Sex Pistols: Never Mind the Bollocks Here's the Sex Pistols (clear vinyl, indie exclusive) [RHINO]

Why you'll love it

This limited indie exclusive comes on ultra-clear vinyl with a blue and white printed inner sleeve. Rolling Stone ranked the album No. 41 on its 500 greatest albums in 2003 and 2012, and Time named it one of the 100 greatest albums ever.

This edition

• Clear vinyl
• Indie exclusive
• Limited edition
• Printed inner sleeve

About the album

When Never Mind the Bollocks arrived in October 1977, some charts printed a blank space rather than the title. It went to No. 1 in the UK anyway, with 125,000 advance orders, and stayed in the top 75 for 48 weeks.

Johnny Rotten, Steve Jones and Paul Cook wrote the songs between 1975 and 1976, with original bassist Glen Matlock co-writing most of them and Sid Vicious coming in for two. Matlock's bass drives "Anarchy in the U.K.," while Jones layered guitars (and much of the bass) into a roaring wall of sound under producers Chris Thomas and Bill Price. "Pretty Vacant" was the first song they ever wrote, "Holidays in the Sun" opens this sequence at a stomp, and "God Save the Queen," "Seventeen" and "No Feelings" sneer right on schedule. Thomas and Price traded sessions so often that every song carries both of their names.

Rotten's half-sung, half-spat delivery changed how a generation of bands approached a microphone. In 1987 Rolling Stone ranked it the second-best album of the previous 20 years, just behind Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which must have made for an interesting dinner party.

Also at Kops: more Sex Pistols on vinyl · browse Punk

Tracklist

Listen

On Virgin / Warner Records / Rhino (cat# R1 3147), a reissue of the 1977 album.