Though containing four very different personalities, Matlock says that the band worked in harmony musically, at least in that early period. Matlock says he named The Sex Pistols with band’s first vocalist, Wally Nightingale, even before McLaren exercised his now legendary marketing skills and business nous by replacing Nightingale with the much more eye-catching and anarchic Lydon. “We all sort of gravitated there because we had a gut feeling that something, somehow would happen,” he says, talking of himself and his eventual bandmates Steve Jones, Paul Cook and, slightly later, John ‘Johnny Rotten’ Lydon.įrustrated by “the dearth of anything that was for the kids, by the kids,” at that time, the idea of forming a band soon took hold. Matlock describes his teenage self as “kind of driven… lost… and wanting to be different,” and “like every oddball at that time,“ he drifted towards Malcolm McLaren’s ‘Sex’ shop on the Kings Road in Chelsea. As he says himself, at a particular time in his life he was in “the hippest place to be in the world.” His show will give some of his own take on this history, but that’s “more of a hook to hang other things on” – stories of his musical adventures and misadventures since with some of the key musical figures of three and a half decades, as well as songs old and new, played acoustically with a flair and energy that has seen him pull in audiences to solo shows worldwide.ĭespite seeing somewhat mystified that people still want to talk about the Pistols after all this time, Matlock quickly settles into the well-worn grooves of his story and it soon becomes clear why people still want to know. His replacement by the altogether less reliable Sid Vicious has been the source of much speculation and storytelling since, and Matlock remains “a sort of semi-media bête noir” for contradicting the official narrative of the Pistols that has emerged, by shaky consensus, over the decades. He co-wrote most of the songs on the band’s only album, but missed out on actually playing the chords due to a split with the band just before they hit the studio. Matlock was part of the band for more than half of its history an explosive 18 months or so typical of the fast and furious nature of punk. Matlock is a newcomer to the Fringe – his show I Was a Teenage Sex Pistol taking its title from his autobiography and trading on a relatively brief but undeniably pivotal period of his life. “But if that’s what people want, you try to give it to them.” “I don’t get up in the morning and think ‘I used to be in the Sex Pistols,’” says Glen Matlock, talking from his London home, his slight grogginess at 11am suggesting a man whose lifelong music career has never endeared him to the concept of mornings in the first place.