Despite being the most able musician in the early days of the Sex Pistols, Glen Matlock was ejected after the Anarchy In The UK single, but then infamously re-hired for the recording of God Save The Queen.
Not short of ambition, however, he soon emerged from the shadow of punk’s most iconic band, founding the short-lived Rich Kids with future Ultravox frontman Midge Ure, and then established himself as one of rock’s most respected sidemen.
After over 40 years in the business, his CV entries include gigs and recordings with everyone from Iggy Pop to The Faces and Primal Scream.
When opportunity knocks, Matlock pursues a concurrent solo career which has so far resulted in half a dozen titles. As befits a man in possession of one of rock’s most enviable address books, his latest release Good To Go features contributions from The Stray Cats’ Slim Jim Phantom, former David Bowie guitarist Earl Slick and Chis Spedding, the man who helmed the Pistols’ very first studio demo in May 1976.
“Chris plays on the album’s last track, Keep On Pushing, which I’d recorded with [drummer] Chris Musto, but I felt it still needed something,” Matlock says of this recent collaboration. “I came up with a lick that sounded like something Spedding might play, but also reminded me of Bryan Ferry’s version of The Everly Brothers’ The Price Of Love, so I looked that up and guess what? It’s only Chris Spedding playing on it.
“So, anyway, I call Chris up and say, ‘Look, I dig your guitar on that track, I’ve got a tune that needs that kind of thing, would you come down?’” he furthers. “Well, he comes down, does the riff and the lead solo and it’s great. I ask him what he wants for doing it and he says, ‘That’s OK, you can play on my next album for nothing, too, and we can call it quits.’ That’s still how these things work in my world.”
Just shy of his 62nd birthday, Matlock is chatty and eminently likeable. Gigging far and wide of late, he’s now back in the UK preparing for a five-night residency at swanky Canary Wharf venue The Boisdale.
The ideal moment, then, to join the bassmeister as he shares some of the numerous spills and thrills from his rollercoaster, 40-year career, one that has taken him from teenage Sex Pistol to in-demand elder statesman.
RC: The Boisdale has an award-winning restaurant, which Tatler have voted London’s No 1 jazz venue. And Jools Holland’s the Patron Of Music. That’s all very establishment for a Sex Pistol, isn’t it?
Yeah, it is a bit, I suppose. I’ve played
there previously. I did a charity thing there a couple of years back and Jools Holland, [The Clash’s] Mick Jones and The Pretenders’ Martin Chambers were involved, so that was great. Besides, I still love playing live. I’m also doing the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool and the Peace Train Festival in the demilitarised zone between North and South Korea soon, so life’s a minestrone, as someone once said [It was Eric Stewart and Lol Crème, actually – Ed].
Even now, people view you as the Paul McCartney of punk, the guy whose love of songcraft balanced out the anarchy in the Pistols. Do you feel you’ve received your due for your role in the band at last?
Do you mean financially or creatively? Artistically, yeah, to a degree. I never had any problem with Sid [Vicious], he was just a likeable idiot, but I think one of the best things about the reunions, especially the first one in 1996, was that it just felt right. Growing up, we all learnt to play together and we’ve got something in common that only four people in the whole world have – when we’re in a room together and plug in, we’re the Sex Pistols! So I think we all thought that was something to be celebrated and also something to be rewarded handsomely for.
Talking of reunions, John Lydon’s now revived PiL and both his book Anger Is An Energy and Steve Jones’ Lonely Boy heavily hint that the Pistols are dead and buried for good. Are further shows out of the question?
I certainly don’t get up in the morning thinking it might happen again, but then everything we’ve done over the years has come together at the last minute, so never say never, I guess. Mind you, I have the best idea ever for if we did ever reform again. We should hire a fantastic publicist, tell all the people in the Bible belt in the US we’re coming to their towns, get them to pay us off and then don’t do it – and call it the Hush Money tour. I think Malcolm [McLaren] would be proud of that one!
Post-Pistols you formed the short-lived new wave supergroup Rich Kids with Midge Ure, Steve New and Rusty Egan and made a great debut album, [1978’s] Ghosts Of Princes In Towers. Why did it all fall apart so quickly?
Everything started changing so fast after punk. Midge and Rusty, especially, were really keen to get more involved in electronic music and got kinda side-tracked into New Romantic. I didn’t mind that per se, because when we signed to EMI, part of the deal was they gave us all copies of The Beatles’ entire catalogue and all the Tamla Motown gear, but also all the Can and Kraftwerk stuff and most people don’t realise that I loved all that, and electronic stuff, too. I wouldn’t have minded bringing some of that into what we were doing, but when Midge got involved with Steve Strange in what became Visage, that pretty much finished Rich Kids off.
Midge Ure later achieved mainstream success with Ultravox and co-wrote Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas? with Bob Geldof. He seems very driven.
Yeah, he is. He’s a class act, and I got him into Rich Kids because I always loved his voice, even before he was with [bubblegum popsters] Slik, plus I liked the quiff he used to have. With hindsight, though, getting him in kinda put the cat among the pigeons with the punks. There was a lot of talent in Rich Kids, but in retrospect it obviously wasn’t going to last.
You went on to play with Iggy Pop at the turn of the 80s, touring with him and playing on his [1980] LP Soldier. How did that come about?
I’d already met Iggy when Rich Kids played The Lyceum in London. We had Ian McLagan playing with us and they were trying to reform The Small Faces at the time, so Steve Marriott also came down that night and he got a bit annoyed with me, ’cos he thought I was trying to nick his keyboard player – which I kinda was. Anyway, then Iggy turned up along with Steve [Jones] and Paul [Cook], who I hadn’t seen since I left the Pistols. They came into the dressing room and tried to nick our champagne. Nothing changes.
Jackie Clarke, who played bass on New Values, the Iggy album before Soldier, wanted to play second guitar on the tour behind that album, so they were short a bass player. My agent, John Giddings, the guy who revived the Isle Of Wight Festival, suggested me.
As a result, I worked on Iggy’s Soldier and toured Europe.
During the 80s, you were involved with several promising but short-lived outfits including The Spectres and Hot Club.
Yeah, the original line-up of The Spectres featuring [ex-Tom Robinson Band] guitarist Danny Kustow, that one especially had a lot of promise. Polydor were definitely in the running to sign us at one point, but it all went a bit tits-up in the end. I really loved Danny’s playing. I was a big fan of the original TRB and his solo on 2-4-6-8 Motorway is just so accomplished.
You later recorded the underrated solo
set Who’s He Think He Is When He’s
At Home? for Creation at the height
of Britpop.
I like to bring in guest guitarists when I’m making my solo records, so I brought in Steve New [Rich Kids] and Derwood Andrews [Generation X] for that one. I don’t always play bass these days and as I’d become matey with Chris McCormack from 3 Colours Red [and currently in The Professionals with Paul Cook], he made up the rhythm section with their drummer Keith Baxter. It’s sad to think Steve and Keith are both dead now.
That Creation period did open some doors for me, but the album was supposed to come out in 1995 and it got held back. In the interim, the Sex Pistols reunion came up and the LP finally got released as I was going on tour with the Pistols. It didn’t do much, but I still like it. It’s got some great songs including Apparently and My Little Philistine.
Your new album Good To Go features killer self-penned pop/rock tracks Won’t Put The Brakes On Me and the rockabilly-flavoured Sexy Beast, but there’s also a surprise cover of Scott Walker’s Montague Terrace (In Blue).
I like some of Scott Walker’s stuff very much. I’m not so sure about that album where he’s hitting a piece of meat [2006’s The Drift], that goes over my head, but
I vividly remember hearing John Peel play The Electrician [from The Walker Brothers’ 1978 Nite Flights] and just thinking, Wow! It’s maybe not something you’d expect me to cover, but I’ve been doing Montague Terrace in my live set for a long time and I really like the lyric, which I actually feel is quite punky.
It ended up on the album almost by accident. Slim Jim broke a stick during the session so to fill in time I started playing Montague Terrace. Everyone dug it, so we worked it up and recorded it. Simple as.
Another Good To Go highlight is Wanderlust where you make it clear how much you relish playing live. Is that more of a necessity than ever these days?
The nitty-gritty is that playing live is the way people like us earn a living these days.
I keep busy. Last year, I played the UK, New Zealand and Japan and I play Italy regularly. My situation’s pretty flexible. For example, I’ve got Earl Slick coming over for the Boisdale shows – I’ve got a little coterie of quality people I can call on, depending on what money’s offered. What spurs me on is that I seem to have more people hanging on my every word now than I did 40 years ago. I’m glad I’m still viewed in a contemporary light – the last thing I wanna be is a punk pensioner who just goes out and plays the hits with
a second-division band.
Good To Go is released via Soundwave on 24 August.
