Glen Matlock on why Mose Allison was “the height of Beatnik cool”
Whatever your opinions on the Sex Pistols are, the punk rock explosion of the mid-1970s would not have been the same without their influence. From their manufactured beginnings in Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s ‘Sex’ shop, the band spread the punk gospel to venues around the country. At the forefront of a new musical frontier, original bassist Glen Matlock was more concerned with the beatnik and counterculture of years past.
Despite the ‘rip it up and start again’ attitude of the early punk scene, the lineage of the movement goes back much farther than the discography of Iggy Pop. Many would argue that the attitude of punk started with the Beat Generation of the 1950s. Experimenting with drugs, sexuality, spirituality and expression, these beatniks characterised a sense of post-war youth rebellion, which was later carried on by the hippies of the 1960s and the punks of the 1970s.
At the forefront of the Beatnik movement, alongside writers like Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs, was a new generation of individualistic musicians. Among that musical scene was Mose Allison, a stunningly original pianist who established a genre-bending sound incorporating free jazz and blues. While Allison’s jazz piano may seem an unlikely influence on the raucous punk revolution of Sex Pistols, Glen Matlock affirms that the beatnik holds a special place in his heart.
During an interview with Goldmine, Matlock revealed the moment he first heard the groundbreaking sounds of Allison, “When I used to work in Malcolm McLaren’s store, he’d show me all sorts of interesting music, which was great,” the bassist said, “But one day, he came in one day with this crazy jazz record by a guy called Mose Alison, and it was so fantastic.”
The album that McLaren introduced to Matlock was Allison’s 1964 effort The Word from Mose, featuring the noted jazz bassist Ben Tucker. The Word from Mose is an utterly essential jazz record and one of the greatest musical products of the Beatnik generation.
Expanding upon his appreciation for the record in Long Live Vinyl, Matlock affirmed, “I think it’s just the height of Beatnik cool. If you listen to a lot of his stuff, it sounds the same: two verses, solo, verse, outro. The playing’s great, and the lyrics are fantastic.”
“There’s something about the groove,” the Pistols bassist continued, “If it weren’t for Mose, there would be no ‘My Generation’ by The Who.” There may be some truth in that claim, with The Who clearly fans of Allison in their own right; on their seminal Live at Leeds album, the mod rockers covered Allison’s ‘Young Man Blues’.
‘My Generation’ was a pivotal track in the development of UK punk, predicting the angry, youthful spirit that Matlock and the Sex Pistols would later adopt.
