Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Moderators, Rollbackers
23,028
edits
Sex Pistols: Difference between revisions
→top: Fixing|links to disambiguation pages
(tropelist) |
Derivative (talk | contribs) (→top: Fixing|links to disambiguation pages) |
||
| (4 intermediate revisions by 4 users not shown) | |||
Line 1:
{{
[[File:FilthandtheFury.png|frame|All because he said '[[Cluster F-Bomb|Fuck]]'.]]
{{quote|''Next to the Sex Pistols, rock and roll and that hall of fame is a piss stain. Your museum. Urine in wine. We're not coming. We're not your monkeys. If you voted for us, hope you noted your reasons. You're anonymous as judges but you're still music industry people. We're not coming. You're not paying attention. Outside the shit-stream is a real Sex Pistol.''
|'''Steve Jones''', rejecting the band's admission to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame}}
Late [[The Seventies|1970s]] punk rock band, not the original but definitely the most famous. The [[Sex Pistols]] were composed of vocalist Johnny Rotten (aka John Lydon), guitarist Steve Jones, drummer Paul Cook, and bassists Glen Matlock and Sid Vicious (aka John Simon Ritchie), who replaced Matlock. They are credited with starting the punk movement in Britain. Though the band didn't last very long (1975-78), and released only a single album, ''Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols'', they are one of the most influential bands in the history of pop music. Strangely enough, their biggest fans today range from hardcore punks to geeks.
▲{{quote|''Next to the Sex Pistols, rock and roll and that hall of fame is a piss stain. Your museum. Urine in wine. We're not coming. We're not your monkeys. If you voted for us, hope you noted your reasons. You're anonymous as judges but you're still music industry people. We're not coming. You're not paying attention. Outside the shit-stream is a real Sex Pistol.''|'''Steve Jones''', rejecting the band's admission to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame}}
▲Late [[The Seventies|1970s]] punk rock band, not the original but definitely the most famous. The Sex Pistols were composed of vocalist Johnny Rotten (aka John Lydon), guitarist Steve Jones, drummer Paul Cook, and bassists Glen Matlock and Sid Vicious (aka John Simon Ritchie), who replaced Matlock. They are credited with starting the punk movement in Britain. Though the band didn't last very long (1975-78), and released only a single album, ''Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols'', they are one of the most influential bands in the history of pop music. Strangely enough, their biggest fans today range from hardcore punks to geeks.
Famously, the band performed to a crowd of approximately 42 people at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in Manchester England in June of 1976. As recounted in the film ''[[24 Hour Party People]]'', each person in the crowd either later formed a band (future members of [[The Smiths]], [[Joy Division]] (and by extension [[New Order]]), The Fall, The Buzzcocks and Simply Red) or had a pivotal role in shaping that city's music scene (Factory Records founder Tony Wilson and NME journalist Paul Morley). This show alone was proof to the band's reaching influence on punk, post-punk, new wave and eventually alternative and indie rock music.
Line 13:
Many future punk rockers got their start as Sex Pistols fans, such as Siouxsie Sioux and Billy Idol. Most of these musicians were part of the media-named, (in)famous "Bromley Contingent," a group of artistically minded youths who hung out in gay clubs and shared a love of [[Roxy Music]] and [[Velvet Underground]], and were, in fact, largely '''not''' from Bromley. Malcolm McLaren clothed them in Vivienne Westwood bondage apparel and helped them get from one Pistols show to the next - even France! - to cause controversy. Sid Vicious was initialy part of this group; he would be the Banshees' drummer for their first-ever show, as well as try to form his own band, The Flowers of Romance, before becoming a Pistol.
No discussion of the Sex Pistols would be complete without a mention of Malcolm McLaren, their manager, and [[Yoko Oh No|Nancy Spungen, Vicious' girlfriend]]. McLaren had a habit of taking the Pistols' ideas for his own, and spreading the [[The Svengali|myth that the whole group was his Structuralist art project]]. Spungen was stabbed to death in 1978. Vicious was imprisoned for Spungen's death and died of a drug overdose in 1979 after his release on bail.
In January 1978, Rotten left the band sometime after [[Beyond the Valley of
After Lydon left, The Pistols attempted to continue on. One single was released in June 1978, with infamous train robber Ronnie Biggs taking over for Lydon on vocals (as a publicity stunt). After that single and the soundtrack to the then unreleased film ''The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle'' (eventually released in 1980), the band was essentially over by the time of Nancy Spungen's death in October 1978.
After the Pistols split, Cook became a session musician and Jones made a few solo albums before becoming a radio personality. The band's original Lydon/Jones/Matlock/Cook lineup reunited for a tour in 1995. They reunited once more for a series of dates in 2002 and 2003. In 2007, they reunited once more for a few more shows. They were put on hiatus in 2009 so Lydon could restart PiL, and the Pistols have abandoned the latest of several attempts to record their second album. Malcolm McLaren died in early 2010, and by that time Lydon and McLaren had at least patched up enough things for Lydon to recall him fondly in interviews leading up to McLaren's funeral.
Notable songs include:
* "God Save the Queen"
* "Anarchy in the U.K."
Line 28:
----
{{creatortropes}}
* [[Accentuate the Negative]]
* [[The Band Minus the Face]]: After Johnny Rotten left the band the rest released a few more songs.
Line 45:
* [[Exact Words]]: When it was ruled they could not perform their song "God Save the Queen" on UK ''soil'' they got a boat and performed on the river Thames.
* [[Jerkass]]: Just watch any interview with Johnny Rotten/Lydon.
* [[Name's the Same]]: "Sid Vicious" (real name Sid Eudy) was later a world heavyweight champion in [[World Wrestling Entertainment|WWE]] and [[WCW]]. Technically the guy went by "Sycho Sid" in WWE, but the last name got used on occasion there anyhow.
* [[Non-Appearing Title]]: Nowhere on the album is "Never Mind The Bollocks" uttered. Not even once.
* [[Obligatory Bondage Song]]: "Submission" was originally going to be one of these, but the band got mad at McLaren and made it about a submarine mission instead.
Line 55:
* [[Real Life Writes the Plot]]:
** "God Save the Queen" was written when Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her 25th jubilee anniversary.
** Rotten was once visited by a girl who had just undergone an abortion, thus inspiring the song "Bodies".
* [[Sarcastic Title]]: "God Save the Queen"
* [[Self-Titled Album]]: ''Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols'' is a partial example of this.
* [[Short
* [[Signature Song]]: "Anarchy in the U.K." and "God Save the Queen"
* [[Smarmy Host]]: Bill Grundy, pictured in the newspaper headline at the top of this page. The reason guitarist Steve Jones [[Cluster F-Bomb|dropped the f-bomb]] is because Grundy [[Dirty Old Man|made an explicit pass]] at Siouxie Sioux.
* [[Stage Names]]: Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten.
* [[The Svengali]]: McLaren claimed to be this to the band, although how much influence he actually had is up for debate.
** Glen Matlock admitted that he left the band because of arguments with Johnny, and the band has since agreed that McLaren played a part in exacerbating it.
** His behaviour is the reason why ''Never Mind the Bollocks'' carried an unusual production credit. To let Bill Price explain:
{{quote|The simple facts of the matter were that Chris was hired by Malcolm to do a series of singles for the Sex Pistols. I was hired by Malcolm to do a series of album tracks with the Sex Pistols. Life got slightly complicated, because I did a few album tracks that Chris remade as singles. Also, Chris started a couple of tracks, which got abandoned as singles, which I remade to be used as album tracks. On quite a large number of songs, when we'd finished the album, we had two versions of the song. I couldn't quite understand why Malcolm kept chopping and changing between different versions of different songs. It slowly dawned on Chris and myself that Malcolm was trying to slip between two stools and not pay Chris or me. So we said, "I'll tell you what, Malcolm. Whatever's on the Sex Pistols' album, it was either done by me or Chris, and you can pay us and we'll divvy it out amongst our little selves." Which is what we did. But it did force that very strange credit, simply because the sleeve was printed long before it was finally decided which version of each individual song was on the record. If we'd known, it would have said 'produced by Bill Price' or 'produced by Chris Thomas'. That's how you ended up with that credit, 'produced by Bill Price or Chris Thomas'.}}
** Subsequent issues of the album on CD have amended this to a slightly more reasonable "Produced by Chris Thomas, engineered by Bill Price".
* [[Take That]]:
** The entire group was a anarchic reaction against everything rock 'n' roll stood for.
** Their entire public image and songs were designed to shock the establishment.
Line 84:
[[Category:Sex Pistols]]
[[Category:Music]]
[[Category:Names to Know in Music]]
| |||