The Domestic Terrorist - The Golden Jubilee Of The SeX pIsToLs

THE SEX PISTOLS AT THE PALACE. 27 July 2002.

It’s a gig too far. With all due respect, this should never have happened. It’s Pantomime Punk with the Sex Pistols. Gasp! As Johnny Rotten cant be bothered to sing and throw his mike open to the crowd like Bon Jovi. Swoon! As Steve Jones wanders around looking like a lost brickie. Yawn! As Glen Matlock sings and lives out his pub rock fantasies in a stadium looking like your Dad. Erm! As Paul Cook looks like your dad and plays drums for a sizable percentage of around about half a million quid. Cringe! As you see the Pistols flogging a dead horse in every newspaper, conservative Sunday Mail Supplement, and breakfast TV show you can imagine.

The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long, the quote goes. The Pistols exploded for a few short moments all that time ago, before fragmenting. Every so often a ghost of their greatness returns, haunting us with images from the past, but lacking substance, without body, without genius. I wish I could say it sounds fantastic. But it doesn’t. It sounds like the best Sex Pistols tribute band there is, and what we’re watching here is people doing cover versions of what was once great, and degrading it. With the Pistols, integrity is EVERYTHING. Well, except to themselves. They only did it ‘cos of fame.

See, the Sex Pistols at Crystal Palace just seems odd. Wrong, even. Six years after their Filthy Lucre tour, comes a supposedly final, definitive, but actually somewhat half-arsed attempt at bleeding yet more Cash from Chaos. Despite Malcolm McClaren’s protestations that “the only notes that matter come in wads“, the Pistols were about no such thing. I don’t know what they were about, but they weren’t a franchise. Not till now. It might be their 25th anniversary, their very own Jubilee, but this, a pointless processed-meat style reformation in a football stadium (with it’s very own stand called the “Jubilee Stand 1977”) just seems cheesy.

Almost as cheesy as the multitude of families here with their picnic baskets, their £5 binoculars, their frankly offensive Union Jack silk shirts, and their children jigging their hands in the air on Daddy’s Shoulders - all to the tune of Johnny Rotten singing ”DIE LITTLE BABY, SCREAMING!”.

From the back though, it looks like U2 without the video screens. Japanese tourists make sure they get their photographs giving the thumbs up, with Johnny Rotten yelling in the background. The Sex Pistols are a tourist attraction, just like the Queen. It’s a fucking insult to what music’s all about. Meanwhile, these people take a holiday in other people’s misery and take photographs. Look, there we are with all those quaint Lahdahners seeing the Sex Pistols, gorblimey, luvaduck.

Now credit where credits due. The Pistols do try to be good - and they sound great, apart from a clunky, domineering bass in some songs. And the selection of songs is inventive - no mere rerun of the Filthy Lucre Tour here. But why? These songs are as relevant as they have ever been. They are beyond specifics such as a certain decade, they belong to a state of mind and in my mind, 2002 is just like 1976.

The complete collapse of the Government in following their promises. The world teetering on the edge of war and shortages. Mass unemployment, job insecurity, minimum wage, cut price Aldi-Lidl existences, eeking out a reality on ever-shrinking dole payments and collossal, crippling debts. Culture so bland it could never grow mould - there’s nothing for bacteria to live off within it. Stand up Travis, stand up the Stereophonies. Men Old Before Their Time. You are the bland leading the bland.

The only problem is that this time round, the hopeless bunch of old fucks living off the achievements of the past and devoid of musical progression are on stage and call themselves the Sex Pistols. And my God, this, a diluted, castrated, laughable version of whatever it was that was brilliant in 1977 is still better than Men Old Before Their Time. The Pistols are boys trapped in the bodies of men, young after their time. But to treat songs this great, this pure, as the raw material for cabaret and pantomime is just insulting.

But please, less of the patronising stadium rock gestures. It’s painful to hear the amassed 20,000 Punk Grandads of London singing “EMI” thank you. Just sing the fucking song and do your jobs. That’s what singers are. You don’t see guitarists stopping their playing so the crowd can do it for them do you?

Whilst these Bonoesque moves leave a dark taste in your mouth, the fact that Rotten just comes out and tells us the truth - “I’ll do anything for 500 grand” - he boldly states at one point, must count for something. But what, I don’t know. Maybe the Pistols don’t mean anything anymore. After all, they haven’t written a single song for quarter of a century.

But then again, lines such as “And blind acceptance is a sign / Of stupid fools who stand in line” and “There is no future / In England's dreaming / Don't be told what you want / Don't be told what you need” are timeless. They are as important and connected to the social landscape today as they were 25 years ago. Some things never change. We’ve got DVD players and the Internet, but they’re just toys to distract us from the fact that capitalism cannot - will not - fill the hole we feel sometimes in the centre of our lives.

Neither will a Sex Pistols reunion. It’s just a bunch of blokes on stage playing songs they wrote quarter of a century ago. They’re great songs, but this, “singing songs about how bad the good old days were” as Jello Biafra described it, just seems wrong. Despite it being the Pistols very own Jubilee, and determined to celebrate their anniversary, it seems almost perfunctory. From the meaningless flag behind the stage that reinforces the sense of misplaced nationalism - and the Pistols were always about far far more than the paraochial, small-minded, shortsighted Britishness they seem to have branded with - to the complete lack of excitement emanating from the stage, it feels like Just Another Gig to me.

The complete lack of excitement doesn’t just affect the Pistols, aside from an excellent set by And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Dead, the other support acts are, despite their efforts, less than exciting. The Dropkick Murphys give us an insulting mixture of bagpipes and nu-metal, wrapped up in a sickening brand of nationalism and unimaginative, oafish rock gestures. And the jarring, average attempts of DJ / rappers Mellobostic who work the field like it was Saturday Night At The Dome with their empty toasting and hollow stadium hollering of “Sex Pistols!” at any opportunity they can squeeze in.

If these bands are the future, then I’ll embrace the past. Except the heroes of the past, as the Pistols supposedly are, let you down. They can’t live up to the past. But they might as well try. Rotten is his normal self, and the most enjoyable parts of the evening are the bits between the songs where he’s left alone. During these he shows that despite coming here just for cash he has a point to make - he dedicates “Holidays In The Sun” to the new British Queen, Tony Blair. He then admonishes whomever voted for Blair : “Never Trust A Toff. Never. Never. Ever. Never Trust A Toff.” They later play a song about Tony - “Liar”.

It’s “punk” in so much as it makes its own rules - and the rules are simple : take the money and run. There are no rules. Wear no uniforms. Think for yourself. But there are traditions. After all, following a Pistols tradition for cover versions, the evening starts with a medley of “Silver Machine / God Save The Queen” (yes, a cover of Hawkwind’s 1972 Top Ten hit). In a further attempt to perform cabaret with us, “Submission” comes bundled in with The Doors “Hello I Love You” and the Kinks “All Day And All Of The Night”. That’s on top of “Substitute”, “No Lip”, “No Fun”, “Stepping Stone”, the rarely performed “Through My Eyes”, and a risible version of “My Way” where Rotten can’t even be bothered to sing and the Pistols try an appalling version of the song : oddly enough sans orchestra and dead bassist, it just sounds like a cheap attempt at crowd pleasing.

The only other surprise is “Belsen Was A Gas”, a song the Pistols performed publicly only a handful of times in the last month of their original lifespan and never officially recorded. There are moments where the Pistols seem to connect with the spirit of what they had back in 77 - “No Fun” sounds desolate, and empty - it sounds alone. But that’s about it. Baby, I’m bored with this charade.

But really, its just no good. At the back of the stadium, past the £3 pints and the officially licensed £35 bondage tops, past the bass and drums singalonga Johnny portion of “Pretty Vacant”, it’s a travesty. A final cash in to fool the faithful. No Fun. Never mind the Sex Pistols, they were bollocks.Ha ha ha, ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?

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