Frank Carter + Sex Pistols
Bush Hall, London, Tuesday August 13, 2024
There’s a tense, expectant atmosphere this evening as the band prepares to take the stage at the Bush Hall, a faded, one-room Victorian venue in West London’s Shepherd’s Bush. Cat calls of “Come on, Frankie!” ramp up the electric charge, as does an airborne plastic cup arcing high into the chandeliered ceiling. As the houselights dim, and the 500-strong crowd bay with football-terrace muscle, Glen Matlock, Steve Jones and Paul Cook take up their positions, together with a man with orange hair and a lairy look in his eye, who’s far too young, short and tattooed to be Johnny Rotten. And when Cook thumps out the stomping jackboot intro to Holidays In The Sun – extended for effect – there’s an almost surreal moment of collective panic: what will former Gallows frontman and Rattlesnakes leader Frank Carter sound like as the Sex Pistols’ new frontman? Is he going to do tonight’s reading of punk’s premier 1977 artefact, Never Mind The Bollocks, the Pistols’ one and only studio album, true justice? Or will it be a rock’n’roll swindle? And what if the rump Pistols, who haven’t performed together since 2008, are under-rehearsed and under-powered like last year’s Generation Sex punk ‘supergroup’ at Crystal Palace?
The reason we’re here, pondering such matters, can be traced back to the dramatic events of three years ago, when Rotten, aka John Lydon, lost a High Court action to allow any one Pistol to veto use of the band’s music, as he argued was the band’s long-standing MO. The catalyst for the case was the imminent filming of Steve Jones’s memoir, Lonely Boy, for the Disney+ mini-series Pistol, for which Rotten said he was denied script approval. Ill feeling (to say the least) between Lydon and the others means it’s now almost inconceivable that the original line-up will ever play together again. But – and here’s the rub – it has also freed the Matlock/Cook/Jones axis to bill themselves as the Sex Pistols. As Matlock, ousted from the band by Rotten in 1977, commented to MOJO last week: “Now the boot’s on the other foot…” Rotten, for his part, is meant to be furious.
So, in April this year, when unsigned West London band The Molotovs asked Paul Cook to join them on-stage at Bush Hall to help raise money for much-needed refurbishment, the Shepherd’s Bush native agreed – and proposed that the Pistols should play a series of fund-raisers themselves. Matlock’s son Louis suggested 40-year-old Frank Carter, a famously ferocious performer and neo-punk icon, as Rotten’s replacement. An exhilarating audition in July convinced the band he was the right choice. This is, after all, the man who proclaimed, “I’m a punk rock renegade/A tattooed mother fucker!” on the Rattlesnakes’ 2019 track Kitty Sucker.
At just after 9pm on this baking-hot August night, we’re about to find out for ourselves if Carter can cut it. But as he launches into the first line of Holidays In The Sun, eyes hidden behind kiddies’ white-framed sunglasses, body rigid like a cage-fighter, the crowd completely drowns him out. But the vibe is evidently spot-on and the Pistols are thunderous, a black-gloved Cook pneumatically pumping the kit, a bespectacled Jones in ‘Shepherd’s Bush’ T-shirt intently getting his parts right, and a clean-shaven Matlock looking like that cat who’s got the cream – or got rid of that troublesome old singer. And when we do finally hear Carter above the din, he’s perfectly calibrated: a sufficient dash of Johnny’s sardonic whine for it to sound like the Pistols, enough of his own personality and snarl to deflect accusations of a karaoke act.
Lots of bands these days don't have the original singer.
Glen Matlock
Carter removes his shades, revealing a mad, piercing glare, and Never Mind The Bollocks begins to unfold in no particular order – Seventeen, New York, Pretty Vacant. When it comes to the pummelling beat and profane litany of Bodies, the venue explodes, to which Carter responds by diving headfirst into the crowd. Beer cups take flight, ringing feedback and toggle-switch bleeps show Jones is enjoying himself, and B-side Did You No Wrong completes the sweaty, back-to-’77 time travel experience. And then, who’s this on the stage? A swishing curtain of jet-black hair fanfares the sudden appearance of Carter’s friend, emo pop punk star Yungblud, who helps gives God Save The Queen’s thuggish “no future” refrain new generational potency (only, of course, like the Pistols, he and Carter will no doubt go on to enjoy a better future than most others).
Things are by now getting punkily out-of-hand, with neither band nor audience seemingly in control, and when Satellite (another B-side) completely breaks down when Carter discovers it’s virtually impossible to sing while standing upside-down in a Pistols moshpit – here mostly full of old punks plus maybe 20 per cent under-thirties – the band’s fatherly smiles give way to frowns of concern. “That was shite,” grumps Jones. Yet before long we’re back into a beefy final run of No Feelings, EMI and Problems, on which every player manages to remain in time, in tune and, vitally, on-stage.
The first encore – The Stooges’ No Fun – is the only big let-down of the night, Carter demonstrating that, though he’s a very decent Rotten, he’s no Iggy, and the song plods on tentatively to a sullen conclusion. For the first time this evening, there’s a vague pang of missing Lydon but a blitzkrieg Anarchy In The UK swiftly restores the euphoric party atmosphere. Then, Bollocks and B-sides all but exhausted, the houselights go up and Frank Carter + Sex Pistols sign off with grins, handshakes and a bow on the first show of their three-night stand here.
In two weeks’ time, the group will be performing again at the AMA Music Festival in Italy and have just announced a show at Kentish Town Forum on September 26, and Matlock suggests there will be more dates to come. “Lots of bands these days don’t have the original singer,” he says by way of justification of his group’s new incarnation. Indeed: who would have thought that when the Pistols were recording Never Mind The Bollocks at Wessex studios in summer 1977 that, in five decades time, the band in the room next door would be known as Queen + Adam Lambert – and they themselves as Frank Carter + Sex Pistols. Funny old world.
Set List
Holidays In The Sun
Seventeen
New York
Pretty Vacant
Bodies
Did You No Wrong
Liar
God Save The Queen
Submission
Satellite
No Feelings
EMI
Problems
Encore:
No Fun
Anarchy In The UK
Photo: Cristina Massei/Alamy
The latest issue of MOJO is on sale now! Featuring Bob Dylan, Motown, The The, Neil Young, Arthur Lee, Nick Lowe, Gillian Welch, Galaxie 500, Laurie Anderson, John Mayall and more. More info and to order a copy HERE!
