Produced by long time Pistol's collaborator Julien Temple "There'll Always Be An England" captures the Sex Pistols live on their 2007 tour. Coupled with plenty of interviews and tours around London with members of the band this is the perfect follow on from Temple's 2000 Pistols film 'The Filth & The Fury'. The DVD version of this release came out back in 2008 and despite the three year gap there don't seem to be any additional extras on this Blu-Ray.
The main feature is a complete live show from Brixton Academy on the 2007 tour. Even now I still get a tingle when Jones hits the first notes of 'Pretty Vacant' and that's purely because as a kid growing up in the early 80s the Pistols were the ultimate punk band but had already passed into legend. We thought we would never get to see them live and with performances still very infrequent there is still something pretty special about a Pistols live show.
I went to the Manchester leg of this tour and really wasn't very impressed at all (having seen them put in a brilliant performance at Finsbury Park back in 1996) but there is a much better energy and vibe about this performance. Maybe because it's London, maybe because it's a smaller venue and so you get a bit more intimacy than in the vast arena of the MEN.
John Lydon (or perhaps we should call him Johnny Rotten for this?) is animated and on good form, pulling all of his trademark faces and engaging in plenty of banter with the crowd. Matlock and Jones are rather pedestrian in their movements aside from a rather cringe worthy routine during an impromptu 'Beside the Seaside' but then they always were, the Sex Pistols live show (before Vicious) was always more about the charisma and performance of Rotten. Cook as always provides solid but uncomplicated drums and is not particularly visible throughout.
Given the short lifespan of the band and a relatively small amount of recorded work, the set list is understandably predictable and they play pretty much everything you would expect (and want) to hear ('Anarchy', 'God Save The Queen', 'Liar', 'Holidays In The Sun' etc). The multiple camera angles are good and keep the footage moving at a fast pace, switching between band and crowd constantly and that helps to enhance to the overall feel, making it far more entertaining than a single view. Some of the songs sound a little dated and slower than you might remember but overall it's a solid and powerful performance that from the footage of the crowd alone, ably demonstrates just what kind of legacy the Pistols left.
The extras consist of the band giving a tour of London and the places where it all started. It's fascinating and entertaining, memories have clearly faded in some instances, particularly when Cook, Matlock and Jones all identify different phone boxes as being the location for a famous photo shoot! Many of the places they visit are no longer what they were but others like the 100 Club are much the same as they were back then. Interestingly the Denmark Street flat that they shared still has the graffiti and caricatures on the walls that Rotten did with a marker pen, preserved by the current occupants. There are lengthy pieces of Cook and Jones revisiting their old haunts and recounting tales of stealing guitars and dodging cab fares, I think it's fair to say that it's interesting up to a point!
There's plenty of interest in the extras, footage of the soundcheck from Brixton Academy and then an open top bus tour from Rotten where he pontificates about the state of the nation and London in particular. Some of it's amusing, some of it is fairly typical Lydon ranting, the kind of thing you'll watch once or maybe twice. Overall though this fills the gap nicely, it includes lengthy interviews with those band members who didn't appear in 'The Filth & The Fury' and the death of Malcolm McLaren aside, it brings the Sex Pistols story right up to date. Well worth a look.