Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols

 

A bit late with this post, but better late than never, the Sex Pistol's incendiary debut album and one and only LP  Never Mind the Bollocks  Here's the Sex Pistol's was released on October 28, 1977 and captured a raw, rebellious energy, aggression and attitude that helped make it one of the most influential punk records of all time.

 Formed in 1975 in soon-to-be manager Malcolm McClaren’s London clothing store SEX, frequent customers Paul Cook (drums) and Steve Jones (guitar) were introduced by McClaren to his shop assistant Glen Matlock (bass) and later, another patron wearing a Pink Floyd t-shirt with “I hate” scribbled above was spotted by McClaren’s friend Bernard Rhodes. John Lydon would change his name to Johnny Rotten and join the band on snarling vocals and The Sex Pistols would begin its reign as England’s most reviled and inspiring band of all time, perfectly encapsulating the disdain of the working class for the establishment that was failing them so miserably by the mid-70s.

Britain at this time was an economic wasteland  with a decade of social unrest, of high unemployment, and with the optimism of the Sixties long since receded, a generational attitude shift was long overdue. Rock was crassly reaching peak commercialism. Soaring inflation in a stagnant economy created a disgruntled generation of working poor while simultaneously, rock concerts had become big business, and rock stars were increasingly seen as jet-setting, champagne-sipping aristocratic social climbers. The music itself had taken on the superficial gloss that comes with a refined technological mastery and a dearth of ideas. It’s easy to see now that rock, at least in England, was on a collision course with the youth culture that spawned it. Punk arrived as a great cleansing — the raw vitriol spoke to the moment and the pure energy was cathartic, but what the Sex Pistols provided was something more, a giant piss-take on the lurching beheamoth construct of rock itself, reducing the whole endeavor to a cynical laugh at commerce, and a de-pantsing of posturing, preening rock stars and the moneyed powers that financed them. 

 Never Mind The Bollocks was born amid the bloated pomp of progressive rock, a movement whose musicians could not have been further removed from the original Pistols line-up Indeed the band’s ideology hinged on being everything that supergroups like Emerson Lake And Palmer were not.Furthermore, under the aegis of the Pistols’ infamous and influential manager Malcolm McLaren, who had seen the Ramones, the New York Dolls and other punk bands in  New York and wanted to bring their style, attitude and music to the United Kingdom. McLaren , who was himself influenced by Situationst  thinking and reasoning, https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/jan-d-matthews-an-introduction-to-the-situationists at the  that time, was also a Machiavellian arch-provocateur who delighted in subversion and who wasn’t one to waste a good headline, all this outrage was made to work to their advantage as they doubled down in their campaign to rile up the authorities

Where the mission of bands like The Clash was to inspire revolution through protest, it seemed that the mission of the Sex Pistols was to offend as many of their countrymen as possible. Revolution vs. revulsion and, while The Clash created a more lasting musical legacy and a string of brilliant and near-brilliant but always adventurous albums, The Sex Pistols broke through in the moment in the public imagination, in the U.K. music press and soon after, across the pond in America where they landed on the cover of Rolling Stone. 

 The Sex Pistols were a back room fabrication, even less authentic than The Monkees. Their nihilism was contrived. The punk attitude was staged, planned, and brilliantly marketed, hypocrisy on a grand scale, and the hypocrisy is the point. Where The Clash earned the heartfelt loyalty of their fanbase through the pursuit of substance and meaning, The Sex Pistols rejected and deconstructed everything, even nihilism — which was the true punk expression. It’s what makes the Sex Pistols the most important punk band in history, the great catalyst that connected with their generation and inspired a movement.

Early rehearsals in rented buildings were suitably chaotic, with the band fumbling through old Who numbers. The group eventually found themselves a permanent HQ in London’s Denmark Street and tightened up their sound by recording a series of demos in ‘76, produced by Chris Spedding.

Most of 1976 consisted of the band playing gigs throughout England and eventually getting signed by EMI later in the year. The EMI deal did not last long, however. Their first single with the label, “Anarchy in the U.K.,” caused quite a stir in England. The good citizens of the British Isles were feeling patriotic; we were about to celebrate the Silver Jubilee of Elizabeth II, marking the 25th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II’s accession to the throne. But these little buggers came along to ruin the whole thing! Workers at the EMI plant refused to pack the band’s single.  

Although the Damned's `New Rose' is hailed as the first punk single to be released, it could be argued that  the Pistols song was the one  that best epitomised this emerging subculture.The lyrics portray a particularly sensational, violent concept of anarchy that reflected the pervasive sense of embittered anger, confusion, restlessness, economic frustration and social alienation which was being felt by a generation of disenfranchised youth amidst the declining economic situation and bland music scene of the mid-1970s.

Anarchy the UK was  a cataclysmic wall of noise that provided the perfect foil for Rotten’s snarling vocal. It  was nailed in three takes. and articulated more in under four minutes than most bands do over decades-long careers.

From the sneering `I am an antichrist, I am an anarchist', to the final lingering `destroy', the track was, as  Jon Savage noted, `a call to arms, delivered in language that was as explosive as the implications of the group's name'. " The track is immediately confrontational, and begins with a contemptuous, laughing John Lydon - lead vocalist - delivering a drawn-out declamation of the words `right, now'. The tone is almost one of mocking the audience, celebrating the emergence of punk against the stale musical environment of the time, as well as the increasing economic and social breakdown that was gripping Britain. 

As the track continues, themes such as the Antichrist, the destroying of passersby, the IRA and Council Estates are juxtaposed, almost laboured so as to produce clashing half rhymes. Whilst UK, UDA and IRA are fused together, the line `I use the NME, I use anarchy' highlights the ambiguity of syllabic pronunciation: the question as to Lydon actually meaning `enemy' - rather than a reference to the established popular music press and the New Music Express - could be asked. Moreover, the track pulls upon a notion that will become more evident in the latter single `God Save the Queen': the idea that those listening lack a sense of future. It could be argued that the Pistols do indeed sum up the unemployment figures of July 1975, of the seemingly apocalyptic atmosphere of the time. `Anarchy in the UK' seems to sum up this sense of helplessness, this supposed lack of future in 1970s Britain. Yet this track also moves towards establishing the idea of a punk rock aesthetic.

Anarchy in the UK -Sex Pistols

Three more singles followed before Never Mind The Bollocks eventually appeared. The cancellation of two record deals, with A&M and then EMI, had thrown obvious delays into the works as other labels were reluctant to pick up the most controversial band around. Flush with cash from the massive success of Tubular Bells, Richard Branson’s Virgin swooped in to rescue the album project, so a quick album that was begun in March eventually ended in August 1977. By the time Never Mind the Bollocks… finally hit the shelves, punk was as much a part of the mainstream as disco and AOR rock, and the much ballyhooed desire to shake up the system was somewhat undermined by the fact that they were now as much a part of the system as anyone else. Of course, it was going to be a hit due to name recognition and a marketing campaign based purely on the cheap shock value of having a profanity in the window of your local record shop.. ‘

In early November 1977, the London Evening Standard reported how a Virgin Records shop manager in Nottingham was arrested for displaying the record after police warned him to cover up the word “bollocks”. Chris Seale, the shop’s manager, may or may not have colluded with McLaren and Branson at their behest, as, following Seale’s arrest, Branson announced that he would cover his legal costs and hired Queen’s Counsel John Mortimer as defence barrister.

In typically McLaren-esque fashion, the resulting media furore was a publicity masterstroke, keeping the album in the public consciousness for months as Mortimer produced expert witnesses who were able to successfully demonstrate that the word “bollocks” was not obscene, and was actually a legitimate archaic English term referring to a priest, and which only meant “nonsense” in the context of the album’s title.

By the time of its release, a full 11 months after the release of their debut single the Sex Pistols were already extremely controversial. They had caused outrage in suburban Middle England after appearing as late replacements for EMI labelmates  Queen on Today, a live London regional TV show. When presenter Bill Grundy, contemptuously encouraged them to swear, they duly obliged, damaging his career while catapulting themselves to notoriety, and sparking a moral panic.causing the Daily Mirror the next day to run with the headline ‘The Filth and the fury’  A&M  would then sign the band, only to drop them after only six days. Turning up drunk , then trashing A&M' offices probably helped to further  fuel their anti-establishment image although such notoriety did little to harm the record's sales in the UK... 

The subsequent national newspaper headlines and ensuing moral panic led venues, under pressure from councils, to cancel gigs by the Sex Pistols, fearing violence, vandalism and who knows what else, It would see a rise in extreme hairdos, an increased rejection of social and consensus acceptability, that was condemned by the press at the times. But to be vilified for your stance at the time was a badge of honour, not a condemnation.

Oddly, for a band so frequently credited with lighting the fuse for punk, the Sex Pistols were one of the very last of the first-wave punk acts to release a debut album.While no one would ever dare question Sex Pistols’ cultural impact, such was Malcolm Mclaren’s obsession with publicity stunts, that by the time Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols was finally released in late October ’77, they had very nearly missed the bus. Both The Damned and The Clash had beaten them to the punch when it came to album releases, and even Buzzcocks – a band only formed after they had seen the Sex Pistols perform – had managed to release their iconic Spiral Scratch EP.

 Graphic designer Jamie Reid was responsible for iconic cut-and-paste, collage style that was used on every Sex Pistols release, not just Never Mind The Bollocks  Reid’s contribution to punk visual aesthetics is every bit as important as the likes of Vivienne Westwood. He tapped into the sense of underground danger that the band threatened, producing a garish yellow sleeve with red that captured that sense of samizdat self-production, that the listener was holding something that wasn’t officially sanctioned.

Literally, Britain’s establishment and self-appointed moral guardians considered the Sex Pistols to be too dangerous for consumption, poised to undermine the nation’s youth with their debauchery and a threat to public decency and order – or, they were the saviours of music, depending on who you asked.

Like Elvis before them and the explosion of acid house and rave a decade later, all the efforts of formal censorship only drove punk underground and made it more appealing to the nation’s bored, alienated youth.

Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols is now considered a highly influential 'rock classic'; lyrically and musically it was a violent assault on contemporary British foibles and frailties. Lead singer Johnny Rotten's slurred, angry vocals scream about corporate control, intellectual vacuity and political hypocrisy, whilst Steve Jones's ' multi-layered guitar tracks created a much emulated 'wall of noise' foil to this sneering contempt (Producer Chris Thomas  who had worked with the likes of Pink Floyd, took a different approach from earlier punk records, achieving a very clear sound layered with multiple guitar overdubs). Some have however argued that the album is over-produced, and that the Pistols had lost their initial spark of energy and exuberance by the time it was recorded. The band's previous singles, such as "Anarchy the UK.", were re-recorded for the album, and many fans believe they lack the energy of the originals,  but articulated more in under four minutes than most bands do over decades-long careers. .

Yet opening with the sound of jackboots marching, like a tuning fork chiming the notes of dystopia for Never Mind The Bollocks… perfectly,"Holidays; in the Sun" is completely iconic but only the fourth most famous moment on an extraordinary record. Inspired by a trip to Berlin, Johnny Rotten said of the inspiration: “Being in London at the time made us feel like we were trapped in a prison camp environment. There was hatred and constant threat of violence. The best thing we could do was to go set up in a prison camp somewhere else. Berlin and its decadence was a good idea… The communists looked in on the circus atmosphere of West Berlin, which never went to sleep, and that would be their impression of the West.”

At the same time that David Bowie was using the Berlin Wall as the basis for a sprawling, epic of hope for humanity with "Heroes" the Pistols were using it as a metaphor for how fucked the world was. Rotten’s opening lyric is a reference to a piece of graffiti that appeared during the famous Situationist riots in Paris in 1968 – “a cheap holiday in other people’s misery” – set to a powerful riff cheekily nicked from The Jam’s own 1977 debut single ‘In The City’.  

Holiday in the Sun - Sex Pistols

After the controversy of two blistering and scabrous punk singles, it was appropriate that Pretty Vacant’ , probably the most musically adept moment on Never Mind The Bollocks… was the track that finally put the Sex Pistols on ‘Top of the Pops’ and into the nation’s living rooms as a musical unit, rather than pantomime hate figures. To many, it’s an ironic middle finger at their parents’ generation for dismissing their kids as lacking moral fibre – as every generation seems to do to the next.

Pretty Vacant - Sex Pistols

Of course, Never Mind The Bollocks is home to by far the most well-known punk song in history. God Save The Queen’ was the first Pistols track to be recorded with bassist Sid Vicious, and the track seems to benefit from his untutored, attack-minded approach as opposed to the more subtle dynamics from the ousted Glen Matlock, fired in February 1977 because he apparently ‘liked The Beatles’. Released in late May to coincide with  the ' mad parade'  of the Queen's Silver Jubilee,  the Sex Pistols  were seen to embody a thriving awakening politically charged youth culture.Queen’s Silver Jubilee,  the Pistols crashed the establishment’s street party with the perfect pop-culture subversion, playing on a barge sailing up the River Thames on Coronation Day (June 7^th) in an attempt to escape a local ban through a loophole by performing on water, before they were arrested.

 God Save The Queen’ became an alternative national anthem, hitting the top of the NME’s single chart but only at no.2 in the official singles chart used by the BBC (behind Rod Stewart’s ‘I Don’t Want To Talk About It’) in what many decried as an industry conspiracy after many shops refused to stock the single, and radio airplay all but banned. In 2021 four decades after Lydon’s bellowing call to apathy “There’s no future / in England’s dreaming”, the song’s urgency and sentiment now echoes louder than ever for those of us terrified by the insanity of Brexit, and of neo-liberalism’s general race to the bottom.

God Save the Queen - Sex Pistols

 

The unbelievably ferocious "Bodies " uses a graphic theme of abortion, making it the most straight-up controversial track in the Sex Pistols’ canon alongside the seriously fucked-up ‘Belsen Was A Gas’. With its breakneck pace, Paul Cook’s thudding, brutal drums and Steve Jones’ buzzsawing guitars, it informed a great deal of hardcore and trash metal in the years afterwards.

Bodies - Sex Pistols

Given the album’s legendary status, a total newcomer to it might be surprised by how uneven it is in places, but the entire album was a screeching, hissing, spitting absolutely primal rebuttal to shitty circumstances and served as the raised fist of the downtrodden and the marginalised. It raised thousands if not millions of British youths on safety pins and shredded clothes and, despite their government’s desperate attempts to prevent it from ever happening, showed that regular people could stand up and challenge authority.

The BBC refused to acknowledge it, let alone even play it. This didn’t stop it from rocketing up the charts as a disenfranchised generation of youths latched onto the unquestionable ‘fuck you’ the Sex Pistols had spat at the feet of the monarchy. When it only reached number two there were claims of it being rigged to prevent such a shocking song climbing all the way to number one.

The disintegration of the Sex Pistols came quickly and messily, as now seems so preordained for such a white-hot and chaotic band. An American tour of the Deep South in January 1978 was marred by infighting, drug addictions and hostile band-audience situations, and on the 14^th of that month they played what would be their final gig at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom, with a deeply disillusioned Rotten uttering the immortal phrase “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” as the last chords of their encore number, their well-known cover of The Stooges’ ‘No Fun’, came to a lacklustre end. Within three months of Never Mind the Bollocks release Lydon would declare his discontentment with Sex Pistols and the band would split, only for Mclaren to start his barrel-scraping exercise a few short months later, as there was more cash to be milked from the now dead cash cow. 

 Lydon of course would go on to form the successful Public Image Ltd and enjoy a solo career, but in recent years has become an ever more erratic character, with his contradictory statements on where he stands politically and occasionally popping up in ill-judged adverts. Cook, Jones and Matlock have each gone on to great things in their career, forming bands, becoming celebrated sidemen and making guest appearances alongside acts as diverse as Edwyn Collins, The Faces, Iggy Pop and Siouxsie and The Banshees. Vicious would of course die young, thus cementing his place as the most iconic member of Sex Pistols alongside Lydon, and becoming punk’s ever young martyr.

The Sex Pistols have since reunited for a tour and live album in 1996, making no secret that the effort was a money-grab. They have since performed occassionally together in Europe.The Sex Pistols are no strangers to being headline news but after a ruling in August they have been brought back into the limelight, this time not for their outrageous antics, but over licencing rights to their music.

A new TV drama Pistol is set to hit our screens next year which will detail the life and music of The Sex Pistols. But this TV Drama  caused the former band members to take their argument to the High Court. Lydon, had been sued by drummer Paul Cook and guitarist Steve Jones after Lydon prevented the use of Pistols songs in the series Pistol. Lydon lost the case, with a judge ruling that Jones and Cook were allowed to overrule him using a majority rule created in the terms of a band agreement.

Lydon had claimed he wasn’t aware of the extent of the agreement, but judge Sir Anthony Mann said: “I reject the suggestion made by him that he did not really know or appreciate its effect. That piece of evidence was a convenient contrivance. It is highly likely that, even if he did not read it himself, it will have been explained to him and he will have understood its effects.

Pistol is based on Steve Jones’s memoir Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol. Jones and Cook had said in a joint statement immediately following the ruling in their favour: “We welcome the courts ruling in this case. It brings clarity to our decision making and upholds the band members’ agreement on collective decision making. It has not been a pleasant experience, but we believe it was necessary to allow us to move forward and hopefully work together in the future with better relations.”

 History can be shortsighted: the Sex Pistols, a band so beloved for their music, their live show, and their ideology, is eclipsed by their mythology. and the histrionics notwithstanding, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols wound up being one of the most important records in rock history. If you remove the chaos, the anarchy and the style over substance, you have an incredible political statement about England in the late seventies. It is a giant middle finger to the establishment and a rallying cry to just go completely ape shit. It’s a shame the message got lost in the antics of a band who really did not give a fuck. In my eyes, that’s what being punk is really about.

The music industry was so threatened by these guys that they thought they had no choice but to deride their messages as mere juvenile ranting, the bark and howl of an underclass that is not worth a nickel. They didn’t mind making money off of it but they sure as shit weren’t going to hold it up and say, “This is a flawless work.” Which many argue it is.

In the years since it was released  music has exploded. Rage has become an economic juggernaut. Volume has increased, censorship both implied and explicit has ebbed, and no one is shocked when they encounter uncomfortable topics presented with all the unpleasant details right out front.

But when The Sex Pistols hit the scene, this was far from the case. They were unseemly. They were unruly. They had unabashed scorn for anything that smacked of the establishment. They hated hippies as much as businessmen. The baby boomers who thought their softly strummed odes to fucking while stoned were going to change the world were the biggest resisters to the noise and clamor of these hooligans.

The Sex Pistols defined a generation and captured a feeling within the nation that simply no one else could of. The band created a truly distinctive sound and ‘Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols’ impact and influence still strongly resonates with musicians, artists and people to this day. Upon its original release in 1977, it may have been the notoriety surrounding the Sex Pistols that propelled the album to #1 in the UK. Over forty years later, however, it’s the attitude and intelligence of the songwriting that resonates and retain a pertinence and a spite that allow us to remember just why punk resonated so widely and deeply.

The Pistol's were not the first punk band but they were the first  punk band to fully capture public interest, their legacy was not musical. It was socio-political, creating a wave in fashion, in attitude, and in the relationship of the youth to its leaders. And the mission of punk as a movement in England, ignited by The Pistols — to cleanse rock and roll of its charlatans and false idols, and to rewrite its ethos ,was deep and lasting, and ultimately effective.

Alongside band,like the Clash, the Ramones, the Stranglers, the Buzzcocks, X Ray Spex and the anarcho punk movement that would emerged epitomised by bands like the seminal Crass, who formed in November 1977, the Mob, Zounds and the Subhumans among many others, the Pistols helped create and shape punk rock, an aesthetic and political revolution that has since swept the world with a steady stream  of punk inspired acts, some with bold new approaches, have managed to keep the smouldering scene.burning despite the music press and others pronouncing its proverbial fifteen minutes offically over.

Punk in all of its forms has always given voice to the alienated. It is a wrench tossed into the works of a mechanized consumer society. Punk has given us music to thrash to and iconoclastic poetry to feed our rebellious spirit. Whether simmering under the surface of polite society or exploding in our faces, the punk ethos is eternal, and during that foul season in the U.K. of economic downturn and social upheaval the album that broke open the earth was Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols. And it's influence didn't end with punk, The album was also embraced by many members of the metal community and had an undeniable impact on the genre.

 Punk's far from dead, neither is the true spirit of anarchy, more than a fashion statement to be commodified and sold, and hijacked by the mainstream,  it's early instigators being accused of selling out, it's influence on arts and culture is undeniable.

And  despite Rotten's recent descent  into vacuousness we can at least still enjoy Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols and can still play our part in acts of cultural subversion, changing the world through art and ideas, that are no less  needed than in the present times we live.

With a ramshackle corrupt Government, increasing intolerance, and a seeming acceptance of ever more authoritarian inclined politicians  who keep lying to us, with the Tories treating benefit cuts like a joke, creating  poverty, alienation and division,as we drift towards a draconian police state, with problems like imminent climate disaster escalating on a daily basis, that some people  just continue to willfully ignore, it seems we are still sleeping and dreaming, and jeopardising our future. Never mind the Bollocks, remember that anger is an energy, that will never die.

 Problems - Sex Pistols