Rock & Roll Museum

Sex Pistols

Unabashedly crude, intensely emotional, calculated either to exhilarate or to offend, the Sex Pistols’ music and stance were in direct opposition to the star trappings and complacency that they felt had rendered rock & roll irrelevant to the common bloke. Apparently, they were not alone. Over the course of their short, turbulent existence, they released a single studio album that changed if not the history of rock, at least its course. While the Sex Pistols were not the first punk rockers (that distinction probably goes to the Stooges), they were the most widely known and, at least to appearances, the most threatening. Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols unquestionably ranks as one of the most important rock & roll records ever, its sound a raw, snarling, yet mesmerizing rejection of and challenge to not only rock & roll music and culture but a modern world that offered, as Rotten sang in "God Save the Queen," "no future." Whether the Sex Pistols were simply a sophisticated hype run amok or the true voice of their generation has been widely debated, yet, oddly, neither matters nor explains how they came to spark and personify one of the few truly critical moments in pop culture -- the rise of punk.

The Sex Pistols were the brainchild of young entrepreneur Malcolm McLaren [see entry]. The owner of a London clothes boutique, Sex, which specialized in "anti-fashion," McLaren had conceived the idea of a rock & roll act that would challenge every established notion of propriety when, in 1975, he found himself managing the New York Dolls in their final months as a group. A part-time employee of Sex, Glen Matlock played bass with Paul Cook and Steve Jones; he let McLaren know they were looking for a singer. McLaren approached 19-year-old John Lydon, whom he had seen hanging around the jukebox at Sex and who was known mainly for his rudeness..

  

Lydon had never sung before, but he accepted the invitation and thoroughly impressed the others with his scabrous charisma. McLaren had found his act; he named the group the Sex Pistols. Allegedly, Lydon’s disregard for personal hygiene prompted Jones to dub him Johnny Rotten. Ten minutes into their first gig at a suburban art school dance on November 6, 1975, the school’s social programmer unplugged their amplifiers. In the early months of 1976, McLaren’s carefully cultivated word-of-mouth about the Sex Pistols made them leaders of the nascent punk movement. Their gigs inspired the formation of the Clash, Buzzcocks, X-Ray Spex, Joy Division, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and countless other rebel groups in the second half of the Seventies.

The press and record industry ignored the Sex Pistols at first, but by the end of the summer the uproar -- both acclamatory and denunciatory -- was too loud to be ignored. In November EMI outbid Polydor with a recording contract worth £40,000. The Sex Pistols’ first single, "Anarchy in the U.K.," was released in December. That month the band used the word "fucker" in a nationally televised interview; the consequent outrage led promoters and local authorities to cancel all but five of the dates scheduled on the group’s national tour and EMI to withdraw "Anarchy in the U.K." -- #38 on the U.K. chart in January 1977 -- from circulation and to terminate its contract with the Sex Pistols.

In March Matlock left to form the Rich Kids and was replaced by John Ritchie, a previously nonmusical friend of Rotten, who named him Sid Vicious. That same month A&M signed up the Pistols for £150,000; just a week later the company fired them for a balance payment of £75,000. In May Virgin signed the Pistols and released their second record, "God Save the Queen," in time to spite the queen’s Silver Jubilee that June. The song was immediately banned from airplay in England. Nonetheless it was a top-selling single (cited as a blank at the #2 position on official charts, listed as #1 on independent charts).

When no hall in Britain would book the Sex Pistols, they went abroad -- to the Continent in July and to the U.S. in December, by which time their album had been released. In America they found themselves the object of a little adulation, considerable hostility, but mostly uncomprehending curiosity, which turned to scoffing when the Pistols made only halfhearted attempts to live up to their reputation for savagery.

Rotten was characteristically critical of the sensationalism and opportunism that had been attached to the Sex Pistols (for which he blamed McLaren), and on January 14,1978, immediately after a concert in San Francisco, he announced the breakup of the group. The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle was a film directed by Julien Temple that included early footage of the group. Jones and Cook remained active in the punk movement and formed the Professionals; Jones materialized in the mid-Eighties in Chequered Past, which included former Blondie rhythm section Nigel Harrison and Clem Burke, Tony Sales, and singer Michael des Barres. Vicious initiated a solo career, which ended when he was imprisoned in New York on charges of stabbing his girlfriend Nancy Spungen to death in their Chelsea Hotel room. He died of a heroin overdose while out on bail before he could be tried.

Dismissing the Sex Pistols as "a farce" and reverting to his given name, Lydon formed Public Image, Ltd. [see entry]. In 1986 the surviving members of the group and Vicious’ mother won a lawsuit against McLaren, charging he had tied up their royalties in two management companies. The plaintiffs were later awarded approximately $1.44 million. That same year, the critically acclaimed Alex Cox film Sid and Nancy was released. Nancy Spungen’s mother wrote a book entitled And I Don’t Want to Live This Life, in which she recounted her daughter’s lifelong emotional and psychological problems and presented a surprisingly sympathetic view of her relationship with Vicious.

 

Interesting Links:

Sex Pistols - Site Oficial

Sex Pistols Page

Sex Pistols Brasileira

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