Sex Pistols
Nevermind The Bollocks

THE REVIEW

Well yes, I feel like stirring up some trouble. Because I've heard a ton of behind-the-scenes gossip from sticker collectors about the Pistols, and since I have the truth in my pocket and it’s inconvenient for me, I’ll share some. Let's start with an essential premise: those who hate Nevermind and the Pistols, citing reasons that have nothing to do with music, have just fallen into the Pistols' dirty game, the same as the little swastika t-shirt, just a bit more subtle. The Pistols originate, for better or worse, from McLaren, fresh from a colossal flop with the New York Dolls. He owns the shop, the style, the ideas, the foundation, his contacts for the first lineup, the one before Vicious. This guy had studied the New York Dolls well, had the idea, had checked out Richard Hell's clothes, the voice (listen to Rotten and compare with Hell, please), he needed a means to launch the "style". So he takes four thugs, gives them some instruments, a name, some clothes. From there begins a series of embarrassing nonsense; if it were history, the Nazis would be a group of well-meaning people (quote).

In short. The record labels initially don't even know who the Pistols are; they start having a following (composed also of the likes of Ian Curtis or my beloved and "sexual perversion till 1984" Siouxsie) for the concerts, which are a concentrate of violence and madness never seen from those parts. These four start to adopt quite worrying attitudes, in the sense that the singer, Rotten, regularly goes off on rants between the absurd and the insulting, Vicious, the young friend of Rotten who joined the band as a fan, starts to increasingly mix the character with his life. Things that aren't good, to be clear. This thing is just to imagine, the Pistols are images to be kept in mind, they are stuff that goes beyond music - these four ragged guys, almost always drunk, who pose as nihilists in a continuous nonsense, iconoclasts with the sole purpose of offending, because in the end the result of all this philosophy is that they're a real pain in the ass. Yes, the first in a series of irrefutable points is this; they are objectively ungovernable.

But let's go slowly. In '76, the first single is released, the one that explodes the phenomenon, "Anarchy in the UK". It's very raw stuff, they really don't know how to handle the instruments, but there’s something inside, it's not just "garage for dummies", it's an instinctive thing that gets inside the heads of the youngsters, a desperate rebellious movement that obviously will lead to nothing, stuff like "up until now you've preached free love and now I have AIDS, allow me to disagree". Rotten, as already specified, is a pain, so with the shout of "we do it just for the money" at the beginning of '77, we have Matlock out for a Vicious who comes in, as well as the first record deal goes down the toilet (great policy, if you want to make money, ruin record contracts). It's then time for a new single, "God Save the Queen", and a new record deal. The Pistols start to get boycotted by the media, and it's not that they speak badly about them; they simply don’t speak about them at all (another great strategy for selling). And off goes another ruined contract; Virgin comes along. Meanwhile, the band can no longer do concerts. Got it? The white collars freaked out, and they tried to take them down. How are we doing with points?

And it arrives. Nevermind sweeps everything away; it’s a manifesto and a birth, without having to trouble pseudo-surf bands, or all the other people who didn’t have a tenth of the charisma and stage presence of the last of the Pistols; this is where it all really begins. It's not even properly punk; it's, as I already said, faster and less refined Garage. Thanks to Nevermind, thousands of bands are born; thanks to Nevermind, the "style" starts, the clothes, the fashion, the safety pins in the butt, especially the non-response to society. The tracks are bar politics, superficial and aware of being so, cheap and minimalist philosophy without rhyme or reason, nihilism and iconoclasm. The record is the people of the time, unprotected and insecure but eager to win anyway: the answer is "do whatever you want, you can't do anything to me".

Then it's the descent. The American tour starts, which is not clear if it’s going well or not, Rotten and McLaren are at each other's throats, Vicious meets the two women of his life and goodbye, by the end of the year, the Pistols have split up. Here, just to give a point of support to those who "have heard," the first documentary by Julien Temple comes out, "The Great Rock'n'roll Swindle," with a gloating McLaren claiming to have piloted the Pistols pretty much in everything. Clearly, this is nonsense. Let's start from the premise that a person who cannot succeed with a band like the New York Dolls is unlikely to be someone who can make an O with a glass; to claim that a band that became a cultural phenomenon and Rock Music History did so thanks to the manager is idiotic (with offense, clearly). He had the ideas, he contributed, but the chaos was made by the Pistols. Rotten used to be bossed around but then goes crazy and starts fighting with those who bossed him? Come on... And without his mentor, he puts together an absolutely splendid and seminal band like PIL? Get out of here; you have current running between your ears. And then they were inflated, they were constructed, they couldn’t play.

Meanwhile, you polish your wherever-for-the-umpteenth-time Pearl Jam cover, repeat these words: "I have Siouxsie and Curtis as fans, at my concert tonight there were the Buzzcocks and the Damned, my opening band are the Clash", now gather your self-esteem and go to the bathroom, you know what you have to do. Then there's always this thing about not being able to play that always comes in handy for the Pistols, with the Beatles no one ever brings it up, it’s quite strange this thing. Few also know that Temple made a second documentary, where the Pistols are given a voice, and in which McLaren's figure is heavily downsized, but this is for refined palates. Then, in the end, they're just the grandiose delusions of a de-punk; like it or not, it’s all the same to the Pistols, I swear.