In I Was a Teenage Sex Pistol, the new documentary based on the 1990 autobiography of the same name written by Sex Pistols’ founding bassist Glen Matlock, the musician traces his upbringing in northwest London to his role in writing 10 of the 12 songs featured on the band’s dynamic-changing 1977 album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols. In 2022, the FX miniseries Pistol chronicled the band’s meteoric rise in the late ’70s. Based on guitarist Steve Jones’ memoir Lonely Boy: Tales From a Sex Pistol and directed by Danny Boyle, Matlock was portrayed in a less-than-flattering light. Thus, the desire to adapt his book into a film to share his side of the story appealed to him.
On top of bandmates Jones and drummer Paul Cook (Johnny Rotten is only featured in archival voice interviews due to his estrangement from the band), the doc features appearances by Blondie’s Debbie Harry and Chris Stein, Billy Idol, NOFX’s Fat Mike, The Vandals’ Joe Escalante, and The Damned’s Rat Scabies, among others. On a heavier note, the film features the final on-camera interview with MC5’s Wayne Kramer and one of the last interviews with Blondie drummer Clem Burke. “I knew Wayne, [though] not as well as I did Clem,” says Matlock, noting that he was “honored” to have both musicians appear in his film. “A year or two ago [Clem] was staying with me and was up half the night. I said to him, ‘What’s up, you got jet lag?’ and he said, ‘Man, I don’t feel right.’ I said, ‘You want to go and get yourself checked out?’ I was the first person to know that he wasn’t doing very well. There are lots of mixed feelings about all that.”
What there isn’t mixed feelings about, though, is the return of the Pistols this fall with vocalist Frank Carter of Gallows and Frank Carter & the Rattlesnakes. Between the release of this documentary and those shows (including an appearance at Riot Fest in September), Matlock is excited to see how his year turns out. A week before the film’s release, Matlock Zoomed in from his home in London to discuss all of this and more.
Why was the timing right to put this out?
I wasn’t in any mad rush to do it, it was something I had in the back of my mind. As with lots of things in life, it’s just meeting the right people at the right time, and I met Nick Mead—who is co-director and co-producer—and he met [co-director] Andre Relis, then we all got together maybe two years ago and started discussing it. It’s gotten a good reaction. Fortuitously, that coincided with the 50th anniversary of punk and the Sex Pistols coming together again with different guys, so things just slotted together. I’m not really one for anniversaries and things like that, but I know that’s the way the world works.
Do you see any common ground between your upbringing and the other artists you’ve played with?
I’ve been playing with Blondie in recent years. A year or two ago I was in New York, and we were supposed to do some gigs. We’d been rehearsing, and then one of the band members—I won’t say which one—went out one night and got COVID, and we had to put the gigs back. I was in Weehawken [New Jersey], which wasn’t the most happening place. It was just me and Clem, and Clem had a car, so we drove around. He took me around all the places where he [grew up], like his school, where his uncle lived, and where his dad worked on the docks. It was like an American version of my upbringing. Most people in bands have some kind of working-class upbringing. Not everybody sees it, and it’s the same but different for everybody.
photo by Alex McDowell
“If you’re in a band, there’s never one truth. It’s like a common truth between all of you, and everybody’s got a slightly different story.”
Something that struck me was how you said this is your side of the story. I found this documentary to be more engaging than any piece of fiction. It just felt very grounded in reality, where a lot of the stuff around the Pistols is based on myth.
Maybe I’ve let the cat out of the bag, but I don’t really care. If you’re in a band, there’s never one truth. It’s like a common truth between all of you, and everybody’s got a slightly different story. I originally wrote my book because I thought my contribution had been sort of overlooked. At the time, I did have a big chip on my shoulder about it, and it affected my life. By writing it, I found it very cathartic and a good way to come to terms with it, and it kind of made me address certain things. But pretty soon after that we did the ’96 tour, and I don’t think I would’ve been able to step up to it if I hadn’t got it off my chest.
You called it “letting the cat out of the bag,” but for many, seeing that you first wrote the music for “Anarchy in the U.K.” will be informative.
When I played a bass part in “Anarchy,” everybody thinks it’s like GGGGG, which is kind of punk, but it ain’t. One of the most formative gigs I ever went to, in about 1973 at Hammersmith Palais, was seeing Can. The drummer is fantastic, but the bass player, he was doing all these octave kind of things. It’s like playing bass a lot of the time. When you get to the bear at the end of the song, he goes down. It’s the split second you change the octave that gives it a kind of movement. When I was doing “Anarchy,” if I played the G up here, it was a bit too high. It didn’t have enough power, and if I did it low, it didn’t cut through enough. So I thought, “Oh, I’ll do both.” Then Paul joined them on the drums, and it’s a different thing. It was never supposed to be really fast, you know, it’s just the right kind of tempo. Everybody thinks it’s like a line of speed and off you go, and see you in two and a half minutes. Well, ours is kind of like a nice drink. See you in three and a half minutes.
Did you feel that cathartic feeling with the documentary?
Maybe not to the same extent [as the book]. What I am pleased and interested in is the people I’ve worked with and made acquaintance with over the years, and the quality, caliber, and quantity of people who stepped up to kind of blow smoke up my backside. For me, that’s what I’m quite pleased about.
Are you excited to hit the road with the Pistols this year?
It’s good to play your music to a whole new bunch of people, because there are lots of young kids who come. We did a couple of gigs right at the beginning with Frank [Carter] to help a local club out called Bush Hall, which is around the corner from where Paul [Cook] and Jenny [his wife] live. After the first night, she said, “You know what? I’ve seen you guys play for the past 35 years, and it’s the first time I’ve ever seen you come on stage with a smile on your faces.” So you can read into that what you like. FL
photo by Ray Stevenson
