Pistols pack a punch

Matthew d'Ancona

Wednesday, 14th November 2007

There is also something so overwhelmingly English about the Pistols. Before they arrive on stage, we are played Vera Lynn’s ‘There’ll Always Be an England’, and while it is a joke, it is not only a joke. Rotten has described himself as ‘the absolute Englishman’, and he personifies a particular kind of underdog patriotism: angry, libertarian, ironic, eccentric and, above all, funny. You don’t write songs like theirs because you hate the English, Rotten has said, but ‘because you love them, and you’re fed up with them being mistreated’. A backdrop of Jamie Reid’s famous record sleeve is lowered on to the stage, as the band burst into ‘God Save the Queen’: ‘There’s no future, In England’s dreaming’. But there is, isn’t there? That’s what the Pistols were, and are, about. Saving their country from those who would steal its passion and its sarky soul.

‘Fifty-two in January, and still nobody’s f***ing stepping stone,’ says Rotten, before launching into the Monkees’ eponymous classic. Yes, he is no spring chicken. He likes to compare the Pistols, that great rag-and- bone shop of a band, to Steptoe and Son â” and these days he looks more like Wilfrid Brambell than Harry H. Corbett. But so what? Grumpy middle age suits him just as well as seditious youth. The message hasn’t changed.

It’s getting late as the Pistols stroll back on stage for their encore, and there is just time for a storming rendition of ‘Bodies’ and that venerable anthem ‘Anarchy in the UK’. Then we all leave the venue in a decidedly orderly, un-anarchic fashion to get the Tube home, for a hot cup of Ovaltine and sweet dreams of the next time the filthy lucre runs out and the greatest band that ever drew breath takes to the stage once more.