`THEY’VE changed everything,” said Paul Dickens, a 32-year-old civil servant, fluffing a newly spiked hairdo last weekend at the Sex Pistols’ first British gig in 18 years. You wouldn’t have known it to look at the four beer-bellied market traders on stage in Finsbury Park, north London, but these were the erstwhile swearing, gobbing punk rockers who invented a genre.
Since their 1978 split, Johnny Rotten, Steve Jones, Glen Matlock and Paul Cook have never failed to profess their mutual hatred. Every band has its price, though, and for a reported R40-million plus, the Pistols were prepared to put on their best sneers and hit the road again. And with customary frankness, they’ve titled the 20-date European leg the Filthy Lucre tour.
Since announcing the temporary reunion in March, the group, now all 40-plus, have reverted to type, boasting about the fortune they’ll make. But this is not at all certain: Finsbury Park failed to sell out, despite a bill featuring fellow old-timers Stiff Little Fingers and the Buzzcocks.
Rotten, who reverted to his real name of John Lydon when he moved to California in the 1980s, had expressed the hope that reviewers’ wheelchairs would get stuck in the mud. One presumes he meant the decades of mud encrusted in fans’ grubby leather jackets. Some of them must have been in storage for years, awaiting this moment. Their owners were a combination of multi-earringed diehards, 40-ish accountant types and the odd incredulous youth.
The few safety pins on display were worn nostalgically, not rebelliously, and there were certainly none anywhere near the Pistols. Lydon had made an effort to be Rotten, teasing his hair into gummy blue tufts, but the others looked every bit the middle-aged home-owners they are. Compared to the rippling hemispheres of muscle of support act Iggy Pop, the headliners eloquently epitomised the dangers of too much lager and too little anarchy.
Lydon went into “on” mode as if he’d been plugged in, staring, flailing and pretending to masturbate. Not to be outdone, Jones croaked: “Oo wants a quick shag?” With those trousers? Forget it.
Soundbites? Johnny obliged. “It’s only Uncle Johnny and the boys here — fat, 40 and back. How you longed to see the day,” he cackled. “Any journalists here? Send `em to me and I shall deal with them.” Despite that, however, he was hardly confrontational, and of what use is a mellowed-out John Lydon?
Well, he did say fat and 40. The former scourge of Finsbury Park has come home, and he’s a rather endearing pussycat.