About Glen Matlock
Glen Matlock is an English musician, best known for being the bass guitarist in the original line-up of the punk rock band the Sex Pistols. He is credited as a songwriter on 10 of the 12 songs on the Sex Pistols' only officially released studio album, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols, although he had left the band early in the recording process, credited as bassist and backing vocalist on only one song on the album, "Anarchy in the U.K.". However, on the bootleg album Spunk, Matlock played bass on all the songs, which included earlier studio recordings of 10 of the 12 songs that later appeared on the Bollocks album.
Since leaving the Sex Pistols in 1977, he has performed with several other bands, including Rich Kids, who scored a UK #24 hit with the single "Rich Kids" in 1978, as well as presenting his own work. After the death of his replacement in the Sex Pistols, Sid Vicious, Matlock has resumed bass guitar duties for subsequent Sex Pistols reunions, including the 1996 Filthy Lucre Tour, the 2002 concert to commemorate the Golden Jubilee of Elizabeth II, their 2003 North American Piss Off Tour, and their 2007–08 UK and Europe Combine Harvester Tour.
Matlock attended Saint Martin's School of Art until 1974. He was the original bass player of the Sex Pistols, having been introduced to guitarist Steve Jones and drummer Paul Cook while working in Sex, Malcolm McLaren's clothing boutique in London. He is credited as co-writer on 10 of the 12 songs appearing on the album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols, and as bassist and backing vocalist on the song Anarchy in the U.K.. However, his overall contribution to the album has been disputed: Jones said in a 2011 interview he was "tired of Matlock's claims that he had co-written some of the punk icon's biggest tunes", stating that he himself had written as many songs as Matlock, whilst Matlock himself notes in his autobiography, I Was a Teenage Sex Pistol, that the band only wrote two songs after his departure. According to a 2014 interview, he played a big role in writing the songs that appeared on the album. Cook has stated that Matlock actually wrote most of the songs on the album. Additionally, whilst Jones has insisted that Matlock disliked many of Johnny Rotten's lyrics, Matlock has said that he had no issue with them.
Matlock left the band in late February 1977, with contemporary reports stating that he was 'thrown out' because he liked the Beatles. The claim was fictional, with Steve Huey of AllMusic claiming that Matlock "was even more enamored of The Faces and the mod groups prominently featured on London pirate radio in the late '60s, as were Steve Jones and Paul Cook". Another claim, made at the time by Jones, that he thought it bizarre that Matlock was "always washing his feet", has also been misquoted and misinterpreted as the cause of Matlock's firing from the group.
In I Was a Teenage Sex Pistol, Matlock stated that he left the band of his own volition as he was "sick of all the bullshit". In the 2000 documentary The Filth and the Fury, the band members generally agree that there was tension between Matlock and Rotten, which Matlock suggests was further aggravated by Malcolm McLaren in an attempt to generate chaos within the band as a creative mechanism.
In his autobiography, Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, John Lydon stated that Matlock worked on Sex Pistols material , after he had left the band, as a paid session musician. However, Matlock denied the "session musician" label, stating that all but two of the songs appearing on the album had already been recorded as singles or b-sides before his departure. Jones played bass on the two songs recorded after Matlock's departure and overdubbed some additional parts on other existing songs, with Vicious also contributing to the song "Bodies". Music historian David Howard states that Matlock did not participate in any of the Never Mind the Bollocks recording sessions. In the 2002 Classic Albums documentary about Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols, Jones stated that in retrospect, pushing Matlock out of the band was a mistake: "We were what we were. Who cares if he washed his feet? That was him. I'm sure I had things that bugged him". He also conceded that the band could have recorded more albums had Matlock stayed and they had not participated in the television interview with Bill Grundy.
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