The Sex Pistols live - ultra-rare 1996 live album! Sale price £29.99 GBP Regular price £44.98 GBP
"Never mind the Bollocks" by the Sex Pistols is the only studio album by English punk rock band the Sex Pistols, released on 28 October 1977 by Virgin Records in the UK and on 11 November 1977 by Warner Bros. Sex Pistols "Same old ten inch bollocks" captures them live in Santiago.
Sex Pistols "Same old Bollocks"
The 1996 Filthy Lucre Tour included dates in Europe, North and South America, Australia and Japan and tickets sold out immediately. The Sex Pistols decided against producing new material for the tour and stuck to the 1976 repertoire which had made them famous. The Sex Pistols were disdainful of the media attention at the time and were indifferent to any negative comments. This led to some fans jokingly referring to the tour as ‘the same old bollocks tour’ but, as always, the music was a huge success. The proof of just how great these now-legendary gigs actually were can be found on these powerful vinyl albums.
"Never Mind the Bollocks" made punk mainstream as a new genre and inspired The Clash, The Damned, Stiff Little Fingers and many more. It is probably one of the most controversial albums of all time. The song “God Save the Queen” was banned by the BBC. This was in part a reaction to Jones’ foul-mouthed prime-time TV interview with Bill Grundy. Jones swore throughout but says that only happened because he was plied with “three bottles of Blue Nun in the green room”. He says Mclaren (their manager) was left “as white as a sheet with fear” – worried it spelled the end for the band. In fact, it put them on the front pages and lifted their profile yet higher.
Due in part to its notoriety, and in spite of many sales bans at major retailers, the album debuted at number one on the UK Album Charts. It achieved advance orders of 125,000 copies after a week of its release and went gold only a few weeks later, on 17 November. It remained a best-seller for nearly a year, spending 48 weeks in the top 75. The album has also been certified platinum by the RIAA. It has seen several reissues, the latest in 2017.
Apart from notoriety, why was the album so popular? The album has raw energy, and Johnny Rotten's sneering delivery and "half-singing," are often considered game-changing. It is frequently listed as the most influential punk album, and one of the most important and best albums of all time. The band's internal relationships were always volatile, and the line-up saw changes during the recording of the album. Original bass guitarist Glen Matlock left the band early in the recording process, and while he is credited as a co-writer on all but two of the tracks, he only performed bass and backing vocals on one track, "Anarchy in the U.K." Recording sessions continued with a new bass player, Sid Vicious, who is credited on two of the songs the band wrote after he joined. While Vicious's bass playing appeared on two tracks, his lack of skill on the instrument meant that many of the tracks were recorded with guitarist Steve Jones playing bass instead. Drummer Paul Cook and singer Johnny Rotten appear on every track. The various recording sessions were led alternately by record producers Chris Thomas or Bill Price, and sometimes both together, but as the songs on the final albums often combined mixes from different sessions, or were poorly documented who was present in the recording booth at the time, each song is jointly credited to both producers.
In 1987, Rolling Stone magazine named the album the second-best of the previous 20 years, behind only the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The same magazine ranked it number 80 on their list of 500 greatest albums of all time in 2020. In 2006, it was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 greatest albums ever.