When the question of were they really that good? comes up, there is invariably one band that always crops up, The Sex Pistols. I’ve cobbled this together from facts, memories and personal opinion. I had to look up some chronology, some dates and some facts, it’s over 40 years ago after all. The band were in existence for longer than most people realise, and were infamous for shorter. I haven’t covered everything, everyone knows they took a boat down the Thames, everyone knows Sid died of a heroin overdose,but I’ve tried to include everything I personally think are important parts of their story.
Were they that influential or Were they that good? I’ll leave that for you to decide. And add my thoughts afterwards, but whether you think they are/were or not, I think there’s no doubt there will ever be another band like them. It’s long, so I’ll apologise for that now, but their career consisted of a lot more than one album and it’s the lead up to that recording that made them not so much the band they were, but the band they could have been. Anyway, The Sex Pistols. Werethey really that good?
In the early to mid 70’s music, pop music in this country seemed to have stagnated and England was a depressing place to live. Nightly power black outs, rubbish piled up in the streets, strikes and mass unemployment following the boom of the 60’s combined to leave a generation just starting to find its way left with a sense they had lost their direction before taking their first steps into adult life. Bland easy listening and manufactured acts were replacing the vibrancy of Glam Rock, The Bay City Rollers Bye Bye Baby was the biggest selling single of the 1975, David Essex was at his peak and Jim Reeves had a top 5 selling album. And The Wombles were appearing on Top Of The Pops
It wasn’t without it’s moments. THe Who By Numbers and Physical Graffiti albums were both released, Life on Mars, Bohemian Rhapsody and Love is The Drug were all put out as singles, but so was Whispering Grass and Englebert Humperdink’s greatest hits and so while the future didn't quite seem bleak it was far from the 50’s, the emergence of rock n roll, a young Elvis and cinema seats being torn up in youthful rebellion.
In London, a boutique owner with an eye for trends and seeing a gap for a new protest style after spending time in America managing The New York Dolls set about creating a new look for the time and a group of 4 teenagers bored with the current state of affairs met head on and created something that still influences some of the biggest bands in the world today.
As regulars in Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren’s shop Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die by now renamed as Sex, members of what would go on to become the leaders of the UK Punk movement had already caught McLarens eye, who after his spell in the States and exposure to the fledgling New York Punk scene was eager to shake up the music industry in the British Isles.
A year earlier, singer Steve Jones had asked McLaren to manage his band the Strand whose members included Paul Cook on drums and shop assistant Glen Matlock on bass.. Upon returning from his travels he decided to pay them a little more attention and after firing front man Wally Nightingale and finding Jones uncomfortable in his new role as guitar/singer McLaren and the remaining band members set about finding a front man.
Following the breakdown of talks with Dolls' frontman Sylvain Sylvain, the remaining band members along with a friend of McLarens, Bernard Rhodes started approaching anyone in the street they liked the look of to offer them an audition which luckily for music, they all turned down as did Televisions Richard Hell who went on to become an inspiration and heavy influence on the band's whole aesthetic instead.
After being spotted in the ings Road and subsequently auditioning to an Alice Coppers track inside Sex after hours, the slighly withdrawn but acerbic witted John Lydon was recruited as singer and the band that would change music forever, The Sex Pistols were born.
Initial rehearsals gave no indication of what would later emerge, with Jones coming very close to being kicked out of the band for lack of 6 string proficiency, but this only spurred him on to become more adept, and the process of writing their own material began and although Matlock and Lydon shared most of the burden, all compositions were credited to all four band members.
Performing live for the first time in late 1975 at St Martins College, things hardly got off to a flying start when half way through a set of mostly covers the band they were supporting pulled the plug on them in fear that the kit they had lent the band was about to be destroyed. Further performances around London Colleges followed as did the allegiance of what became known as the Bromley Contingent whose number included Siouxsie Sioux and Billy Idol who in adopting The Pistols anti fashion styling began a trend, McLaren .
As the movement started to grow, more of McLaren's friends waded in with contributions to art work and promotional flyers and once McLaren started to introduced them to the ideas and motivations of anarchist 1968 Paris uprising all the pieces started to fall together becoming the catalyst needed to establish the movement that would go on to shock the nation.
In Early 76 the band caught the attention of the NME and bigger gigs at bigger venues followed as did being banned from returning to most of them. Following a further flurry of small gigs in London and by now running out of places they weren't banned from, they embarked on a tour of the North performing and cutting demo’s overseen by former Wombles guitarist Chris Spedding which included a night at The Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester attended by 40 people, a number that has now swollen to thousands and is now often referred to as The Gig That Changed The World. Attended by Howard Devoto and Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks who had already met the band in London, other attendees included founding members of Joy Division who formed the next day and is widely accepted to be responsible for the highly influential Manchester music scene that followed.
Back in London and by now a headline act in their own right, The Pistols were being supported by bands such as The Clash that themselves would go on to be global stars. At a subsequent tv appearance back in Manchester organised soon to be Factory Records boss Tony Wilson the band performed their latest composition Anarchy In The UK and despite the historic common misconception that they could hardly play their instruments, played further gigs in the UK and Europe to critical acclaim having like many bands of the 60’s through touring become a tight, aggressive live band whose energy was making even the most critical and cynical elements of the music press take note.
In October ‘76 the band's hard work was finally rewarded when EMI offered them a 2 year deal the single Anarchy In The UK was cut, famously just being pipped by The Damned’s Black Rose as the first Punk single to be released
Now having gained National notoriety and following the withdrawal of Queen from a planned live TV interview, someone at LWT decided in their infinite wisdom to invite the Pistols as last minute stand ins. If that initial decision wasn’t ill advised enough, and after plying the band with large volumes of alcohol, chat show host Bill Grundy encouraged the band to swear and become abusive, a move that would all but end Grundy’s career and ensure the band achieved national notoriety. Initially starting off quite well, following Siouxsie Sioux’s comment that she had always wanted to meet the popular London tv chat show host Grundy encouraged Steve JOnes to become more and more profane ending with his saying to Grundy “What a fucking rotter.”
It was fodder for the Press who made a regional tv show appearance a National event. Tour dates were cancelled and a London councillor declared,
"Most of these groups would be vastly improved by sudden death. The worst of the punk rock groups I suppose currently are the Sex Pistols. They are unbelievably nauseating. They are the antithesis of humankind. I would like to see somebody dig a very, very large, exceedingly deep hole and drop the whole bloody lot down it."
All before the band had recorded or released an album.
Moral outrage and panic ensued the likes of which hadn't been seen since cameras had to be averted from Elvis Presley's hips. The press, feeling free to write what they liked about the band did, eventually leading to EMI succumbing to mounting pressure and cancelling The Pistols contract. Whilst being actively pursued by other labels, that mounting pressure and their new found infamy started to affect the band internally, with not so many cracks starting to appear within the band as gaping chasms.
In early 77, and still with no album released Glen Matlock left The Sex Pistols, with Matlock citing Lydon's expanding ego and Steve Jnes citing Matlock's love of the Beatles and not looking like a Pistol as the reasons. ‘by mutual consent’ the Pistols bass player and main musical contributor left the band to be replaced by Lydons long time friend and self-styled ultimate Pistols fan, Sid Vicious, ironically so named after his hamster, a gentle soul by nature. Sid’s main contribution to both The Pistols and the Punk movement was to invent The Pogo. McLaren approved his addition to the band solely on the fact that he looked right and despite the fact he had no musical talent to speak of.
It marked the end of The Pistols as a musical unit and becoming solely a red top target for salacious headlines.
With the band's management now actively encouraging them to publicly portray themselves at their worst, they became the very thing they had fought hard not to be categorised as. Having become musically proficient and a live act to be reckoned with they now became a pastiche of themselves and with the addition of Sid became the band that couldn’t play.
Membership of the band took an instant toll on the anachronistically named Vicious which was further compounded by meeting the heroin addicted Nancy Spungen. Despite the best efforts of his friends, Spungen’s grip on her new boyfriend became unbreakable and he soon joined her intravenous adventure with the substance that would like million’s before, would eventually kill him.
On 10th March 1977 A&M stepped into the void left by EMI and in a PR move signed the band outside Buckingham Palace and set about pressing God Save The Queen for release. Following private and public altercations with the label staff and associates, on March 16th A&M dropped the Pistols and destroyed all but a handful of the 25,000 copies of God Save The Queen made leaving an A&M copy of the 7 inch as one of the most sought after pieces of vinyl in the world.
National Treasure’ Sirrichard Branson was the next label boss to step into the breach and gladly agreed to release GSTQ but instantly hit a number of issues. Workers at pressing plants refused to work on it and even when Virgin managed to get it pressed, main high street chains refused to stock the single and almost every radio station refused to play it making it the most heavily censored record ever.Whilst the nation was in full on Silver Jubilee celebrations, GSTQ sold in ever growing numbers, outselling their nearest rival Rod Stewart 2-1, but by tweaking the sales count for a single week, the BPI declared Rod Stewart to have taken the top slot denying the band the Number 1 position their sales had warranted.
Increasingly ill advised high profile PR stunts followed, as did attacks on Punks in the street with Lydon himself eventually becoming a victim. The press had by now cottoned on to McLaren's overriding influence and much to the chagrin of the band took great joy in pointing it out to them when interviewed. The band hotly denied the accusations that they were McLaren's puppets, which to all intents and purposes they’d become, whilst doing little to prove they weren’t. Further tour dates were cancelled, eventually leading the band to book venues under pseudonym and creating one of the most sought after pieces of band memorabilia , a SPOT’s (Sex Pistols on Tour) poster.
Having been recording on and off since the spring of 77, The PIstols finally set about finishing their Album Never Mind The Bollocks. Despite his attempts at inclusion this was completed mostly without the input of Sid Vicious, Steve Jones filling in for him after Glen Matlock declined an offer to be included as a session musician. In an odd quirk, whilst Jones plays all bass parts, he claims not to play any of the instantly recognisable guitar parts saying they were all recorded by former Womble Chris Spedding. For his part Spedding says it is entirely Jones work on the final release.
Despite the now almost inevitable bans and refusal to stock it by high street shops, the album reached No1 in the charts. Prior to the albums release Pretty Vacant and Holidays in the Sun, with the music for both being written by Glen Matlock were issued as singles and 10 of the 12 tracks on the Never Mind The Bollocks album were Glen Matlock compositions.
Attempts were made in the High Court to ban the sale of the record and the band were defended in court by QC John Mortimer, author of Rumpole of the Bailey. He successfully argued that amongst other things, Bollocks was an archaic term for the clergy and as such banning it for being offensive was illegal, and won. Following a short promo tour in Holland, the band returned to the UK to perform a mini 8 date tour, 4 of which were cancelled before crossing the Atlantic to embark on a tour of the USA.
Despite the tour being hotly anticipated, the band was by now falling apart and on the verge of collapse. Sid Vicious was firmly in the grip of heroin addiction tensions within the band had reached an all time high and McLaren had purposely booked venues where they would provoke a violent reaction from unreceptive audiences in order to once again increase notoriety and generate more headlines.
On 14 January 1978 the band played their final concert at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, performing a single cover of Iggy Pop’s No Fun, ending with Lydon kneeling at the front of the stage and issuing the final parting words “Ever get the feeling you've been cheated? Good night" 3 days later the band split up, 2 months after releasing their one and only album together.
iven that A. Chris Spedding probably plays all guitars on the album and singles and B Steve Jones plays bass on all of it post Matlock, I didn’t see the point in putting links toNMTB recordongs recordings. All the original members went on to play in well respected bands with other well respected musicians and re formed in 1996 for the Filthy Lucre World Tour and again for a series of nights at The Brixton Academy in 2007 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Never Mind The Bollocks, filmed by Julian Temple.
Anarchy In the UK EMI release
