Not many bands can count Johnny Rotten as a fan, but Leeds brotherly trio the Cribs sure can thanks to a brief tour with the Sex Pistols in the UK. "Johnny Rotten said that he loved us," Cribs frontman Ryan Jarman tells Spinner. "That is quite a significant achievement. I heard the other bands that played with them didn't even last 15 minutes on stage."

The Pistols and the Cribs bonded last month over several dates at London's Brixton Academy. They found a rock 'n' roll friendship behind the scenes.

"The first day, Johnny Lydon came into the backstage room. They had a smoking lounge backstage, which I don't know how they managed to swing in somewhere like Brixton Academy 'cause all the venues here are no smoking now," Ryan recounts. "Everyone used that to hang out. We went out with them a few times. I had some good chats with Johnny."

So what did the brunette twenty something and his elder punk statesman have to talk about?

"Johnny Rotten was saying we're more than welcome in his world as long as they're welcome in ours, so we were like 'Sure,'" Ryan says. "I love the Pistols. Punk rock -- that was one of the most significant parts of my entire upbringing. They're definitely a good influence when you're growing up."

The Cribs jumped on the Pistols tour after canceling a lengthy string of fall U.S. dates in order to work on some new music at home. "When it comes to making the next record we don't know what the next record is gonna be like so we can't save these songs," Ryan notes of the songs they laid down for 'Don't You Wanna Be Relevant.' "We had these songs we thought were good enough to be a single. But also, in the UK, the trend is very much that bands are releasing as many singles as possible off their album, and we just really didn't want to do anything like that."

As for that fall U.S. tour, it's been rescheduled for March and April 2008. In the meantime, the Cribs plan to spend a little time in their hometown of Wakefield, England.

"There's quite a lot going on actually," Ryan says. "We booked like three kind of secret gigs at a working mens club in Leeds. We're gonna play all [our] albums in their entirety on each night. We're gonna get some really good support bands on. They're gonna be like parties, basically."