The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Sex Pistols · produced by Chris Thomas, with Bill Price · Virgin · twelve tracks, six to a side
Mode
Punk rock: short songs on few chords, contempt sung over heavily multitracked guitars at one pressure
Mythos
The national anthem inverted into its own curse, built; the antichrist, the fool against the throne and the wall at the edge of the world, evoked
Phase
Twelve tracks on two sides of six; four singles of a year set among eight new songs, an arc on each side, the band’s verdict on its old company at the close
Presentation
Album; the Virgin LP of October 1977 in its twelve-track UK sequence, the band’s one studio album
Register
A voice that sneers every line, vowels twisted and words thrown late; guitar, bass and drums only, with no keyboards, horns or strings and no slow song
Scale
The Crown, the record industry, a generation without work, the body and a wall in Berlin, each named and spat at in its own song
Governing Proposition
In the year of a royal jubilee, a band dropped by two record companies and banned from the radio sets its singles among new songs and sings, over a wall of guitars that leaves no space, that the national ceremony is a show laid over a generation offered nothing, and that the honest answer is refusal. The record knows what it refuses better than what the refusal reveals, and it holds its one law because it does one thing.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record opens with its newest single. Holidays in the Sun had been issued two weeks before the album, and it stands first because it was the latest thing the band had made. It sets the frame at once: a riff that drives, a voice that will not sing a line straight, and a refusal of the cheap escape, leisure seen as “other people’s misery”, the singer sent not to a beach but to the Berlin wall. It is the nearest the record comes to grandeur, a song that runs toward the edge of the world and finds a wall there. Everything after it is heard at the same pressure.
Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols was issued by Virgin in Britain in October 1977, twelve tracks on two sides of six, and it reached No. 1 on the British album chart. Chris Thomas produced it, with Bill Price. Johnny Rotten sings, Steve Jones plays the guitars and most of the bass, and Paul Cook plays the drums. Every track is guitar, bass, drums and voice; there are no keyboards, horns or strings, no ballad and no song in a slow tempo. Jamie Reid’s sleeve set the title in ransom-note lettering on yellow and pink. It is the band’s one studio album.
It is also a gathering. Four of the twelve tracks had been singles over the year before it: Anarchy in the U.K. in November 1976, on EMI; God Save the Queen in May 1977; Pretty Vacant in July; Holidays in the Sun in October. By the time the album appeared the band had been dropped by EMI and by A&M and banned from the BBC, and its consequence was largely made. The record sets those four among eight new songs. That is its first fact, and it governs what the sequence can do: the album records a force already spent in public more than it carries that force for the first time.
Movement II
God Save the Queen stands fifth, at the end of side one, and it is the record’s centre. It takes the name of the national hymn, the most ritual song a British crowd sings, and turns it into a curse: the monarchy a “fascist regime”, the young told “No future”, and the refusal repeated at the close until it becomes the chorus. Issued as a single in May 1977, in the year of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, it stood at No. 2 in the week of the celebrations. On the album it is the one song that could not go without the record losing its claim.
What the record discloses can be put in a sentence. In Britain in 1977 the national ceremony was a show laid over a young generation offered no work and nothing to inherit, and the honest answer was refusal. Pretty Vacant turns the insult of idleness into a boast; Seventeen gives the generation an age. The sound discloses as fully as the words. A wall of guitars and a voice that sneers every line make contempt audible as a social fact, and the record’s knowledge is in that pressure: put these words to an acoustic guitar and they would be complaint, not contempt.
Here too the record builds its one myth. The anthem’s form carries the anti-anthem, so that the song does not allude to the ritual but inverts it, and the inversion is the structure. Nothing else on the record is built that way. Around it the band’s figures are poses: the fool who speaks against the throne is the band’s legend more than a figure the songs construct. And half the record is spite with no object beyond the band’s enemies. The record knows what it refuses better than what the refusal reveals, and its disclosure, exact at the centre, is named more than articulated across the whole.
Movement III
Bodies stands second, and it is the one place the contempt turns on the body and on horror. It brings an abortion and a girl from Birmingham in trouble into rock with nothing softened, the voice spat over the band. It is not a song of pity and not a song of argument. It refuses the body’s sentimentality as the rest of the record refuses the Crown and the company, and its horror is a kind of height: the dreadful elevation the rubric counts, reached on a record that otherwise refuses transport by design.
The making is the record’s strength. Chris Thomas, who had worked with Roxy Music, built a sound from Jones’s guitars, multitracked heavily and layered into one mass with every part locked, and Cook’s drumming holds the mid tempo tight and plain without slack. Rotten’s voice is the best-made instrument: the rolled consonants, the pitch bent into scorn, the timing that throws a word late. It sounds unruly and is controlled across both sides, more exact than it first seems. Players of modest technique command the medium here through a producer, and that was itself part of what the record proved.
The costs are those of a narrow means. The palette is one, guitar, bass, drums and voice, at one pressure and nearly one tempo, and the songs are simple in harmony and form. No Feelings, Liar and New York are routine as composition, and the first two, with Problems, are three statements of one spite, any one of which could go with little loss. In places the polish works against the matter: a punk record made smooth. Eight of the twelve tracks are energy without elevation, loud and unvaried. Force is not height, and the rubric counts how often a work rises.
Movement IV
The band’s first single, its first statement, is placed second on side two. Anarchy in the U.K. opens with a declaration, “I am an antichrist”, and gains its height from that opening and from the long guitar break. On a record built as a sequence it would come first; here it is one of four singles distributed through twelve tracks. Each side does make an arc, the first running to God Save the Queen and the second from Seventeen to the revenge of E.M.I., but the album is assembled more than built, and the sequence is the place where that shows most.
The turn the record makes is twofold. In sound it is a return: short songs on few chords, the line of the Stooges, the New York Dolls, the early Who and Chuck Berry, made heavy and polished in the studio. The musical wager had been placed by the Ramones and the American scene before them, and the record’s sound was a proven one made louder. In voice, stance and word the turn is large. No rock singer had sung like this, a sneer held across a whole record, the words aimed at the Crown, the industry and the listener. The stake was real, and the band paid it.
That stance moved the field. British punk, the independent labels and their do-it-yourself releases, and post-punk all took this band as their starting point, and the British rock vocal changed after Rotten. Much of that reach belongs to the band, its concerts of 1976 and its singles, which had done their work before the album appeared; the album is the record of the force, not its first carrier. It stands level on the axis with one heir, Unknown Pleasures, at 9.0, and a tenth below another, London Calling, at 9.1. The antichrist of the opening line stays a boast, and the myth of punk’s year zero belongs to the history around the record, not to the record.
Movement V
The record closes on the name of the company that dropped it. E.M.I. is the band’s verdict on its own history, a song of revenge on the industry that signed it and let it go, and it earns its place as the last word: the record ends by refusing the trade that made it. Before it, New York is a jibe at another scene, and Submission is a slower song the record does not need. The close is placed with intent, and it shows how far the record’s targets are its own enemies.
One law governs the whole: refusal, sung as contempt over a wall of guitars. Bodies and Submission, the two most distant tracks, obey it, one refusing the body’s sentimentality and the other seriousness itself, and the industry and the Crown are refused in the same voice. The law holds without strain across all twelve tracks. But the range is narrow, one mood, one sound, one band of tempo, and narrowness is not coherence. What the record holds is wide in kind and joined by nothing but the voice: the state, a generation without work, commerce, the body, a wall in Berlin, each named and spat at in its own song.
Forty-nine years have kept it whole and present. It is in print and reissued; three of its songs are known far beyond its listeners; Greil Marcus’s Lipstick Traces and Jon Savage’s England’s Dreaming studied the band at length. But the attention has gone to the phenomenon more than to these recordings, and the surface is fixed by design to Jubilee year, a record company’s contracts and a scene of 1975. What holds the record in Tier III is depth and height: an archetype built only once, elevation on four tracks of twelve, a yield on return concentrated in three or four songs, orders listed rather than joined, and a sequence assembled from singles. Its consequence is wide; the record that carries it is narrower than its consequence.
Act III · The Twelve
Twelve tracks on two sides, and the subtractive test splits the record in two. Holidays in the Sun must open: its refusal of escape sets the frame. God Save the Queen is the centre and could not go. Anarchy in the U.K. and Pretty Vacant state the self and the generation the rest abuses; Bodies is required as the one place the contempt turns on the body, and E.M.I. earns its close. The test bites on the rest. No Feelings, Liar and Problems are three statements of one spite, any one of which could go; New York is a jibe at another scene; Submission is a slower song the record does not need. Half compelled, a third permitted: the figure sits on the line.
Score: 7.5 / 10
The disclosure can be stated, and the record states it in words: in Britain in 1977 the national ceremony was a show laid over a young generation offered no work and nothing to inherit, and the honest answer was refusal. God Save the Queen says it outright, the monarchy a “fascist regime” and the young told “No future”, in Jubilee year. Pretty Vacant turns the insult of idleness into a boast; Holidays in the Sun sees leisure as “other people’s misery”; Bodies brings an abortion into rock unsoftened. The sound discloses as fully. Held back because half the record is spite with no object beyond the band’s enemies, and because the condition is named more than articulated.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Elevation of one kind, the dreadful and the exhilarating, on four tracks. Holidays in the Sun drives toward the Berlin wall, the nearest the record comes to grandeur. God Save the Queen has a terrible exultation, the anthem’s name chanted back as a curse and the refusal repeated into a chorus. Anarchy in the U.K. takes its height from the opening declaration and the long guitar break. Bodies reaches horror. The rest holds one level of force, loud, mid-tempo and unvaried, and force is not height: eight of twelve tracks are energy without elevation, and there is no beauty on the record by design. A record that refuses transport is not charged much for lacking it, but the axis records what is there.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Myth is evoked often and built in one place. God Save the Queen builds an inversion: the national hymn, the most ritual song a British crowd sings, remade as its own curse, so that the anthem’s name carries the anti-anthem. That structure bears load and holds the figure up. Around it archetypes are summoned: the singer as “I am an antichrist”, the fool who speaks against the throne, the wall as the edge of the world. The particular stays particular: a girl from Birmingham, a record company, a holiday camp. What holds the axis well below the bar is that the figures are poses more than structures, and the myth of punk’s year zero belongs to the history around the record, not to the record.
Score: 7.5 / 10
The inheritance is British rock of the mid 1970s, the long progressive record and the stadium act, and the turn is twofold. In sound it is a return: short songs on few chords, the line of the Stooges, the New York Dolls, the early Who and Chuck Berry, made heavy and polished by a producer who had worked with Roxy Music. In voice, stance and word the turn is large: no rock singer had sung like Rotten, a sneer held across a whole record and aimed at the Crown, the industry and the listener. The stake was real and paid: dropped by EMI and A&M, banned from the BBC. Held at the bar, level with Horses and Fun House, because the musical wager had been placed by the Ramones and the American scene before them.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Change the form and the record loses much of what it knows, because the knowledge is in the sound. A claim of refusal is built of a voice that will not sing a line straight and a wall of guitars that leaves no space: set to an acoustic guitar or a long arrangement, these words would be complaint, not contempt. The narrow form, short and loud and at one pressure, is the instrument. The sequence is counted here, once, and it is the weakness. It holds four singles of a year among new songs: Anarchy in the U.K., the first statement, sits second on side two, and Holidays in the Sun opens because it was the latest single. Each side makes an arc and the close is placed, but the album is assembled more than built.
Score: 7.7 / 10
Evidence over forty-nine years, and most of it is attention to the phenomenon rather than the record. Greil Marcus’s Lipstick Traces (1989) and Jon Savage’s England’s Dreaming (1991) studied the band at length, and films and memoirs have retold its history; little of that is close attention to these twelve tracks as recordings. The record does yield on return in its making: Thomas’s layering of Jones’s guitars into one sound, and Rotten’s phrasing, more controlled than it first seems. God Save the Queen and Holidays in the Sun still reorganise as history moves. Most of the rest is exhausted early. Formal depth is moderate; semantic depth is concentrated in three or four songs.
Score: 7.6 / 10
The field is rock music of the 1970s, above all in Britain. The intrinsic force is in the stance, not the means, which are old: the record changed what a singer could sound like and what a rock record could say about the state, and showed that players of modest technique could command the medium through a producer. The discount is attribution. Much of the reach belongs to the band, its concerts of 1976 and its singles, which had done their work before the album appeared; the album is the record of that force, not its first carrier, and it stands level with Unknown Pleasures at 9.0 and a tenth below London Calling at 9.1. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: British punk, the independent labels and post-punk took this band as their starting point at once, and the British rock vocal changed after Rotten. That prompt reach sets it above Fun House and Horses, whose reach was delayed or left the musical language where it was.
Score: 9.0 / 10
Survival is weighed over forty-nine years, on form, then presence, then fabric. The form is whole: the recording survives as released, in print and reissued. Presence is wide and continuous: Anarchy in the U.K., God Save the Queen and Pretty Vacant are known far beyond the record’s listeners, though popularity is presence, not proof. The charge is the fabric. The record is a topical satire by design, fixed to Jubilee year, a record company’s contracts, the Berlin wall and the New York scene of 1975, and the axis penalises exactly that surface. Some of it has outlived its moment, and “No future” survives as a phrase; some has not, in E.M.I. and New York. It stands level with Marquee Moon here.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Command of the recorded medium is strong and in two respects load-bearing. Chris Thomas built a sound from Steve Jones’s multitracked guitars, one heavy mass with every part locked, over Paul Cook’s tight, plain drumming. Johnny Rotten’s voice is the record’s best-made instrument: the rolled consonants, the pitch bent into scorn, the timing that throws a word late, all controlled across both sides. The costs fall across a large share. The palette is one, guitar, bass, drums and voice, at one pressure and nearly one tempo. The songs are simple in harmony and form, and No Feelings, Liar and New York are routine as composition. In places the polish works against the matter. Strong command of a narrow means.
Score: 8.0 / 10
One law governs the record: refusal, sung as contempt over a wall of guitars. Take the two most distant elements, Bodies, the record’s horror, and Submission, its slow and druggy song. Both obey: one refuses the body’s sentimentality, the other refuses seriousness itself. E.M.I. and God Save the Queen refuse the industry and the Crown in the same voice. The law holds without strain across all twelve tracks. What holds the figure is the rubric’s own rule, that narrowness is not coherence. One mood, one sound and one band of tempo leave the law little distance to cover, and a record that obeys one law because it does one thing earns the coherence of a small span.
Score: 7.7 / 10
Judged on what the record holds, with no discount for the album form. The state is held, as the Crown in God Save the Queen and the political words of Anarchy in the U.K.; labour and its absence, a generation idle and told it has no future, in Pretty Vacant and Seventeen; commerce, as the record industry in E.M.I. and the holiday trade. History and the Cold War are glimpsed at the Berlin wall; the body is held, harshly, in Bodies; consciousness as one voice of scorn. The family, the sacred except as blasphemy, and the natural order are absent. What holds it lowest is integration: each order is named and spat at in its own song, and only the voice joins them.
Score: 7.0 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
7.9 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier III · Major
Strongest Dimensions
Pressure on Tradition at 9.0, then The Swerve and The Imperishable at 8.5. A stance that changed what a rock singer could sound like and what a rock record could say about the state, taken up by British punk, the independent labels and post-punk; a turn in voice and word, paid for by two lost contracts and a broadcasting ban, on a musical path already proven; and a recording whole and present after forty-nine years, three of its songs known far beyond its listeners.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.0: the state, commerce, a generation without work, the body and a wall in Berlin, each named and spat at in its own song and joined only by the voice, with the family, the sacred and the natural order absent. Then The Inevitable and The Archetypal Deep at 7.5: three interchangeable statements of one spite and two more songs the record does not need, and a single built myth, the inverted anthem, among poses. Then The Sublime and The Bottomless Well at 7.6.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.5 against a threshold of 7.5, on the line and with no room. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 7.7, The Made at 8.0, The Inner Law at 7.7, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: Pressure on Tradition at 9.0 clears the bar of 8.5, The Swerve and The Imperishable meet it exactly at 8.5, but The Unconcealment at 8.0 and The Archetypal Deep at 7.5 fall short. The Universal Minimum is met: no axis but The Encompassed falls below 7.5, and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.0. Four of the five summit conditions are met. The work stands where its aggregate places it: 7.9, in the band of Tier III, short of the 8.0 at which Tier IV begins and of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · the album as first released by Virgin in Britain in October 1977, the twelve-track UK LP in its original order, six tracks on each side, produced by Chris Thomas with Bill Price: Holidays in the Sun, Bodies, No Feelings, Liar, God Save the Queen, Problems; Seventeen, Anarchy in the U.K., Submission, Pretty Vacant, New York, E.M.I. The American edition on Warner Bros., which runs in a different order, and later reissues and bonus discs are evidence for survival, not the object. Judged from knowledge of the recording, its documented making and its reception; no recording, sleeve or lyric sheet was in hand, and the album tracks are known less closely than the four singles. Songs are cited by title, and no lyric is quoted beyond a fragment of four words. Facts that could not be verified, among them the catalogue number and the exact day of release, the wording of the production credit, the studios and dates of recording, the track lengths and running time, the contents of the earliest pressings, which players appear on particular tracks, any prosecution over the title, any violence against the band in the street and the later reissues of God Save the Queen, are not given.