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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 ''[[Twenty Four Hour Party People (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.
 
One can argue that the Sex Pistols' appeal mostly came from their image and attitude, [[Three Chords and Thethe Truth|not the actual quality of the music]]. Supposedly, Sid Vicious [[Dreadful Musician|didn't even know how to play his instrument]] (the bass). The turning point from band to spectacle is usually considered to be the firing of Glen Matlock (their [[The Beatles (Musicband)|Beatles]]-liking, actually capable bassist who co-wrote most of their early songs) and the hiring of Vicious. Notably, Vicious didn't play any bass on their album ''Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols'', with bass duties handled mostly by Jones and Matlock, returning as a session musician.
 
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.
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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 The Dolls|Russ Meyer]] and [[Roger Ebert]] gave up trying to film a ''[[A Hard DaysDay's Night|Hard Day's Night]]''-esque Pistols film called ''Who Killed Bambi?'' and directly after a famously disastrous US tour which ended with him being stranded in the United States by McLaren. He reverted back to his birth name of John Lydon and formed art rock band [[Public Image Ltd]] as a means to explore his love of genres such as dub, progressive rock and noise music, which he had to keep on the lowdown during his Pistols days because these were the kinds of pretentious genres that the Pistols were allegedly supposed to be killing off (Rotten was discovered by McLaren after he saw Rotten wearing a [[Pink Floyd]] t-shirt he had altered to read "I Hate Pink Floyd", the irony being that Rotten actually ''didn't'' hate Pink Floyd, it was just to be nonconformist. Additionally, McLaren once got pissed at Lydon because in an interview he named some of his musical influences as [[Can (Music)|Can]], [[Van Derder Graaf Generator]] and [[Captain Beefheart]], going against the punk image he was trying to cultivate.). Over the course of the next decade and eight albums, PiL became an influential pioneer in the genres of [[Post Punk]] and [[Alternative Rock]].
 
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.
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* [[Cover Version]]: "Stepping Stone" by [[The Monkees]], "Silver Machine" by [[Hawkwind]], "No Fun" by [[The Stooges]], and "Substitute" by [[The Who]] used to be live mainstays. Notably, "No Fun" was the last song they played at their famous last gig in the USA - the one which ended with him throwing away his microphone and yelling "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?".
** Don't forget Sid Vicious' tribute ([[Your Mileage May Vary|or trashing]]) of [[Frank Sinatra]]'s ''My Way''. With added [[Country Matters|C-]] and [[Cluster F-Bomb|F-bombs]].
* [[Dreadful Musician]]: Vicious. Supposedly, he once told [[Motorhead (Music)|Lemmy]] "I can't play bass". Lemmy's reply? "I know".
** Jones admitted that the band tried "as hard as they could" to keep Vicious away from the studio while they were recording ''Never Mind the Bollocks''. Luckily for them, he had caught a severe case of hepatitis. Jones also admitted that they let him play one small bass part on "Bodies", but it was buried in the mix and he overdubbed his own.
** Paul Cook and Keith Levene have both disputed this and said the Sid Vicious did become a fairly competent bassist. He was dreadful at it because he never played bass prior to being hired by the Sex Pistols (he was a drummer, singer, and saxophonist before that point). Coincidentally, most of the "Sid Vicious can't play" examples cite events that happened immediately after he was hired.
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** "EMI" against record company EMI.
** The band's refusal to attend their induction to the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame - complete with a scathing [[Reason You Suck Speech]] - also qualifies.
* [[Three Chords and Thethe Truth]]: They were a punk band, what did you expect?
* [[What Could Have Been]]: In ''England's Dreaming'', John Savage's bio of the the band, Rotten mentioned that he wrote some songs during the Pistols' American tour in order to expand their sound. He would later record them with his next project, [[Public Image Ltd]], when McLaren disapproved of the new material.
* [[World War Three]]: Mentioned in "Holidays in the Sun".
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