Loud, raucous and irreverent, this LP delivers as promised. This is punk rock at its best, with no letup. Once it begins there's no getting up for air until the record ends. It's all simple riffs and elemental chords with a machine gun beat, but nobody does it better. Included here are all the notorious hits that so shocked the English establishment. Once you get past the rawness of it all, it becomes apparent that this band can craft some very relevant tunes. Best cuts: "Pretty Vacant," "God Save The Queen," "Anarchy In The U.K.," "EMI," "Holidays In The Sun."

- Billboard, 1977.

Bonus Reviews!

Get this straight: no matter what the chicmongers want to believe, to call this band dangerous is more than a suave existentialist compliment. They mean no good. It won't do to pass off Rotten's hatred and disgust as role-playing -- the gusto of the performance is too convincing. Which is why this is such an impressive record. 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). These ideas must be dealt with, and can be expected to affect the way fans think and behave. The chief limitation on their power is the music, which can get heavy occasionally, but the only real question is how many American kids might feel the way Rotten does, and where he and they will go next. I wonder -- but I also worry. A

- Robert Christgau, Christgau's Record Guide, 1981.

The premier punk album stands high in our survey, gobbing on everything else below. Critic Mikal Gilmore chooses it as his number one: "If, as Greil Marcus noted, punk was the event that tore rock history in half, setting many suppositions and ideals and customs crosswise from each other, then Bullocks may well be the signal dividing work of that movement -- and of all post-fifties pop. But as much as anything, I've elected it here because it reminded me (even more than the work of Patti Smith and Graham Parker that immediately preceded it and helped pave its way) that rock could still be a vital music of stylistic, political and generational bravado -- in fact, a tool of real pop-cultural insurgency.

It also reminded methat by accepting punk and the Pistols' challenge, or that by siding with the renewed spirit of revolt, one could stay faithful to every promise of eruption, defiance and transcendence that rock-and-roll had ever offered -- and that you could even raise the stakes on the whole sheband.

"Maybe there are better punk or post-punk LPs -- London Calling, Metal Box or Closer come to mind -- but the Pistols embodied the conceits and brilliance and limitations of the movement better than anybody, so they win my support and thanks."

Everything about the Pistols as historical figures is on this record: "Anarchy in the UK," the first punk hit, a record so shocking it had British radio programmers trying to stamp it out and a couple of established deejays losing their cool on air and vowing never to play punk; "God Save the Queen," number two in the week of Her Majesty's Silver Jubilee, only kept out of number one by a two-sided Rod Stewart hit; "Pretty Vacant," a generational anthem featured on Top of the Pops; and "Holidays in the Sun," a nasty piece of lyrical work conjuring up images of a "new Belsen."

Not only the singles shocked. "Bodies," a song about a girl carrying an aborted foetus around in a carrier bag, was the most ruthless putdown in rock since Positively Fourth Street.

Let the historian remmeber that it was Glen Matlock, not Sid Vicious, who had a major role in writing the seminal Sex Pistols material. He is rightly credited on the label.

In 1987, Never Mind The Bollocks Here's The Sex Pistols was chosen by a panel of rock critics and music broadcasters as the #19 rock album of all time.

- Paul Gambaccini, The Top 100 Rock 'n' Roll Albums of All Time, Harmony Books, 1987.

The Sex Pistols on Compact Disc is as odd a concept as a home movie shot in Cinemascope! About the only validity this Compact Disc has is as a historic document charting a particularly pustular band on the often acned face of rock'n'roll. Never Mind... was the only LP to be released by the band -- all other LP and CD product is an attempt to cash in on the questionable veneration of the late Sid Vicious.

With the three chords they can muster the band are fairly competent, though Johnny Rotten performs better on two notes than three. The Pistols' music has an inevitable grinding repetitiveness.

Much has been made about the raw energy and simple recording standards that sent many bands back-to-basics in imitation. From Compact Disc these tapes are revealed for what they are: compressed and messy. How did producer Chris Thomas get mixed up with this? The Pistols' lasting effect was on the politics of the record industry and the wider connection between style and music -- not on recorded sound.

A budget CD single with just "Anarchy in the UK" and "Pretty Vacant" would have been more appropriate.

- David Prakel, Rock 'n' Roll on Compact Disc, 1987.

It's an assault. A remembrance of things past and of a spirit almost lost. You feel the Sex Pistols. The hearing is almost irrelevant. This is dissolute, daring music that isn't easy in any way, but it is one of those rare recordings that somehow affects the way everything after it is heard. Never Mind the Bollocks was the one unchallenged rock & roll album of the seventies. Nihilistic, nasty, neurotic, and pneumatic, it was/is the spirit incarnate. The sound is tight, driving, and abrasive, just as was intended. A+

- Bill Shapiro, Rock & Roll Review: A Guide to Good Rock on CD, 1991.

Never Mind the Bollocks (Here's the Sex Pistols) is a delightfully vulgar and viscerally pulverizing debut. Everything you need is here, including "God Save the Queen," "Pretty Vacant," "Holidays in the Sun," and "Anarchy in the U.K." * * * * *

- John Floyd, The All-Music Guide to Rock, 1995.

Never Mind The Bollocks Here's The Sex Pistols was the great punk rock wake-up call whose resonance still echoes in the modern rock community. * * * * *

- Anna Glen, Musichound Rock: The Essential Album Guide, 1996.

Further reading on Super Seventies RockSite!: Seventies' Greatest Album Covers: Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols

Latter-day listeners will no doubt wonder what all the fuss was about. Never Mind... is a surprisingly traditional record and contains little of the atmosphere in which it was conceived. When this album was eventually released, rather ironically in the UK on Richard Branson's "hippyfied" Virgin Records in November 1977, the punk upsurge had already faded into a softer, more marketable "new wave." The very fact that the Pistols had released an album at all seemed to signify the end of punk's shaky ideology. The Sex Pistols' fantastic quartet of early singles, "Anarchy in the UK," "God Save the Queen," "Pretty Vacant" and "Holidays In The Sun" had already been unleashed. And the album release proved something of an anti-climax. Nobody who was around at the time will ever forget that intoxicating moment when "Anarchy..." and "God Save The Queen" first assailed their ears. Against the odds, the standard set by the singles was maintained throughout the album. In particular, tracks like "New York," a savage attack on manager Malcolm McClaren's time there, and the obvious "EMI," proved entertainingly virulent. It was nothing more or less than one of the all time great rock albums. Strangely, in 1977, that didn't seem quite enough, and in America it took twenty years before it would pass the million sales mark.

- Collins Gem Classic Albums, 1999.

Be afraid, be very afraid...from the harsh reality of the lyrics to the throbbing melodies spit from the guitar, this historically significant, quintessential punk album -- loud, snotty and angry youthful anarchy in all its glory -- defined a new genre of music and culture and instantly made many popular bands obsolete. With hard-rock production that other bands would kill for, radical Johnny Rotten and the lads created a phenomenon that lives up to the hype. * * * * *

- Zagat Survey Music Guide - 1,000 Top Albums of All Time, 2003.

"If the sessions had gone the way I wanted, it would have been unlistenable for most people," Johnny Rotten said. "I guess it's the very nature of music; if you want people to listen, you're going to have to compromise." But few heard it that way at the time. Packed with disgust, nihilism and raw guitar, the Pistols' only studio album sounds like a rejection of everything rock & roll, and the world itself, had to offer. True, the music was less shocking than Rotten himself, who sang about abortions, anarchy and hatred in general on "Bodies" and "Anarchy in the U.K." But Never Mind... is the Sermon on the Mount of English punk -- and the echoes are everywhere.

Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols was chosen as the 41st greatest album of all time by the editors of Rolling Stone magazine in Dec. 2003.

- Rolling Stone, 12/11/03.

 Main Page | The Classic 300 | Readers' Favorites | Other Seventies Discs | Search The RockSite/The Web