When the bass player Glen Matlock left the Sex Pistols in early 1977 he invited New, still only 16 years old, to join a new band that he was forming called Rich Kids as its lead guitarist. On 15 August 1978, whilst still with Rich Kids, New performed with a one night only line-up titled the Vicious White Kids at the Electric Ballroom in Camden Town, in what came to be seen as one of the events that marked the last hurrah of the punk rock movement's heyday in London. Whilst Rich Kids was musically gifted, it failed to find commercial success and broke up in early 1979 after the commercial failure of two of its three singles releases and first long-player release titled "Ghosts of Princes in Towers" (which reached No. 51 in the UK Album Chart in 1978), and New's career was undermined beyond this period by long-term narcotics use.