This is the original demo version of the song, recorded in the Denmark Street studio with Dave Goodman sometime in 1976. A lot of people think that the demo versions were better than the more cleaned up versions later released on the album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols.
I used to have this on some sort of record, I think it was maybe a 45 of some sort. It also came out on a bootleg album called Spunk which was mostly demos and other in studio stuff. Spunk itself was later copied many times by other people. Virgin Records then released their own version of Spunk. This demo version actually sounds a lot different from the studio version – almost as if they were two separate songs altogether – and it has always had a special place in my heart.
This is similar to the Anarchy in the UK version on The Great Rock and Roll Swindle album, but that one is actually somewhat different, an previously unreleased studio version from October 1976 remixed for a beefed up version with more drums by Mike Thorne. That version is really cool too, and it’s actually somewhat different from both the demo and the Bollocks song. It’s also really boss.
I had a cassette of the Bullocks album, and around 1978-79, I listened to that tape almost every day when I was commuting to and from the university. That album just played all the time in car for months there. It put me in a certain sort of mood – what mood, I am not even sure – that I really enjoyed being in for some reason, but I can’t put my finger on that reason either. It was sort of a Gestalt thing. It was like the music of my life at that time.
