Getting into a fight with Johnny Rotten

Dear supporter, 

Thank you for joining us on this journey to bring The Oral History of Guitar Hero, Rock Band and the Music Game Boom to life. This project isn’t just a tribute to two groundbreaking series; it’s a celebration of the ingenuity and creative vision that turned musical performance into interactive play, reimagining the way we experience music and games alike. 

To keep you connected with the project’s progress, we’re thrilled to hand over to Blake Hester, the talented writer behind this deep dive into the rhythm game phenomenon. Blake has been exploring the origins, challenges and stories behind Guitar Hero and Rock Band, speaking to key voices who shaped these genre-defining titles. Here’s Blake with a special update on his progress: 

Tackling this book has been an immense challenge. There’s the immediate concern of reopening work I did back in 2020 and trying to match that tone and storytelling, while also having to add dozens of new interviews, all seamlessly melded together as if no time at all has passed. My solution is to go in chunks, starting with Neversoft and Guitar Hero III: Warriors of Rock and the studio’s other guitar games.

So far, I’ve interviewed about a dozen people from Neversoft with plenty more on the way. If you know anything about Neversoft, you know the stories are wild. Expect plenty of booze, parties, theft and mischief. To tide you all over, here’s a mostly unedited transcript of Aaron Habibipour describing how he almost got into a fight with the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten — who was featured in Guitar Hero III no less! 

We were upstairs and we were backstage at On The Rocks – of course, you know, we’d all been drinking – and Paul [Robinson, former Neversoft developer] was like, “I wanna smoke a cigarette.” And I’m like, “You can’t smoke a cigarette in here, dude.” And he’s like, “Well, Johnny Rotten’s smoking a cigarette.” And I’m like, “Yeah, but he’s Johnny Rotten.” And so, Paul goes, “I’m gonna try to get him to light my cigarette.” And I was like, “Fuck, dude. Please don’t do this.” [laughs] 

So, he goes up and he tries to get Johnny Rotten to light his cigarette. So, Johnny Rotten takes a lighter out, and then somebody comes up behind Paul, knocks into Paul, and Paul spills part of his beer on Johnny Rotten. And then Johnny Rotten pushes Paul into me and I spill half my beer on myself. And he [Johnny] starts going, “You’re fucking rude, mate.” Not to me, but to Paul. He goes, “You’re fucking rude, mate.” Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, he’s yelling at him. And so, Paul and I go away to the upstairs bathroom to clean off, right? 

And then Paul goes, “I’m gonna get him to light my cigarette again.” 

I was like, “Fuck!” 

So, we go downstairs, and I’m like, “Paul, don’t, don’t, don’t.” I went and just sat at the bar to watch what was happening. And then I noticed that Johnny Rotten was looking in my relative direction, like, fuming. I started to look around. It was like a scene from a movie, I started to look around and go, “Who the fuck is he staring at? Who’s he mad dogging?” And it was me! 

He had a little bodyguard with him. When I say little bodyguard, I mean, the guy was, like, four-and-a-half feet tall. He comes out from behind Johnny Rotten – I didn’t even see him there. He comes out from behind Johnny Rotten and he stomps up to me and he goes, [doing a British accent] “You fuckin’ cool, mate?” And I’m like, “What?!” [laughs] He’s like, “Are you fuckin’ cool?” And I was like, “Woah, dude. I don’t even know what’s going on here.” And he’s like, “That’s right!” [laughs]. And he goes back and I’m like, “Did I almost just fight Johnny Rotten? What the hell just happened here?”. 

Yeah, it was a really weird and awesome interaction. Fortunately, or unfortunately, there were many stories like that that came out of Neversoft. 

As always, thank you for the support. 

The Read-Only Memory team 
readonlymemory.com