The influence behind Pretty Vacant, a song featured on The Sex Pistols‘ Never Mind the Bollocks album, was mocked at the time of writing.
Glen Matlock confirmed ABBA was the unlikely source of influence behind the song, which featured on the B-side of the band’s only studio album. ABBA’s Europop beat and the “air of despondency and desperation” which struck the bassist at the time led to the making of Pretty Vacant. Though an iconic song in the band’s discography, the song has the ABBA track SOS to thank for its sound, namely the riff featured in Pretty Vacant. Matlock, speaking of the song with Rolling Stone Magazine, suggested the song had the US to thank for its title. He said: “Malcolm McLaren had been going back and forth to the States to be involved in the rag trade and buy old Fifties clothes because he had a Teddy Boy shop, and I knew he ran into Sylvain Sylvain from the New York Dolls and went backstage.
“Malcolm came back with fliers for the shows and he brought back setlists, but none of these bands had made records at that stage. One said Blank Generation, and that got me thinking about how there was nothing going on in London. There was a real air of despondency and desperation, so I came out with the idea of Pretty Vacant.”
But the song itself, beyond the title, has ABBA to thank for its sound. Matlock explained: “I had the set of chord changes and the lyric but I was short of a riff. I knew it needed a melodic thing, and I heard something on a record by a band called ABBA, and it inspired the riff I needed, and I said, ‘Guys, I’ve got it.'”
Matlock had previously spoken of his fondness for ABBA, and the stick he received for liking the Waterloo hitmakers. He shared with The Mouth: “I always got quite a bit of stick for liking ABBA, but I think as pop songwriters they’re fantastic. I mean, if you listen to the drums on Waterloo it could be Paul [Cook] playing it… I think perhaps he’d picked up a bit, subconsciously, on that.”
It turned out nicely for Matlock, too, who says after praising the bass work from ABBA he received Christmas cards from Rutger Gunnarsson for years. Matlock said: “I mentioned the ABBA influence in an interview once, and the bass player from ABBA somehow got my address and started sending me Christmas cards for about 10 years.”
Wider influences on the band weren’t always as clear as Matlock and ABBA, with John Lydon once invited into the studio to work with Pink Floyd. He would ultimately turn the band down.
