Classic Album Review: Sex Pistols - Never Mind The Bollocks (1977)

Where do you start with an album like Never Mind The Bollocks?

Let’s face it, for a talentless bunch of anti-social misfits who supposedly couldn’t play a note between them, the Sex Pistols left an indelible mark on popular music’s vast and rich multi-coloured quilt … even if that mark now bears a remarkable resemblance to that of a stale semen stain.

I’m quite sure the band wouldn’t have had it any other way.

It is hard to believe the Pistols operated as a going concern for little more than a year (in reality), and given the size of their discography nowadays, even more difficult to fathom is the fact that Never Mind The Bollocks was the band’s only official studio album.

The story behind the album has been told so many times it almost seems ludicrous to offer my own little piece of revisionism here, suffice to say that Never Mind The Bollocks is a landmark work … of its time, for its time – an acerbic, snotty-nosed, sneering, take-no-prisoners monolithic monster of a Rock’n’Roll record that still, even after all these years, simply has to be heard to be believed.

If you haven’t heard it yet, then why the hell are you wasting time sitting there reading this? Get to it. Life’s too short …

Oh, and great cover art too. Who knew pink and yellow were so compatible?

Five for download: ‘Anarchy In The UK’, ‘God Save The Queen’, ‘Pretty Vacant’, ‘EMI’, and ‘Submission’.