Music Blogs

The unexpected news that the Sex Pistols had announced a London show in November arrived via a text, sent by someone mysteriously logged into my address book as "Cess Pitt." It was 12.53pm on Tuesday. Within an hour, similar messages had arrived from "Simon-mohican," "Steve mobile," "Sham harry" and half-a-dozen others. Clearly the subterranean punk world was abuzz. The chosen venue--Brixton Academy--was the icing on the cake: big enough to feel like an event, intimate enough to see the roly-poly folds of Steve Jones's paunch in all their devil-may-care glory. You could imagine that eerie intro to "Bodies" slowly curdling around the auditorium, then 4,000 punks exploding in a frenzy of airborne glasses and tartan bum-flaps, as Lydon bellows, "She was a girl from Bir-ming-ham..."

Of course, Led Zeppelin have also got pulses racing with news of a comeback, but Led Zep aren't the Pistols, are they? Page and Plant will no doubt put on a great rock'n'roll show, but that's all it will be--a great rock'n'roll show. The Pistols seem to mean something bigger and more complicated--they represent an attitude, a moral encumbrance, a whiff old Albion that's been lost forever. Though they post-date the Zep, it's almost as if they come from an earlier age. Everything about them is alluringly archaic, from those smoggy old London accents, straight out of Dixon Of Dock Green, to their "f**king rotter" argot and songs railing against the monarchy. I love that detail in Rotten's autobiography, No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, about his boyhood experience of being scrubbed with disinfectant in a tin bath. The Pistols really are the last of the Victorians, a warning from the past that we don't live in a benign, classless society, whatever Tory leader and Old Etonian David Cameron may tell us. And, as cranky old Dickensian scruffs, they have a warmth and crookness that's indelibly human and fallible and maybe a little gauche. They're probably the closest all of us will probably get to watching old-fashioned music hall.

Unlike Zep, too, the Pistols' return to London--their first show here since 2002's bash at Crystal Palace--will provoke heated debate, focusing on whether punk's first self-destructing heroes should be performing at all. Will it be the bollocks or the swindle, etc? Is it pissing on the grave of the spirit of '77? But to try to attach a set of values to the Pistols is to miss the point: what they've always been about is not the notion of liberty or revolution, but simply the idea of freedom--the freedom to do what the f**k they like.

A few months ago, I bumped into Matlock and Cook in a Soho pub. They looked like a couple of old Cockney lags, all chunky ID bracelets, stylish clothes and suntans. They exuded semi-criminality. I couldn't help thinking of Ray Winstone in Sexy Beast. Meanwhile, Lydon and Jones live in LA, living out the working-class Londoner's dream of fun in the Hollywood sun. They're winners: they took on the fusty, prejudiced, conservative English postwar society and won.

The Pistols return, then, as successful middle-aged men--a bunch of old geezers who've attained their success on their own terms. With some blinding punk rock tunes, too. I find that inspiring in a way that Led Zep's awesome rock'n'roll show and fine rendering of "Whole Lotta Love" and "Stairway To Heaven" can never hope to match. So, erm, anyone got a spare ticket? Being contrary buggers, there's no press freebies. Like Lydon says, "See you all at Brixton with proper feelings and proper people all around."

For more MOJOness, visit www.mojo4music.com