Sex Pistols
Never Mind the Bollocks
The promise of the band's early singles was eventually fulfilled by the group's first album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols, released on October 28 1977. The album included singles Pretty Vacant (released on July 2 1977), an ode to apathy, and Holidays in the Sun (released on October 15 1977) - Bruce Foxton, bass player for The Jam and Stiff Little Fingers later alleged in a 1990s book that the riff had been stolen from the Jam's In the City single. Again the Sex Pistols faced controversy when a record shop in Nottingham was threatened with prosecution for displaying the album's 'obscene' cover, although the case was overturned when defending QC John Mortimer produced expert witnesses, including Professor James Kinsley, a professor of linguistics at the University of Nottingham, who were able to demonstrate that the word "bollocks" was a legitimate old English term originally used to refer to a priest, and that although the word is also slang for the testicles, in this context it meant 'nonsense'.