A reinvigorated return to power: Sex Pistols and Frank Carter in London

Posted On September 30, 2024September 30, 2024

“Do you know what you’ve let yourself in for?” a man asks me as we wait for the Sex Pistols to step onto the stage. He’s dressed smartly and stands out amidst the crowd of bodies, all wearing their punk uniforms. But he’s a real one. He tells me about seeing the band back in the 1970s, about the thrill of it and how everyone was both scared and excited. He says he hasn’t seen them since, or really, he hasn’t seen much since then, “I don’t get out much.” Then, when the band emerge, and Frank Carter begins the opening growl of ‘Holidays In The Sun’, he disappears off into the mosh pit, and I don’t see him again for an hour or so, and when he returns, exhausted and overjoyed.

Wherever I’d stood in Ketish Town Forum, I probably would’ve encountered the same story. The crowd was a multigenerational mix, but the beauty of it lay in people just like that; the ones that were part of this band’s crucial history were rowdy kids back in the day frequenting gigs we can only read about now but have settled into a quieter life since. Just as the band commanded the stage in London, reclaiming the city as their own, their fans reclaim their old selves. The return of Sex Pistols in this reinvigorated form feels like permission for their fans to be reinvigorated, too, as they come out in droves where many of them usually wouldn’t come out at all.

Reinvigorated is the right word for it. It’s clear that the Pistols, or Steve Jones, Paul Cook and Glen Matlock, have been trying to come back in this way for some time. Their previous attempt, Generation Sex, where they combined with Tony James and Billy Idol of Generation X, was limp. Watching them felt like confronting the depressing fact that these musicians were far from their prime, clinging to a career powered by the energy of youth.

But now, with Frank Carter stepping into Johnny Rotten’s shoes with ease, it all falls into place. Carter’s performance is so perfect, so full of exactly the kind of gobby attitude, raging spirit and pure rockstar power, that it makes the whole band make sense again. Suddenly, the original Pistols sound back at their best because you’re not focused on them. Instead, you’re focused on Carter jumping off balconies, pints being thrown, and mosh pits opening. You’re focused on the excitement of being there rather than the technicalities of sound or skill, which is precisely what the Sex Pistols and punk is all about.

Carter’s presence also feels like a vital modernising force that somehow acts as a kind of bouncer for the punk world and its legacy. It is inevitable at a gig for a band famed for being rowdy and violent that there will be men in the crowd who came just for permission to behave like that. If it was just the older members, I can’t help but feel like that would’ve been worse as the looming legacy of what the group were would hang heavier over the crowd, staling it with outdated ideas of gig etiquette or who belonged there.

But Carter was on form to remind the crowd what punk is, who it is for and how it should behave. Ahead of ‘Bodies’, a song that has had a conflicting legacy regarding its confusing stance on abortion rights, the singer reminds the room that punk has always been for the underdogs and for those overlooked in society and that no one has suffered that more than women. Inviting the women into the centre for a girls-only mosh pit, I grabbed my friend’s hand, and we went in. For one song, watching these old punk men making sure the crowd stuck to the rules and gave us our space, smiling as women of all ages reclaimed room not only in this audience but in the story and history of punk, it was one of the most moving live music moment I’ve had in a long time. 

It’s probably not the description the famed punk band would ever wish for, but the night was wholesome. From the joy of that mosh pit, to my regular thoughts flicking back to that man from the start of the night as i found myself hoping he was having a good time, to the multigenerational crowd of people all with arms raised in pure excitement; the room buzzed. It buzzed in the way that I’m sure it did back when the band began, when everyone there felt part of something special. Decades on, as the band played hits like ‘God Save The Queen’, ‘Anarchy In The UK’, ‘Pretty Vacant’ and more, that sense of witnessing something important was still there as Frank Carter gave the band and their crowd their lifeblood back.

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