The Sex Pistols

In their day, they were enormously influential and I really wish I'd seen them, but I was just a touch too young and only got into their music about 3 years after they'd finished.

Never Mind The XXXXXXXX is a great album, some superb songs on there.

I think plenty of "older" people give them the respect they deserve, but many youngsters don't really get them and understand what the punk movement was about.

They were punk, not the nofx type bands of today.
 
Ah, Malcolm McLaren's boy band. ;)

A lot of people nowadays tend to only see the hype, the infamy and the cartoonish characterisation [Sid, I'm looking at you, you sad, gullible, starstruck smackhead].

But The Sex Pistols - mainly due to John Lydon/Rotten, it has to be said - did write some great, cynical, biting, and emotionally charged songs. While Anarchy In The UK, Pretty Vacant, Holidays In The Sun and the excellent God Save The Queen are the ones most often played, it's the hugely underrated Bodies that proved beyond doubt that they were a serious band. I'll never forget that school lunchtime where, on a friend's Walkman, I heard Rotten's heartfelt "Mummy... I'm not an animal..." and realised that they weren't the thick, jokey publicity seekers the press would have had you believe.

Mind you, it all went musically downhill after Mr Rotten left, and they did end up as a sad cartoon band. It's a good job he went on to form Public Image Limited [at least in the early days].
 
I was one of the lucky ones who actually got to see them live twice at Wolverhampton and Burton around 1977.
Both times they played under another name and one of the gigs only lasted 10 minutes.
Matlock, Jones & Cook were a powerhouse and don't let anybody tell you they couldn't play.
Rotten had a very in tune vocal that he made to sound like it was out of tune and the 4 of them were as tight as a ducks bum.
It was a pity that ****** called Vicious joined them because he couldn't play and spent the gigs abusing the audience.
The Pistols are one of the greatest bands ever and Never Mind an all time classic.
 
da_mic_1530 said:
love the band, playing flogging a dead horse at the mo, nice little album
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I think its safe to say the band probably had no actual say in releasing that.

For me, the Sex Pistols ended the moment Rotten walked out - and to some extent the moment Vicious joined. Although that is a little harsh on him to be fair, for the first few months he was actually a decent bassist, but when McClaren and Nancy got him onto heroin he (along with McClaren) turned the band into a joke.

While Matlock was still in the band their sound was startlingly different to what peoples' general perception of them is. If you can get hold of any bootlegs or demos from live shows during 1976 I'm sure you would agree with me. They bared little resemblance to what was released on NVMB. I wonder sometimes whether Never Mind the ******** would have been even better than it is if Matlock was still in the band to record the proper basslines to the songs, as when they played with him live they were exceptional - they were a fantastic rock n roll band (keyword: rock n roll).

Unfortunately I don't think there are any soundboard recordings of any Sex Pistols gigs, they are all audience ones taken in small venues (IIRC the Sex Pistols never played to more than a few hundred people at any gig, and I'm sure most venues would have ended up with massive fines for cramming so many people in to watch them if they were around today).
 
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If any of you get chance please watch 'The Filth and the Fury' its a music documentary about the pistols (directed by Julian Temple), its the best music documentary I've ever seen. After watching the documentary I'm in no doubt that the pistols were the most important band ever in British musical history, they literally changed everything.
 
I remember when i was about 11, my did let me listen to Never Mind the ********. It's was the first album i was hooked on, and my dad still has a t-shirt that he wore at the only gig he saw of them.
I have a Never Mind The ******** mini strat guitar (one of those gift replica things) sitting on my desk now!, And it's up there in my top 5 most life changing albums off all time.
 
dmpoole said:
I was one of the lucky ones who actually got to see them live twice at Wolverhampton and Burton around 1977.
Both times they played under another name and one of the gigs only lasted 10 minutes.
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I didn't have time earlier to explain why they only played 10 minutes.
They came on and of course the audience started spitting.
Rotten said something like "You read too many newspapers, the media started the spitting".
They kicked in, played the first song and then walked off until the audience stopped spitting.
They came back on again, kicked in again but walked as soon as the spitting started.
Rotten then addressed the audience saying "We did not start the spitting".
I also saw The Clash walk off in the early days because of this.

Oh and another thing, don't believe a single word of what Malcolm McLaren says about The Rock & Roll Swindle.
The only thing he engineered was getting Vicious into the band.
 
When I was about 12 I used to sneak into the back room and play "*******' in the Rigging" as loud as I could get away with, so nobody else would hear it. Never Mind The ********is a class album.
 
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