Streaming audio of Glen's answers can be heard by clicking on the player by each question. For help in playing music, see our Playing Audio page in the Big Help Desk.

Glen Matlock / Sex Pistols external links:
To Glen Matlock's personal website
To Sex-Pistols.net
To The Filth and the Fury

You need an updated version of Adobe Flash Player to listen - click button to download.

But it opened a lot of doors and also defined a lot of people in the way that they thought, including you and me for that matter.

You need an updated version of Adobe Flash Player to listen - click button to download.

You’re talking about the music business as if it’s synonymous with music.

You need an updated version of Adobe Flash Player to listen - click button to download.

Couldn’t you have asked the same question in 1975 just when everything got very bland?

You need an updated version of Adobe Flash Player to listen - click button to download.

Do you think that’s because it was more related, in the old days, innovations connected to song or have songs seemed to slip out of the equation?

You need an updated version of Adobe Flash Player to listen - click button to download.

Right. Well, at the end of the Pistols, that was way after you’d left, it also became very navel gazing; it became very self-referential and just almost striking a pose. It was just going through motions...

You need an updated version of Adobe Flash Player to listen - click button to download.

Well, for me, all the music in the Sex Pistols and what constitutes the music is arguable anyway really was defined before you left. Do you think that it would have continued to grow? Or do you think it was over for all of you by then?

You need an updated version of Adobe Flash Player to listen - click button to download.

Would you go on another Pistols revival tour?

You need an updated version of Adobe Flash Player to listen - click button to download.

Well there’s something timeless about the songs, but you’ve moved on to really focus on songwriting. Do you see yourself more as a writer or as a performer or do you think the two are inextricable?

You need an updated version of Adobe Flash Player to listen - click button to download.

Do you think it is easier or harder to write for yourself?

You need an updated version of Adobe Flash Player to listen - click button to download.

You talk about writing songs as though it is an old cliché. Pop songs are often in the same structure, anyway, but somehow it manages to stay fresh.

You need an updated version of Adobe Flash Player to listen - click button to download.

Well, there are a lot of Y2K Punks who are just striking a pose and imitating the attitude that was defined a whole generation ago, but are there people in that area that you think are fresh and new?

You need an updated version of Adobe Flash Player to listen - click button to download.

What got you going? How did you actually start in music?

You need an updated version of Adobe Flash Player to listen - click button to download.

There’s a whole, the cliché of the Rock ‘n Roll spirit, it did mean something once upon a time. Do you think the sum pervasive quality, some attitude which just keeps surfacing in different guises, surfacing in The Stones or in The Faces or in The Pistols or in people now, recently. Are there any examples you can think of?

You need an updated version of Adobe Flash Player to listen - click button to download.

It’s all to do with winding people up, isn’t it? Moreover, it’s winding people up in an abstract way that in the Seventies you’d wear a swastika or just do some outrageous thing, but it was all a general outrageousness. Where do you think the limit is? Where do you think is the edge that should be pushed?

You need an updated version of Adobe Flash Player to listen - click button to download.

I was about to say a lot of pop music,a lot of the best pop music, is very subversive, and you mentioned ironic. So, it says one thing and implies another, and maybe the parents don’t get it.

You need an updated version of Adobe Flash Player to listen - click button to download.

So it seems there’s not much room to maneuver in the pop song now - when you’re writing pop songs.

You need an updated version of Adobe Flash Player to listen - click button to download.

One of your classic songs for me is Pretty Vacant, as you know. What was the genesis of that?

You need an updated version of Adobe Flash Player to listen - click button to download.

It got stuck in a loop though because there’s quite a lot of luminaries from that period adopted that attitude, and they continued to be acerbic and continued to seemly recycle the same ideas. Does that strike you?

You need an updated version of Adobe Flash Player to listen - click button to download.

You need an updated version of Adobe Flash Player to listen - click button to download.

The one thing that continues for you, though, is the instrumental line-up you work with. Do you think you might ever move outside the beat-combo lineup?

You need an updated version of Adobe Flash Player to listen - click button to download.

Do you find the computer very useful for songwriting?

You need an updated version of Adobe Flash Player to listen - click button to download.

In addition, it used to be relatively easy, in the pre-computer days, when you’re playing just because you would know when there was an exciting performance. It was something that everybody just seemed to feel in the water. Do you think there’s a danger of losing that now? Those things can be so deliberate and so carefully wrought?

You need an updated version of Adobe Flash Player to listen - click button to download.

You think the controls we’ve got now is losing us in the details, and we’re missing the big strokes.

You need an updated version of Adobe Flash Player to listen - click button to download.

With your new CD, did you have a struggle against this sea of getting buried in details because you recorded it partly as a layered production.

You need an updated version of Adobe Flash Player to listen - click button to download.

Now that you’ve finished the CD and it’s ready to go you’re taking it on the road. How does the music change when you start playing it?

You need an updated version of Adobe Flash Player to listen - click button to download.

Well, that’s Hollywood. Do the show right here.

You need an updated version of Adobe Flash Player to listen - click button to download.

It puts it in perspective. So, do you think everybody takes it a bit too seriously now?

You need an updated version of Adobe Flash Player to listen - click button to download.

So you don’t think there’s too much weight of history felt by anybody just because of all this music that’s floating around?

You need an updated version of Adobe Flash Player to listen - click button to download.

However, you must have felt that same way from the mid-Seventies onwards.

You need an updated version of Adobe Flash Player to listen - click button to download.

The Sex Pistols at the Stereo Society (selected links):
To Sex Pistols Central (all links)

To the Sex Pistols' Bravo music magazine folded poster insert (1976, Germany)
To the front page of the Daily Mirror 1976
To Mike Thorne's Anarchy In the UK commentary
To Thorne's commentary and review of the Jubilee boxed set
To the 1976 letter to EMI from a disgruntled artist
To the 1976 EMI press release in response to the shock and the horror
To Mike Thorne's interview 2002 for God Save The Sex Pistols

To the full text of Glen Matlock's Interview
To Glen Matlock's book and album details

Glen Matlock / Sex Pistols external links:
To Glen Matlock's personal website
To Sex-Pistols.net
To The Filth and the Fury

Home Albums Artists Contact Downloads Help Links New Shopping Words

We encourage shopping:
Why our CD prices are so low
What you get in packaging
Why CDs sound better
Why you get almost instant satisfaction: wait just three days for REAL quality
We give away HUGE chunks of music so you can REALLY check it out

to the albums page						to the albums page