God Save the Queen by the Sex Pistols is the only track in chart history to have been listed with a blank title to avoid offence. Now, the band’s former bassist is drawing another blank as he tries to rework the lyrics before King Charles’s coronation.
Glen Matlock, who will perform God Save the King at the 100 Club in London on Saturday, indicated he was struggling with one or two of the rhymes.
“When you start changing one word, you’ve got to change them all,” he said. “There’s not that many words that kind of rhyme nicely [with king] apart from bling, Ming. It’s not great.”
He added: “I’ll probably just sort of make it up as I go along, so if you want to find out what the new lyrics might be, you’d better come on down because it’ll probably be on the spur of the moment.”
Matlock, whose performance is listed on London City Hall’s programme of royal festivities this weekend, said he was now “passionately ambivalent” about the monarchy.
God Save the Queen was released in 1977, the year of the queen’s silver jubilee, and had a decidedly anti-royalist bent, comparing the monarchy to a “fascist regime” – which some have argued shows it is also difficult to find words that rhyme with “queen”.
Despite being banned from BBC radio and television, the song reached No 2 in the charts, held off the top by Rod Stewart – though rumours have persisted ever since that the charts were manipulated to keep the song off No 1.
The band promoted the record on their own jubilee boat trip along the Thames, which ended in their arrest, and the song was rereleased last year to mark the queen’s platinum jubilee.
Matlock said he would not watch Charles and Camilla, the Queen Consort, being crowned at Westminster Abbey as he would be “deciding what shirt to wear” and doing a sound check on Saturday.
Asked what he thought of the coronation’s pomp and ceremony, he said: “There’s just so many people in destitution at the moment in this country. I think it’s kind of rubbing their noses in it a little bit. It’s all a distraction, but that’s the country we live in.
“I think things are bleak for a lot of people and I think the royal family is, like, kind of pretty much the same as Love Island or [The] X Factor. They’re kind of the opium of the masses, just keeping people quiet.
“This is England and that’s the way it is, what can I do about it? I just can rail against it every now and then.”
The singer-songwriter has been touring as Blondie’s bassist and released his latest album, Consequences Coming, in April.
