Glen Matlock
AN AUDIENCE WITH...
With a fiery new solo album ready to roll, the Sex Pistols songwriter talks “Anarchy…”, activism and gigging in the DMZ
Interview by SAM RICHARDS
Glen Matlock: proving he’s “not a one-trick pony from 1976
“Music can be a release and it can be a rallying cry”
SCROLL through Glen Matlock’s Twitter feed and there are almost as many pictures of him holding placards as there are of him holding guitars. Whether it’s marching against Brexit or the Policing Bill, it seems that the man who once penned the nihilist anthem “Pretty Vacant” has lately become a bit of an activist. “I’m totally disgusted with the way this country’s gone,” begins Matlock, perched outside a café near his home in Maida Vale. “I’m not the most political person in the world, but we can all stand up and be counted about the things that matter. And I think the only way you can do that is actually turn up and be there It’s normally quite a laugh as well.”
This sense of jubilant protest energy fuels his new solo album, a collection of crisp rock’n’roll rabble-rousers featuring Earl Slick, Norman Watt-Roy and Clem Burke. The lead-off single is even called “Head On A Stick”. Anyone’s in particular, Glen? “Well, there’s many candidates!” He recounts having a “run-in” with Michael Gove at a recent QPR match: “I told him in no uncertain terms what I think about his stupid Brexit and what it’s done for touring musicians. I was bristling, I really had to hold myself back.”
Matlock is warier about revisiting old Sex Pistols spats, but with Danny Boyle’s miniseries about the band due to air in May, he looks back fondly on his pivotal role in the punk revolution, selling shoes to Mick Ronson and accidentally inventing the new romantics. Turns out there is a point in asking…