GLEN MATLOCK Featuring EARL SLICK (Live)

At The Cluny, Newcastyle, U.K., May 24, 2019

Glen Matlock may be intrinsically linked with the Sex Pistols as the original bassist and co-writer of some of Punk’s most iconic songs but that would be doing a disservice to his subsequent 40 plus years in the business with the likes of the Rich Kids, The International Swingers, The Damned, as a member of Iggy Pop’s band and as a member of the briefly reformed Faces with Ronnie Wood, Kenny Jones and Ian McLagan with Mick Hucknall subbing for an absent Rod Stewart. Not a bad record and that’s not including his own solo work and his albums with The Philistines.

A beautiful sunny day in Newcastle saw Matlock making a long awaited return to the region along with one of Rock’s most fabled sidemen, guitarist Earl Slick, whose credits include several stints with David Bowie stretching from Station To Station and Yong Americans in the 1970s to The Next Day in 2013, to John Lennon’s Double Fantasy opus to name just a couple. If you want a guitarist with the chops and the style, Slick is your man.

Drawing mainly on his recent solo album, Good To Go, Matlock took on acoustic guitar and vocal duties leaving his bass to Jim Lowe while Chris Musto occupied the drum stool and provided the backbone to the Rockabilly of Sexy Beast, the Calypso flavoured Speak To Soon and the dirty Blues of Wanderlust. The more ballad-like Piece Of Work lulled the crowd into a false sense of security prior to Richard Hell’s Blank Generation, a song hailed by Matlock as Punk’s finest moment.

Matlock’s influences came to the fore on a moving tribute to the recently departed Scott Walker on Montague Terrace (In Blue) with Slick providing some smooth harmonies with the E Bow.

It was easy to see why Slick has become such a coveted guitarist by some of Rocks biggest names and surely must be one of the coolest cats on the block with his shades, tilted hat and flowing scarves and with an intricate, fluid style and some of the dirtiest Blues riffs around, Slick was the complete package.

Born Running, with its pumping riff and infectious chorus is as good as anything in Matlock’s catalogue but of course he couldn’t go without at least one song by THAT band and he duly obliged with a thumping Pretty Vacant before closing the show with a nod to one of his earliest influences, All Or Nothing by the Small Faces.

Review and Photos By Mick Burgess

Author

Mick Burgess

Mick is a reviewer and photographer here at Metal Express Radio, based in the North-East of England. He first fell in love with music after hearing Jeff Wayne's spectacular The War of the Worlds in the cold winter of 1978. Then in the summer of '79 he discovered a copy of Kiss Alive II amongst his sister’s record collection, which literally blew him away! He then quickly found Van Halen I and Rainbow's Down To Earth, and he was well on the way to being rescued from Top 40 radio hell! Over the ensuing years, he's enjoyed the Classic Rock music of Rush, Blue Oyster Cult, and Deep Purple; the AOR of Journey and Foreigner; the Pomp of Styx and Kansas; the Progressive Metal of Dream Theater, Queensrÿche, and Symphony X; the Goth Metal of Nightwish, Within Temptation, and Epica, and a whole host of other great bands that are too numerous to mention. When he's not listening to music, he watches Sunderland lose more football (soccer) matches than they win, and occasionally, if he has to, he goes to work as a property lawyer.
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