Legendary Bands - The Sex Pistols Posters

In many ways, the Sex Pistols were more about sociology than they were great music. Of course, punk existed long before the Pistols, dating back to garage groups like Question Mark & the Mysterians and probably all the way back to Elvis Presley. And then there were the mid-'70s NYC bands like the Ramones, who actually influenced the Pistols. But after the U.K. phenomenon of "punk," led by this band, hit the world, punk was never the same--and the trappings of the form that exist today were basically created here.

The brainchild of entrepreneur Malcolm McLaren (a latter-day manager of the New York Dolls), who ran a London clothing boutique called Sex, members Steve Jones, Paul Cook, and Glenn Matlock were already playing together as a trio (post the Ramones' London show) when McLaren brought a young ruffian calling himself Johnny Rotten (nee Lydon) into the folk to front the band. And thus a movement was born. The Pistols' stated goal was to "destroy rock 'n' roll"--though they meant destroying the bloated albatross that rock 'n' roll had become.

Releasing a song like "God Save The Queen" doesn't seem like such a big deal in the '90s, but at the time, in the middle of the Queen's Golden Jubilee, it was an act of incredible outrage. The band was banned everywhere almost before they played anywhere! The hit singles (in Britain) and the sole album were completed long before the Pistols replaced Matlock with the infamous Sid Vicious (nee John Simon Ritchie) who really couldn't play--but certainly brought a whole new level of outrage to the group.

Of course, the group imploded during a disastrous 1978 U.S. tour, with Rotten quitting the band while onstage in San Francisco, and Vicious later dying in New York City from a heroin overdose, shortly after he'd been arrested for murdering his gal-pal (and Courtney Love prototype) Nancy Spungen. The original Pistols actually reunited in 1996 for world tour, much to the horror of jeering real "punks" who figured the band was messing with its own history and "purity." Truth is, however, they sounded great and far superior, in retrospect, to most of their progeny.