As part of the Teenage Cancer Trust series of events at the Royal Albert Hall, the Sex Pistols featuring Frank Carter performed the band’s seminal 1977 debut album ‘Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols’ as part of a wider tour the remaining original members, Steve Jones, Paul Cook and Glen Matlock, have taken to the road nationally and internationally since they reformed the band without frontman John Lydon last summer.
Opening on ‘Holidays in the Sun’ and soon after performing ‘Pretty Vacant’ – with Jones’ rusty, heavy guitar sound – it soon became evident that it was sacrilege to have Carter, with his rough, scraggy voice, desecrate the classics, but he worked the audience well, diving into it to crowd-surf during the latter song. He also did a much better job at his favourite song, ‘Bodies’, as he struggled to get back on stage with Jones and Matlock singing on backing vocals.
Carter also performed vocals from the middle of a circle pit he whipped up for ‘Silly Thing’, although his crowd surfing did interfere in his abilities to keep up the verses and took attention away from the founding members on stage. The band’s infamous single, ‘God Save the Queen’, sounded more like a karaoke act; Carter having a brattier voice than Lydon, although he kept up the rhythm of the song in time and egged the whole venue into singing, “No future” to finish the track when his jokes had otherwise dropped short.
One of the best moments of the night, however, came in the way of cover track ‘No Fun’ by the Stooges, which saw Jones’ perform a melting pedal guitar solo and band introductions with further solos by each member, the unpretentious Jones playing a single high pitched note on his Les Paul Custom that was amazingly reminiscent of a synth key. Carter also handled ‘Problems’ with brute force.
The Pistols returned for an encore that included ‘My Way’ in homage to Sid Vicious’ solo cover of the 1969 Sinatra classic, with Jones and Matlock sitting down for the number that Carter could not be faulted for effort. They ended the night on ‘Anarchy in the UK’, with its chorus ringing out from the whole venue and injecting some energy into what was otherwise a dull and corporate evening. Although the three members have done well to bring back the original music for a new generation of listeners, doing so without frontman Johnny Rotten has alienated such famous lyrics from the music creating a strange separation of elements with this line-up.
24/03/25: Sex Pistols ft Frank Carter @ Royal Albert Hall, London.
Photos © John Stead.
© Ayisha Khan.