Part of an irregular series of bite-sized posts about 7″ singles I own – shameless nostalgia from the days of vinyl. (Search ‘Backtracking’ to collect the set!)
THE SEX PISTOLS – Pretty Vacant b/w No Fun (Virgin Records, 1977)
This is the third of the Pistols’ trilogy of iconoclastic singles which I gleefully purchased on release and played to death.
After this, the too long-delayed Never Mind The Bollocks! album was a bit of a let down, especially since it included all three hits (as Rotten proclaimed in another context : “ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”).
The fact that the band were allowed to be seen performing the song on Top Of The Pops signified that the cultural assimilation process had begun. (Hegemony In the UK!).
Still, Rotten singing “va-cunt” on prime time TV was good value and designed to ruffle a few straight-laced feathers.
The B-side is a cover of The Stooges’ No Fun which opens with a sneering address to the nation promising a “sociology lecture….. with a bit of fuck-ology”.
It’s a warts and all first take recording wherein Rotten bluffs and ad-lib his way through the song (although the lyrics are by no mean complex) . The band manage to drag a three-minute garage rock tune to way past the six-minute mark as though they were emulating the much derided prog-rockers. No fun indeed!
Looking immaculately wasted on the cover , Richard Hell was an early poster boy for punk. The Blank Generation inspired Pretty Vacant and Hell laid claim to inventing the ripped T-shirt anti-fashion look.
