Thurs. Nov. 8

      I remember talking to Warren Zevon, somewhere in the '90s, about his touring. I liked him both solo acoustic and with full band, but it had been a while since I'd seen him with a full-tilt rock band. I wondered why and if we might see this some day. The answer was: Economics and probably not and that turned out to be correct. Zevon, as great as he was (and he truly was), didn't have a big enough audience to play big enough venues to make enough money to support all. I'm guessing that's one of the primary reasons Glen Matlock - yes, an artist on a smaller scale - is doing a US acoustic tour that will stop at the Middle East Upstairs Thursday Nov. 8. (He did play some dates this fall in England with the Philistines, but bringing a band over and dragging them around ... )

    Matlock, 56, may need an introduction for some: He was the bassist in the Sex Pistols (pre-Sid Vicious) and he was the one who could both a) play and b) write. Rumor was he was booted out of the Pistols because he admitted a fondness for Paul McCartney (and presumably strong melodies). Dunno if it's true. Makes a good myth, if not. He did rejoin the fellas on various reunion tours, including the first reunion tour of 1996. (I covered it; see below). Matlock gets props for his Pistols work because although Johnny Rotten was the voice, the words and the attitude, Matock was reportedly the melody maker behind "God Save the Queen," "Anarchy in the UK," "Pretty Vacant" and others.
    After he exited the Pistols he formed the Rich Kids, and went on to work with a variety of artists ranging from Iggy Pop, fellow original School of ’76 Brit Punk Rockers The Damned (yes, he was one of the thousands), through to neo-rockabilly singer Robert Gordon, whilst pursuing his own direction where melodic and inventive rock music thrives. He released an , "Born Running," in 2010. and he took up the bassist spot in the reformed Faces. It was one of the bands he loved as a kid. Who didn't? He was also a fan of the Kinks, The Who and David Bowie. In 1974, whilst employed as an assistant in the King’s Road, Chelsea clothing emporium Let It Rock (owned by Malcolm McLaren and his then-wife Vivienne Westwood) joined up with guitarist Steve Jones and drummer Paul Cook (alongside guitarist Wally Nightingale) in a combo that would become The Sex Pistols. The band line-up was completed by the recruitment of John Lydon (soon to become Johnny Rotten) as their vocalist. (Johnny got the gig after singing along to Alice Cooper.) The Sex Pistols line-up eventually settled around Rotten, Jones and Cook, with Matlock playing bass and singing backing vocals.
     Matlock’s autobiography, "I Was A Teenage Sex Pistol," was published in 1990, and updated and reprinted in 1996 with insights and updates following the reformed Sex Pistols ‘Filthy Lucre’ tour.
     In April, 2010, Matlock toured Australia with Robert Gordon, along with Slim Jim Phantom of The Stray Cats and guitarist Chris Spedding. Spedding produced some demo recordings for The Sex Pistols in 1976, one of the few old school musicians who acknowledged the worth of the band, and Matlock returned that favour three and a half decades later. (Spedding reportedly played a lot on that "Bollocks" LP.)  In the spring of 2010, it was announced that three members of the Faces – Ronnie Wood, Ian McLagan and Kenney Jones – were to reform, with Mick Hucknall on vocals, and with Glen taking the coveted role as Ronnie Lane’s replacement.
   And, now, he's playing the tiny Middle East Up, and we're guessing there will be heavy nostaliga (and irony) for old Pistols fans and some new stuff, too.
    I wrote the copy above and then had a chat with Glen who was sitting on a park bench, shirt off, on his cell in Miami.
   JSInk: Why solo acoustic?
   Matlock: I've done a few over the past few years and it somehow struck a chord with people. When I'm with the Philistines, it's a good rock band, but with a band you're plugging the next album, and acoustic I can do all the things I've done [over my career]. all the songs I've written and co-written and had a hand in has started out on acoustic gutrirar. So, it's bare bones. I'm not Johnny Rotten, and I don't try to be. I just try to get the songs acrosss. People have said they can actually hear the songs better not covered up with up all that noise. I'm not the best guitarist in the world, but I'm a good provider of simple things done well. It's almost like Richie Havens. ... I went to see Ray Davies play. I think watching his show, I felt on the same page as him. It was a re-affirmation of what I'm doing. I think Ray Davies is one of the greatest English songwriters.
  OK,  how many Pistols songs?
   I do two songs. Get this clear: I don't do an acoustic version of "Never Mind the Bollocks." What you'll find, is , i walways jokingly say the same old shit, my sogns whatever period, they all fit hand in glove with each otehr.
    Which songs?
    (The phone connection breaks up and Matlock's London accent is tough to begin with but he basically said to reveal them would be to reveal the punch line of a joke.)
    My impression was in the Pistols you were the guy who brought the melody. True?
    Kind of. "Pretty Vacant." as far as I'm concerned, that's my song. The only one we did together was "Submission," where we traded line by line. I worked out the chords, shouted to the other guys.
    How do you view the arc of your career?
   It's up and down. I've never seen myself as a rock star. I'm just a guy who play music.
   Back to seeing Ray, do you use that storyteller format, songs and tales?
    It all depends. I like to get 'em singing along. I have rough set list. Playing solo, the buck stops with you. You haven't got the other guys to hide behind.
    You're getting people in their 50s, I'm sure, original Sex Pistols fans Are you getting younger people as well?
    Yeah. I haven't got millions of people coiming. But it seems to be building. I've got my bumps. It's tough being in the Sex Pistols and then getting on with what you want to do now. It is hard. You have to find a way with dealing with that. But I'm quite hapy to do this. I'll make another record with my gusy in England. I've got half the songs written as I've geen traveling around the States. I slot the a few new ones in.
    

      This is what I came back with in 1996 when I covered the Sex Pistols reunion outside Washington D.C. (I'd seen their US debut in Atlanta in 1978, with Vicious aboard.)
     Johnny Rotten is up to his old tricks. He's baiting the crowd -- calling those seated in the loge "sissies" -- and dropping his trousers. His eyes still bulge when he glares. "Enjoy or die!" he tells the crowd. He's still cussing like a pirate. He crows from the stage at the Patriot Center, a college basketball arena, that he and his boys, the Sex Pistols, are "fat, 40 and back."

      The band -- guitarist Steve Jones, drummer Paul Cook, bassist Glen Matlock -- plays better than ever. That is, it plays songs written about two decades ago, last played live 18 years ago, much the way they sound on the Sex Pistols' one legitimate album, the groundbreaking "Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols." Matlock was the original bassist and co-songwriter. He was sacked and then replaced before their one US tour in 1978 by Rotten's talent-deficient pal Sid Vicious.

       It's the late, notorious Vicious -- an impressionable, slight hanger-on whose nom de punque was bestowed upon him as a taunt -- whom many fans associate most closely with the Sex Pistols. This irks Rotten, who now sports a tall, yellow/pink crown of spikes as his hairdo and faux lederhosen garb.

     "He was a coat hanger from start to finish," says Rotten, chatting up this reunion during a stop on the European leg of the tour. "Amazing. He's the most popular coat hanger in this history of bad music. . . . Old Sid. That man never played."

     "It was kind of a mistake getting him in the band," adds Jones. "It was mainly 'cause he looked the part and he'd come to all our shows and John knew him. But he couldn't play, and when he joined the whole chemistry just went out the window."

     Vicious bought the punk myth and in 1979 followed his hero Dee Dee Ramone into heroin abuse. He became a punk icon. "He had a good time when he was around," says Jones. "No one put a . . . needle in his arm."

    Let's go back in time. The date: June 1986, about eight years after the Sex Pistols disintegrated following their only US tour. Rotten, going by his given surname of Lydon, is playing with his post-Pistols band, Public image Ltd. He's backstage at the Orpheum, employing his usual glare -- intimidation flag raised to its normal position, Rotten button switched on. The notion of a Sex Pistols 10th-anniversary reunion tour had been floating about, so, of course, the topic is raised.

     "That's one of Malcolm's ideas," he snorted derisively, referring to Pistols' former manager Malcolm McLaren, who, some have said, was their creator. "Ha ha ha. It'd be fun to try and get Sid back up onstage, wouldn't it?"

     What about Matlock?

     "He's a born-again Christian," caws Lydon/Rotten. "And that's worse 'n drugs."

     Backstage after the Fairfax gig -- an hourlong show before 3,500 fans at George Mason University, pretty much a copy of the new "Filthy Lucre Live" album -- Matlock receives a compliment from a fan: "Good to have you back in the band." Matlock nods. What exactly do you say to that?

     He is asked if it feels weird.

      "What? You mean being so old and all?" asks Matlock, who is actually the youngest-looking of the bunch. "No. It feels right. It feels natural."

     "Dunno," answers Cook to the same question. "It's weird playing places like this. I think we're more of an urban band." (The Washington date was an hour outside the city, in a verdant, collegiate setting.) "We're not really a gymnasium band."

     Same question to Jones. "At first, the first few shows, it was very, very weird," he says, punctuating his observations with expletives. "I can't even describe it to you. Almost like being in the `Twilight Zone' or something. But, now it seems as natural as . . . air. There's no reason on God's . . . green earth why we shouldn't be back together playing music. You know if we don't, we start believing our own myth."

      Pete Shelley, leader of punk progenitors and peers the Buzzcocks, played with the Sex Pistols in June at London's Finsbury Park before 30,000. "I loved it," Shelley says. "I was singing along. It was everything they ever were. It was serious, but they weren't serious. John is a consummate performer."

      There are those who charge that a Sex Pistols reunion is hypocritical and heretical. Or worse, irrelevant. Imagine if in 1976 somebody had talked up a tour by Jerry Lee Lewis or Chuck Berry -- heroes of the late 1950s -- with such hype. Is it a genuine replica or the real thing?

"That's pretty stupid and pathetic," says Jones of those accusations. "Who are they to tell us what we should or shouldn't be doing? When the real band gets back together, we play and there's chemistry."

Of course, when you think about it, the Sex Pistols win either way. If they're a scam and a sham, they can chortle, spit and snort -- they can say they were the canny con artists you suspected them of being. If they spin you 'round and rekindle the old punk rock fire, they can glare at you and say, "Told you so." The reunion tour is called "Never Mind the Sex Pistols -- Here's the Filthy Lucre."

In pop and rock, our sense of elapsed time has been compressed. What was created in 1976 does have a vital connection today. To wit: Green Day, Offspring, Rancid and all the new punks. And the Sex Pistols songs -- though hatched from a very specific time, place and mind-set -- still make sense today. It can serve as nostalgia for something most have never seen.

There was something strangely uplifting about seeing a front row of teen-age girls -- not even zygotes during the Pistols' reign of terror -- singing along to "No Feelings": "No feelings! No feelings! No feelings! For anybody else!" They got the nihilism, but they got the humor, too.

The Pistols always were a volatile mix of negativity and affirmation -- sharper lyrically than most of their brethren. In "Anarchy in the UK," Rotten's anarchic details include minor annoyances like "Give a wrong time, stop a traffic line" that set up a major complaint: "Your future dream is a sharpie's scheme!" Listen to "No future for you!" in "God Save the Queen," and you pick up the rage and the sense of caustic celebration. If society's failed you or is falling apart, make your own fun.

"Everything I've written is forever," says Rotten. "I don't {mess about with lyrics. I think I cut out the garbage and I get right to the point. Hello, I'm still angry. I'm fat, 40 and angry. There you go, there's your headline."

     Of course, in 1976-77, the Sex Pistols had England in a snit. Punk was only a rumble here, but a major noisemaker across the pond. The Pistols had hit songs. Not "alternative" hits, but mainstream hits. They were banned by the BBC. They did attack the notion of monarchy. They were sacked by EMI and then A&M before landing with Virgin in Britain and Warner Bros. in the United States. They did curse on live TV and engender tabloid headlines like "The Filth and the Fury."

     Today, the context is different. Alternative rock is everywhere -- becoming vague and ill-defined, yes, but much of it informed by what the Pistols created so long ago, even if, as Rotten has long maintained, the Pistols were at heart a conventional band, certainly much more so than the early version of his next vehicle, Public image Ltd.

     The 66-date world tour, which began in Finland June 21 and ends in Japan Nov. 21, comes to Great Woods Center for the Performing Arts tomorrow.

     "We're a bit older," says guitarist Jones. "Our egos aren't as big amongst each other. We all know our place now and we've obviously been playing a lot longer. It ain't as angry as it used be, or as edgy, I guess. But I think it's definitely got a lot more power." SIDEBAR

`Anarchy' in the fortysomething generation

Should you rush right out and buy the new live album?

Rotten: "Who cares about that? Live music translated to a disc or CD is never really much. I wouldn't endorse the project, but at the same time I wouldn't put it down. . . . There's money in it. . . . It's actually . . . stunning!"

What can the Sex Pistols give their fans on the far left?

"Anarchy in the UK," of course, updated with a USA reference. And hope. "It's coming someday, maybe."

And to those on the far right?

"Bodies," the concert kickoff, which is sung, partially, from an about-to-be-aborted fetus' viewpoint: "I'm not a discharge, I'm not a loss in protein!"

Please do not throw things at the Sex Pistols.

"We've had to walk offstage a couple of times, those stupid {expletive}," says Cook. "We all have gotten hit by cans and bottles, some of them full."

What do some of your favorite pop stars think of the Sex Pistols reunion?

- The Cure's Robert Smith: "It's pretty tragic. I can't imagine anyone going to see it. I don't know if it's the younger generation going to see what all the fuss was about, in which case that's really sad -- that wasn't what all the fuss was about. . . . There was a real spirit of the times onstage. I think that you can never resurrect that. They must miss it so badly."

- Rotten's response: "Old fatty! He still lives at home with his mum! Please, Robert, stop whining. Can't we have any uptempo number just for once, you dismal dirge bastard?"

- The Ramones' Joey Ramone: "All that hype. Sure, they'll make a financial killing. That's the only reason they're doing it in the first place. They're coming back to celebrate their 20th anniversary or whatever and it's a joke that they come back at all. What they were at the time, that was cool. They're a bunch of fat, balding, bloated old men who want to make some money. A bunch of hypocrites."

- Rotten's response: "I love seeing that as he comes in at 48. Don't you just love jealousy? Isn't it lovely? In a sad way, that statement is the absolute demise of the Ramones. He should know better than to talk such trash."

- Blur's Damon Albarn: "I can't really imagine it. So what, really. {I'd see the show} if I was doing absolutely nothing in a town I was in . . . "

- Rotten's response: "He actually likes me, the swine, because he sent me a love letter."

- Pete Townshend of The Who (to Q magazine): "If you listen to what Johnny Rotten is saying this week, what you have to think about isn't credibility and whether or not he's doing it for the money, but the fact that deep down in John Lydon's soul is someone who . . . knows what rock 'n' roll is and knows it's the best thing he can ever do, that there's nothing wrong with getting the Sex Pistols back together. You know, `Never Mind the Bollocks' is one of the greatest records of the 20th century. The only problem is that, embarrassingly enough, it's going to make everyone concerned lots of money."

- Rotten's response: "I think Pete's become petulant. I disagree with everything he just said."

But it's a compliment! "I just want to be contentious," says Rotten, laughing. "That's the fun of life. That's all we have is humor. And when you lack that, you lack everything."

Tix: $13. With Lenny Lashley's Gang of One, and Roots and Razors Sound System. Starts at 9.

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