The Sex Pistols ‘big fans’ of Sir Cliff Richard but the feeling isn’t mutual

The Sex Pistols are secret fans of crooner Sir Cliff Richard even though he hates their noisy punk rock.

The Daily Star revealed this week the Young Ones singer had been holding a grudge for more than 40 years and blasted the "racket" the punk icons made. But Glen Matlock said in his new book that Sir Cliff was a major influence on them and their sound as a fledgling punk outfit that went on to change the world.

The Pistol bass player confessed that they even privately watched his movies on their tour bus as they rose to global fame. Glen, 67, said: "Steve Jones told me recently that he quite likes the Beatles and even a few hair metal bands like Rainbow, but he would never have dreamed of letting that cat out of the bag in 1977.

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"When the Sex Pistols were nominated for entry into the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame, he had an answering-machine message left by Cliff Richard, singing Congratulations, and Steve was beside himself. He didn’t mind a bit of Cliff.

"In fact, on one of our later tours, we were pulling out of LA on the tour bus and the bus was surrounded by an army of cheering punks while we were watching Steve’s DVD of Summer Holiday. We’d all grown up with the Shadows and Cliff, as well as all that end-of-the-pier British humour, so why deny yourself those pleasures at the risk of being deemed ‘uncool’?"

Earlier this week we told how squeaky-clean Sir Cliff, 83, had taken a pop at punk when he made his comeback at the same time .He moaned: "I’m Nearly Famous was released in 1976, at the height of punk rock, when bands like The Clash and The Sex Pistols were sneering that established stars like Elvis, Elton, Rod Stewart and me were boring old hat."

I have to say that the feeling was mutual, because I thought they were… what’s the word I’m looking for? Oh, yes… rubbish! Most of the punk bands were just a racket. For me, they hardly even qualified as music.

"They would hit one chord – CLANG! – and then shout over the top. It was absolutely awful stuff, and for me, the big question is, 'Where are they nowadays?' Hardly any of them lasted. Frankly, I’m not surprised."

But in his new book Triggers, Glen said that the Anarchy In The UK rockers were covert fans of the British prince of pop. He added: "The Pistols was a very rich broth of different influences. Our trick was to translate those influences into what we did.“

According to some writers at the time, all the groups from the old guard were anathema to the punk scene .“I don’t think I got the memo, but we were all meant to burn our old records and start over, but they forget that Steve, Paul and I first got together because of a shared love of the Faces.”

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