The Sex Pistols: Never Mind the Bollocks - Here's The Sex Pistols - 1977

There can be no under-estimating the seismic cultural effect of this thirty-odd minutes. I can remember to this day buying it, with its iconic yellow cover and “up yours” title plastered provocatively all over it. I was eighteen at the time. I brought the album home and left it defiantly on the kitchen table for my mother to see. Hoping for her to be suitably appalled, I returned to find that she just shrugged her shoulders and giggled. So much for my own little revolution.

Anyway - back to the album, its effect launched a hundred punk bands and generated a feeling among the young that they could question the established order of things, they did not need to be deferential to their elders and they could tell people to “fuck off” with impunity. “There’s no point in asking, you’ll get no reply..” Of course, real life was never really completely like that, but there was a change, for sure, however small, there really was, and a lot of it was down to this album. Was there ever a better album to be released when you were eighteen? Surely not. 

It was never my favourite punk album, however, lacking the upbeat vitality of debut albums by The Clash, The Ramones and The Jam. Some tracks are distinctly chugging - notably No Feelings, Liar and the bassy, menacing Problems. At times there are almost heavy rock riffs used, heaven forbid. Guitarist Steve Jones and drummer Paul Cook had stated, also, that in 1974, they had listened to Sparks’ Kimono My House every day. No Iggy Pop or The New York Dolls for them, then! 

These tracks, however, are all still relatively enjoyable, they certainly clear the cobwebs and the entire album is lifted sky high by the sneering, Dickensian vocals of Mr. Johnny Rotten. John Lydon (Rotten) carries almost half an album’s worth of unremarkable tracks by the sheer bleating, griping chutzpah of his delivery. Great stuff. Just listen to how he injects life into a song like Problems, how he rants and rails in the vibrant punk of Seventeen or the glorious obscenity of the profanity-laden beauty that is Bodies. 

Actually, I really like Submission. It is remastered superbly on the latest edition, big, booming and bassy. There are serious cornerstones on the album, though, and boy are they big ones. 

The sheer in your face two fingers of Anarchy In The UK, with its marvellous “I am an anti-Christ..” opening line that made one want to play it full volume in the University Christian Union coffee bar; the iconic, magnificent God Save The Queen with its kick-ass opening riff and deliciously disrespectful vocals; Pretty Vacant (emphasis on the final syllable is essential for the greatest effect) with its absolutely dog’s equipment of an intro (the best intro in punk, ever, along with The Ramones’ Blitzkreig Bop); the slowed-down riff borrowed from The Jam’s In The City that introduces the questionable taste of Holidays In The Sun and the fast-paced ranting, grudge-holding punk of EMI. These five tracks are all The Sex Pistols that anyone really needs. 

Lest I forget, though, then there is New York - a brooding, undergound-ish grinding piece of heavy, nihilistic noise. A little mentioned moody classic in some ways. 

Despite the lesser-known appeal of somewhat clunky tracks like No Feelings, Liar, Submission, Problems and New York it is the others that get you clenching your fist, stabbing your finger, gritting your teeth, spitting out lyrics and hating every other person in the world, even now, for a few glorious fucking minutes.