- On October 28, 1977, the Sex Pistols unleashed their debut album, "Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols," on an unsuspecting world.
It shot straight to the top of the album charts and stayed there for an astonishing 47 weeks.
Everything about the album was designed to shock, from its provocative title, its 12 short, explosive songs and its garish pink and yellow pop art album cover.
The names of the tracks were printed on the album sleeve in wonky black type, making them look like classic anonymous ransom demands cobbled together from letters cut out of newspapers.
Aggressively marketed by Richard Branson's Virgin Records, it quickly became the defining album of punk. The faces of the band's frontman Johnny Rotten and bassist Sid Vicious leered out at television viewers across the land.
"The Sex Pistols were a turning point for us, the band we had been looking for," Branson later wrote in his autobiography.
"(They) generated more newspaper cuttings than anything else in 1977 apart from the (Queen's) Silver Jubilee itself. Their notoriety was practically a tangible asset."
THE DREADED "B" WORD
The album even spawned a court case.
A week after its release, a policewoman spotted a window display in a record shop which consisted of a dozen Sex Pistols posters and album covers, all with the "B" word prominently displayed.
She marched into the shop, ordered the display to be dismantled and arrested the manager, who was charged under the Indecent Advertising Act.
The case, heard in the central city of Nottingham later that month, revolved around the alleged indecency of the word bollocks — British slang for testicles.
The decisive evidence came from James Kingsley, a professor of English at Nottingham University and a former priest, who successfully argued that the word was accepted slang and had been in use for centuries.
Article comments
1 - Jim S
don't forget the fact that "God Save The Queen" was banned by the British government. The band was also banned in their home country from many shows.
Black Flag took their cue for enticing the police and inciting governmental wrath straight out of the Sex Pistols book.
That album RULES. There are few underproduced, raw, uncut albums in any genre that would stand up to that one.
2 - MT
The first Dolls and Ramones albums plus Bollocks define the punk period.
3 - Jonathan
Man, is there anything that gets you going like those first few bars from Anarchy in the UK? An album for the ages for sure.
4 - James Russell
Galvanising stuff. When I saw the documentary The Filth & The Fury at the cinema, I couldn't help but quietly sing along with "Anarchy" when it came on; regrettably no one joined in. Fantastic otherwise.
5 - Nigel E. Richardson
don't forget the fact that "God Save The Queen" was banned by the British government.
Not quite. I don't think the British Government could ban a record. What happened was:
The BBC refused to play it, claiming it was "gross bad taste" (although John Peel played it twice)
The IBA (Independent Broadcasting Authority) instructed all commercial radio and TV stations not to play it as it was "in contravention of Section 4 (10) (A) of the IBA act, being 'against good taste or decency, likely to encourage or incite to crime, or lead to disorder'."
Woolworths, Boots and WH Smith refused to stock it. The British Market Research Bureau allegedly rigged the charts so that it didn't get to number one.
So no airplay, unavailable in most shops and a little chart rigging. No need for the government involvement at all.
underproduced, raw, uncut
Consensus is that it's actually horribly overproduced. Embalmed, is Jon Savage's opinion. Rotten later said it was too clean, too nice. The Spunk bootleg that came out just before Bollocks was the real deal if you want raw power. It's been re-issued legit and otherwise umpteen times since under the title No Future UK.
It's still a classic rock album -- with the emphasis on rock -- but the culmination of what went before rather than the start of anything new. Wait for the 25th anniversary of PiL's "Metal Box" if you want to celebrate John Lydon's most significant contribution to music qua music rather than pop culture.
Oh yeah, and you've missed THE best book on UK punk, and one of the best books about music of all time, Jon Savage's England's Dreaming, where most of the above facts come from.
6 - Dean holmes
I went into Nottingham one afternoon hoped off the bus and saw the 'Never Mind The Bollocks here's the sex....... Advert in the window of selecterdisc on king street. Thought I'd buy the album. So went in and as I paid for the album the sales chap said "ya mans down stairs" "you what" I said. "Your mans down stairs". I thought what the fucks he on about? Went down stairs and johnny rotten and the band were down in the basement celebrating winning there court case hence he signed my album!