Classic Album no. 20 - Never Mind The b****cks

[vastar iner]

Here's The Sex Pistols. A title that's too long to fit the subject thread...



Side one
1."Holidays in the Sun" – 3:22
2."Bodies" – 3:03
3."No Feelings" – 2:53
4."Liar" – 2:41
5."God Save the Queen" – 3:20
6."Problems" – 4:11

Side two
1."Seventeen" – 2:02
2."Anarchy in the UK" – 3:32
3."Submission" – 4:12
4."Pretty Vacant" – 3:18
5."New York" – 3:07
6."EMI" – 3:10

The version linked is the US version, which switches tracks 5 and 6 around. And has "Submission" as part of side 2, rather than as a bonus 7 inch bundled with the album.

So. Have at it...

[Shireblogger]

Inevitable that this would come up sooner or later. But a choice I had feared, as, for reasons which will become apparent in due course, I didn't really want to review it.

[raliverpool]

I'm looking forward to reviewing this. My review will explain why.

Personally, I would have been topical and selected either one of the fallen Madonna's twin peaks (Like A Prayer or Ray Of Light) for this month.

[Shireblogger]

Sex Pistols – Never Mind The b****cks

Context
I was just getting into music when the Sex Pistols exploded onto the scene. But my home taping of the chart show, and earliest Christmas presents, tended to feature pop acts like Abba and Showaddywaddy. I remember the jubilee controversy, and being intrigued as to what “God Save The Queen” sounded like, as I’d never heard it. As a 10 year old, I quite enjoyed “Anarchy In The UK” and “Pretty Vacant”, but it was a long time before I checked out the album.
3/10

General Overview
My original (early 1980s) view was “this is over-hyped rubbish”. I returned to the album several times over the years, and kept coming to the same conclusion. (I should state, there are a few punk albums which I devoured then, and still do today, so it isn’t a case of me not liking this type of music). And now, I try again, and my opinion remains unchanged. 4 great singles surrounded by dross. Sacrilege perhaps, but I’d bet good money that the vast majority of people who cite the Sex Pistols as a key influence do so because of the early singles and the attitude, not because “Never Mind…” is a seminal LP.
2/10

Intro & Outro
I have a big problem with “Holidays In The Sun”. I love its stomping feel, rock’n’roll guitar thrusts, and snarling singing. But the jack boot intro, the reference to Belsen, and the Nazi imagery which surrounded the band, makes me very uncomfortable. They may not have been glorifying genocide, but they were certainly quite ambiguous about their position. Different lyrics would have made this absolutely brilliant. “EMI” is the best of the album tracks, and, I reckon, is the one song where the lyrics are actually the real deal, as opposed to representing the exaggerated caricatures that appear on the rest of the album and on tv appearances. For once, a song that actually has something interesting to say.
6/10

Music
Fast. Furious. Exciting. Exhausting. It would have been great to have seen the Pistols live, except I don’t like being gobbed on. But to hear the same idea repeated 12 times over begins to get tiresome. I never saw the need to buy a Ramones album, because one or two singles tell the whole story. Same with “Never Mind…”. The four best tracks are enough, and the rest is just filler.

My revelation from this review, however, is the third key influence on the band. First, obviously, are the New York punks, starting with Velvet Underground. Then we have the original rock’n’rollers, such as Eddie Cochran, Link Wray and Jerry Lee Lewis. But the third, and it only dawned on me this time, are the likes of Gary Glitter and Status Quo. Just listen to the last 45 seconds of “God Save The Queen”, and specifically the “no future” chanting, and then sing “Do you want to be in my gang, oh yeah !” or “Down down, deeper and down” over the top. The same game also works with the last minute of “Pretty Vacant”. The simple bombast of 70s rockers worked just as well with or without flares and long hair.
7/10

Lyrics
Johnny Rotten had his moments, especially when he found an interesting expression. “Claustrophobia, there’s too much paranoia.” “I thought it was the UK, or just another country, another council tenancy”. But I don’t think he devoted hours and hours to his subject matter. Far too many tracks on “Never Mind…” go down the route of self-centred (sometimes narcissistic) disenfranchisement. “I’m a lazy sod, I can’t even be bothered”. “I got no emotions for anybody else”. “You’re just a pile of sh*t.” “I don’t need your blah blah.” Ad nauseum. And I detest the sentiments of “Bodies”, an offensive and ignorant anti-abortion treatise for which the band should be ashamed. The album could have been a masterpiece, if they’d put in some effort.
3/10

Production & Sound
I love the fact that Paul Cook’s drum kit seems to consist of nothing but cymbals, and the relentless assault that he lays on. And Rotten’s vocal delivery is absorbing and unique, never convincingly imitated (the rolled Rs for example), and breathtakingly self-confident. But the album is cleaner than it should be. Given the punk ethos, the right sound would have been fuzzier. Some wrong notes, maybe a false intro, a bit of studio banter, painful feedback, generally rawer. It really has the sound of a talented producer, and that doesn’t sit right with the band’s image or subject matter.
4/10

High Points
“Pretty Vacant” and “Anarchy In The UK” are pure genius. Perhaps more cartoon pop to my ears than the band desired, but riotous and rollicking songs which have stood the test of time, and which reinforce how much creativity and energy can be crammed into just 3 minutes. Cartoon pop ? Well, the most anarchic Johnny and co can manage seems to be reading the NME, getting p*ssed, and not stopping at red lights. Still brilliant, of course, but perhaps not quite in the way they intended.
10/10

Low Points
Where to start ? “17” ? “Liar” ? “Problems” ? “Submission” ? “New York” ? “No Feelings” ? They’re all rubbish. But actually, “Bodies” is the worst of the lot. A complete waste of vinyl.
0/10

Packaging
The much imitated front cover is memorable. But it manages to be too contrived and, again, says to me that the band was more stylised than they dared to admit, or, alternatively, too much at the mercy of Richard Branson and Malcolm McLaren’s art school sensibilities. The lipstick pink on banana yellow is eye catching, but hardly the colour of downtrodden, idle youth. I’m quite partial to the track listing on the back sleeve, with its pastiche of hostage ransom notes cut from newspapers.
5/10

On balance
My position gets firmer each time I listen to “Never Mind The b****cks”. It is a poor album which is home to four fantastic songs. And thus, any of the Sex Pistols compilations is a better purchase, because they add “Silly Thing”. To be blunt, Public Image Ltd were a far more interesting band, whose body of work contains more of value. But very few songs, in the entire history of rock music, had then, and still have now, the impact of “Pretty Vacant” and “Anarchy In The UK”.
2/10

TOTAL SCORE
You’ll always find me out to lunch.
42/100.

For Haven:
4/10

[vastar iner]

The stereotype about punk was that it was all so one-dimensional. The fanzine Sideburns famously – or infamously, it gets attributed to the much more famous Sniffin’ Glue – had a list of three chords, then said “now form a band”. And lyrically an inchoate cry into the wind. Chelsea’s “Right To Work”? They revelled in the dole.

So what do we have with NMTB? The title itself is yob culture writ large. If it is a breakthrough, it is one only so far as album titles had been hitherto restrained, or positively mental (Tales From Topographic Oceans anyone?), rather than so in yer face. That might lead one to expect a similar level of insight on the LP itself.

So what do we have? Topics covered include:

-the Iron Curtain;
-abortion;
-republicanism;
-the depressed state of Britain in 1977;
-Richard Branson;
-anarchism;
-sado-masochism;
-Malcolm McLaren’s New York Dolls obsession;
-the music industry.

That’s about nine topics more than the entire oeuvre of the Minogue family has covered in early three decades of crap.

And then there’s the humour. Yes, seriously. “Submission” was written as tongue-in-cheek after McLaren gave them the title and told them to write about masochism. They refused. Until Rotten suggested sub rosa to do it as a submarine mission. “It’s an octopus rock.” “Holidays In The Sun” was inspired by Rotten standing on top of the Berlin wall inviting the Soviets to shoot. Bitterly sarcastic. Rotten does sarcasm well. “Pretty Vacant”. TOTP never noticed the obscenity. Steve Jones with a hanky hat on the GSTQ video.

It’s music hall. A twisted, tortured version of music hall, but music hall nevertheless. Ladies and gentlemen, I bring to you the freak show. The pantomime of vitriol.

And music. Yes, there’s music. Could they play? Vicious obviously could not. Matlock could. Cook was metronomic. And Jones. Vastly underrated. He basically took over guitar and bass for the album and laid overdub on overdub. Captain Sensible was not impressed. He thought they lost the rough and ready, dog-rough, live edge. With Rotten sounding like old man Steptoe. McLaren had that covered. The week before NMTB came out, he bootlegged the Pistols’ own raw sessions under the name Spunk. So compare and contrast.

Anyway, NMTB. Has there ever been a more starkly astonishing opening to any artist’s album career? Jackboots and that one jarring chord. Then other chords separated until the collapse into the opening riff. Wow. Wow wow and wow. The seventeenth word is “Belsen”. There’s no warm-up. Voom. Straight into it. And do we ease off for the second track? No. In honour of a deranged fan who claimed at various times to be pregnant by at least five Pistols, we have the sort of brutalist look at abortion that would make an American pro-lifer blush. At 120 miles per hour. For some reason I can never find it on karaoke.

One of the Pistols’ live tracks was a turned-around cover of “Whatcha Gonna Do About It”, turning it from a love song into a hate song. And song three is their own hate song. Everything about it is set up for a conventional normal pop song. And then negatived. “There ain’t no moonlight after midnight.” Almost the reverse again is “Liar”, where the relationship is inverted. It’s all breathless stuff.

Before we get to GSTQ. A number 2 hit without a chorus. How often had that happened before? And in Jubilee week to assault the establishment aurally was physically dangerous. It’s easy to overlook how daring, adventurous and innovative this all was though. “We’re the poison in the human machine, we’re the future, your future.” Rotten is imperious on this one – he is sneering. Clockwork Orange meets 1984. No future is a simultaneous threat and clarion call. The US version switches this with “Problems”; the US version works much better. Finish the side on a down.

I do wonder though whether they should have finished the entire album on “Anarchy” though. Second on side two is a bit of an unobtrusive insertion. Especially after “Seventeen”, a loud and proud assertion of identity against corporatism, a theme Rotten subverted via PiL and took to the max with Album and Single. A singalong chorus of “I’m a lazy sod”. It’s British to the core.

And as for “Anarchy”. The first sentence of the first single the Pistols released was “I am an anti-Christ.” As an introduction, that can never be bettered. And another singalong chorus, but extolling the virtues of anarchism. The whole ethos of pop subverted. Don’t think anyone did that as well until “Panic”.

The final four tracks are all different. “Submission” is almost reggae in its lilt; Rotten was becoming more influenced by Don Letts, and Matlock always had a deep reggae background that he tried to bring into his songs. “Pretty Vacant” is a pure pop song taken to 11. “New York” is an intricate dismantling of the proto-punk scene Stateside. You were all just playing a part. Fake. This is reality. And finally “EMI”. It’s almost a comedy number. How lucky was A&M? They treated the Pistols worse than EMI but almost escape unscathed.

The Pistols were conscious of trying to make an album of singles. And they did it. Every track could have been released into a hit – at times McLaren was pretty obviously trying to do that – and there were few other punk bands that could come up with one track as good as anything on NMTB. The problem was of course Matlock and Rotten’s creative tension spilled over into McLaren’s lap and the tunesmith was exiled. Rotten has challenged musical sensibilities ever since, but the others, lacking that push, have never recovered. And of course punk was seized into the mainstream and sanitized. Generation X? Oh dear.

But this still stands. This grotty, scruffy aural interrogation spans the ruins of British “society” in the late seventies. It is still megatons more powerful than anything coming out today. It is still one of the great triumphs of music. It is still one of the greatest works of art ever made.

Ten out of ten.

[o]

I'm with Shireblogger on this one, this quote sums it up for me.
"4 great singles surrounded by dross"

4/10.

Who's doing April?

[Shireblogger]

Mar 31, 2015 12:33:34 GMT 1 o said:

Who's doing April?

It's your turn again, I think. You picked Radiohead, I did Meat Loaf, raliverpool chose Fleetwood Mac, and the Pistols was Vas, so its back to you again, as everyone else has stopped doing reviews.

[o]

Hummm, will have to have a look and see what I have in order to listen to it myself.

[Earl Purple]

A bit like the TV show then that borrows from its title. Good moments but far too much filler.

[vastar iner]

Mar 31, 2015 12:42:46 GMT 1 Shireblogger said:

You picked Radiohead, I did Meat Loaf, raliverpool chose Fleetwood Mac, and the Pistols was Vas, so its back to you again, as everyone else has stopped doing reviews.

It was all going so well until Damien Rice. Christ, what a f***oad of sh*te that was.

[raliverpool]

You know the story: Formed by boutique proprietor and former manager of the New York Dolls Malcolm McLaren, the Sex Pistols originally consisted of Johnny Rotten (born John Lydon), Steve Jones, Paul Cook and Glen Matlock, the latter an employee at McLaren's store who co-wrote most of the band's songs and played bass before being booted for the more photogenic Sid Vicious (born John Simon Ritchie). Boasting a titanic sound matched only by a knack for causing scandal, the Pistols machine blindsided Britain and the rest of the world so strongly during an active period about as long as the average fiX-Factor winner that is still being felt today.

But is that a good or a bad thing?

In March 1977 the Sex Pistols entered Wessex Sound Studios to record with producer Chris Thomas and engineer Bill Price. New bassist Sid Vicious played on the track "Bodies", but his performing skills were not considered fit enough to record the full album, so the band asked manager Malcolm McLaren to convince previous bassist Glen Matlock to perform the instrument for the sessions. Matlock agreed on the condition that he was paid beforehand. When payment was not received, he declined to show up. As a result, Thomas asked guitarist Steve Jones to play bass so work could begin on the basic tracks. Jones' playing was so satisfactory that Thomas had him play the bass tracks for all the remaining songs recorded during the sessions.

In January 1978 three months after the release of this album, at the end of a turbulent tour of the United States, Rotten left the Sex Pistols and announced its break-up. Over the next several months, the three other band members recorded songs for McLaren's film version of the Sex Pistols' story, The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle whilst flogging the dead horse. Vicious died of a heroin overdose in February 1979. In January 1986, Lydon, Jones, Cook, Matlock and the estate of Sid Vicious were awarded control of the band's heritage and their manager Malcolm McLaren was ordered to pay them compensation of £1.75 million.

Hence we come to this album (#. "Track" length - Rating out of 10):

Side one

1."Holidays in the Sun" 3:22 6.5 - Starting with the sound of Nazi Storm trooper jackboots over a descending introductory chord pattern that is identical to the Jam's In The City which was already in the charts when this was recorded, and a tune nowhere near as good, and featuring some Rotten attention grabbing lyrics which taken out of a context are offensive, but when assembled all together are not. Hmmm. McLaren produced a promotional poster for this singles release (just prior to the album's release) of Jewish concentration campers superimposed on a beach. Vile.
2."Bodies" 3:03 4.0 - Rotten's attention seeking lyrics which are effectively anti-abortion, anti-woman, and anti-sex with a load of profanities thrown in.
3."No Feelings" 2:53 2.5 - A shame some good lyrics saying get a mind of your own and stick up for yourself or else expletives will take complete advantage of you is wasted on such a poor tune.
4."Liar" 2:41 3.5 - John's to the point lyrics about his manager, over another poor tune with minimal melody.
5."God Save the Queen" 3:20 10.0 - A brilliant tune, and Rotten at his very playful best. The people who got all upset at GSTQ inadvertently fed right into McLaren's Sex Pistols mythos. The song isn’t even about the Queen FFS. The pay off final lines “There is no future / And England’s dreaming” and “No future for you / No future for me” are the most significant lines of the track, and are more relevant now with us coming up for an election where either UKIP or SNP are going to have a detrimental impact on the UK.
6."Problems" 4:11 6.0 - Lyrically this sums up John's raison d'etre telling the listener don't look to me as a leader or guro, get up and Do It Yourself, don't be a sheep, etc.

Side two
1."Seventeen" – 2:02 2.0 - About being young and having nothing to do, other than listen to this tune free track that sounds like it is written by Lonnie Donegan's rebellious offspring.
2."Anarchy in the UK" – 3:32 10.0 - Where it all started. Musically the best track on the album, thanks to being the one track containing Glen Matlock's (rudimentary) McCartney influenced bass guitar playing. At the time of his removal McLaren claimed he had been fired due to being a fan of Wings, and latter that he did not get on with John Lydon. According to John Lydon that was not the case, and he was fired because he was the first to rightly question their manager's business sense (McLaren later lost a court case against the original four band members over finances), and he also insulted McLaren over his collection of child art in numerous stages of nudity. Hmmm.
3."Submission" – 4:12 7.5 - Malcolm thought it would be provocative to write a song called Submission, and it would be about S+M and bondage and be very contraversial. As John has realized by now that Malcolm was a tosser he decided to write about a submarine mission just to p*ss him off. Hilarious. Whilst this track at least sounds different from the one dimensional attack of the rest of the album.
4."Pretty Vacant" 3:18 10.0 - An anthem of teenage apathy. With the ironic Lydon wit to make Vacant sound like Va ****.
5."New York" 3:07 3.0 - The subject is the New York Dolls. It references specific songs of theirs including "Looking for a Kiss" and "Pills" and at the time was regarded as derogatory towards them. In his autobiography Lydon claims his lyrics were derogatory but the target was their manager Malcolm McLaren and not the band, as he would frequently use the NYDs to put down the Pistols when they were not obeying his instructions. The "do the sambo" lyric refers to when McLaren in attempt to gain the NYDs some publicity got them to blackface and camp up their image to disastrous results.
6."EMI" 3:10 4.5 - This song is taunting EMI records for signing the Pistols because of their celebrity alone, and then dropping them when they actually discovered what they were like

Overall 5 (69.5 / 12 = 59.79% (56%-63% category)).

In short this album is a classic example of hype and marketing over content, to which producer Chris Thomas played a blinder with three great songs, two decent tunes, and the rest filler at best. Something which has become increasingly prevalent in popular music ever since from Michael Jackson & Madonna to more relevantly the empty musical vessels that were Frankie Goes To Hollywood & Sigue Sigue Sputnik. Which David Geffen perfected the US rebellious emo teenage angst with his US contacts and 25 years of influence with his charges Guns N Roses and then Nirvana in the late 1980s & early 1990s. To me The Clash were miles better than the Pistols; the Buzzcocks & The Jam were better than the Pistols; and the Undertones debut is vastly superior to this album. But none of those acts had the backing of a marketing frenzy aided and abetted with tabloid fed stories. Little wonder, as McLaren was interested in publicity, notoriety, and getting sheep to purchase clothes produced by his life partner Vivienne Westwood from their "Sex" store. The same sheep whom in the 1978 NME music poll voted "wailing hippy banshee" Kate Bush as the worst act in the world (six years after David Bowie won the same accolade in a NME year end readers poll); and "Wuthering Heights" worst single. Little wonder McLaren and Lydon were polar opposites.

Maybe it as harsh to blame the Sex Pistols for creating the multimedia marketing link (tabloids - TV - music - merchandise) that exists today with Simon Cowell X-Factor, as it is for blaming John Lydon when he walked out of I'm A Celebrity in the last week when he was 1/3 odds on to win for being responsible for the subsequent careers of the top three in his absence/vaccum Kerry Katona, Peter Andre, & Katie Price. But when the BBC in 2000 produced the series "I Love YYYY" and it got to (I think) 1988 there was a whole section on Stock Aitken & Waterman. To which Pete Waterman said "In hindsight we were like a modern version of Punk Rock...." As we see today sadly the McLaren's of the world have won, and the Lydon's of the world have lost. Ever had the feeling you've been cheated.....

[vastar iner]

Mar 31, 2015 20:18:22 GMT 1 raliverpool said:

McLaren produced a promotional poster for this singles release (just prior to the album's release) of Jewish concentration campers superimposed on a beach. Vile.

McLaren was of course Jewish.  But that was a reference to the Nazis forcing Jewish concentration camp inmates sending postcards back to those unarrested Jews saying that they were at a holiday resort and wishing they were here...

[raliverpool]

Mar 31, 2015 20:58:46 GMT 1 vastar iner said:

Mar 31, 2015 20:18:22 GMT 1 raliverpool said:

McLaren produced a promotional poster for this singles release (just prior to the album's release) of Jewish concentration campers superimposed on a beach. Vile.

McLaren was of course Jewish.  But that was a reference to the Nazis forcing Jewish concentration camp inmates sending postcards back to those unarrested Jews saying that they were at a holiday resort and wishing they were here...

My bad.

I still think Malcolm McLaren was a low life con merchant for gullible poseurs, for turning popular culture into a cheap marketing gimmick, after cheap marketing gimmick.

It is somewhat fitting he got on so well with the equally pretentious bullshitter Paul Morley; and had his first album (Duck Rock) produced by ZTT's Trevor Horn. After all ZTT were never famous for ripping off their acts financially.

Then there is the issue of how he mugged Adam Ant of his first band to form Bow Wow Wow. And how he exploited the 15 year old lead singer (Annabel Lamb) naked on the cover of their See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang, Yeah. City All Over! Go Ape Crazy album.

Still someone even less original than him did an undisclosed confidential out of court settlement in 1991 for her worldwide 1990 #1 hit seemingly being rather to close for comfort to this July 1989 Malcolm McLaren single which topped the Billboard Dance charts replacing at the top of this chart a song that later lost 25% of its royalties for infringing on the 1972 US hit single "Respect Yourself" by the Staple Singers:

Just watch the video, listen to the bassline beat and chords sequence, and the female vocals ....



"So reductive". 

[vastar iner]

Annabella Lwin, not Annabel Lamb. Spellchecker going OTT?

McLaren's best sale was McLaren. The Pistols happened accidentally and he had to deal with things on the hoof, usually badly. It was his retconning that the whole thing was a scam. He was less a planned-out genius than an improviser with his finger more on the pulse than 99% of major label AOR departments.

"Deep In Vogue" was co-produced by Mark "S'Express" Moore and none other than William Orbit, so another link with the Great Plagiarizer there...