This is not the first time the Sex Pistols have reformed. Punk rock’s original shock troops reunited in 1996 for the aptly named Filthy Lucre tour, then did so again for similar cash-in arena jaunts in 2002/3 and 2007/8. This time around, though, is very different.
The band are playing three fundraising gigs for the 400-capacity Bush Hall, a struggling grassroots venue in the Shepherds Bush area of London where guitarist Steve Jones and drummer Paul Cook grew up. Jones has long since decamped to Los Angeles to be a radio DJ, but Cook, who had the idea for these benefits, remains local.
The other, very notable difference in this latest Pistols incarnation is the frontman. With talismanic singer Johnny Rotten/John Lydon estranged from the band after a legal fallout about the use of their music in Danny Boyle’s 2022 TV biographical drama, Pistol, his place is taken by the ex-Gallows and Rattlesnakes singer, Frank Carter.
Even nearing 50 years after the release of their sole album proper, 1977’s Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, there is a sense of event. Excitement levels are high in a crowd comprised largely of first-generation punk fans; should the Bush Hall fail to revive its fortunes, it could reinvent itself as a sauna.
It used to be a cliche to state that the Pistols couldn’t play but this claim was wide of the mark. Jones has always been a ferocious guitarist. Whatever insurrectionary agenda their late former manager, Malcolm McLaren, imposed on the group, they were primarily a thrilling rock’n’roll band, as hearing Seventeen and Pretty Vacant again confirms.
The wired, muscular Carter, a punk rock veteran himself, hurls himself into these songs and into the mosh pit, favouring wide-eyed intensity over Johnny Rotten’s arch, mocking sneer. Howling God Save the Queen, he has the air of a competition winner unable to believe his luck: “I’m having the time of my fucking life here!” he confirms.
It’s undeniably poignant to see a band once viewed as a threat to the fabric of society reinvented as a nostalgia turn, yet the closing Anarchy in the UK sounds a fair summary of recent events on Britain’s streets. It’s all over by 10pm and 400 grinning old punks reach for their bus passes and toddle off home.
