In the year 1977, the Sex Pistols' album Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols arrived world-wide, surrounded by violence, controversy and censorship in the United Kingdom. The lineup of drummer Paul Cook, guitarist Steve Jones, frontman Johnny Rotten, and replacement bass player Sid Vicious ushered in the era of British Punk with an amateurish and confrontational sound and attitude. In the end, the LP influenced nearly everything done subsequently in rock and is hailed as one of the genre's greatest albums of all time.

"God Save The Queen" was the first single that preceded release of the album. The title provides the first four words of the song, followed by the lyric "the fascist regime." For many offended Brits, the song was all downhill from there.  As the band continued work on their album that year — recording "Holidays In The Sun" on June 18 — they adjourned that night to a pub and got beat up badly enough to make the newspapers. Like the lyrics to that lead single, the action became even more intense thereafter.

The album's producer, Chris Thomas, has since shaped many rockers' sounds, winning one of his GRAMMYs at the 48th GRAMMY Awards when U2's How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb took Album Of The Year. His detailed overdubs on Never Mind The Bollocks…, punching in and out patiently with Cook and Jones, produced a furious and exuberant finished work superficially at odds with the craft invested in its creation. Meanwhile the band's other hit singles produced punk's signature controversy. As a result the only label that would have them was Virgin Records. Richard Branson hand-picked the tracklist.

Looking back, it seems only fitting that the Sex Pistols' gusto got them in trouble. "Banned In Britain" is one of rock history's quaint phrases in the U.S., but every major retailer in England was prevented from selling the album. Since it debuted at No. 1 in the U.K., this was a boon for independent outlets. A Virgin Records outlet was raided and its manager arrested for displaying the album's text-only graphic-art cover in his window. While "Never mind the bollocks" is a phrase that makes the word mean "nonsense," the potentially obscene implications of the word brought the band before the British bar, while news headlines made the most of the sensational controversy.

At Nottingham Magistrates' Court, the use of the word "bollocks" was considered objectionable but not illegally "obscene." For example, major newspapers had included the LP's title in their coverage but the papers were not put on trial. The hearing's chairman described the now-classic album as "vulgar exploitation of the worst instincts of human nature for the purchases of commercial profits." He said the not guilty verdict was delivered "reluctantly." Rock was f***ing transformed.

In a 2016 Pitchfork interview, John Lydon (a.k.a. Johnny Rotten) made headlines again for "forgiving" Nirvana for reflecting the Sex Pistols' sound. But the Sex Pistols' musically riveting flare and defiance had the heavy influence of greatness on what hundreds if not thousands of other musicians chose to do with their art.

In 2015 Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols was inducted into the Recording Academy's GRAMMY Hall Of Fame. It was both the Sex Pistols' debut as well as the only studio album they recorded, ever.

Catching Up On Music News Powered By The Recording Academy Just Got Easier. Have A Google Home Device? "Talk To GRAMMYs"