Frank Carter and Sex Pistols
Bush House, Shepherds Bush, London
15th August 2024
For almost fifty years, the names Sex Pistols and John Lydon have been rolling off our tongues as synonymously as punk and rock. Now, Phil Ross wonders who the hell Frank Carter is, and tries to imagine the unimaginable.
When bands replace an original member, a little bit of magic gets lost, more-so if it’s the singer. I was 12 years old when the Sex Pistols’ only studio album Never Mind The Bollocks was released, and by the time I’d started to buy punk records they had already disbanded. Although, ‘disbanded’ is a far from accurate description of their massive implosion.
Sex Pistols were unusual household names, disparaged by tabloids, banned by venues and despised by parents, teachers and grown-ups alike. They had exploded onto the nation’s consciousness after an expletive-filled TV appearance on Bill Grundy’s Today show, the event that pushed both the Pistols and the punk movement, screaming, spitting and swearing into the mainstream media. Bassist Glen Matlock was sacked by manager Malcolm McLaren for reputedly ‘liking The Beatles’ and replaced by Sid Vicious, a violent drug addict who couldn’t play the bass. Drunken chaos and violence kept them permanently in the public spotlight and got them sacked by both EMI and A&M Records.
On their debut US tour, after asking the audience “ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” singer John Lydon quit the band, as well as his stage-name Johnny Rotten. Curtly walking off stage, Lydon formed Public Image Limited shortly afterwards. The Pistols’ implosion was complete when Vicious, on bail for the suspected second degree murder of his girlfriend Nancy Spungen, died of a drug overdose in New York in February 1979; he was 21 years old.
Within weeks of Vicious’ death, McLaren and Virgin Records released the soundtrack of the forthcoming Pistols movie The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle. It was the precursor to one of the brashest, most tasteless and possibly most successful and exploitative marketing campaigns in music industry history. There were toys, t-shirts and merchandise galore and a glut of singles, and albums clogging the charts before finally running out of steam with the compilation Flogging A Dead Horse in February 1980.
Following that were almost twenty years of accusations and recriminations between band members and management played out publicly in memoirs, biographies and law courts. But eventually, a magical moment arrived in 1996, when the original musicians finally reconciled and reformed for the first of a series of reunions – and at the age of 31, an unimaginable lifetime dream came true, I saw Sex Pistols at the Phoenix Festival in Long Marston, and again later at Brixton Academy.
NMTB is the greatest punk album of all time, standing head and shoulders above all others, and it was surreal after half my life, to hear it played live for the first time, every track stamping out the test of time, encapsulating teenage confidence, anger and naivety like some magical elixir of youth. An elixir that can’t be used every day, but when it comes out of its record sleeve every year or so, to this day, it transports me like a time machine back to when I was 14 years old, miming every rasp, snarl or rrrolling R of Lydon’s North London Irish accent in the bedroom mirror or youth club disco.
More recently however, I’d been saddened by Lydon and the band falling-out again, this time over Pistol, the Danny Boyle mini-series based on guitarist Steve Jones’ memoir Lonely Boy, and further saddened by the singer’s comments to Andrew Marr about immigrants and Brexit. I have the greatest of sympathy for the passing of his wife Nora and great respect for him taking care of her, but perhaps Lydon himself or at least his views don’t seem to have stood the test of time that the album has. But he was always the most opinionated and had the most attitude, a difficult bugger you could say – I guess it’s what gave his lyrics so much bite, and on stage, there ain’t no human bein’ can match the persona of John Lydon.
Last year at Dog Day Afternoon, I’d pogoed ecstatically with 20,000 punks to the adorably shambolic Generation Sex featuring Cook and Jones along with Billy Idol and Tony James of Generation X, but in honesty, the performance was a bit loose and the vocals a bit rough. So this summer, when I saw that three Pistols Cook, Jones and Matlock were performing Never Mind The Bollocks in full, for a benefit gig, with a vocalist I’d never heard of, called Frank Carter, I wasn’t sure what to expect.
Tonight’s gig, tiny in comparison to the enormous Crystal Palace Park, takes place in a slightly shabby former soup kitchen, snooker club and bingo hall called Bush House, built in 1904 and frequented by Paul Cook in his younger days. It’s part of the local West London music scene and funds raised by this short run of Frank Carter and Sex Pistols shows will help keep the troubled 400-capacity venue afloat.
It’s a nice touch to see Don Letts, pioneer of film and music on the DJ decks, warming up the audience with vintage punk and dub remixes. It’s gonna be a good night I think, as the crowd gently bobs to an upbeat version of Max Romeo’s War ina Babylon, before a head pops around the backstage door. Don nods with a thumbs up, lines up his final track, Blockbuster by The Sweet before turning and heading off into the darkness.
As the tech crew makes the last minute equipment checks, I look up and around at the mirror ball, chandeliers and ornate ceiling coving of the 120 year old Bush Hall and it occurs to me what a fitting venue for a time capsule performance of a classic album.
There are numerous shouts of ‘come on Frank’ and ‘come on Franky’ as the band come on, and Carter, a little guy with red hair, rolls up the sleeves of his white shirt to reveal multiple tattoos. An audience member shouts ‘fucking do it’ as he paces like a caged leopard to the familiar bass drum intro for Holidays In The Sun. Crouching and weaving like a fighter warming up, he seems less than half the age of Jones and the other Pistols. His youthful face splits into an enormous, maniacal grin and he throws the mic stand high above his head, shaking and brandishing it like some ancient tattooed Celtic warrior with a spear, daring Caesar and his legionaries to come ahead and try to invade our little island.
Bursting with energy, he pogoes, leaps, punching the air, legs wide, elbows out, both Jones and Matlock giving him lots of space, laying down a tight, solid base of music for him to make the stage his own. His rasping, screeching delivery delights the heaving crowd as much as his exuberance does, and from the outset he owns them too. They have barely a moment to cheer before the opening sweeps of Seventeen cut through and Carter is again stomping, posturing, foot on the monitor. He jumps onto the crash barrier, standing among the heads and hands held high, holding him in place, amidst a sea of cameras, phones and spittle. I’m sure I detect a hint of a London Irish accent and the occasional Lydon mannerism. He’s clearly loving every moment tonight, and for a split second I feel a pang of jealousy that he’s up there doing it, and I wish it was me. But it’s a fleeting feeling, gone in an instance. I’m really fucking happy for him, he got the best gig in the world, I’m happy to be here in this moment, and happy for the elixir of youth. I imagine young Carter did the same as I did, and the same as a million young punks around the world did – sang along to NMTB in his bedroom.
He’s still on the crash barrier for New York, swinging his hips, singing ‘do the Franky’ and not the original lyric ‘do the s*mbo’, which is poignant given my qualms about Lydon’s immigrant comments. Later in Anarchy In The UK, I notice he changes the lyrics here too, to sing: ‘is this the fucking EDL, or is this the USA, or is this the IDF, I thought it was the UK’, and unless I’m completely wrong, I like his politics too.
At times, the body language is a little strange on stage, as the three Sex Pistols are clearly delighted with Carter but just a little uncomfortable with such a ball of energy. And he’s clearly a little in awe of them, and on Cloud 9 at the same time. It occurs to me that after decades of being forced to accommodate a problem personality, the band’s founders Paul Cook and Steve Jones have finally sacked John Lydon and replaced him with a younger wild-eyed version (who brings his own fanbase).
I started the evening trying to imagine what unimaginable creature could possibly match and replace the persona of Lydon. I ended the evening in the knowledge that I saw the beast crowd-surfing at Bush Hall. Do the Franky!
Frank Carter and Sex Pistols play the O2 Forum, Kentish Town on Thursday 26th September 20204 – this show is sold out.
~
Words by Phil Ross. More writing by Phil can be found at his Louder Than War author’s archive.
All words and photos by Naomi Dryden-Smith. Louder Than War | Facebook |Twitter | Instagram | portfolio
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