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Holidays In The Sun
Liar
No Feelings
God Save The Queen
Problems
Seventeen
Anarchy In The U.K.
Bodies
Pretty Vacant
New York
E.M.I.
Nearly half a century on, this is a divisive album. The bottom half of the internet will light up at the merest suggestion of its name. There are still plenty who believe that the Sex Pistols were a mere construct, a prototype Take That fashioned simply to sell unfortunate trousers, and that their solitary album of original material was, well, just an album; unsophisticated, iconoclastic, raw, but a bit of a paper tiger. They're wrong.
In Never Mind The Bollocks producer Chris Thomas, the Pistols found their Visconti. Their savant genius was already there – all they needed was an interpreter to translate passion into the language of vinyl, and here it was. A titanic wall of guitars, The Stooges Spectorised, the New York Dolls Anglicised and John Lydon distilling a lost, dismissed and disenfranchised generation’s directionless, nihilistic fury into succinct spitballs of vented spleen as intense, uncompromising and affecting as any dead poetry.
There can’t have been many more hair-raising couplets in rock’s history than Anarchy In The UK’s ‘I am an anti-christ! I am an anar-kyste!’, and its impact has hardly been dulled with time or repeated listens. Then, to publicly dismiss our monarch with God Save The Queen – the album’s crown jewel, if you will – by observing ‘she ain’t no human being’ in the year of her universally celebrated Silver Jubilee, represented a whole new level of provocation to the establishment. In terms of timing alone, that song was a work of spittle-flecked, petulant genius.
Every week, Album of the Week Club listens to and discusses the album in question, votes on how good it is, and publishes our findings, with the aim of giving people reliable reviews and the wider rock community the chance to contribute.
Other albums released in October 1977
- The Runaways - Waitin' for the Night
- Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers - L.A.M.F.
- Electric Light Orchestra - Out of the Blue
- The Charlie Daniels Band - Midnight Wind
- Kansas - Point of Know Return
- Kiss - Alive II
- "Heroes" - David Bowie
- Lynyrd Skynyrd - Street Survivors
- Meat Loaf - Bat Out of Hell
- Genesis - Seconds Out
- UFO - Lights Out
- Neil Young - Decade
- Queen - News of the World
- Sweet - The Golden Greats
- Barclay James Harvest - Gone to Earth
- Sparks - Introducing Sparks
- Levon Helm - Levon Helm & the RCO All-Stars
- Santana - Moonflower
- Sammy Hagar - Musical Chairs
- Nils Lofgren Live - Night After Night
- Utopia - Oops! Wrong Planet
- Dead Boys - Young Loud and Snotty
What they said...
"It's easy to see how the band's roaring energy, overwhelmingly snotty attitude, and Johnny Rotten's furious ranting sparked a musical revolution, and those qualities haven't diminished one bit over time. Never Mind the Bollocks is simply one of the greatest, most inspiring rock records of all time." (AllMusic)
"The Pistols' only studio album sounds like a rejection of everything rock & roll had to offer. True, the music was less shocking than Rotten himself, who snarled about abortions, anarchy and hatred. But Never Mind. . . is the Sermon on the Mount of U.K. punk – and its echoes are everywhere." (Rolling Stone)
"The forbidden ideas from which Rotten makes songs take on undeniable truth value, whether one is sympathetic (Holidays in the Sun is a hysterically frightening vision of global economics) or filled with loathing (Bodies, an indictment from which Rotten doesn't altogether exclude himself, is effectively anti-abortion, anti-woman, and anti-sex)." (Robert Christgau)
What you said...
Evan Sanders: What an album! I find it hard to sufficiently describe how much the Sex Pistols changed the trajectory of rock music at a time when the listening landscape offered safer options such as Fleetwood Mac and Billy Joel, progressive options from Pink Floyd and Yes, and the highly produced sounds of Queen, Meat Loaf, and more.
Punk stripped everything down and reintroduced anger as a driving force. Even though the Sex Pistols were criticised then and now for their limited musical skills, people were missing the point that they were looking more for a garage band feel than technical excellence.
And the album does hold up well. All 12 songs are strong, and several remain as punk archetypes, including Holidays In The Sun, God Save The Queen, Pretty Vacant, and Anarchy In The UK. Other bands had longer careers, and perhaps the Sex Pistols were destined, in Neil Young's words, as ones who were "better to burn out than to fade away". 8/10 for the music alone, 9/10 for the cultural significance.
Brian Hart: The greatest punk album of all time. It has all the rawness and attitude you want with just a hint of just a hint of pop sensibility to make every song singable and memorable. This is the definitive punk album.
Andrew Cumming: Growing up in the late ’80s, my experience of this album was shaped by its reputation. It seemed like everyone in rock music regarded it as hugely influential. The upside was discovering it without all the surrounding hype (often no bad thing). So my experience was being told – by everyone, it felt like – that this was a brilliant album until I conceded and went and bought it.
The marching intro to Holidays In the Sun still sends shivers, and the album launches at a ferocious pace - Holidays, Bodies (a revoltingly brilliant song), No Feelings, Liar, God Save The Queen and Problems. What a start, what a side 1. Chock full of attitude and great songs. Even without the context, it's a set of songs to make you want to rebel against, well, anything frankly.
Side two is a patchier affair. Seventeen begins with a snarl ("You're only twenty-nine"), and Anarchy and Pretty Vacant are great (although I suspect Anarchy in particular was a song that benefited from being there at the time). The rest less so. So it feels like the album runs out of steam a bit. In fact, listening to the album feels a bit like a metaphor for the Pistols' initial life - hits you like a train, for a quite a while, but then fizzles out.
Notwithstanding any of the hype and influence, this is a good album that stands up well today and has a handful of songs that feel genuinely timeless.
Dave Morgan: Good band with a crap singer. Imagine Di’Anno singing.
Peter Thomas Webb: Never Mind the Bollocks was not the first, the best, or the most radical punk album (the Stooges' Raw Power from 1973 rivals it on all three fronts, and even John Lydon's early work with Public Image Ltd. was way more "out there"). However, it was the album most newcomers and casual listeners turned to for an idea of what "punk" meant in the specific context of Great Britain in the late 1970s.
Steve Jones's guitar and bass riffs punched like little else at the time (certainly more than the Ramones' exciting but underproduced early albums). Johnny Rotten's lyrics were both angry and humane ("We're the poison in your human machine"). Chris Thomas's meticulous production, informed by his earlier work on The Dark Side of the Moon, gave punk its first studio masterpiece (so much for Johnny's "I Hate Pink Floyd" T-shirt).
Today, Never Mind the Bollocks sounds less like a musical revolution than a particularly solid entry in the hard rock pantheon of the 1970s. That doesn't mean it wasn't important at the time of its release. However, it does indicate how deeply the album wove its way into the very fabric of rock. My rating: 9/10
Chris Elliott: Where to begin with this? One of the most important albums ever made - in part due to the media's overreaction, that helped create the "movement" that followed. In some ways, the Pistols' main function was to kick the doors in and allow the rest in. New wave, the more "acceptable" elements of punk and the entire post-punk/UK indie scene either exist because of the Pistols or got airplay because punk/new wave couldn't be ignored totally (remember we had one national "pop" radio station).
I was 11 at the time - just beginning to listen to music (taping the good bits of the top 40). Given it was banned by the BBC - at 11 I saw the fuss and outrage but never heard any of it - I knew what it had inspired from the stuff in the charts and John Peel ((UK late night DJ who pivoted from hippy to punk) By the time I was in my teens I finally bought a second hand copy and sneaked it in the house (and bought headphones....it would have been thrown out if my father heard it). I was listening to NWOBHM at the time, and this just changed things in ways beyond the music. At the time, I thought it was perfect. Now? Probably less so.
Three truly great tracks – and the power of the rest is undeniable – but it hasn't all aged well (it's great strength in 77 was honesty – working class views expressed in the language of the time... bits of that are cringeworthy today - but that's not unique to the Pistols). Equally, what it inspired took the "music" to more interesting places - but we all get old.
Lydon's lyrics and vocals are what truly set this apart at the time - and God Save the Queen and Anarchy still stand apart from the crowd. It's still a great album - but the mindset it inspired in some of us is its real legacy.
Adam Ranger: These days, when nothing shocks us, it's hard to comprehend. In the 50s, it was rock'n'roll that shook the establishment. In the 60s, hippy culture disgusted the establishment and in the mid-70s, we had punk that shocked the established order. And the Pistols were perhaps the epitome of that shock.
As a 12-year-old, they made a massive impression on me, not just the music but the attitude and the way it scares a lot of parents.
Is this the best punk album? Probably not, for me. That goes to one of the Damned albums. But this album had such an impact. We are still talking about that today! It was loud, brash and contained some really quite astonishing lyrics.
I love this album for the memories, the noise and the effect it has on my parents' generation. Some great rock'n'roll, with attitude.
Philip Qvist: Living in South Africa, the Sex Pistols hardly got any exposure apart from the odd Sunday newspaper article about their latest antics, and as I was only starting to get into music in 1977, their impact on music passed me by. It was only five years later, when one of my schoolmates started to play this album, that I started to understand what all the fuss was all about.
I have always felt punk's influence on the music scene has been greatly exaggerated. For sure, the industry had become saturated with bloated acts and a movement like punk was needed to reset the music clock, but did it really change people's music tastes? Well, check out the best-selling UK albums in 1977 and 1978 and make up your own mind. ABBA, The Shadows, Bread, Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd, the Supremes and the Eagles are hardly the epitome of Punk.
So what about Never Mind The Bollocks? Well, things have definitely changed in 50 years. What was considered controversial and cutting-edge in the late 70s would now be regarded as quaint in the 2020s. God Save The Queen hardly sounds controversial these days, as groundbreaking and controversial as it was in 1977.
Holidays in the Sun, Anarchy in the UK, Pretty Vacant, God Save The Queen, Liar and Bodies are my picks on Never Mind the Bollocks. In truth, though, as chaotic and amateurish as it sounds at times, this is a top-notch album. I do think the hype sometimes overshadows the record, but I do give it the odd spin from time to time. An 8 from me.
Miz Patel: A truly landmark record that captured the anger and frustration of the 70s, although it should be said that the decade was itself full of rock gold, e.g. just recall 1971, for example!
This album is the pure fire of youth kicking against anything and everything. Rock'n'roll that aims for the jugular with no frills.
Forget the BS that critics inevitably cite, McLaren, Manufactured, etc. It is what it is, and is a statement in the context of the times it was made, that stands the test of time. Stonewall classic 10/10.
Nigel Mawdsley: Great album, such raw energy and some cracking tunes. Yes, it's derivative in places (The Kinks and The Stooges spring to mind), but some of these Pistols' songs are stone-cold classics!
Always makes me chuckle that the BBC and other institutions in the UK banned God Save The Queen, yet they let Pretty Vacant slip through their censorship! We're vac*nt... brilliant!
James Southard: Familiarity lessens some of the songs, but whatever you say about the Pistols, no one can deny that this album is top-tier. Anarchy, Pretty Vacant, Holidays in the Sun, EMI, God Save the Queen. These endure for a reason. A definite 10/10 album that will go on influencing new bands for many years yet.
Drew Martin: Ferocious front to back.
Gary Clark: Fuckin' great album
Shayne Ashby: Killer guitar tones. Just the song Bodies is better than all of Pink Floyd's catalogue.
Martin Wooliscroft: I'm not sure if anyone who wasn't around at the time can truly comprehend the effect this album had on me, a 12-year-old boy, back in 1977.
Firstly, it taught me to think for myself. I may not have agreed with all of Lydon's takes, but I certainly started questioning the orthodoxy at that point, for better or for worse. And musically: I currently have over 9,000 songs on my main Spotify playlist, and I can trace my liking for every single one back to this one album. This album led me into punk, then metal, then back to classic rock. And prog. Then forward to thrash and back again to the blues and all sorts of other joys, but all roads lead back to Never Mind The Bollocks.
For me, discussing the individual songs and production, etc., really misses the point, because it means more to me than that. It made me who I am today. I blame it for everything.
Andrew Bramah: The production is really good. Guitar tone is perfect with multiple overdubs. The whole album is well put together in terms of track sequence. Even after 50 years, it still sounds good.
I remember buying this and a Rainbow album at the same time! One sounded so dated.
Anna Cristina: The thing about anything that is “punk” - and especially The Sex Pistols - is this: People like to talk about the shock and novelty factor, the Filth and the Fury and McLaren and the image. They like to talk about “but back at that time”, and to frame it as something that exists within the social and pop culture context of the late 70s, etc., etc.
But I think characterising the music like this almost always detracts from what a lot of these great punk records were as standalone albums in and of themselves.
I got really into this album when I was 14, 15. And by the 90s, we all knew what “shock” was to the point that stuff from the 70s looked tame. I had already heard music influenced by this. But it was still such an exciting album to hear.
It is transformative: you could hear this album, and it could make you more of something, less of something else.
When the Pistols reformed in 1996, there was renewed interest in this album. When they did the stint of gigs in 2007/8, the same. And when I saw them play this album through with Frank Carter in 2024, it was absolutely amazing to hear it come alive in a small venue.
The room was filled with people who had heard it hundreds of times over, but were thrilled to hear it live again. The youngest teens to people over 70, all here to see this played in full.
It’s consistently amongst people’s listed favourite albums, because hey, it’s just a great album. It has long departed from its original context.
It is Steve Jones’s album. Steve Jones even named the album. You can recognise the riffs and that driving sound anywhere and within other players he’s influenced. There is this stupid myth that the Pistols couldn’t play, but Steve really could and practised hard to do so.
He played both the guitar parts and the bass parts. And fucking hell, he still sounds amazing live. The sound of Holidays In The Sun opening the album is still invigorating today.
Johnny Rotten, too. These lyrics were amazing for a kid of 18 or 19. Whatever you think of Rotten – now, before, whenever – it is a distinctive vocal style on this record that still defines what a “punk” singer is.
It is a classic album which does so much in 38 minutes. There have been people discovering this album for almost 50 years, and there will be people today and forever doing the same.
Paul De Maria Mañas: Groundbreaking.
Jim McElhattan: The definitive punk album. The album that started me liking punk.
John Davidson: It's hard to separate Never Mind the Bollocks, the album, from the hype and history that surrounds it. Musically, it's punchy, fast-paced riff'n'roll. Noisy but hardly groundbreaking. Socially, it trampled over most of the taboos of mid-70s radio with its sweary, anti-establishment lyrics and sneering tone.
It was sing-along savagery. Like football chants with aggressive guitars. Parents hated it, so of course, teenagers loved it. Is it a great album? No.
There are three or four songs on it that hit the spot (Anarchy, God Save The Queen, Pretty Vacant and maybe Holidays In The Sun), but the rest are the same as Holidays... only not quite as interesting.
As Nevermind did 13 years later, Never Mind The Bollocks epitomised a musical movement without being the best example of it. On its own, it's a 6 or 7, as a cultural icon, it's an 8 or 9.
Greg Schwepe: No, I didn’t buy this on vinyl when it came out in 1977. No, I’m not an expert on punk rock and its social significance in the UK or elsewhere. And before I really heard anything from this album, I read more in the newspaper and magazines about the Pistols' exploits offstage and the mayhem they caused. Rock stars behaving badly. Funny, same thing happened for me with Oasis some twenty years later. Knew more about the Gallagher brothers getting into fights than their music.
So when I finally snagged a used copy (only 10-15 years ago, how lame is that?!) of Never Mind The Bollocks (and the live Filthy Lucre. It was a banner day at the record store!) I realised what all the fuss was about. There is power in power chords. Visceral. Simple. Raw. And yes, comes with a nice dose of social commentary, some tongue-in-cheek. But all with "safety pin in cheek." This is one of those “If you call yourself a music fan, you should own this” albums. Is this album Ground Zero for punk rock? Maybe, maybe not, but it’s sure near the top of the list.
To steal from the best descriptions I read over the years about Johnny Rotten’s vocal delivery, Never Mind The Bollocks is full of his sneering and snarling style. I even ended up buying the guitar tablature book so I could learn Steve Jones chunky riffs. And he can play! A nice style and tone to grind through this album. There is not a song on this album that I don’t like. Favourites are Bodies and Pretty Vacant.
8 out of 10 on this one for me. And after writing this, I think it’s downstairs for a little loud guitar riffing on a few songs from this…because “we don’t caaaaaaare!”
Mark Herrington: In 1977, I was mainly into heavy rock and the classic bands of the era: Lizzy, Sabbath, Rainbow, etc. I remember Never Mind The Bollocks was pretty seismic at the time, and shook things up a lot. It was always on at parties, and songs like Pretty Vacant were guaranteed to liven things up at the Disco.
I liked it but not enough to buy it, and also preferred the new wave/ goth it helped kickstart, such as The Cure, Joy Division and Echo and the Bunnymen. I also preferred bands like The Stranglers, The Damned and Buzzcocks in the Punk arena.
I still listen to all my old heavy rock/classic rock albums from back then, but the Pistols slipped off my radar fairly quickly in the late 70s. Other albums around the late 70’s had a bigger impact on me, such as Overkill, Van Halen and Live and Dangerous.
So, for me, an exciting part of my musical youth, but there was so much other stuff I preferred and that stayed with me much longer.
Alan Gudgin: I dipped my toes briefly into punk music and quickly whipped them back out. I was unimpressed then and remain unimpressed now. Went back to Judas Priest, UFO, Rush, etc.
Mike Canoe: First things first: I wasn't there. In 1977, I was far away in another country and still young enough to be influenced by the music my parents listened to. I probably didn't hear Never Mind the Bollocks until five or six years later, when I started to forge my own musical path.
And I loved it. I still love it.
My middle school friends and I may not have understood a lot of the political references in our north Texas suburb, but the anti-authoritarian and rebellious attitude came through loud and clear. And the power. Such power. Divebomb guitars and ratatat drums. And over the top of it all, a snarling, sneering voice like we'd never heard before. We may not have always understood why Johnny Rotten sounded so pissed off, but, truth be told, we didn't understand why we were so pissed off all the time either.
Anarchy In The UK is still an all-caps ANTHEM. I can understand why US metal bands loved to cover it, even if it didn't translate well. For a green teen looking for a manifesto, this fit the bill perfectly - even if we mumbled the first line because we lived in the Bible Belt and only came in strong on the second, although we didn't have a clear idea of what an anarchist was.
Speaking of Bible Belt, we thought Bodies would be the perfect song to win over to punk rock the anti-abortion football coaches who also taught our science and history classes - if it wasn't for all those F-bombs delivered with terrifying vitriol.
Never Mind the Bollocks sounds good because it was made to sound good, thanks in large part to a producer who knew what he was doing. Purely from a get your blood moving standpoint, most of the album was/is exceptional. Holidays in the Sun, Problems, No Feelings, Liar, Pretty Vacant, EMI" - all rip snorting slashers scoring and scorching the earth. Mildly slower, Submission adds a different depth, pun acknowledged but not intended, and shows that Steve Jones could play pretty good bass on top of his slash and burn guitar.
Of course, the Pistols imploded spectacularly, as they were always kind of meant to. It's still the best thing any of the band members has ever done. Citing Metal Box may give you more muso credibility, but it's not nearly as much fun. Similarly, history argues that the Pistols were more publicity stunt than band, which is not entirely untrue, and will point you in the direction of the Clash or the Damned as the quintessential UK punk band. Arguments could be made for both, but neither ever put out an album as potent as this one.
Don't let anybody sway you; this is a great album.
Adrian Bolster: Her majesty's government versus Virgin Records, Nottingham Crown Court 1977. A very smart Richard Branson hired an even smarter barrister called John Mortimer, later to become Sir John Mortimer, to convince the Court that 'Bollocks' was not a swear word. As a result, the cover was retained, and we could buy it without a plain paper bag cover.
As a 13-year-old in Cork, Southern Ireland, a friend bought it, and we all taped it. Despite being a Beatles, Deep Purple, and Led Zeppelin fan, I loved it, and Bodies was un-fucking-believable honesty. Still love it today, despite Rotten's cuntary.
Final score: 7.64 (126 votes cast, total score 963)
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