It was brilliant, actually. It must be twenty years or more than that since I played a Sex Pistols record. My NMTB was lost along with Donna Summer's Greatest Hits when I didn't take the precaution of getting them back from a girlfriend before finishing with her but I do have my precious bootleg Spunk. And so it perhaps shouldn't have come as a surprise how good they were but somehow it did. I saw Public Image Limited in Manchester circa 1980/1 and they were either not much good or studiedly under-rehearsed but this reunion gig was very convincing.
The documentary went to some lengths to dispel the rumours at the time that the band couldn't play and Chris Spedding had played all the guitar parts. We know Sid couldn't play but in the reunion it was Glen Matlock and it showed that Steve Jones certainly can play.
In 2007, Steve McClaren must still have been the England football manager. Lydon asks the audience where they are from, meaning England, and says, yeah, they had a manager called McClaren once and he was **** as well before piling into a vitriolic rendering of Liar.
I'm a Lazy Sod was a sublime classic to be reminded of and I wish I could have stayed up longer to see the whole thing but it was already past my bedtime.
It could just have been the awful pull of nostalgia that made it seem so good but I don't think so. I think it was a marvellous revival of some tremendous pop records. Say what you like about John Lydon, and I sometimes have, but he was a great front man and an iconic figure (before he goes on to spend five minutes berating the very notion of being an iconic figure).
