| |
|
 |
 |
 |
|
 It’s universally accepted that in 1976, in a rather gloomy, stagnant and economically challenged Britain, an unprecedented musical phenomenon changed Rock music and culture as the people knew it, for ever.
A quartet named the Sex Pistols were found guilty of this most useful assault on our senses.
Despite their meteoric rise to fame and only being able to write one LP, their sentence was lifelong as 30 years later they’re still talked about as a point of references and influences by respectful talented peers as well as regular waves of newcomers.
2006 sees an important anniversary to be celebrated and music magazines world-wide are running articles on the subject and doing interviews with ‘relevant’ people.
Not to be outdone, I decided to meet up with Sex Pistols founding member and songwriter Glen Matlock and hear it from the ‘horse’s mouth’.
And No! There was no snarling or spitting and no item of furnishing or musical instrument were thrown at me, Johnny Rotten style!
Instead I found myself sitting opposite a very soft spoken, polite, proud family man, full of fascinating stories to tell. The kind you could only gather after 30 years in the music business and a fulfilling life....
And to think that it all started around a clothes shop on the London King’s Road.
I really can’t wait for Gap to instigate the next cultural tsunami!
 Florence: Hi Glen!
Quite predictably I need to start from the beginning and travel back to 1976.....
Glen: Actually it all started in 1975!
Florence: OK you’ve got me!
Back in 1975 when you co-wrote the Sex Pistols’ only album ‘Never Mind The Bollocks’, did you feel that you were starting a musical career?
Did you think this was possibly the first of many LPs for The Pistols?
Or was it always your intention to ‘hit and run’, be the ‘one hit album wonder’ that would change the face of music forever and spurn a still talked about 30 years later cultural shake-up?
Glen: We didn’t think about it that much, we just wanted to do something for ourselves.
We wanted to get a band together and we didn’t like the fact that, at the times, nothing was happening in London.
Steve Jones and Paul Cook already had a band together, but it wasn’t right.
After a few personnel changes I joined them and about a year later we started looking for a singer. Until then Steve was singing....
The band already had a certain ‘spirit’ but we needed someone to encapsulate this and put it into words....and we found John Lydon, AKA Johnny Rotten!
We really started working and trying to get this project to the next stage, but somehow we didn’t really see past the end of the week.
We just did what we wanted to do but nobody saw it as a career but then again we didn’t think that we would make just one record and then split-up!
It was all a series of fortunate events!
Florence: Did you realise at the time what a phenomenon you had just created?
That The Sex Pistols would forever be associated with that period in musical history?
Could you have predicted that in 2006, The Sex Pistols would still be making music magazines’ covers?
Glen: No!
But what we did know is that we were different from everybody else, because of the where and when and how the band was formed and the people surrounding us.
We also had a real arrogance about us which was very good!
It would all gravitate around Malcolm McLaren and his shop on the King’s Road.
Then, Malcolm had a Teddy Boy shop at the wrong end of the road.
The other shops around were the likes of ‘Granny takes a trip’ where The Faces and The Rolling Stones would get their ‘dandy’ fashion clothes from.
Further down the road, ‘Alkasura’ supplying for Gary Glitter and other Glam Rockers.
And then there were Anthony Price and Bryan Ferry walking past.
Malcolm would take the mickey out of them, so we would as well, mainly because Malcolm was a bit older than us, a kind of mentor and we were looking up to him.
The joke was, all these passers-by were actually multimillionaires while we didn’t have any money at all. But we still took the piss out of them!
And this kind of arrogance gave us ‘un certain je ne sais quoi’!
Florence: Talking about Malcolm being a mentor....how much control did he have over the Pistols?
If you had wanted to take the whole thing a bit more seriously and maybe write a second album, would he have allowed you to do that?
Glen: Well! There were two bands, the real Pistols with me in it, and then after my departure, the Pistols with Sid Vicious which became a media exercise which played right into Malcolm’s hands.
As a result two people became very conceited, John and Malcolm.
Malcolm was managing the band but wished he was in the band.
As soon as we got some press, our faces in the papers and were trying to get somewhere they became very big headed.
I think that the whole thing was doomed pretty much from the beginning.
Florence: Maybe not from the beginning but definitely from the day you left.
Wouldn’t you agree that your departure was the kiss of death?
With Sid, it all went pear shaped...very rapidly.
Glen: It was all down to the balance of the band.
I was quite happy to be the bass player and song write the tunes within the band. John was the main focus in the band and it all worked pretty well.
However Sid wanted to be bigger than John. They grew up differently from Steve, Paul and myself.
Both Sid and John needed all the attention and there were a lot of rivalry between them. Sid needed to outdo John, the band’s front man, and that pushed the band out of balance.
Florence: Concerning your departure, did you feel any bitterness or disappointment?
Glen: The band had become that classic English saying:’ more trouble than it’s worth!’.
I had been in the band for two years and I felt that I should have been backed up by Steve and Paul, whose band it was.
I did expect more support from them, but instead we had this corporate take over from John.
Various elements came into it.
Firstly I thought if nobody can back me up then sod them.
Secondly, as we signed to EMI, I got friendly with an A&R guy called Mike Thorne, who went on to become a record producer, [among others Soft Cells’ Tainted Love].
The tension between John and I became obvious to EMI and one day Mike told me that he hoped we could resolve our problems within the band or alternatively, knowing that I was the main songwriter, he would be happy, as well as EMI, to back up any project I came up with, and I was only 19!
Florence: So at that point your choices were the not very Punk option of taking a load of shit from John or do something else with EMI’s blessing?
Well that’s a no-brainer really!
Glen: That’s right.
I didn’t join a band to get that kind of aggro.
I wanted to do what I wanted to do with like minded people, and not be told what to do all the time!
So....I moved on pretty quickly and started my next band, The Rich Kids.
We signed with EMI, we had a top 30 album over here and I was very happy and busy doing that while the Pistols were on Top of the Pops.
Good luck to them is all I could say, but then again they went to America and broke up after six gigs! What a bunch of wankers!!!
Florence: At that time, most English bands would have killed for such an opportunity but they just couldn’t handle it.
Glen: It was a joke!
But in the meanwhile what I could see was Bernard Rhodes, a guy who very early on almost co-managed the Pistols with Malcolm, [but didn’t due to his rivalry with McLaren], now managing The Clash formed by Mick Jones, and observing what was going on, ending up doing the exact opposite of what the Pistols were doing.
Of course when the Clash crossed the Atlantic, they broke America and in the process became much bigger than the Pistols over there.
Bernard realised the strength of the band and managed to keep it together despite all the usual arguments.
Malcolm’s attitude was much more ‘divide and conquer’, the need to be in charge all the time, creating unnecessary friction within the band by telling John that I had said this and that about him, when I hadn’t and vice versa. Just kids’ stuff. That would keep his excitement level up but eventually destroyed the band.
Anyway, eventually the two other guys in The Rich Kids, Midge Ure and Rusty Egan wanted to go in a different direction and kind of started the ‘New Romantics’ thing, so that was it for me after a couple of years, and I went on to work with Iggy Pop.
Luckily for me I have always been busy, busy, busy doing things I love, such as playing music!
The party line with the Pistols is that we couldn’t play anywhere, we were banned from places. Actually we could play all over the place but it just wasn’t such good press, and that was very frustrating.
Florence: I suppose that you are regularly asked about the Pistols.
This was a very short period of your life, yet you’ve been branded for ever.
Are you proud enough of these few years that you don’t mind talking about it, or do you wish that people would move on the way you have and stop mentioning it?
Glen: I don’t mind talking about it because I have a job being able to forget it.
In the last 30 years there hasn’t been one week when someone doesn’t call me up and ask me to talk about the Sex Pistols.
However it was a fantastic experience, the whole spirit about this period. It’s important to me, not so much for what we did but because we kind of touched the core with people, we provided them with something to rally around, some sort of alternative way of looking at things. Somehow there were a lot of humour and style in it.
Florence: ‘Never Mind...’ is still a lot of fun to listen to, still relevant today.
It’s an album that stood the test of time, became a classic and that’s an achievement in itself!
Glen: Thank you!
Florence: Which other Punk band did you respect at the times?
Glen: A few other bands started around the same time as us, The Damned, The Buzzcocks...also The Stranglers, who really were a pub rock band but fitted in that Punk scene. Those were English bands.
In the States, back in ‘74, ‘75, ‘76 you had Talking Heads, Blondie, The Ramones, Television... who started up with pretty much the same sets of criteria we had.
At that time the world started to become like a ‘global village’ and they were reacting against the same kind of things we were reacting against.
At the very beginning no one had heard of each others’ bands because none of us had made any records but there were very close similarities in what we were all getting up to.
Florence: With ‘technically’ no Punk music at the time you were song writing, who were your influences?
Glen: I grew up in the Sixties and with ‘pirate radio’. The only time you could hear the charts was on sunday afternoon. We had a lot of illegal boats somewhere in the North sea, broadcasting to England and that coincided with big bands like The Yardbirds, The Kinks, The Who, The Small Faces and The Stones and they had this fantastic sound....it was exciting and that was my kind of music.
Contrary to what people think I wasn’t into The New York Dolls and the likes, instead I favoured a very English sound.
The very first records I bought were The Kinks’ ‘You Really Got Me Now’ and ‘Twist And Shout’ by The Beatles.
 Florence: As previously mentioned, you are constantly busy, so tell me about your current project.
Glen: Right now my main project is my new band: The Philistines.
My aim, I suppose, is to go on as I started. Song writing.
I have a fantastic bunch of characters around me, Ray McVeigh [who was in The Professionals with Steve and Paul], Chris Musto on drums, Koozie Johns on guitars.
We’re like a little gang, cut from the same cloth, with the same set of influences, around the same age, 16 and a half!
We just want to play and rock out!
It’s good to trust the judgement of people you are playing with and a good band is the sum of all the personalities involved in the group.
At the same time, I think that I am on some kind of quest.
I believe that the music business has become such bullshit.
Certain things exist just to be on MTV and MTV exists just for certain kind of things. Punk has become a pose and rebellion common currency.
To me it’s just plain bullshit, quite simply.
Florence: Where are you going with The Philistines?
Glen: All the way to the top!
Honestly? We play and it goes down very well so we play some more and some more. We just love being on stage, gigging is better than staying home watching TV.
Florence: Don’t you have a tour planned in the very near future?
Glen: Yes, dates are being finalised now.
We’ll be playing quite a lot from end of April and into May.
Looking at offers from America and places on the Continent.
The only small setback is that we’re older than most bands. Sometimes it’s a hurdle to get over but also an interesting challenge. I am convinced that if we were 18 or 19 we would be on the cover of the NME. I believe that we are good enough.
Florence: Talking about age and being a more mature artist....
Is the music industry as ageist as the film industry is reported to be?
Glen: In America, I don’t find the business to be ageist at all. You do what you do and if you are any good it’s kind of good luck to you!
In England it’s more of a problem.
Let’s say I was still part of the Pistols, and it’s an ongoing thing after 30 years, we are still writing, then it would be easy as The pistols is a brand name. It’s fine for The Damned or The Buzzcocks.
But if you start something new, you now have to compete with so many other new bands....it’s more problematic.
Florence: Do you take an interest in the current music scene?
Glen: I try to but there are a lot more bands now than it ever used to be.
End of January, beginning of February I went to the States to do some work with a band called Third Estate (still unsigned) and they were absolutely fantastic. A bunch of young guys in the vein of Green Day and Good Charlotte but with hell of a lot more to offer.
I do have a good network of people involved in interesting projects and I get to hear up and coming really cool stuff.
Once it’s in the NME, you might as well forget it because you know that there is a huge media operation behind it.
It’s like this whole Arctic Monkeys thing, apparently they did it all on their own and by themselves on myspace.com.
That’s total bullshit, they had a big team behind them.
I guess I like things that work at grass root level.
Florence: Any UK band blowing your mind right now?
Glen: No, not really.
That said it’s a lot healthier to have so many guitar bands around.
Florence: What are you listening to these days?
Glen: Actually nothing!
If I am song writing I always have an idea going around my head.
If I listen to too many records I find that the song I’ve just written sounds a lot like the stuff I’ve just listened to. I get influenced very easily.
I enjoy walking around town. As you walk in and out of stores you hear snippets of music you would not think of listening to, you hear music by chance, I like that.
Florence: What do your sons put on their stereos?
Any Busted or Westlife blaring out of their room?
|
|
|
