Customer Reviews
Never mind the others, here's the one you need - By: ascensus, 28 Aug 2008 
A cursory listener to "Never Mind The Bollocks" might, just possibly might, wonder why this LP is one of the few records that truly merits the term "essential". After all, isn't Steve Jones' guitar work merely speeded-up heavy metal laced with licks lifted from Chris Spedding? Isn't Paul Cook's drumming efficient, powerful even, but essentially monotonous? Isn't Glen Matlock's bass playing submergedin the mix to the point it hardly registers? As for Johnny Rotten's vocals; well, is that really singing?
But it's unlikely that even a cursory listener could miss the rage, frustration & venomin Rotten's delivery. If that listener also tookin his words, which skewer the disintegrating society that was late 1970s Britain, & if that listener considered the wider contextin which The Sex Pistols operated, then "Never Mind The Bollocks" would emerge as being amongst the most important recordsin the history of rock music. In fact, it is arguably the most important of all for reasons that go well beyond music.
This review is not the place to catalogue the chaos The Sex Pistols' manager, Malcolm McLaren, wroughtin the British music business, though his situationist ideas & the Pistols' public viciousness turned the tables on EMI & A&M, making for the first timein years a group & their manager the master of their record label & not the other way around. After the Pistols the business would never be the same again. Their scarification prepared the ground for seminal labels like Rough Trade, Stiff & Factory & the entire "indie" movement that followed, bothin Britain & America.
Neither is this review the place to describe the turmoil & foment the Pistols inducedin late 1970s Britain. The media, local councils & the staid British establishment had no idea how to handle a phenomenon that was by turns disgustingly rude & dangerously critical of their institutions. From the perspective of thirty years later it is clear that even if the Pistols were degenerate themselves (McLaren's introduction of Sid Vicious, who was a drug-addicted fool & later a probable murderer, starkly illustrated it) the society around them was worse. In a sense the Pistols helped consign the long 1960s of Britain to the dustbin, clearing the way for something different (that this turned out to be Margaret Thatcher was hardly their fault).
This review is the place to point out that Rotten's angry, screaming, scathing dissection of a moribund British society lifts the music on "Never Mind The Bollocks" out of the league of the likes of The Jam, The Stranglers, The Damned, The Ramones - even The Clash - & takes it somewhere else entirely. There had been protest records before but nothing as furious, nothing so nihilistic and, most importantly, nothing even as remotely dangerous as this record felt.
Nothing has come close since. Boy, you had better look at Johnny.
Should be 10 stars - By: Mr. D-G, 24 May 2008 Forget all the hype & rubbish that surrounded the Sex Pistols & remember that this album changed music. The reason is that it simply is a truly great album.
I have owned it for nearly 30 years & it is still an album that is exciting to play.
Inspired - buy it !
Shockingly Brilliant - By: Robin H, 23 Apr 2008 This really was punk - instead of signing to an indie label like "true punks" lets go with a major & take them for all their worth TWICE OVER -nice one SP!
Socially & musically this album cannot be underestimated. It is without doubt one of the most important & influential albums ever recorded.
Every track is a punk gem, as fresh now as it was then, a powerhouse of multi-layered guitars & scowling vocals with astute & witty lyrics,
Anachy & Pretty Vacantin particular, contain two of the greatest intros of all time.
For all these modern bands who pretend to be punk, Oasis, Artic Mondays & a multitude of American bands spring to mind, this is the real deal.
Most importantly of all, it is the album that finally killed off disco & progressive rock & for that we should all be eternally grateful
A Holiday in Other People's Misery! - By: Blah Blah, 24 Jan 2008 
Ah, punk rock. One of the only pure forms of music to come alongin the past forty years, & one of the most misunderstood. Today's Generation Y (I'm one of 'em) look-up to bands like Greenday as being punk, & that's why today's Generation Y will be the laughing stock of all generations to come. Green Day are part of the bollocks.
Never mind the bollocks.
I bought this record on a whim, on a hint. Someone, somewhere had told me the Sex Pistols were good, I wasin need of pure British rock & I picked this one because the title made me laugh. And thank God, thank God I did.
I won't get into the track-listing & explain each one. I won't explain how "God Save the Queen" has more punk, snarl, angerin it than most punk bands' discography today (punk being the corporate idea of what punk is, anyways). I'll stick to the opening "Holidaysin the Sun." No, you know what? The opening LYRIC: "I want a cheap holidayin other people's misery!"
A snarl, a shiver, a rotten, purely rotten voice. Punk. Pure punk.
Just think about that opening lyric. Yeah.
The entire record - sadly the ONLY Sex Pistols record - is filled with songs that range from topics like abortion to the famous anarchy, & is downright pumped with guitar hooks. Very catchy, very luring, & very good.
The only reason that I won't give this five stars, instead of four, is that ... well, watch the young Johnny & the new Johnny. If you compare them - kinda feels like the new Johnny is just trying so hard to be punk, but he hasn't got any outrageousness leftin him. Kinda kills the glamour. Oh well. Otherwise, high praise.
Crap will out - By: Ace Music Lover, 18 Oct 2007 
Just goes to prove that with the right amount of hype the least talented pathetic tw*ts get the most kudos. And every 5 years or so dear little Johnny is wheeled out as an 'Outragous Rebel', when really he has long ago become part of the establishment.
Rate this album?
At least minus 10 stars
