There is a primal energy that permeates every second of Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols. Raw. Visceral. Impossible to deny.
Formed during a period of high unemployment and working class discontent that pervaded the U.K. in the mid-70’s, the Sex Pistols were a punk rock bomb that blew up in in the streets of London and heard all around the world. To this day Never Mind the Bollocks remains the most censored album in the history of Great Britain. The government and record companies literally altered how they calculated singles sales just to keep the Sex Pistols off the top spot. Think about that.
If that wasn’t enough to cement their punk rock bonafides, a legendary interview on the Today program with Bill Grundy would do the trick. After a profanity-laced back-and-forth with Grundy that saw lead guitarist Steve Jones call the host “a dirty old man…a f***ing rotter” the band was launched into the stratosphere and single-handedly brought punk to the mainstream. With movie character names like Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious, they were a perfectly acute counterpoint to the sensibilities of anything remotely close to the establishment. They didn’t just reject it. They wanted to burn the whole thing down.
Unfortunately for the Sex Pistols, decadence and nihilism eventually brought an end to the group less than three months after their debut album release. Lead singer Johnny Rotten exited the group shortly after their American tour, and while the rest of the band attempted to continue on in the studio, they would never play a live show ever again. Vicious’ heroin overdose at the age of 21-years old followed a year later, marking a final grim end to the band.
Never Mind the Bollocks is filled with awesome punk songs. “Holidays in the Sun” is an incredible album opener, “Anarchy in the U.K.” is the audio equivalent of a fiddle finger, “Bodies” just simply rocks). But the Sex Pistols impact extends far beyond the sonic quality of this sole studio release. There simply hasn’t been another band in history who has had such an outsized impact on popular music relative to their total career output. In today’s digital age, I don’t know if it’s even possible for it to happen again.
This is one of the most culturally significant albums released in the history of music. And for one year in the late 70’s, the entire world was paying attention.
Standout Songs: “Holidays in the Sun”, “Anarchy in the U.K.”, “Bodies”
