MAKUHARI, Japan — This is not just a rock ‘n’ roll show. The Sex Pistols and a thousand trembling lambs is what this is. I am in a city just outside Tokyo, inside the venue that houses the Mountain Stage (more like the cavernous Thunderdome in that Mad Max movie), staring at a smattering of Japanese and Caucasian punks wreaking anarchy in a place called Makuhari. Not tearing the place apart, but spraying mineral water, pogo-ing, and pressing against the stage like a human tsunami to the soothing, relaxing crystalline sounds of punk rock.
Oh, what fun. And I mean it, maan.
This is the first night of the Summer Sonic rock festival in Chiba Prefecture in Japan. It is early August and it is hot as hell. The last time I attended the festival was in 2003 via the invitation of EMI Music Philippines when Radiohead and Blur headlined. It also featured great bands such as The Mars Volta, Interpol, The Strokes, Stereophonics, Blondie, etc. Other groups came and went since then: Arcade Fire, Oasis, the Flaming Lips, Arctic Monkeys, and a slew of others that played in the Marine, Mountain, Sonic and four satellite stages. Sharing the bill with the Pistols on the two-day gig are other must-see acts — The Verve, Jesus & Mary Chain, Spiritualized, Vampire Weekend, Paul Weller (which my companion, the Queen Bee, chose over Rotten, Jones, Matlock and Cook which make up the business firm from hell) and Coldplay (which for some strange sentimental reason we would go on to pick over the Reid Brothers in the Sunday slot). For those of us who can’t afford Glastonbury or Coachella, this is the ticket. Concertgoers can gorge on good bands from 11 in the morning to 9 in the evening. Well, if they could take the heat, the humidity and occasional clunkers like SUM 41.
But this is not just a rock ‘n’ roll band. Playing before my eyes are guitarist Steve Jones, bassist Glen Matlock, drummer Paul Cook and head screamer John Lydon (a.k.a. Johnny Rotten), four elderly musicians who should’ve been dead a long, long time ago, or burned out beyond belief at best.
In its 26-month existence, the band dubbed as the Sex Pistols managed to turn music on its head, arriving like a sickle to the chaff of prog-rock bands like ELP, Yes and Pink Floyd. Rotten notoriously walked the lengths of King’s Road with a hand-painted “I Hate Pink Floyd” shirt. But David Gilmour once said in a Q interview that he talked to Lydon years later who confessed that he actually was a fan of Floyd, and Nick Mason remembers meeting Johnny who turned out to be a respectful bloke. But the Pistols managed to shake things up quite a bit, pissing on the order of things — sort of like the aural equivalent of Hegel, Nietzsche, Karl Marx and other philosophers who are closet punks.
In a DVD documentary, Factory Records founder Tony Wilson said the Pistols playing at Manchester Lesser Free Trade Hall in June 1976 was the fruit of Robert Johnson going to the crossroads to sell his soul to the devil. The performance made rock ‘n’ roll exciting again. And, oh, spotted in the audience were future members of Joy Division and The Fall, even Morrissey. Not sure about Mick Hucknall, though, along with a hundred musicians who swore they were there in the audience of, what, 40? (When I interviewed New Order drummer Stephen Morris and asked about the veracity of some of the scenes in 24-Hour Party People, he dismissed the question with, “It’s supposed to be an allegory, man.” And that was that.)
Ex-manager and master manipulator Malcolm McLaren and the Pistols made an infamous movie titled The Great Rock ‘N’ Roll Swindle, which can be described as The Song Remains the Same with gimps, midgets and Sue the Catwoman. In the movie it is apparent that, as a singer, Johnny Rotten tries to be equal parts Alice Cooper, Richard III and the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
It has been said that the late Heath Ledger based his Joker character on Rotten and his preoccupation with chaos and confusion. Christian Bale, who played Batman in The Dark Knight, says it’s based on Pistols bassist Sid Vicious, so that makes things even more confusing.
Vicious once bashed rock journalist Nick Kent’s head with a bicycle chain leaving him in “a lather of blood and confusion,” got portrayed by Gary Oldman in Alex Cox’s Sid & Nancy, overdosed on heroin and became as iconic as Che Guevara and Chairman Mao. The records show he took the blows and did it… well, you know the rest. The thing is, one of the most popular bassists of all time didn’t really play the bass that well. Steve Jones would unplug Sid’s bass when Sid was smashed.
“He could take on England,” Lydon once said in an interview about Sid, “but he couldn’t take on his heroin addiction.”
The guys from the Pistols, together with their hangers-on (including lead Banshee Siouxsie Sioux), made a shambolic appearance on the Bill Grundy show, with Steve Jones calling the host a “dirty sod” and “dirty old man,” among other choice expletives. The morning after, The Daily Mirror famously bannered the phrase “The Filth and the Fury,” while another asked, “Were the Pistols Loaded?”
Neil Young, one of the “dinosaur rockers” not targeted by the Pistols, famously pays tribute to Rotten in My My Hey Hey: “The king is gone but he’s not forgotten, this is the story of Johnny Rotten.” For those lines alone we’ll forgive Young for Four Strong Winds.
The Pistols should’ve disappeared into the black void of legend, never to appear onstage together again like the Eagles which they despise. When God Save the Queen was the “No. ” single in the UK, the runner-up was — I think — Hotel California in 1977, the year Elvis died. And, oh, there was an infamous boat party to celebrate the Queen’s Jubilee. Those were strange days indeed.
To heighten the drama, McLaren booked the Pistols on an American tour in 1978. Not in the spots that were lorded over by The Ramones, the New York Dolls, or The Stooges (the bands that spawned the punk movement in the UK) but in redneck bars and places where cowboys congregate — a coldly calculated move. As a result they got pelted with bottles and pig snouts. “At the end, it wasn’t a rock ‘n’ roll party,” recalled Lydon in an interview. “It was a dying horse that needed putting down.”
The end came at Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco where the Pistols ended with The Stooges song No Fun and Rotten mouthed the famous line, “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”
Fast forward to the Year of our Lord Two Thousand Eight in a time when Britney is queen and punk has been simplified by Simple Plan. Terrible fashion, terrible art, terrible movies (remember Here Come the Punks starring Rey “PJ” Abellana and Leni Santos?). We have read a lot of obituaries detailing the supposed demise of punk.
Thus the Pistols should’ve stuck with what they were doing. Host a radio show. Form super-groups with ex-members of Guns N’ Roses and Duran Duran. Reform Public Image Ltd. (the best band in the ‘80s, along with The Smiths). Do documentaries on bugs. Not fade away. Not flog a dead horse. Not ruin the very thing they propagated. Not reform for the love of filthy lucre in 1996 and 2002, and embark on tours from 2003 to the present. Not play on a stage smaller than what’s accorded to, of all bands, Prodigy. Not go to Japan and play to a thousand trembling lambs.
Butyou know what? I’m glad they did.
There they are: like the elder statesmen of rock ‘n’ roll revisiting past glories. Like an infernalnostalgia machine. The Pistols launch into Pretty Vacant: “There’s no point in asking, you’ll get no reply!” All hell breaks loose. Water fountains everywhere. Plastic bottles become airborne. A Japanese girl with pink hair gets pushed down by a guy rushing to take pictures with his camera phone. I get pushed. I look at the precious punk moment he has preserved forever. All that fuss for an indistinguishable blur on a cell phone? Thinking like a McLaren, I decide to situate myself between two hulking Caucasians to protect myself from the mad rush of punks with SoftBank mobile phones.
Can’t really blame them. The Pistols are onstage. Steve Jones has gotten burly. He plays chunks upon chunks of power chords with conviction on his cream Gibson, dabbling into occasional solos. Paul Cook plays like punk’s own Ringo. Glen Matlock’s bass is audible and steady, thus rendering the overall sound of the band isn’t too trebly at all just like the “Never Mind the Bollocks” album. (Matlock was replaced by Vicious because the former “liked The Beatles and washed his feet too much.”)
And what about Johnny Rotten? Well Rotten is Rotten to the core.
Holding the British flag and the rising sun flag aloft, Johnny Lydon, in stripes and plaid, simply commands attention. He tells the audience as he takes a bow, “Good evening, Land of the Rising Sun… We’re the Sex Pistols.” He swigs brandy from a bottle and then spits the drink out. He blows his nose occasionally. He sings, of course. All the glorious hits of yesteryear.
Lydon has gotten portly, yes that’s true. But he still sings menacingly like the Hunchback of Finsbury Park of old. He grins, he grimaces and he makes clownish faces. “Nippon boys and girls very quiet, very shy,” he notices at one point, wondering why they are afraid of Uncle Johnny. He tells them to loosen up. “We cannot hear you for we are very old men.”
Then he launches into a diatribe against George W. Bush and the Iraq War. His spiel is filled with so much filth and fury that it’s best not to quote him in detail. Then he segues into a song that praises Allah, Jesus and Buddha in equal measures.
“Thank you for your patience. Japan, we salute you.” Lydon then looks at the band and says, “Well, get on with it.” Afterwards, he dedicates the Pistols song Liar to Malcolm McLaren. “You’re a liar!” Well, McLaren told Q two years ago that the Pistols reunion is a “cartoon, unreal, stupid, sad, almost blasphemous” affair. He also said that Lydon is a “buffoon.” Johnny admits to reuniting solely for the money because they didn’t get paid the first time. I’m sure that Malcolm and John have not exchanged Christmas cards since the Pistols disbanded.
Johnny takes a swig of brandy, tilts his head back, gargles and then spits it all out before singing Holidays in the Sun, which is about taking a “cheap holiday in other people’s misery.” (This track was pillaged by Sebastian Bach and Skid Row, of I Remember You fame, for the “Stairway to Heaven, Highway to Hell” album dedicated to rockers who died from drug overdose. Aerosmith was supposed to contribute a Doors song to the enterprise but thought better of it.)
“I didn’t ask for sunshine, and I got World War Three / I’m looking at the wall, and they’re looking at me!” Lydon sings with conviction, as if he were still that angry young punk going with Sid and the other Pistols to the Berlin Wall, just horsing around months before that bitter end at Winterland.
Follow (I’m Not Your) Stepping Stone, I Did U No Wrong, Submission, and a cover of The Stooges’ No Fun. After playing Bodies, Johnny addresses the crowd while contorting his face, “Would you like to have a baby like me? Mommy!” Then it’s EMI, “an unlimited supply.” The Pistols got sacked by labels EMI and A&M (shortly after signing their contract in front of Buckingham Palace), and ultimately ending up at Richard Branson’s Virgin.
At one point, Lydon pauses upon hearing a request made by a guy in the audience. “Oh, look. A Westerner in Japan calling for Anarchy. Isn’t that cute? Why don’t you go back to where you came from and cause some. We did.”
They do play Anarchy in the UK and all hell breaks loose, part two. More pushing, more flashes from mobile phones, more anarchy. “I am an anti-Christ, I am an anarchist,” Johnny sings it not as a young, angry punk of yore, but as a self-confessed “bitter and twisted old git” who still has a few rants and quips up his sleeve. In an interview in the July issue of MOJO, he declares, “I don’t need to buy into the shit-stem,” but then paragraphs later says that he’s not averse to writing a song for Britney Spears. Possibly.
“They don’t play the Pistols on the radio, they don’t play Public Image, they play f**king sh*t,” he improvises on the Modern Lovers’ Roadrunner. “Radio once, radio twice, radio three times till we’re out of sight!”
Another song in the Pistols’ second encore is a cover of Hawkwind’s Silver Machine, wherein Steve Jones utilizes a variety of sound effects (maybe a phaser or a delay) to get a thuggish psychedelic vibe going on. Strangely, it sounds a bit like PiL. “They were the first ravers,” Lydon raves about Hawkwind.
You know what? The Sex Pistols have this reputation of being sloppy, incompetent musicians led by a singer who notoriously can’t carry a tune, but watching them at the Summer Sonic festival I am amazed at how tight and well-balanced their playing is. Jones’ guitar parts are sparse and economical with just the right amount of solos to serve the songs, hardly any fat. Lydon can sing. Not operatically, of course, but does one need a soprano for an anarchic punk band? The Pistols do run a tight ship.
I would go on to watch Coldplay the following evening, giving up the chance to hear Just Like Honey in Japan (the significance of that is obvious to those who watched Lost in Translation). Chris Martin and the rest of the band are supposed to be at the top of their game, being at the tail-end of a tour to promote the “Viva La Vida” album, which features Violet Hill, Cemeteries of London, and that song supposedly filched from the Creaky Boards. But they would play sloppily, surprisingly, and with Martin hitting a few bum notes, glaringly on Fix You. Guest Alicia Keys would also flub her piano part in Clocks. But I don’t mind that at all. I like watching human beings onstage. I don’t want to go to a concert and hear perfect renditions of songs I already have on CD, enhanced by computerized orchestral backing tapes and pitch correction devices (which enable Britney to sing angelically). All I’m saying is that the Pistols are playing like a well-oiled rock band, the best set I’ve ever seen in my life.
God Saved the Queen crystallizes the moment. The venue becomes a huge karaoke joint as a thousand Japanese and Caucasian punks sing “No future, no future, no future for you!” in unison.
So, what does the future hold? Well, days later most of the concertgoers will board their respective planes, trains and automobiles to go back to their dead-end jobs and dead-end relationships, and continue that mad parade called life. Here’s a comforting thought: they could always go back to their Sex Pistols CDs and know how it is to be a poison in the human machine. A flower in the dustbin. Even for brief moments. Listen closely, that’s the sound of England dreaming. God save the Sex Pistols, God save the… My reverie is cut short when a massive dude bumps into me and I bear the full frontal brunt of his anarchic body odor.
Punk’s not dead; it just smells funny.