God Save the Queen

The Sex Pistols have been on my mind lately thanks to the FX series Pistol. And because they played their classic God Save the Queen on the Thames River during the Queen's Golden Jubilee, the Pistols have since been ironically linked to the Queen herself, even if only because of that classic 70s film footage you always see from it.

I can't possibly guess how many times over the years on this blog I've blathered on and on about how great Never Mind the Bullocks is, and now here's a post on their website from 2012 with the band members going through the album, track by track:

Paul: It started with Glen’s bass riff. Steve got hold of it, then I started playing. Suddenly John came up with ‘God Save The Queen.’ It wasn’t written specifically for the Queen’s Jubilee. We weren’t aware of it at the time. It didn’t even click there was a Jubilee coming up.

John: The whole thing was written in one go. I had the lyrics ready. I wrote them a while back, but never used them. The words didn’t fit in with any of the other tunes. I didn’t think it would ever fit to anything. It was more like a big tirade.

Glen: The main riff was something I found piddling around on the piano, while we recorded the aborted version of ‘Anarchy’. I had a pretty fixed idea of how the tune should go, but John had other plans.

Steve: One of my favourites. I liked the chaos surrounding this record! Recorded after just two takes, with guitar and drums, like most of the other tracks.

Enjoy the whole thing. You're welcome, people!