what's your favourite track on never mind the bollocks?

[editor]

It's a tough call but it's gotta be Anarchy In the UK because it was the one that kick started punk and changed everything for me!

Fucking great album though.

 

[editor]

Holidays without question, the time when the lyrics matched the music properly - there's a real sense of dread and import to it

"Cheap holiday in other people's misery!"

Fantastic stuff.

 

[kained&able]

I love pretty vacant. So many good tunes on he album though.

The lyrics to bodies seriously worry me.




dave

 

[futha]

shit i voted god save the queen but on second thoughts hollidays is the best.

 

[rekil]

Bodies - on the strength of the 'She was a bloody disgrace' line alone.

 

[sojourner]

Bodies

Still has the power to raise goosebumps



As an aside, I saw an 11 or 12 year old kid all dressed in leather jacket and tartan bondage gear tother day - had a red mohican too. Looked cool, but I was dying to say something old and miserly to him

 

[Louis MacNeice]

Submission - longer, slower, more ground out and has lasted better. My favourite track, album or otherwise, is 'I wanna be me', the b side to Anarchy in the UK...besides the whole sound, the urgency of the singing, and the lyrics falling over themselves, I particularly love the stop start.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

 

[Griff]

Submission and New York.

Can't believe you left off New York.

 

[dash_two]

Pretty Vacant and Bodies.

 

[stavros]

I'm abstaining from this because, although they were undoubtedly an almighty singles band, together they just work so well as an album. Non-stop pummelling for around 40 minutes.

 

[kained&able]

Umm so no one else thinks the lyrics are a bit dodgy on bodies???

She was a girl from Birmingham
She just had an abortion
She was case of insanity
Her name was Pauline, she lived in a tree

She was a no one who killed her baby
She sent her letters from the country
She was an animal
She was a bloody disgrace

Body! I'm not an animal
Body! I'm not an animal

Dragged on a table in factory
Illegitimate place to be
In a packet in a lavatory
Die little baby screaming
Body screaming fucking bloody mess
Not an animal
It's an abortion

Body! I'm not animal
Mummy! I'm not an abortion

[Spoken]
Throbbing squirm,
gurgling bloody mess
I'm not a discharge
I'm not a loss in protein
I'm not a throbbing squirm

Fuck this and fuck that
Fuck it all and fuck a fucking brat
She don't wanna baby that looks like that
I don't wanna baby that looks like that
Body, I'm not an animal
Body, an abortion

Body! I'm not an animal
Body! I'm not an animal
An animal
I'm not an animal.....
I'm not an abortion.....

Mummy! UGH!

Seems more then a bit militent anti abortionist type bollocks.


dave

 

[django]

Think it's Submission for me too.

 

[poului]

Umm so no one else thinks the lyrics are a bit dodgy on bodies???



Seems more then a bit militent anti abortionist type bollocks.


dave

Lydon's gone on record saying "if you think 'Bodies' is an anti-abortion song you're clearly a silly cunt."

 

[andy2002]

Has to be Anarchy but I love them all. I don't understand why many people don't rate Bollocks very highly. There isn't really a bad track on it and some of them are fantastic (Bodies, EMI, Liar, Submission, all the singles). Also, even after 30 years it still sounds bloody fresh.

 

[andy2002]

Lydon's gone on record saying "if you think 'Bodies' is an anti-abortion song you're clearly a silly cunt."

Or just someone who, not unreasonably, takes Lydon's lyrics at face value.

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

Wow I can't belive it's bodies even though that's my favorate.

I'm so MOR

 

[kained&able]

Lydon's gone on record saying "if you think 'Bodies' is an anti-abortion song you're clearly a silly cunt."

so what is he saying?

dave

 

[Paulie Tandoori]

so what is he saying?

dave

Got to love wiki
"Bodies" is a Sex Pistols song about abortion from the 1977 album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols. It has a large amount of profanity for the time, with one couplet largely composed of the word "fuck".

The song was written by the entire band. It is mostly about a fan named Pauline, who was (as the song states) from Birmingham. She had been in a mental institution, where she had apparently gotten pregnant from one of the male nurses. When she was released, she travelled to London, where she became a punk rock fan. She had several abortions. According to legend, she showed up once at John Lydon's door wearing nothing but a clear plastic bag and holding an aborted foetus in a plastic bag as well.

However, what is known from Lydon's autobiography, is that she would tell Lydon about becoming pregnant and then having abortions and describing them in detail to him. This affected Lydon enough to write the song. Most of the band also had experiences with Pauline, but have spoken less about it.

With its repeated mentions of "I'm not an animal," of "Mummy," and of a dying "baby," the song is widely interpreted as being anti-abortion. In 2006, National Review magazine put the song at #8 on its list of the "50 Greatest Conservative Rock songs", citing a pro-life message. Yet both Steve Jones and John Lydon have stated in interviews that the song reflects a pro-choice view in its lurid description of an illicit abortion. In 2000, John Lydon went on the record as pro-choice, supporting the choice of a 13 year old French girl to use the morning after pill without her parents' knowledge.

However, in an interview, Lydon is quoted as identifying himself as neither anti- nor pro-abortion. However, he believes the decision belongs to the pregnant woman. In the same interview, Lydon speaks of the song in relation to his mother's miscarriage and how one should not misconstrue that incident as being anti-abortion. This may indicate the song's lyrics describe that situation to some degree.

 

[andy2002]

so what is he saying?

dave

Perhaps he was just trying to be as shocking as possible in his handling of the subject matter?

 

[kained&able]

Got to love wiki
"Bodies" is a Sex Pistols song about abortion from the 1977 album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols. It has a large amount of profanity for the time, with one couplet largely composed of the word "fuck".

The song was written by the entire band. It is mostly about a fan named Pauline, who was (as the song states) from Birmingham. She had been in a mental institution, where she had apparently gotten pregnant from one of the male nurses. When she was released, she travelled to London, where she became a punk rock fan. She had several abortions. According to legend, she showed up once at John Lydon's door wearing nothing but a clear plastic bag and holding an aborted foetus in a plastic bag as well.

ahh okay that sound plausible. now i know.


dave

 

[lights.out.london]

Last couple of bands I've sung in, I've auditioned with Holidays.

 

[isvicthere?]

It's hard to choose. I bunked off school on the release day of the album (28th Oct 1977 - as if I had to look it up!) to go into Virgin Records in Southampton to buy it. Unlike a lot of posters on here who, I suspect, discovered it later, the singles (Anarchy, God save the queen, Pretty vacant, and the just-released Holidays in the sun) were already familiar. So the epoch-making rush of novelty was not as powerful with these tracks as the rest. Also, amid the blandness of the present day, I feel the need to pick a track which somehow is "representative" of the heady atmosphere of the times - this would prompt either "Anarchy" (which is a kind of mission statement) or "God save the queen" (which - hard to believe now - caused genuine apoplectic outrage within large sections of society) or "Pretty vacant" (a kind of era-defining phrase: "we're vacant, and we don't care").

It's probably much easier to judge the "musical merit" of the individual tracks if you don't have to extricate them from the mood of the times.

Fuck it! "God save the queen" coz of Steve Jones's intro, plus the lyrics: "we're the flowers in the dustbin/we're the poison in the human machine/we're the future/your future".

 

[isvicthere?]

By the way - the 18 year-old Julie Burchill utterly slated it in the NME (especially the current favourite "Bodies") to prove how 'iconoclastic' she was. But did she really mean it, maaaaaaan?!

 

[gentlegreen]

"Anarchy in the UK" - says it all really..... though "God Save The Queen" is so deeply rooted ....

I can't say they're way up there in terms of musicality, but then I exited that end of the punk scene quite quickly via the likes of Wire and Howard Devoto - or more accurately, Culture and King Tubby. Would have been nice to have seen them live though - unfortunately Bristol's Bamboo club burned down before the gig.

 

[isvicthere?]

And yes - the Sex Pistols did change my life.

 

[Sir Belchalot]

I was one of the few punks who was disappointed with Bollocks when it came out. Already had the Spunk bootleg for a few weeks & Bollocks just sounded over-produced and putting all their singles on it a bit of a rip-off.
Loved their singles, even though 'Holidays' was a blatant rip-off of 'In The City'

 

[Onket]

Submission.

 

[The_Reverend_M]

On a vaguely related note I just saw Sham 69 at a church fete down the road in Bow. They were pretty good

 

[SpookyFrank]

Shit band, shit record.

 

[purplex]

Liar