You know your band’s legacy is secure when the sold-out crowd at your show can sing two full verses of your song before you even play a single note.
Not that the U.K. Oi! punk originators Cock Sparrer were remotely worried about how they’ll be remembered during their two recent sold-out shows at the Hollywood Palladium (their first L.A. show in 25 years). They were fully in the moment, conducting the crowd as if they were a fist-pumping, chorus-shouting Oi!-chestra. It built to the point that—during lead singer Colin McFaull’s favorite Sparrer song “Because You’re Young”—the audience held the climactic note longer and louder than even he thought possible. “Good thing we’re not coming back to L.A.,” joked McFaull, “because that’s the loudest version of that song ever.”
That is why I went into these shows with “legacy” looming in my mind. These Palladium gigs were billed as the band’s “final L.A. performances ever,” following their 2024 album Hand on Heart being the band’s “final studio album.” I assumed that after five decades of playing fast, raw, working-class anthems with full hearts, the street-punk legends had decided to rest.
I was wrong. Cock Sparrer is NOT retiring. Not exactly.
“We’ve always said we will keep going as long as we’ve got our health, we’re enjoying it, and we’re not embarrassing ourselves,” explains guitarist Daryl Smith. The two Palladium concerts show the band is very much checking those boxes, and McFaull shares that the band currently has gigs booked through 2026 and into 2027, largely across the U.K. and Europe.
So why the recent “final” distinctions? Because the guys in Cock Sparrer are realists. U.S. visas are expensive and difficult to procure, so from a practical standpoint, Smith says, “If we’re still going, the honest truth is America’s a big place, so we’re not going to be coming back to the same places. We’ve only got a limited amount of time and opportunity.”
I’m grateful that Smith acknowledged this elephant in the room. Of course, Cock Sparrer is more honest than most bands when it comes to aging; see them still playing their early classic “What’s It Like To Be Old” with fans chanting back, “Because you’re old old old old old.” “I guess it’s true that there are some places we’ll never get to now,” McFaull admits, adding that he and the band will continue at their current pace of “probably a dozen shows a year, as long as we’re having fun,” and that he and Smith still hope to perform in one place they’ve never played: Japan.
This approach fits a band who has always done things their own way, even when that meant taking breaks for years at a time during their early heydays of the ’70s and ’80s. “Our number one priority is our friendship,” says McFaull. “And we’ve had periods where, ‘You know what? This isn’t a lot of fun at the moment.’ And we go, ‘Okay, that’s fine.’ It’s not like we’ve disbanded. We’ll still go to the game on Saturday. We’ll still meet up in the pub at half past 1:00 before we go and that sort of thing. We’re just choosing not to do gigs.”
“The thing with Cock Sparrer is we’re not a democracy. We’re a bunch of friends first and we would never make a friend do something they didn’t want to do,” Smith offers, then adding with a chuckle, “which is great to keep a happy ship and why we’ve been going 50-odd years, but absolutely horrendous when you’re trying to make a decision.”
Speaking of their 50-odd years, McFaull is as surprised as anyone that Cock Sparrer and punk music are still going strong. “When punk started, it was supposed to be all crash and burn. You’re supposed to come running, smash a few things up, leave a mark, and then never be seen again,” he says. “No one predicted that here we’d be 50 years later, still talking about it, young kids still coming to the shows, so no one knows what the benchmark is now.” With that uncertainty comes freedom, though, particularly in their songwriting. “We’re not at the stage of our lives where we’re going to write songs about going out fighting, because we don’t do that anymore. If we did it—”
“We write strongly worded letters,” Smith cuts in, jokingly. Instead, they bring their older perspective into their music, which in turn allows them to keep connecting with their fans, who are aging as well and passing Cock Sparrer along to their kids.
This shift has led to what Cock Sparrer feels is an improved modern punk scene. “The U.K. was very tribal. Whether it was mods and rockers or punks and Teddy boys or skinheads versus punks, and it was geographically very tribal… and that tribal-ness invariably came with a lot of violence,” explains Smith, citing how this danger made it tough for musicians, “as all you want to do is play your songs and have a good time.” Fortunately, Smith feels the violence is gone now. “I mean, you saw the shows in L.A. It felt like a big family. You couldn’t have done that 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago,” Smith says, “The gigs don’t have that air of menace about them anymore. The idiots have gone and it’s left to people that want to have a good time.”
But back to that word “legacy.” If Cock Sparrer does someday have a final final show, what will they be remembered for? “To me, the beauty of Cock Sparrer lies in their powerful simplicity. They traded in stupid rockstar tropes to live in the moment,” says Graeme McKinnon, lead singer of the band’s recent L.A. opening act Home Front. “In the end they’ll be remembered as five working-class musicians who did things their way.” Sparrer’s Smith also looks at this bluntly, offering, “I think you can’t put a price on a legacy, which is just someone turning around going, “No, they were all right, they were. They were genuine. There was no pretentiousness about them.’” McFaull adds the simple but accurate epitaph: “Does what it says on the tin.”
What will I remember about Cock Sparrer? Near the end of that second L.A. show, when the audience sang two verses of “Where Are They Now?” on their own, I noticed McFaull’s face brighten. He had the most joyful, genuine smile of any artist I’ve ever seen on stage. In this single expression, an artist got to experience what his band means to people in real time. Here’s hoping McFaull and all of Cock Sparrer continue to enjoy moments of connection like this for years to come, wherever they play (even if it is never again L.A.).
