A Seance in Finsbury Park
[Spin, August 1996]
The Sex Pistols were much reviled when they reformed and played live in 1996, but I found their 23rd June date at Finsbury Park – their first UK show for over 18 years – both exciting and emotional. Apart from the mass pogo that broke out during “Bodies”, there was another great moment when, during the encore of “No Fun”, I glanced behind me and there was Mick Jones, grinning like the fans both he and I were and are. Suddenly, it was 1976 again.
Just before the Sex Pistols take the stage in the waning light, a curious hush falls on the boisterous punk crowd. A myth is to be made flesh: the heart quickens. The debates have been raging in what has become, like all Sex Pistols events, a media spectacle: in reforming, the group – and John Lydon in particular – are dancing on the grave of punk ideals; the songs are still relevant; this is just sad nostalgia, the true rock’n roll swindle, cash from chaos; it’s their myth, they can do what they want with it. Round and round the arguments have gone, but now is the hour of truth: can the Sex Pistols walk it like they still talk it ?
Baccara’s perfect slice of Euro-Disco cheese, “Yes Sir I Can Boogie”, segues into the introduction, performed with commendable brevity by England Squad footballer Stuart Pearce. Here is a clue, but without any delay, a large banner is unfurled – made out of those tabloid front pages, when for a week in December 1976, the Sex Pistols were public enemy number one for the first time: “The Filth and the Fury”, “The Foul Mouthed Yobs”. As the noise swells, the four Pistols crash through this backdrop, fists and feet first, be fore ripping the whole thing down: a classic pop entrance (the last time I’ve seen anyone do this kind of thing was late 80′s teen sensations Bros). We start laughing: this is going to be fun.
‘Thank you for coming to our little party’, shouts Lydon and they’re off – into the rollercoaster ride of “Bodies”. Al though we think we’re in a safe zone, my friend and I – respectable fortysomethings both – are swept up in a wild melee of flying liquid, shoving and leaping bodies, hundreds of mouths screaming out the percussive ‘fucks’ in a communal release. I can’t stop laughing: this is what I always wanted to do in 1977 but never could. The Sex Pistols speed through “New York”, “Seventeen: and “No Feelings” before the tone of the event becomes clear: ‘You want more ? Then don’t be so fucking shy,’ Lydon mildly admonishes the crowd; ‘It’s only uncle Johnny and the boys here – FAT, FORTY AND BACK !’
If the audience is expecting Lydon’s trademark sarcasm and hostility, they’re in the wrong time: as the group tosses off “Did You No Wrong”, “God Save The Queen” and “Liar”, he confines himself to mildly spiced, crowd-pleasing in structions. He knows all too well the destructive implications of the credo expressed on PiL’s “Rise”: ‘anger is an energy’. When he sang those words in 1986, the audience took him so literally that they rushed the stage and battered him: so, no more crowd baiting. Just look at the group’s clothes – Lydon in an buttoned-up check jacket, silver straight-legs and an absurd corona of blue/yellow spiked up hair, Steve Jones in gold lame and leopardskin with blonde highlights, Matlock in his understated Mod cool: this is showbusiness.
The group are settling in: a great segue of “Satellite” and “Steppin’ Stone” followed by “Holidays in the Sun”. Several differences between 1996 and 1977 are becoming clear. The Sex Pistols are, as they always were, a great pop/rock band – Matlock’s melodic, endlessly pumping bass, Cook’s driving, heartbeat drums, and Jones’ delinquent, wall of sound guitar – but now you can hear them through a decent PA, without any attendant hysteria. The changes are most evident in Lydon: his formerly hostile, defensive posture has been re placed by the sharp self-mockery and camp, exaggerated gestures of the vaudevillian. As he chatters his way through “Submission”, he delivers a line that shows what he wants out of the occasion: ‘and the crowd went wild’.
And so it does, on the anthemic “Pretty Vacant”, up next. As thousands of throats bellow out the pay-off – ‘And we don’t CAAARE’ – it hits me: this is really new. If you were a Sex Pistols fan in 1976/7, you could not do this. The group only ever played in the UK to a few hundred people – ie about 1% of this gathering of 30,000 — who as often would harass and attack them; if the audience didn’t, then football hooligans, out raged nationalists, and serried ranks of police would. If you wore Punk clothes and gathered together in numbers of more than two, then you’d get attacked as well. The Sex Pistols were loved, to be sure, but being their fan was like being in a hermetic, underground sect: you could only ex press it in public through secret, coded signs. Despite having several major 45 hits and a num ber one album, the group could not relax into their success: in stead, they slid into a fabulous but debilitating disaster – a blocked ritual that has haunted anyone involved ever since.
This is what this spectacle is about: the rewriting of history and unfinished business. In editing out all the post-Lydon material – no Sid songs, nothing from “The Great Rock’n Roll Swindle” – the Sex Pistols have explicitly returned to their highpoint in 1977, when “Never Mind The Bollocks” went number 1 in the UK. But now they want to be loved, because they never were when they should have been. Introduced by a famous footballer in this sport-dominated summer, they have recast themselves as a populist, popular rock group that, unlike many Brits, actually rock. As they careen through “EMI” and the encores of “Anarchy in the UK”, “Problems” and “No Fun”, the circle is completed: in becoming entertain ment, which is all they could do now, the Sex Pistols have laid to rest their and our burden. What a relief.