Late one summer evening in 2012, a packed East London’s Olympic Stadium had witnessed Queen Elizabeth jumping out of a helicopter. While cynics may think it was a stunt person in a pale salmon dress, this wasn't an isolated incident – there were a further three hours of carefully choreographed set pieces created especially for the Summer Olympics' opening ceremony.
An estimated 900 million viewers around the world enjoyed a £27 million fever dream, soundtracked by a selection of songs carefully curated by Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle.
There was William Blake hymn Jerusalem, Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells and, improbably, the EastEnders theme tune. Out of nowhere, a field full of mohawked dancers began to pogo around in across the stage to the sounds of Sex Pistols' 1977 single Pretty Vacant. It’s exactly the kind of spectacle their frontman Johnny Rotten would detest, but its inclusion in the Olympic spectacle only served to underline the enduring, urgent potency of this three-minute punk classic.
The third song to be released from the Pistols’ era-defining Never Mind The Bollocks, Pretty Vacant started life as many of their staples did, with Steve Jones and Glen Matlock bouncing ideas around at the band’s rehearsal spot in London’s Denmark Street.
“We’d all be sitting around and people would throw ideas about,” drummer Paul Cook told Rhythm magazine in 2012. “Glen would come up with a riff, John would sit in the corner scribbling his lyrics and we’d bash out the arrangements.”
On Pretty Vacant, Matlock came up with the initial riff and lyrical framework. The latter was inspired by Richard Hell and the Voidoids’ Blank Generation, although Matlock’s interpretation leaned more into the emptiness of a 1970s London hit by IRA bombs and the three-day week.
“Pretty Vacant is a primal scream kind of thing,” he told Uncut in 2022. “We don’t know what we’re gonna do, but we’re gonna do it anyway.”
Of the riff, Matlock has revealed a pair of influences for the guitar line. The nod to the Small Faces’ Wham Bam Thank You Mam isn’t too unexpected, but his other reference point is a bit more of a head-scratcher.
“I had the set of chord changes and the lyric but I was short of a riff,” Matlock told Rolling Stone in 2017. “I knew it needed a melodic thing, and I heard something on a record by ABBA, and it inspired the riff I needed, and I said, ‘Guys, I’ve got it.'”
That something was the intro from ABBA’s SOS and with that, Matlock had the song. Well, almost. It still needed some beefing up from Jones.
“Glen came up with the intro to this one,” Jones told Total Guitar in 2012. “He’s not a guitar player. Well, he thinks he is, but he’s shit. He came up with some good riffs – Pretty Vacant is a classic riff – but if he was playing guitar on it, it wouldn’t be the song it turned out to be. He’s a way better bass player than I am, but you can hide that a little bit more.”
It was a familiar song and dance. Matlock also provided the riff to God Save The Queen, but his initial guitar noodling rarely met the approval of Jones. On the Never Mind The Bollocks Classic Albums DVD, Matlock admits that his original idea lacked the muscle that Jones would add to it, saying that his bandmate would see his blueprint for the iconic intro riff as a, ‘wanky Beatles chord.’
“I didn’t know how to play Beatles chords,” Jones replied on the same DVD. “I couldn’t play one if my life depended on it. It was a major chord and that was all you’re getting.”
Jones added the muscle and the Pistols had a great song but by the time it came to record it for their album, they had a problem. By February 1977, Matlock had been ousted from the band. At the time, the reasons given for his sacking ranged from his aforementioned penchant for The Beatles to the fact that he washed his feet in the sink after a gig.
Whatever the reason, the upshot was that they needed a bassist and his replacement, Sid Vicious, had two things distinctly counting against him; at the time of recording Never Mind The Bollocks, Vicious could not play the bass and was hospitalised with hepatitis. The latter turned out to be a major stroke of luck for the band (not so much for Sid, admittedly).
I couldn’t play a Beatles chord if my life depended on it. It was a major chord and that was all you’re getting
Steve Jones
With Matlock sacked and Vicious indisposed, the band were left to record as a three-piece, with Jones taking on double duties, playing guitar and bass. With the help of producer Chris Thomas, it was decided that Matlock’s bass lines would be replaced by a more stripped-back approach.
“Glen would do quite complicated bass lines on the early demos, that was great because he was a great musician, but I think Chris was right in that the power of the band was when Steve played the bass,” Cook explained. “It was a full-on assault without too many frills. It all locked in.
"We were a punk band but we wanted it to sound great. We used to really go for it when we recorded, I’d hit the drums really hard. We didn’t hold back and I think that got us that powerful sound. We didn’t pussyfoot about.”
With Jones playing his guitar lines an octave down on bass, the Pistols’ sound was solidified with its scratchy guitar intro, Cook’s pounding toms and Rotten’s roaring delivery. It was strong enough to peak at number six in the UK chart and earn the band their only Top of the Pops appearance.
Bosses at the BBC may have regretted the latter, however, as Rotten took the opportunity to drive home the final syllable of Pretty Vacant at a time when families would be settling in front of the telly for some Thursday evening entertainment.
The sheer strength of the song brings us back to London 2012. The legacy of punk, the legacy of the Pistols and the legacy of Pretty Vacant made it a perfect fit for Boyle’s hugely ambitious genre-spanning showcase.
“It’s great that we left that legacy,” Cook told Rhythm. “There was a danger at the time that it could have been swept under the carpet. It did get forgotten about for about 10-15 years when the 80s came along. I think people were glad to see the back of punk. It wasn’t until the 10th or 15th anniversary that people started to realise how important the punk thing was.”
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