The Sex Pistols song John Lydon found challenging to sing: “I’m insulting myself”
It’s easy to forget how powerful 1977’s Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols really is after nearly 50 years. While victim to commercial subsumption as has befallen Ramones or New York Dolls, and their former frontman indulging in a baffling parody of oafish reactionism of late, the more one becomes immersed in the vast ocean punk has to offer, the less the Sex Pistols‘ iconic debut beckons for a spin.
Like with any record that scores such a ubiquitous feature of the British cultural landscape, when proactively committing its spin in an act of reduced listening, free of all Disney+ deals and plastic Union Jackery, Sex Pistols’ debut and sole LP is an electric listen that still packs insurrectionary volatility.
‘God Save the Queen’ charges with treasonous seethe, ‘Holidays in the Sun’s martial jackboots chillingly echo the divisions exploited by the day’s National Front, and the “no future” bellow that closes ‘Anarchy In The UK’ stings with ever-prescient bite in a political contemporary of managed decline.
Sedition had never been so popular. Sex Pistols’ sole LP shot to the top of the UK Albums charts off the media circus that surrounded their previous singles, and the concerted efforts to cancel 1976’s Anarchy in the UK tour only generated further forbidden allure.
While upending the establishment – rumours even including MPs debating grounds for prosecution under the Treason Act – Sex Pistols became a juicy venture, bringing in Virgin Records’ Richard Branson to help push the band commercially and eventually counting 125,000 advance copies for the upcoming album.
Never Mind the Bollocks… is a fantastic record filled with equally essential album tracks. Their fastest cut on the LP, ‘No Feelings’, was a spat out study of narcissism speedily built around a furious riff guitarist Steve Jones was jamming with. Adopting the lyrical lens of a vapid avatar of conceit, frontman Johnny Rotten forged a curious opportunity to step into the shoes of a subject alien to his professed values.
“The song is from the idea of someone being completely selfish, which I’m not,” he revealed in 2014’s The Art of Noise: Conversations with Great Songwriters. “I like to imagine being in that frame of mind. I’m insulting myself really. That happens a lot”.
With a reputation for dense verbiage in his lyrical excoriations, Lydon found he’d created a challenge for himself when attempting Never Mind the Bollocks…‘s torrid third track. “Some of the songs I’ve written have so many words it’s almost unbearable, Lydon confessed. “‘No Feelings,’ for instance: I think it’s 16 to 18 lines where I don’t take a breath. Now, live, that’s tempting fate. But I managed to do it. I found the knack”.
For years, testing himself was a key feature of Lydon’s creative fire, burning away for the little time the Pistols had left, and into Public Image Ltd’s alien terrain while his former band had veered off into musical pantomime. Such seeds of future barrier testing can be witnessed in ‘No Feeling’s explosive broil. “I love pushing those boundaries, Lydon declared. “You can’t cut up a verse like that because it would become out of context. It’s the monologue that’s necessary to paint the proper picture of someone in a state of babbling confusion”.
