The Sex Pistols

M.E.N. Arena, Manchester

Saturday 17 November 2007

Anarchy in the UK? More like anarchy in the estate agent’s office as a gaggle of grey haired forty some things revisited their youth. The most rebellious and anarchic think about this gig was our moans about how difficult it was to get a decent pint, and how awful it was to sit through the dirge of electro/rave crap that we had to endure from the unseen “warm up act.

This was not only a once in a lifetime chance to witness one of the most ground breaking acts in the history of popular music – it was a chance to see pantomime rock at its best.

As a “serious” musical event, this was a non starter – the whole attraction lay in the above mentioned once in a lifetime chance to see one of pop/rock music’s most iconic acts hamming it up. The Sex Pistols never boasted of being able to play well, indeed their very rough and readiness was what they prided themselves on in setting themselves apart from the “dinosaurs” like Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd against whom they were rebelling. Time has moved on, and they can now play tolerably well, but no more so than the average run of the mill rock band. Not only was the playing rather ordinary, but the volume levels were distinctly weedy. It is probably the quietest of the “rock” concerts I have seen: the contrast in that regard with Black Sabbath, from only the previous  week, could not have been more stark. Despite that however, it did not prevent my friend Mr Gut complaining that it was just too loud for him and that the ringing in his ears didn’t dissipate for over a week!

Still, quality of playing and loudness of volume was not why I came to this concert. I liked the Sex Pistols at the time in 1976/77, but I was never “into” punk. By that time my loyalties lay firmly with the hard rock/progressive rock camp, and such upstarts were generally seen as belonging to a different “genre” altogether, and best avoided. It took a long time for it to dawn on me – and I suspect on other people, too – that there is nothing new under the sun, and that the Sex Pistols were just a return to rock’s roots, blowing away all the overblown padding that the afore mentioned Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and many others had gathered around themselves. With the benefit of years, it is pretty obvious that they were  actually a classic hard rock act all along, being particularly similar to The Who  when they were young and angry. The only differences being that they sung in an English accent, swore once or twice and didn’t do guitar solos – to be fair, all this WAS very revolutionary in 1977, but it is old hat these days. Thus despite my earlier animosity to punk, I now regard the Sex Pistols as one of my favourite groups.

The real difficulty though is that having (in effect) only ever released one album, they have very little material, and as a result tonight’s concert was the shortest I have yet seen, and even then, it was padded out by Johnny Rotten’s ad-libbing with the audience.  I think every single track from “Never Mind The Bollocks” was played, and whilst I certainly did not complain, it was a shame that there wasn’t more. What a shame in particular that they didn’t play “Silly Thing”, but then again, Johnny Rotten didn’t sing on that, and it just wouldn’t have done.

All told, it was a great show, great nostalgia and hugely entertaining pantomime. Being even older than me, they could hardly ever hope to appear as mad, dangerous revolutionaries out to “destroy passers by”, so a bit of hamming it up had to suffice in its place. They did it quite well, but to be fair it was also sad in a way to see them making parodies of themselves in this way. Now that they’ve done this tour, I hope that they will now see fit to retire disgracefully and let us treasure our memories of them at their worst!

(22.09.08)