His punk character was considered far more helpful than any knack for playing, as he was not renowned for his playing skills, though he did have some composing ability, as was later shown when he composed the track "
Belsen Was A Gas" entirely by himself.
Jon Savage's biography of the Sex Pistols,
England's Dreaming, recounts that most of the bass parts on the band's later recordings were played by guitarist
Steve Jones and at later live performances Vicious' amplifier was sometimes switched off. Vicious is said to have asked
Lemmy from
Motörhead to teach him how to play bass with the words, "I can't play bass." Lemmy's reply was (according to Lemmy himself) "I know." In his autobiography
No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, Lydon writes, "he wasn't too bad at all for three-chord songs."