Four years after guitarist Steve Jones teamed up with director Danny Boyle to tell the saga of the Sex Pistols from his perspective in the FX miniseries Pistol, which took a somewhat loose approach to facts, founding bassist Glen Matlock has joined forces with directors Andre Relis and Nick Mead to tell the band’s story as he saw it in the new documentary I Was a Teenage Sex Pistol.
The film features new interviews with Matlock, Jones, Sex Pistols drummer Paul Cook, Bill Idol, Debbie Harry, and many other key figures from the punk scene. It will be available to buy or rent on digital streaming platforms on May 26. Pre-orders begin May 12 on Apple TV. In this exclusive clip, Matlock talks about co-writing “God Save The Queen.”
I Was a Teenage Sex Pistol is loosely based on Matlock’s 1996 memoir of the same name. “It was written as a way of me dealing with the aftermath of the initial Sex Pistols brush with fame and was a way of dealing with the manner I felt I’d been passed over in musical folklore, telling the tale of my contribution to the band — which I think without which the group wouldn’t have had the success it did,” he says in a statement. “It speaks of behind-the-scenes tales of internal politics and subterfuge and the battle to have a young man’s voice heard in the maelstrom that was about to ensue.”
“The film has a whole host of peers and contemporaries who help me get across my side of the story,” he continues. “Now, the band has reformed in different guises since then, but now back in the fold, I feel more than a little vindicated. As I went through the process of writing about those early days, a state of cathartic self-confidence emerged and helped me deal with what was what and where that might lead. For anybody interested in the birth of British punk and its effect on the then-wider music scene, I’d suggest it’s essential viewing, but then I would say that!”
Matlock co-wrote a large percentage of the material for 1977’s Never Mind the Bollocks! Here’s the Sex Pistols, the group’s one proper studio album, but he was fired before they recorded the bulk of it. He only appears on “Anarchy in the UK.” The FX series Pistol portrays him as privileged and disconnected from the genuine punk movement. It also shows Jones firing him in the bathroom of a pub, at the urging of manager Malcolm McLaren.
According to Matlock, this was all a gross mischaracterization. He’s always claimed he made the decision to leave the band, tired of endless fights with John Lydon and McLaren. “I told Danny Boyle what really happened and he totally ignored me,” Matlock told Rolling Stone in 2025. “Maybe it’s not a big deal, but it’s important to me. It comes across as a quasi-documentary, and people won’t know any better.”
Jones understands Matlock’s position. “Glen and I talked about it, but he’s never going to be happy about that,” the guitarist told Rolling Stone in 2025. “Yeah, he came across a little bit of a scapegoat, I guess. Danny Boyle wanted it that way, but I was happy with it because it was about my book, and I loved it. Look, it’s not a documentary. It’s a biopic.”
Well, I Was a Teenage Sex Pistol is a documentary. Just don’t expect to see a new interview with Lydon. He’s completely estranged from his former bandmates, who now tour with punk singer Frank Carter at the helm. Plans for a US tour were delayed last year when Jones broke his wrist. But he’s healed up, and they’re coming Stateside in the fall.
