October 1977: Sex Pistols Release NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS
"When we did 'Anarchy in the UK,' in other words the first sessions, that was like real—what's it all about! Specially when it came to the point of actually working with John," remembered producer Chris Thomas, who was tasked with wrangling a debut album out of the Sex Pistols, on John Lydon, AKA Johnny Rotten. "We put the backing track down, and I still hadn't met him. It was all getting a little bit strange, shenanigans going on already. He came in to do his vocal and he was really disgruntled—because he'd been sort of left out of things, and he didn't know about it. So already there was a bit of an atmosphere.
"I remember saying, 'Shall we try doing the vocal now?' And John said [disgruntled tone]: 'Well that's what I'm 'ere for,'" Thomas continued. "Then we went out into the studio, and he started howling his way through this, just a yell from beginning to end. It's like, 'Christ almighty, how do we sort this one out? The fun really starts now.'"
By the time Lydon and company felt Thomas was indeed up to the task, they began to craft a classic: "Once John had had a go at the vocals, he then became very involved in it all," Thomas said. "They were really into making a great record, definitely. All this thing about being told to do the track without the singer, it made him out to be some fucking monster or something. It turns out he's totally into it. We ended up having to mix it through the night, pretty much. A lot of them were kipping upstairs. And John came down about five in the morning, he's listening to it and he's absolutely knocked out. 'That's great,' he said. 'That's our anthem.'"
"Anarchy in the UK" went on to become the Sex Pistols' very first single, kicking off the band's world-shaking campaign that officially launched on October 28, 1977, with the release of the group's one and only studio album: Never Mind the Bollocks.
Sex Pistols' shocking notoriety had only grown in the time between "Anarchy in the UK" and the release of Never Mind the Bollocks, with the outfit making scads of headlines in the UK, most notably the infamous "Grundy Incident" on Thames Television's Today show when members of the band and their entourage (which included Siouxsie Sioux) cursed and generally caused mayhem live on air during an interview.
“Grundy was the big dividing line in the Sex Pistols’ story," guitarist Steve Jones wrote in his book, Lonely Boy - Tales From A Sex Pistol. "Before it, we were all about the music, but from then on it was all about the media. In some ways it was our finest moment, but in others it was the beginning of the end… In terms of the Sex Pistols having any kind of long-term future, this sudden acceleration was the worst thing that could possibly happened. I still think we’d have got really big in the end without it, but the whole process would have been much slower and maybe less traumatic."
Instead, the notoriety made the band household names across England, sending Never Mind the Bollocks to debut at #1 on the UK Album chart. The album's reputation and stature has only grown over the years. In 1987, Rolling Stone magazine called it the second best album of the previous 20 years, second only to the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Never Mind the Bollocks currently sits at #80 on Rolling Stones' 500 Greatest Albums of All-Time list.
--Scott T. Sterling
