Review
I Was A Teenage Sex Pistol is original Pistols’ bassist Glen Matlock’s account of what it was like to be in the landmark band. This latest edition updates the story with details about the various Pistols’ reunions, though that part of the book unfortunately stops after the 2003 “Piss Off” tour, leaving out the 2007 and 2008 reunion shows.
Matlock’s book is a very entertaining read for Pistols fans. His intention is to set to the record straight, such as insisting that the Pistols were always a band in their own right, and not simply the creation of their manager Malcolm McLaren. He lays most of the band’s later problems at McLaren’s feet (as well as their own youth and inexperience), and so is not surprisingly critical of McLaren’s cinematic history of the group The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle. But neither does he feel the 2000 documentary The Filth and the Fury got it completely right, pointing to the Classic Albums documentary about the making of Never Mind the Bollocks as the best film history of the group.
Most interesting are the parts where Matlock discusses the creation of the band’s music, pointing out the Pistols’ never aspired to the rapid fire performance style of the Ramones but rooted their sound in something slower and heavier. He also claims he wasn’t fired from the band, but chose to leave as the furor around the Pistols became too crazy (a later press release said he’d been fired for liking the Beatles). He also states that far from resenting Sid Vicious for replacing him, he volunteered to help Vicious try and improve his bass playing; the two did play together in a one off group called the Vicious White Kids.
The book limits itself to the Pistols’ story; there’s unfortunately nothing about Matlock’s other musical endeavors. And though he sounded somewhat bitter about the experience in earlier editions of the book (describing the band’s legacy as being an “albatross”), he’s now clearly made his peace with it, proud of the band’s accomplishment and even expressing a bit of regret the Pistols weren’t on hand when they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
