GLEN Matlock should be staying tight-lipped as he faces some unpleasant root-canal work.

Toothache or not, you can't keep a Sex Pistol down as TV presenter Bill Grundy discovered to the cost of his career in 1976 following a foul-mouthed tirade from the band.

I should point out there was only one Rotten in the band and it wasn't me, he jokes.

Unfortunately, Matlock's harvest never took place with the Sex Pistols, cut loose to make way for Sid Vicious and before their album, Never Mind The B******s, dropped a bomb on British popular culture and music that changed the landscape forever.

Despite a flourish of success after founding The Rich Kids, Matlock never found the same level of fame again.

But he is still writing, recording and touring with The Phillistines, with whom he released his latest album Open Mind last year.

You might call Matlock an elder statesman in British music, which is what links him with The Mighty Wah!'s Pete Wylie, Spear of Destiny's Kirk Brandon and Mike Peters, of The Alarm.

All four are legends in their own right and for the first time, play together on the same bill in Worcester later this month.

It's a chance for fans to see their sound stripped down to its acoustic minimum and more than a quarter of a century of rock n' roll anger packed into one night.

The tour is ominously called Dead Men Walking, but Matlock, having experienced the peaks and troughs of rock, takes it in his stride.

Wylie was saying we're almost the underground now, muses the 44-year-old, a born-and-bred Londoner who now lives in Paddington.

He's the first to admit that current fashion leaves former anarchists in the cold.

And yet the best illustration of the Pistols' indelible stamp on pop was best illustrated by the sight of fans in their thousands flocking to see their heroes albeit wrinklier when they reformed five years ago.

For people like us it's about breaking through that boy band and manufactured sound that's dominated the charts for the last 15 years.

So, is he still an angry young man at heart? I always felt you should speak your mind.

It's a young man's thing because rebellion comes with youth. As the Pistols we were blessed in that John Lydon was such a fantastic pirate.

And the Pistols' politics were quite apolitical. We did what we wanted to do, but how right that was is another matter.

There are those who look after themselves and those who look after other people.

Matlock says the material he will play live is a "moveable feast and he hasn't fully decided what to play yet.

But fans can expect one or two Sex Pistols classics as well as material from Open Mind.

As for another Sex Pistols reunion and tour, Matlock won't rule it out.

Who would not want to? The first time round we were in the back of a dingy transit van playing on the floor and playing in front of a few hundred people.

The next time we were playing in front of 10-20,000 people, with five star hotels.

I'd have to see what Lydon says. He normally rings me at Christmas and leaves a drunken message and I never seem to get back to him.

Dead Men Walking, featuring Pete Wylie, Kirk Brandon, Glen Matlock and Mike Peters at The Marr's Bar, Worcester, on Thursday, March 29.