Los Angeles, Calif. (August 29, 2025)—Rhino High Fidelity has reissued the Sex Pistols’ debut album on premium vinyl with new liner notes by producer Chris Thomas.
Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols was cut from the original master tapes by Kevin Gray and pressed on 180-gram black vinyl at Optimal in Germany. This release is limited to 5,000 individually numbered copies and available exclusively at Rhino.com and select Warner Music Group stores internationally.
The Sex Pistols recorded their only studio album at Wessex Sound in London over a six-month period in 1977 (the band’s first single, “Anarchy in the U.K.,” included on the album, was recorded at Wessex in October 1976). Some of the sessions took place while Queen were recording their News of the World album at the facility, leading to several widely reported interactions between the bands.
In the album’s new liner notes, producer Chris Thomas recalls how the band—singer and main lyricist Johnny Rotten (John Lydon), guitarist Steve Jones, drummer Paul Cook and bassist Glen Matlock, later replaced by Sid Vicious—found their recording approach almost by accident during an early session. “We put down a track, just rhythm guitar and drums, pretty much first-take, no mistakes. It was impossible to know if it was any good, so, being a bit stumped, I asked Steve if he would like to have a go at putting the bass part on.”
Instead of playing a traditional bass line, Jones simply mirrored his guitar an octave lower—an unexpected move that snapped everything into focus. “It was an absolute ‘Eureka!’ moment,” recalls Thomas, who had previously worked with the Beatles, Procol Harum, Pink Floyd and Roxy Music. “The combination was so powerful, so simple. We bashed three more songs down, adding the bass and double-tracking the guitar in just a couple of hours. We were seriously in first-take territory.”
Released at the end of October 1977, the album debuted at #1 on the U.K. charts despite—or perhaps because of—being banned by major retailers and causing widespread controversy. Bristling with broadsides like “Anarchy in the U.K.,” “God Save the Queen,” “Pretty Vacant” and “Holidays in the Sun,” the album distilled rage and disillusionment into a single, unrelenting statement.
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Less than three months after the album came out, on January 14, 1978, the band broke up onstage at Winterland in San Francisco at the end of the last show of their only U.S. tour.
The band’s legacy far outlasted their time together. Never Mind the Bollocks has sold over a million copies in the U.S. alone, was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and ranks high among the greatest albums of all time in lists by Rolling Stone, NME and Time. Nearly five decades later, the record remains a defining force in punk and a cultural lightning rod.
