Tonight’s billing suggests m’learned friends have been involved, as the Sex Pistols take the stage without one pistol in particular. Recent years have seen the Seventies punk icons divided: on the one hand John “Johnny Rotten” Lydon, and on the other, the three here tonight, Steve Jones , Glen Matlock and Paul Cook. Tensions came to a head recently after Lydon objected to the band making a TV series with Danny Boyle and ended up going to court in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the band’s music being used in it.
The dispute seems to have only galvanised the other three, because here they are reuniting for the first of three concerts to raise funds for the local venue Bush Hall in London – the Pistols’ home ground. Tonight, Jones sports a T-shirt emblazoned with “Shepherd’s Bush”, and over Matlock’s amp is draped a flag for Queens Park Rangers FC, who play just round the corner. But what is missing is just as important as what’s there.
The Pistols were the Pistols because of Lydon, because of his disgust and horror at himself and the world around him. No one else could have written a line such as “She was a girl from Birmingham/ She just had an abortion.” Lydon turned songs into emotional cluster bombs, detonating with devastating effect.
Frank Carter, a British punk singer of a younger generation, is landed with the unenviable task of replacing Lydon. It’s impossible, really, but he does his best. Carter replicates Lydon’s on-record intro to.