In June 1977 a group called the Sex Pistols were ripping up the British pop charts with ‘God Save The Queen’, an anti-national anthem timed to coincide with the Queens Silver Jubilee. The Pistols notoriety had spread before them like a virus, but for many it was the first time they’d heard what the group actually sounded like. And yet, despite a BBC ban and the old school tie establishment’s futile attempts to brush them under the Axminster, the singles seismic impact confirmed beyond any shadow of doubt that 1977 was cultural year zero.
For the first and possibly only time I was ahead of the pack, my own Damascus moment having arrived a year earlier. I'd turned sixteen on Christmas Eve 1975. Signing on the dole straight from school, as the proverbial lazy sod I spent my time listening to records, devouring the weekly music press, writing angst ridden lyrics and dreaming of a great life to come in-between bouts of boredom so intense they were almost spiritual. When rumours of the Sex Pistols began to filter through in February 1976, I made it my mission to find out more.
The stars of fate finally aligned on Tuesday 29th June 1976 when five of us scraped the cash together for a trip to The 100 Club. In my youthful mind London was still Dickensian and mythical so that alone was excitement enough, but when the Pistols hit the low stage, in one breathless moment I changed forever. But what changed me wasn’t their squalling, I can do that, kick in the head racket, it was Johnny Rotten. Instantly mesmerising, he clearly didn’t give a fuck, taunting us with a non-stop stream of squeals, sarcasm and abuse that oozed out of him like pus from a boil he just had to squeeze.
Rotten was freedom incarnate, an angry, frustrated, skinny, twisted kid from Finsbury Park pissing in the face of society by daring to say what we all felt. I‘d never seen or heard anything like it, but from that very first second I instinctively knew that I could do whatever I wanted to do, and be whatever I wanted to be. Transfixed, I returned home, cut my hair, ripped my Levis into drainpipes, spray painted my shirts, snorted my first line of sulphate and speeded into the future. It really was as simple and as quick as that.
From the start the Pistols refuted everything that had gone before. Music, dress, hair, speech, thoughts and theories, it all had to go. Imbued with the spirit of dissent, theirs was a scorched earth policy, destructive and nihilistic. Whenever and wherever they played, a handful of new groups and misfits blossomed in their wake. And from that handful came a hundred more who would help turn punk into a national phenomenon. But the more the Pistols edged into the spotlight, the more they became embroiled in a media fuelled frenzy; the Anarchy tour outrage; the record company scams; the filth and fury of the Grundy show. Not only did they threaten and confuse the post war values at the deep rooted core of British society, they unwittingly goaded the suburban sheep of this dumb nation into some seriously violent acts of retribution.
Despite or maybe because of this resistance, the Pistols bought a new sense of purpose to pop culture. They let us know that it could be intelligent and smart, that it could be about protest and telling people who and what you were. Yet no matter how much they transformed our culture in the end the pranks, the bullshit and the hoo-ha became a tedious distraction that overshadowed both the music and the meaning. By the time ‘Holidays In The Sun’ appeared my interest had waned, although it was undeniably a cracking record. Released just a couple of weeks later, unfortunately Never Mind The Bollocks wasn’t. Sounding scarily like conventional hard rock (filter out Rotten and listen closely), I couldn’t under- stand the reasoning behind an album in the first place, or why such a talismanic presence felt the need to follow such a traditional, music industry route. I got the feeling I was being cheated.
In 1976 the Sex Pistols had been a shock, like defibrillators on the nations dying heart, but they didn’t know, and more to the point didn’t care about the road to recovery. There were other more naïve and hopeful groups like The Clash happy to take on that role. The Sex Pistols had already achieved everything they’d set out to do and by the summer of 1977 found there was nowhere left to go, a fact borne out by Rotten’s disillusionment and their shambolic end. Ultimately they bequeathed us just sixteen songs, a little less than an hour of music. I know them so well I rarely play them these days. But that doesn't diminish their importance or their legacy. After all, the Sex Pistols literally changed my life. What more could I possibly ask for?
01. Anarchy In The UK (A Side 26th November 1976)
02. I Wanna Be Me (B Side 26th November 1976)
03. God Save The Queen (A Side 27th May 1977)
04. Did You No Wrong (B Side 27th May 1977)
05. Pretty Vacant (A Side 2nd July 1977)
06. No Fun (B Side 2nd July 1977)
07. Holidays In The Sun (A Side 15th October 1977)
08. Satellite (B Side 15th October 1977)
09. Bodies (Never Mind The Bollocks LP 27th October 1977)
10. No Feelings (Never Mind The Bollocks LP 27th October 1977)
11. Liar (Never Mind The Bollocks LP 27th October 1977)
12. Problems (Never Mind The Bollocks LP 27th October 1977)
13. Seventeen (Never Mind The Bollocks LP 27th October 1977)
14. Submission (Never Mind The Bollocks LP 27th October 1977)
15. New York (Never Mind The Bollocks LP 27th October 1977)
16. EMI (Never Mind The Bollocks LP 27th October 1977)