Sex Pistols
Brixton Academy, SW9

The rehabilitation of the Sex Pistols is beyond ironic – and don’t they know it. The band who once appeared to have declared war on the Queen, parliamentary government and the forces of law and order now take to the stage to the strains of Dame Vera Lynn singing “There’ll always be an England”. The capacity crowd at the Brixton Academy last Monday greeted this, the first of many vaudevillian gestures, with an ecstatic roar, delighted at a rare chance to pay tribute to a band who were seldom allowed to perform during their chaotic heyday and have never properly reunited since their disintegration in 1978. A straw poll I conducted after the gig revealed that many of the fortyish, mostly male audience were first-timers.

That the Pistols are, like Dame Vera, more of an institution than a continuing musical entity these days is indisputable. Their 2007 set list is the same as the one they played in 1977. Relations between the four members are said to remain tense, and Glen Matlock – the original bass-player, who was ousted to make way for Sid Vicious – was not involved in a recent rerecording of a couple of old songs for a PlayStation soundtrack. Their work schedule, such as it is, is tightly synched to the historical calendar. The current UK tour, designed to mark the 30th anniversary of the release of their one LP, Never Mind the Bollocks, is the band’s largest outing since the Filthy Lucre expedition of 1996, which marked the 20th anniversary of their formation.

That said, there was no lack of commitment in last Monday’s 75-minute show. As the band strolled on and launched into a thunderously loud Pretty Vacant, it was clear they had spent some time rehearsing. Famously dishevelled in their prime, they were now as tight and punchy as a glam-rock outfit, with the drummer, Paul Cook, particularly crisp and aggressive. Years of LA living may have turned the guitarist, Steve Jones, into a roly-poly giant, but there was no flab on his precision riffing. The super-skinny Matlock cut a curiously waif-like figure by comparison. With his bleached-blond, slicked-back hair, he was the token throwback to the band’s original punk look: garish, scrawny and fragile.

Not that many eyes were on Matlock. The inevitable star of the evening was John “Rotten” Lydon, far more comfortable now in his role as vocalist/provocateur than he ever was in the days when his stage antics were met with a hail of beer cans and phlegm. Where once he would have clung to the mic stand, goading, snarling and flashing that psychotic stare, Lydon now pranced happily across the front of the stage, trying out a number of silly walks. His banter was matey rather than confrontational. He told us stuff about his impending 52nd birthday, as well as an inhaler he’d bought at the chemist, and he returned for the encore with news of how his football team, Arsenal, had got on.

The fact that his vocal had lost much of its febrile, piercing quality barely mattered given the singalong frenzy whipped up by a tiny repertoire of songs that any serious Pistols fan has long since learnt by heart. The outstanding moments were predictable: Anarchy in the UK, EMI, Holidays in the Sun and the real show stopper, God Save the Queen, during which the back of the stage dramatically filled with Jamie Reid’s iconic image of our sovereign, her eyes and mouth effaced with newsprint. It was hard to recall, at the end of such a professional performance, the rage and excitement this antimonarchical statement once generated. But, as Dame Vera might have said, that’s show business.

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