk rock. Still, it’s distinguished by Jones’s sense of humor, his way with self-deprecating anecdotes and a candor that’s as bracing as the opening riff of the Pistols’s 'God Save the Queen.'
