The Sex Pistols—1977: The Bollocks Diaries

This inside look at the recording and release of the Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks features firsthand accounts from lead singer John Lydon, guitarist Steve Jones, bass guitarist Glen Matlock, manager Malcolm McLaren, fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, filmmaker Julien Temple, the engineers who worked on the album, and other associates. Whatever else can be said about the Sex Pistols—influential, inchoate, authentic, a con—that they were always ready to have a laugh is undeniable, and that attitude, more than anything else, shines through in this book. Apart from some newly commissioned interviews, the volume is almost entirely a cut-and-paste job of fliers, newspaper clippings, poster art, and snippets of musical and cultural commentaries chronicling 1977. More cynical readers might sense a cheap cash-out of late 1970s punk nostalgia, but the décollage style is quintessentially Jamie Reid, Sex Pistols collaborator and creator of some of punk's most iconic images.