2023/4 Albums Thing 304 - Sex Pistols “Never Mind The Bollocks Here’s The Sex Pistols”
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“Never Mind The Bollocks Here’s The Sex Pistols” is the most important record made in my lifetime; It’s the greatest rock ‘n’ roll record made in my lifetime; you can disagree with me if you want, but you’re wrong; you can trot out the “but they can’t play” BS if you like, it just tells me you’re not listening. “Never Mind The Bollocks…” changed EVERYTHING ! Without “Never Mind The Bollocks…” specifically and Punk Rock in general the musical landscape we have today would be very, very different. I can only offer in evidence of its importance to me that I own 3 copies, a 1977 blue label Virgin issue, the 1978 Picture Disc release and the 25th Anniversary limited edition on Pink vinyl. One of a few albums important enough to me that I own multiple copies of them.
Today feels very much like 1976 inasmuch as the charts are full of soulless, harmless, moronic pap…wallpaper music, it’s just there but it doesn’t rock the boat, it just exists for its short lifespsan and then, rightly, is forgottngen about. Let me remind you of some of the big hits of 1976…Pussycat “Mississippi”, Mike Oldfield “In Dulce Jubilo”, Slik “Forever And Ever”, CW McCall “Convoy”, Laurie Lingo & The Dipsticks “Convoy GB” (FFS!), The Wurzels “Combine Harvester”, David Dundas “Jeans On”, Rick Dees & His Cast of Idiots “Disco Duck”, Paul Nicholas “Dancing With The Captain”…fuck me is it any surprise Punk Rock happened !
While Paul Nicholas was singing "This here's the plaice if you go the sole" (makes your heart sink doesn’t it ?) along comes this scrawny, scary looking 20 year old kid with spots and bad teeth screaming how he wants to “get pissed, destroy”…I know which one I’m going with.
Now to be totally up front “Anarchy In The UK” passed me by there at the tail end of 1976. But what didn’t pass me by in the summer of 1977 was “God Save The Queen”.
“There is no future, In England’s dreaming”
A 20 year old wrote that. Has there been a lyric written that better sums up England over the past 47 years and longer ? Read it again and just consider the harm this country of “ours” has done to itself and its citizens (I am not and will never consider myself a subject) in that time. Add to the fact that those lyrics were screamed over just about the most exciting 3 minutes and 20 seconds of music it’s ever been my privilege to hear, music whose introduction still sends a shiver up my spine every time I hear it all these years later, music that if I’m having a shitty day I can put it on and 3 minutes and 20 seconds later I don’t feel alone anymore…yeah, you get the idea of how important this is to me.
I still contend it’s an utterly misunderstood lyric. Of course those wrapped up in “England’s dreaming” saw that line, “God save the Queen, She ain’t no human being”, and instantly burst the mercury through the tops of their skulls. But was she ? She wasn’t a human being, or a person, like you or me. She was handed a life of privilege and luxury at our expense due to an accident of birth, not like us at all. The rest of the song is a call to me and those like me and a warning to those still stuck in “England’s dreaming”
“When there’s no future, How can there be sin ?
We’re the flowers in the dustbin
We’re the poison in the human machine
We’re the future…Your future”
“God Save The Queen” is the penultimate song of Side 1 of “Never Mind The Bollocks…”. It’s preceded by “Holidays In The Sun”, still one of the scariest pieces of music I’ve ever heard; “Bodies” is a howl of desperation, disgust and at one point I hear even hear genuine sorrow with the situation and that keening cry of “Mummy” right at the end; next up “No Feelings” and “Liar” the former quite a nasty, self centred thing
“You never realise I take the piss out of you
You come up and see me and I beat you black and blue”
The latter could be seen as a response to that self centred individual in “No Feelings”
“I know where you go, Everybody you know
I know everything that you do or say
So when you tell lies I always be in your way
I’m nobody’s fool and I know all”
Following “God Save The Queen”, we have ”Problems” (yeah we all got those). Were it not for “GSTQ”, “Anarchy…”, “Pretty Vacant” then “Problems” might well be regarded as the Pistols high point. The fact it isn’t tells me what great songwriters they were. Steve Jones has said of it “A simple chord sequence, which I still like. The same goes for the lyrics”, that may be so for the chord sequence Steve but I hear the lyrics as much more intricate. At first the lyric lashes out at people who are doing nothing to help themselves “And I can see there’s something wrong with you, But what do you expect me to do” then explaining why things are different for the singer “I’m using my feet for my human machine, You won’t find me living for the screen”. But by the end of the song all patience is lost and the singer lays it out to the target of his ire
“Bet you thought you had it all worked out, Bet you thought you knew what I was about
Bet you thought you solved all your problems, But…you…are the problem”
With the emphasis on “You”. There’s advice in the song, there’s pleading for change in the song but by the end all empathy is lost. Add that to Jones “simple chord sequence” and a powerhouse performance from Paul Cook and you have a spellbinding thing.
“Seventeen” starts Side 2. It’s pretty obviously a song about being a kid and without much hope of things getting better. As John said of it “It was about being young, having nothing to do, and going through the typical emotions that every seventeen year old goes through…Everybody goes through that period. Unfortunately most English people stay there”. I’ve always thought that on one chorus John sings “I’m a lazy Sid” instead of “lazy sod”, make of that what you will.
“Anarchy In The UK” is another howl of frustration, albeit containing possibly the worst rhyming couplet in the history of rhyming couplets in the first verses “Antichrist/Anarchyyyst” pairing ! “Submission” was famously written to take the piss out of Malcolm McClaren who wanted them to write a song about bondage/sub-mission so they wrote about a submarine mission instead, based around a riff equal parts “Hello I Love You” and “I Can’t Explain”. “Pretty Vacant” is another powerhouse of a single. When I said earlier our musical landscape would be different without the Pistols, in the same week that Hot Chocolate, Brotherhood of Man, Boney M, Alessi and Rita Coolidge were in the UK Top ten, so were the Sex Pistols. Could you imagine that now ?
This is the Sex Pistols, this album’s 12 songs and the 4 b-sides from its singles (“I Wanna Be Me”, “Did You No Wrong”, “No Fun” and “Satellite”), 15 originals and one cover version, all released in a period of just 11 months. This band changed EVERYTHING !
Problems - https://youtu.be/qo2q5idipT4