Former Sex Pistol shoots from the hip

It's not the easiest sell in 2014: solo acoustic versions of God Save the Queen and Pretty Vacant sung by any Sex Pistol, let alone one who is not named Johnny Rotten.

Glen Matlock wasn't even around for the recording of the Sex Pistols' sole album, Never Mind the Bollocks, having been replaced in early 1977 by Sid Vicious, but the bassist was with the Pistols in the band's formative years and played a big role in writing the songs on that one record.

He's now on a "Punk Goes Acoustic Tour" with Sylvain Sylvain of the New York Dolls, making that a double bill of un-frontmen.

"We have been mates for some time," Matlock says. "This is the second time we've done a tour like this together. We're in similar boats: known to be sidemen a little bit, but we're also songwriters, and it's a good way of getting our stuff across."

Matlock was an art student working at Malcolm McLaren's London store Too Fast To Live, Too Young To Die (later known as Sex) when he was recruited to play in The Strand with guitarist Steve Jones and drummer Paul Cook. With the addition of snarling frontman John Lydon (Rotten) in 1975 and their rebranding as the Sex Pistols, McLaren's creation became the trailblazers of British punk - a scene heavily influenced by bands such as the Dolls and the Stooges.

"I think Steve Jones was the one who was more influenced by [Dolls frontman Johnny] Thunders and stuff," the bassist says. "My thing that got me going was all the early rock bands in the early to mid-1960s - The Kinks and The Who and The Small Faces. That was my yardstick. But I remember going to see the Faces [in 1972] and I didn't really know or care who was on the bill. The New York Dolls were supporting, and that was fantastic, a real watershed moment.

"The Pistols were hip to the Dolls and the Stooges and things like that, and the New York punk scene, although we hadn't heard it at the time because no one had made any records. It seemed to be filling both sides of the Atlantic at the same time. When the Ramones first came to England, the Pistols all went and we were quite shocked that they were on the same page as us without us hearing them or them hearing us.

"It was kind of funny. I think everybody got fed up with the same old influences and took a step further back," Matlock recalls.