Cover design by Jamie Reid for the Sex Pistols' compilation album
Flogging a Dead Horse (Virgin Records, 1980), featuring the gold
disc awarded to the band for sales of 500,000 copies of
Never Mind the Bollocks ... (Virgin Records, 1977)
I.
Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols is the only studio album by English punk rock band the Sex Pistols.
Released on 28 October 1977, by Virgin Records, it entered the UK Album Charts at number one, having achieved advance orders of 125,000 copies. Within weeks, it went gold and it remained a best-seller for most of the following year, spending 48 weeks in the top 75.
In the many years since its original release, NMTB has been reissued on several occasions; most recently in 2017, proving that you can continue to flog a dead horse even when just the bare bones remain.
NMTB has inspired many bands and musicians and is frequently listed by critics not merely as the most seminal punk album, but one of the greatest albums across all genres of popular music. In 2015, the album was officially inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, the music industry thereby acknowledging its lasting qualitative and/or historical significance.
II.
The idea that NMTB is the Sex Pistols' greatest achievement cannot be allowed to pass without close critical examination. Don't get me wrong - there are lots of things I love about it; the title, for example, and Jamie Reid's artwork for the sleeve. It even contains half-a-dozen or so songs that I still listen to today.
However, rather than being viewed as an ideal reference point to which all later manifestations of what we term punk rock must nod, NMTB might be seen as just some product released, distributed, and promoted by Virgin Records. The belief that it somehow eludes and resists power and possesses radical or revolutionary properties, is simply a romantic fantasy.
Of course, this isn't to deny that the myth of the Sex Pistols as anti-establishment hasn't proved to be commercially useful - or that it will cease to function in the immediate future. God's shadow is still to be seen long after his death and for a great number of fans the band continues to provide them with their most precious form of identity. Indeed, to such people NMTB is a kind of sacred artefact.
But it gets tedious, does it not?
One grows tired of having to treat NMTB with reverence and bored of the austere monarchy of the Sex Pistols ruling over our thoughts and actions. Ultimately, one gratefully accepts the escape root from punk fandom and the worship of Saint Johnny offered by The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle ...
As Michel Foucault might say, in a postpunk future, many years from now, people will be unable to fathom our fascination with NMTB. And they will smile when they recall that there were once critics, like Robert Christgau, who believed that in the lyrics of the Sex Pistols resided forbidden ideas containing an undeniable truth value ...
