Waiting to Fire The Pistol Of Sex

So happy to have it confirmed that, on Monday April 10 2017, the Louder Than War website will premiere the second single from my delayed but complete and imminent debut album ,Talking Musical Revolutions.

To be released on April 28 The Pistols of Sex is the follow up to The Revolutionary (For Rory Gallagher) (released on Dec 14 2016) .

40 years ago, as a 15 year old fan of the world's most combustible band, their future - which, ever since I'd bought the hastily withdrawn Anarchy debut in Aquarius records on Queens Parade, Bangor Co Down the previous November, had been a No Future - felt ever more precarious.

They'd just lost their most musically creative member, the astute author of their singular potency, Glen Matlock.

"They were finished as a creative unit once he'd gone," recalled Sophie Richmond, the most reliable source in the cavalcade of clowns that surrounded them, quoted in Savage's impeccable England's Dreaming.

Possibly tThe Sex Pistols greatest album, the Dave Goodman produced official bootleg Spunk, had already been recorded.

Ten years ago when a PR genius sent me the 2007 Record Day Limited Edition, heavy lathe cut, vinyl 7 Inch Boxset of Spunk . I held that baby in my hot little hands and weighed its magic charms... the opening words of what would become Pistols Of Sex sprang into life.

Back in 1977 I was as far from seeing The Pistols as I ever would be - until the original 4some reunited in 1996, first for a 100 Club press conference, then for a memorable interview in Los Angeles, which ended with a supremely sozzled Lydon offering your humble scribe outside to have a go on the pavement afront his local Japanese in Marina Del Ray.

And yet I wouldn't have missed the ensuing summer months of Joe Hill's epochal time for the world. The glory of the Safety Pin poster by Jamie Reid and the Virgin Release that fulfilled our need, like the gaping wound in need of suture, finding healing in their No Future, the excitement of the next ditty, declaring that to be Vaycunt was Pretty.

Oh Boy, indeed.

In Ulster The Pistols attained a certain added fervour. My gentle but Bible brandishing, loyalist aunt (a lovely lady, TBF) cried tears at Breakfast time in our house after she had spied that Jamie Reid poster given pride of place above my bed.

"oh Gavin, when I saw what you had done - to our Queen..."

Billyboy boots weighed in and fists rained down when I danced the evangelical martyr pogo to GSTQ the blue and silver sleeve carried in my hot little hands to the RUC run, underage, 'Blue Lamp' Disco.

I was told not to ever bring the record back - by the dopey, dupe cop that played that sainted disc for me in the first fucking place.

A few weeks on and my dad was near on floor of the Scarborough England (sister married a Geordie, like, innit? Whay aye man...) holiday let kitchen floor, like he was in stitches, or something.

I was making it VERY clear - as only a pompous teenage Grammar school boy punk can - that I had to have full access privilege rights to the lounge room telly to see TOTP that night, for the Pistols great unveiling as proper post GSTQ popstars, finally allowed into the fold, was going to occur.

And it was imperative for me to see them why, excatly?

Because, wait for it, "Johnny Rotten is currently the most important lyricist in the country."

"Johnny Rotten, JOHNNY ROTTEN??!! " Repeated me pa in giggling disbelief "Johnny Rotten's bloody Stinking."

I did laugh too, a little.

40 years on being an aged Pistols fan of 55 with Glen hawking the Anarchy Arias and Rotten invoking the Plastic Gods of Farage and Trump, the future once more looks... anything but bright. But I am looking forward to the next few months and remembering, that it was after seeing the Sid Pistols in San Francisco, the finished as a creative force Pistols, at their final ever performance, that Rory Gallagher baffled his companion for the evening, producer Eliot Mazer, by falling in love with the band, penning the brilliant Brute Force and Ignorance and scrapping the album he was then working on to deliver the superior Photo Finish.

Which I think is where we came in. Much more soon.