Never Mind the Bollocks

 

 

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There are very , very few albums that excite the listener over thirty years down the line as much as the first time you clapped ears on them. The album that does it for me is Big Fun by Big Fun.......no only kidding it's Never Mind The Bollocks by The Sex Pistols. A ferocious blast through the musty halls of the establishment and middle England it still sounds vital to me.
Released on the 28th October 1977 i can still remember buying the vinyl version of the album ( i was 14 years old and paid for it with my paper round money - i still have the vinyl copy i first bought) getting it home , playing it ( as opposed to making a table lamp out of it) and almost bursting with excitement as the sheer vitriolic verve and lung shredding energy of the music blasted out of the speakers. Curiously my dad poked his head round my bedroom door and enquired what it was i was playing .When i told him he remarked " It's good .....can i borrow it?".This came from a man who listened to Jim Reeves. Truly here was a band to reckon with.
Never Mind The Bollocks is still the only official album released by The Sex Pistols- the group had to all intents and purposes disbanded just a few months after it's release- and the storm created by it's release and some of the songs therein would seem astonishing now( although the Ross/Brand thing shows you can never be sure what will set the controversy meter whirling )
Having said that there is still something compulsively illicit in listening to a song like "Bodies" - gurgling bloody mess....another discharge" - one of only two songs on the album written by the poster classic Pistols line up of Cook/Jones/Rotten and Vicious , along with "Holidays In The Sun". Has there ever been a better album opener than that song? - the crunching jackboots then the static bolts of guitars ushering in Rottens gnarly vocals.
But then Never Mind The Bollocks is chock full of iconoclastic classics. "God Save The Queen" ( especially in the silver jubilee year) "Anarchy In The U.K.", "Pretty Vacant" as well as the acerbic record company riposte "E.M.I." . It is also a mire varied album than given credit for with the more studied chugging rhythmic "Submission " ( not included on the first batch release V2086) and the knotty arrangement of "New York" sitting next to flaying tempestuous tracks like "No Feelings" ( which predicted Thatcherism with it's me me me attitude) and "Liar".
The impact of this album cannot be underestimated . Rottens vocal delivery a snarling form of anti-singing , dripping with sarcasm and over enunciating particular words -"They made you a MORON" - still sounds audacious today and the way producer Chris Thomas eschewed the usual punk method a capturing a live raw sound for denser gradated layers of sound made the songs vivid impeccably musical orchestrations. How anyone can find this album tuneless or just a lot of noise is beyond me. It crackles with sardonic intensity sure ...but it also resonates with fizzing tunes. Chris Bailey of The Saints called it "loud pop music" which is fair enough really as far as I,m concerned .
It's constant high position in albums of all time polls while not an irreducible signifier of the albums quality and importance is a pretty broad hint and one i certainly wouldn't argue with .It makes my top ten no problem. A brilliant coruscating seething statement Never Mind The Bollocks still makes me want to jump up and down my bedroom like i did when i was 14 . You can argue about the relevance and motivations of the band , especially given their recent shenanigans , but you cannot doubt this albums importance in musical history or it's continuing relevance.

This is punk at it's best, when it was still a strong force of change, before it became acceptable. This album is less than forty minutes long but yet contains enough energy to have you pogoing around your room. Johnny Rottens snarl defined the disgust the youth generation of the seventies felt with their surroundings and the buzzsaw guitars (sorry for that cliché) let loose the anger that was brimming underneath. This is punk before it became fashionable. Songs like Anarchy In The Uk, the controversial God Save The Queen and Pretty Vacant are only the tip of the filthy rotten iceberg. If you are a punk fan then simply ignore all the pale imitations. The only other album I've heard that comes close to the fury of the Sex Pistols only release (while still together) is the self titled album from the Clash. Nevermind the bollocks and just buy this album (sorry, couldn't resist that one).

There are very few albums that have had the impact that this album had, both at the time and in years since. Malcolm McClaren claimed that he invented punk by forming the sex pistols, which is patent nonsense, as punk grew up in New York, and all McClaren did was manage an existing band and give them some fantastic publicity.

The roots of the music lie in conventional rock and roll, with both Steve Jones and Paul Cook playing along the lines of what has gone before. It is a contentious issue whether or not Sid Vicious played bass on this album, and he probably didn't - even Steve Jones has claimed that he played all of the bass on this album. What really makes the band is the sum of the parts, and particularly John Lydon's attitude and delivery. The fact that the band were absolute pants without Lydon shows that he was an integral part of the band.

Conventional playing styles and a production job that uses multi-layered guitars and studio techniques to create a commercial product - what made this album so unique? It's hard to put a finger on one particular thing. Maybe it's the rough unfinished playing, or the attitude that comes over, or the huge publicity machine that drove the band. It's probably a little of all of them, but the songs themselves are often overlooked when someone is trying to make sense of all this, yet they are great songs.

No one else had ever used such provocative language and taken pot shots at national institutions and been given so much airplay. There were of course the exceptions to airplay being given, as the song 'God Save the Queen' made it to number one in all the music charts except the BBC and the BBC would not play their songs on the radio. Along with 'Anarchy in the UK', 'Pretty Vacant' and 'Holidays in the Sun' the music charts didn't know what had hit them.

The huge impact of this album can't be overestimated, as this influenced a generation to pick up a guitar and go out and find a gig as soon as they knew three chords. Music wouldn't be the same without it.

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3.0 out of 5 stars Hot And Cold
This album was patchy for me. I really liked the four hit singles with Pretty Vacant the stand out track for me. Read more

Published 1 month ago by GARY

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the greatest rock albums of all time
12 songs of pure punk rock. 14 songs were actually recorded for this album. Try and track down the 2 other songs that never made it to this album, as they are just as good as the... Read more

Published 2 months ago by D. Watson

5.0 out of 5 stars Mid life crisis
Great! Reliving my youth! The Sex Pistols were the greatest most influential Punk band that changed music forever.
Buy all of their albums and enjoy a piece of history.

Published 3 months ago by THEBOSS

5.0 out of 5 stars The Filth and the Glory
Has there ever been a record, a band even so inextricably linked with the culture that gave it life? Read more

Published 5 months ago by Driza

5.0 out of 5 stars THE Most Important Album Ever Made
This album delivered 30+ years of progressive thinking to the world. That makes it the most important album ever. This fact cannot be understated! Read more

Published 6 months ago by SPB

4.0 out of 5 stars A classic rock'n'roll record and a cultural milestone
I've always enjoyed this record and listened to it a lot in the early 80s but perhaps rather under appreciated its real significance. Read more

Published 11 months ago by Neil Kernohan

5.0 out of 5 stars Classic
I love this, it's a big part of my life. Love to play it when I am cooking the Sunday dinner.

Published 12 months ago by Back in the day

5.0 out of 5 stars classic album of the time
I was at school the first time this came out. Loved it then and love it now.

Published 15 months ago by Leslie Male

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential listening.
I lived through the punk era and I'm familiar with a lot of punk bands, but I never got to listen to this album until 2010. Read more

Published 15 months ago by fogwin

4.0 out of 5 stars No future
I love late 1970s punk and still do, but I love a lot of other types of music too. The most positive thing about it for me is not that it blew the 'dinosaurs' away (it didn't... Read more

Published 15 months ago by D. J. H. Thorn

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