“Maybe I’m just a bad comedian, but I thought Never Mind the Bullocks was hilarious, from start to finish. Pointed, but hilarious.” Johnny Rotten himself sets the stage for this rather uproarious documentary about the making of the one and only studio album of what many consider to be the most influential punk rock band of all time. Never Mind the Bullocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols was released on October 27, 1977 to a hail of controversy due to its angry anti-authoritarian lyrics (though both “God Save the Queen” and “Anarchy in the U.K.” seem rather tame and quaint today) and the fact that “bullocks” isn’t the nicest bit of English slang; the band itself — consisting of John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten, lead vocals), Paul Cook (drums), Steve Jones (guitar/bass), Glen Matlock (bass on “Anarchy”) and, of course, Sid Vicious (bass on “Bodies”) — would break up a mere three months later, but the album would eventually be ranked #41 on Rolling Stone’s Top 500 Albums of All Time (2003). The documentary presents the Sex Pistols as a disorganized bunch of weirdoes and thugs who managed to record an album only by sheer luck — and by the self-described “mismanagement” of Malcolm McLaren, whose only real direction as the record’s producer was to “just make it chaotic.” Featuring interviews with the surviving members of the band as well as music journalists such as Charles M. Young (Rolling Stone) and John Ingham (Sounds); not surprisingly, the most amusing personalities belong to Lydon and McLaren, who both seem to think they’re still living in the mid-’70s.
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New On Netflix: Sex Pistols: Never Mind the Bollocks