When the Pistols split up in 1978, I would never have been able to imagine myself cycling across London at the grand old age of 44 to see them, in their fifties, play live again. But there we were last night - me, T-Lo and former Heaver Gavin, who we bumped into outside the gig. Playing in front of a backdrop of two giant combine harvesters, the band ripped through most of their back catalogue (i.e. the whole of Never Mind the Bollocks, a couple of b-sides, a few covers and 'Belsen was a Gas' reworked as 'Baghdad was a Blast'), with John Lydon camping it up like a chortling punk rock pantomime dame. This is pretty much why the Pistols still work as a live experience - the set is absolutely solid, with no danger of being diluted by new songs (though the encore versions of Silver Machine and Roadrunner were admittedly a bit flabby). The sound was crisp and loud and demolished the myth that the Pistols couldn't play - they could at the time and they still can. I suppose that in a way the gig was like punk rock's answer to 'The Good Old Days', but 'God Save the Queen' blasting out a full volume still sends a shiver down the most cynical of spines and reaffirms the Pistols as national treasures.
