Concert Review : 30 Years On

Wishbone Ash to the Sex Pistols? No problem to me!

Last Sunday saw me at the SECC in Glasgow to catch the Sex Pistols on the last of their 30th Anniversary gigs. I saw them in 1996 when they first reunited in the wake of the successful outcome of their lawsuit against Malcolm McLaren. I got the impression that they felt that they had a point to prove, and that was they were far from being the puppets that McLaren has revelled in painting them as. And as far as I was concerned, they accomplished that mission very successfully.

Another eleven years on, the original quartet are back again. There's nothing new to play short of the entire Bollocks album plus the pick of the B-sides and covers that they played in their heyday. Unfortunately, this didn't include Satellite, the flip of Holidays In The Sun and of which I'm rather fond. But everything else was present and correct.

The classic troika of singles (excluding Holidays which isn't really in the same league) of Anarchy In The UK, God Save The Queen and Pretty Vacant are up there with the best and the muscular live renditions were more than enough to have me sharpening up (and down!) my pogoing skills. Submission was one of the great tracks on the album and was just as impressive in a live setting. And their cover of Iggy's No Fun was simply immense - it's one of these riffs that when the band get into that groove they could play it all night long without complaint from me.

Forget all the "they can't play their instruments" nonsense - that's just McLaren's big lie. This is a superb rock band from top to bottom and one more than worthy of placing amongst the greats. They might not be able to play with the virtuosity of, say, Yes. But I'd reckon that Yes couldn't play with the power and drive that the Pistols exhibited last Sunday night.