Never Mind The Bollocks was released, went to Number 1 for a couple of weeks (even though many shops refused to stock an album with a rude word in it).
It may have been re-configured, remastered, re-issued more times than a collector can keep up with (I have 13 copies in various formats), but it remains one of the greatest Rock albums of all time.
It Was 45 Years Ago Today
by 59 Comments
Yep, a great rock album with a semblance of punk attitude, mainly the vocals.
Agreed. I few of my (high school age) students have known them by reputation then, on hearing the album on my recommendation, been (pleasantly) surprised at how much of a ‘rock album’ it is.
It’s loud, it’s snotty, it’s (surprisingly) tuneful, it’s completely brilliant and it stands the test of time. On previous experience here though quite a few disagree…
Great great album. Sometimes I think Anarchy in the UK is the greatest single there has been
Jesus, where do the years go?
Remember buying NMTB in Hull city centre the
Saturday after it came out.
Still gets a pretty regular playing and still sounds
Fucking great.
And Stevie Wonder’s Talking Book turned 50.
Such was its perceived potency that I knew more than one kid who had the LP literally hidden inside another sleeve at home, & could only play it when their parents were out. One even had the sleeve – which was so lurid it was impossible to hide- ‘looked after’ at a mate’s house, whose parents were less unbothered by the Pistols’ folk devil status!
I recall it was felt by many to be a bit of a ‘greatest hits’ (all the A sides were on it, after all) – therefore a bit of a cheat- as well as the feeling that they had to get an LP out before the end of the year, because everybody knew the game was up & implosion wasn’t too far off.
There was a time when I played it at least once every day & would have passionate arguments with friends about indecipherable lyrics, but it doesn’t get aired these days.
It obviously has great songs on it, but I don’t think it’s a great LP. I honestly think they were briefly a sensational singles band , with brilliant B sides & if I need a bit of old snarl I’ll play Did You No Wrong or In Wanna Be Me. It may well be that they aren’t ruined by over exposure like many of the other tracks, but they still get the hairs standing up on my neck like the rest of it doesn’t.
@Junglejim
All those interested in joining an angry torchlit mob to march on the heretic’s house, form an orderly queue behind me!
I would tend to agree. The best way to experience the SPs is to listen to the first side of Flogging a Dead Horse (basically all the Lydon era As and Bs.) NMTB is brilliant, but listening to the whole thing at once is a bit stultifying.
I don’t get that the Never mind the bollocks title is contentious.
Ian Dury shouting at the start of his song ‘Aresholes, Bastards, Fucking Cunts and pricks’ is much more cutting edge.
The Pistols were just playing at it.
If it wasn’t contentious, Virgin paid John Mortimer QC for nothing.
Having been quite prominent on the Lady Chatterley and Oz trials, he was the go-to guy and worth every penny
@SteveT
But the Pistols – then amongst the most viscerally loathed people in Britain – put their words on a dayglo-coloured cover that appeared in large numbers of high street record stores all over the UK. Ian D buried his on a side of New Boots…
In the middle of side two of a dad-rock album. The Pistols put their bollocks in your face, Ian hid his cunt away.
A dad, named Ian, with female genitalia you say? It’s political wokery gone mad again!
@Moose-the-Mooche
feel a transgressive cover of a Beatles’ classic coming on….
Something from Fuckin’ Rotter Soul?
I bought it the day it came out They were my favourite band. John Peel played all of it apart from Bodies and I recorded it so I had already heard it and it was fantastic. Rock ‘n’ roll has never been as thrilling since.
Go and listen to Animals by Pink Floyd on headphones.
That is more thrilling IMHO.
Of all the threads to be pushing Pink Floyd…
I’m off to the Steely Dan thread to remind people that they should really be listening to Skrillex.
But it is. The Sex Pistols were a nice noisy band back in the day with a few good singles I liked.
You have a point. Punk had some great singles. Bollocks has a fair few on it. My favourite Punk LP is Damned Damned Damned. Much better than Animals in my view.
My 1978 Encylopedia of Rock had a section for The Sex Pistols. It came out too early for the album but it referred to the singles as four of the strongest releases anyone had produced. This case is definitely not closed, or words to that effect. It was of course pretty much near to being over, with not much more to come. Interesting to read the contemporary view.
I have succumbed and just bought a ticket for one of the Damned gigs that reprise the original line up to play the first 2 albums. First time I have used the resale option from Ticketmaster, the price a fair bit cheaper than the eye watering price you can still buy em for!
Ian Dury was an admirer of Steely Dan’s Aja so it’s all connected.
Steve Jones doesn’t like Sex Pistols’ music anymore: “I’d rather listen to Steely Dan”
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/steve-jones-sex-pistols-rather-listen-to-steely-dan/
Living in America for decades will do that to a guy.
I had a Christmas job working in a sorting office, and took a little cassette player along to play tunes while we chucked people’s Christmas presents into the bags hanging on the grid in front of us. My mate Jez had bought the album, so I taped it and took that along to help stave off the near-zero temperature in the cavernous place. Before the end of the fourth track, the assembled permanent employees around me had told me in no uncertain terms that if I didn’t switch it off, or play something more acceptable to their sensitve ears, I’d be out of a job, and possibly in hospital over Christmas. Salt of the earth.
My regular observation of NMTB is just how perfect Lydon’s vocals are. I’d go as far as to say one of the great vocal performances. Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious sound faintly ridiculous as names now. Matlock admitting he lifted from ABBA renders the punk ethos a little redundant. Its a bunch of angry pop songs which is brilliant really and explains it’s longevity. Lydon’s vocals though give it an edge that has survived all those 45 years
Yes, never have the words “spat out the lyrics” been truer
The names Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious sounded ridiculous at the time. A sure way of showing you weren’t there or didn’t get it was to miss the humour in punk.
I’m with you on this. The vocal performances make the songs work.
In all my many years of karaoke, I’ve tried many, many different songs. Some have been challenging because I lack the necessary octave range, some have been challenging because of their pace, some have been challenging because they’re in languages I can’t actually speak, many have been challenging because I’m an over-excited amateur who relies on natural charisma and a tragic lack of personal shame to compensate for lack of any actual vocal talent. Generally, I’ve been able to find a way to make it work, one way or another.
However, the single toughest song I’ve ever attempted, hands down, is God Save The Queen.
You can sing it, and you’ll get through it OK, but dear lord it sounds so utterly weedy and lacking in animus without whatever the hell it is that Lydon does to make it so completely ferocious. You might just about land the “We mean it maaaaaan”, or the slight rolling of the “r”s on “morrrron”, but it’s really hard to fabricate that gleeful blowtorch of a vocal for more than a few seconds at a go. And you will most certainly fail to land all those “No future”s the way Lydon does.
He is utterly perfect for that song, and indeed for the entire album (which is, quite obviously, brilliant).
Check out the Top of the Pops album version of Death Disco to be reminded why/how Lydon is the definitive example of an inimitable vocalist.
Some argue it is a product of the studio. It is true that Chris Thomas and Bill Price’s methods and layering add the density to the record, but this ignores the tightness of Cook and Jones, and John’s articulation with the words, and the sheer power of the songs.
The bootleg Spunk, released just before, has the same songs but a thinner production. No less thrilling to listen to
Personally I far prefer the bootleg.
It’s something to do with the fact that the band’s trademark beefy sound isn’t set in stone at this point, and to my ears they come across as a very deviant pop group rather than a ‘rock band’.
A bit like when you compare their style in early ‘76 (car coats & silk scarves mixed in with Maclaren/Westwood clobber) to the ‘77 look with Sid (leather trousers & knotted hankies & full Seditionaries drag). By the time the look & the sound were fully ‘realised’, it was already a bit naff. Although superficially trivial, such matters were vitally significant to punkers, & it shouldn’t be forgotten that they were one of the most stylish bands that ever existed.
I just got the 76-77 box set for a ludicrously low price $16, look forward to hearing “Spunk” (disc 4) if that is what you are talking about
I think you’ll love it, Dai.
From what I understand from those who saw them at the time, it’s also a closer reflection of what they sounded like live.
As is now clearly acknowledged, they definitely *could* play, but frequently had to perform through crappy PAs in ropey venues, against a backdrop of hysteria.
Looking at the track listing, the number of different sessions for the songs, shows how much they’d workshopped their set before the final released album.
Nearly all of Bollocks was written before 1977. Lydon stopped contributing because of the indifference of his bandmates to the material. By the SPOTS tour they were almost a greatest hits band, apart from Sid’s execrable Belsen song.
It’s not to my taste whatsoever, but you can’t deny it was a clear cut generation divider. My dad would have been about 29 or 30 when it came out, was absolutely a bona fide music lover (had seen Cream, Jefferson Airplane, CSNY, etc in his day) and absolutely never had any time for the Sex Pistols at all. He probably thought of it the same way I think of dubstep and grime and Billie Eilish (just quoting things at random here!) and all that these days, just no connection with it whatsoever. And he would definitely not approved of these snotty kids swearing on TV before the watershed.
I like pre-punk and post-punk music. Even the bit inbetween. It is possible to appreciate the full range. I preferred The Damned and Ramones but ultimately punk was a bit narrow and conservative. The Pistols were a bit stodgy music-wise. Rotten made them stick out. His vocals were remarkable. PiL were more interesting though, inventive guitar, bass. More open and adventurous. I followed the Peel journey from Shine On to Anarchy, with the festive 50, happy with the old and new. My feeling was New York music from 76 an 77 was better than the UK version.
I agree with Clinton Heylin who thought that the formation of PiL and Magazine and the recruitment of John McKay to The Banshees kicked off UK post-Punk. The vocalists were impressively charismatic but it was the guitarists, Keith Levene in PiL and John McGeogh in Magazine plus McKay, who provided most of the innovation.
1977/8 was such an exciting time.
This might be the thread to say that The Filth and The Fury of one of the best rock documentaries. You can look at it as just a response to The Great Rock & Roll Swindle I suppose, but I think it’s very well made, and the footage shows just how different the UK was back then. Although by now I should say way back then.
I like the way JT spliced bits of Billy Dainty, Lawrence Olivier’s Richard III, Max Wall into it to show where the Johnny Rotten act came from. Somebody who wasn’t from the UK or was too young simply wouldn’t make those connections: the SPs didn’t come from nowhere, and nor were they blindly copying US punks.
Yeah, me too. I also think the scene where John Lydon angrily reflects on Sid Vicious’s death (“He died!“) is very moving.
Spot on, Moose.
I can remember as a youngster reading an Observer magazine article- ‘Punk: Why They Go For The New Rock’ that centred on their famous Caerphilly gig & the writer also pointed out the Richard III take, as well as Richard Attenborough’s Pinky from ‘Brighton Rock’. Ian Dury (from the Highroads era), is also a highly plausible source of inspiration. Dury’s charisma compensated for his lack of mobility & he actually made a feature of ‘hanging onto’ the microphone. I think much of why Rotten was spellbinding as a performer was that he was constantly treading the line between being unconfident physically & yet able to be the centre of attention, extremely quick witted & yet obviously nervous. Although some audiences might have regarded him as a demon personifying chaos, he simultaneously appeared noticeably vulnerable. For all of the ‘Swindle’ tinkering & manipulation, that kind of stage presence can’t be faked.
Swindle was McLarens vanity Project “Look what I’ve done”.
Filth and Fury is the true story. Really well put together and sets the record straight.
Temple shot nearly all the footage himself so knows a thing or two about the real story and Malcy’s real part in it. He was there, but nowhere near as much as he made out. An enabler rather than a leader
MM was not really a manager. One of the reasons the album took so long to come out was that he wouldn’t make decisions and was easily distracted, almost Borisian in that respect.
Let’s face it, the “safeguarding” bit of management wasn’t his strong point. His next job as a manager, recently discussed here, involved putting pictures of a naked child on record covers.
Fkin loved Duck Rock, though …
Fkin love (still) Fans. And Paris, while a bit hit and miss, has ‘Paris Paris’ on it. One of my absolute, all time faves. Great video too. With the stunningly beautiful Catherine Deneuve. How’d he wangle that? Steve Jones claimed McLaren had no musical talent at all whatsoever. So how come he made such good albums?
I love the way Deneuve says “Josephine Baker” in her sexy French accent. English spoken with a French accent is very high on my list of best things ever. Especially so when it’s Catherine Deneuve speaking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQAzmMn9j3s
Deneuve, jeepers! (swoons & faints).
I am reliably informed that French men think the English voice of, for instance, Joanna Lumley is the sexiest thing ever, far sexier than , for instance, Catherine Deneuve.
French men are obviously bonkers..
As an expat rosbif, can you confirm that Johnny Frenchie pronounces it ‘bonquers’?
Also, how on earth did Catherine Deneuve still look as breathtaking as that in [whatever year it was filmed]?
Them Depeché lads need to get onto her skincare regime; you think they’d just naturally know how to do it, what with them being French an’ that.
Just checked: it was 1994, so she was 51, so still just a slip of a lass really.
In her family, she probably was, as her mother, also an actress, Renee Simonot, died last year at the astonishing age of 109. In some photos of the younger Mme Simonot, she could be mistaken for her daughter. They must have good genes ( I realise this probably doesn’t have any true scientific meaning.)
Wow, that’s a fine old age.
Yes, generations of good nutrition by the sound of it.
Sapristi! Dangereux pour le travail, mon capitaine!
Bow Wow Wow were a great band who were both helped and hindered by the McLaren connection.
Aye, Duck Rock was ahead of its time in several ways. And full of tunes.
Whatever his shortcomings, Malcolm McLaren got township jive into the top 3 of the UK hit parade at a time when singles sales were measured in tonnage. Kudos for that, if nothing else.