History Trivia / SexPistols

* TrollingCreator: The band's initial shock value came from Rotten's nihilistic lyrics and the way he would deliberately antagonize live audiences, often to the point of inciting riots.

* CreatorBacklash: Johnny really thinks "Belsen Was A Gas" was too tasteless and a cheap attempt at shock value.[[note]]Sid wrote it as an attempt at BlackComedy for an earlier band, recycled basically as album filler just to piss people off. They stopped finding it funny around the time actual Nazis tried to infiltrate punk spaces, and when he disowned it in 1996, it was around the time some Nazi skinhead band covered it unironically.[[/note]]
* DudeNotFunny: Mick Jones of Music/TheClash, who is Jewish, unsurprisingly reacted this way to Sid's joke song "Belsen Was a Gas"; as a result, the two bands never performed together after that.

* NamesTheSame:
** Sid Vicious has one with the wrestler Sid Vicious (real name Wrestling/SidEudy) who was later a world heavyweight champion in Wrestling/{{WWE}} and Wrestling/{{WCW}}. Technically the guy went by "Sycho Sid" in WWE, but the last name got used on occasion there anyhow.
** Rock journalist John Tobler, during his near-hour-long BBC Radio 1 interview with Johnny and Sid shortly after the release of ''Never Mind the Bollocks'' (which can be heard on the interview compilation album ''More Product'') told the band that a while prior he had read in ''NME'' about an East End band called Shadbolt who had a guitarist reportedly also named Sid Vicious, although Johnny told him not to go on and said where the name actually came from; "Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd fame...remember?".
* OldShame: Johnny really thinks "Belsen Was A Gas" was too tasteless and a cheap attempt at shock value.[[note]]Sid wrote it as an attempt at BlackComedy for an earlier band, recycled basically as album filler just to piss people off. They stopped finding it funny around the time actual Nazis tried to infiltrate punk spaces, and when he disowned it in 1996, it was around the time some Nazi skinhead band covered it unironically.[[/note]]

** May even be "What Actually Happened, But Nobody Seems to Know": Johnny Rotten, in an interview with Rolling Stone, once mentioned that in the EMI studio where ''Never Mind the Bollocks'' was being recorded, in the next studio space Music/{{Queen}} were recording, and the band actually invited Johnny to sing backing vocals on one track. He doesn't reveal which song or whether it actually came off in the interview, though he does recount the freedom that Queen was given in recording (specifically that Music/FreddieMercury was allowed numerous takes and their engineer could splice together the best of them to cover flubs) whereas the Pistols were pretty much "one-and-done" and his envy at the latitude Queen could command.

** In a HilariousInHindsight way, allegedly, when the original line-up was being put together, one of the band names they considered before eventually deciding on Sex Pistols was Music/TheDamned.

*** Then again, another version of the story (admittedly told on ThatOtherWiki) recounts a star-struck Johnny going into Queen's studio on all fours, sidling up to the piano where Freddy Mercury was, trying to introduce himself, before going back to the Pistols' studio. In this account, Queen's rather bemused engineer then went next door to ask the band to knock it off. It doesn't help that in THIS version of the story, Sid Vicious had previously been ejected from Queen's studio for trying to pick a fight with Mercury.

** And even when the band recruited Rotten as their vocalist, they were rehearsing with second guitarist, a journalist named Nick Kent, although he was fired by Rotten immediately. [[note]]Allegedly, Kent later had nothing nice to say about the band.[[/note]] Kent later went to an influential music journalism career in his own right, writing for the ''NME'' and ''The Face''. Subsequently, they hired Steve New in Kent's place, but because he did not exactly fit into the band, and because of Jones's improving skills, he did not last either.

** And even when the band recruited Rotten as their vocalist, they were rehearsing with second guitarist, a journalist named Nick Kent, although he was fired by Rotten immediately. [[note]]Allegedly, Kent later had nothing nice to say about the band.[[/note]] Subsequently, they hired Steve New in Kent's place, but because he did not exactly fit into the band, and because of Jones's improving skills, he did not last either.

* OldShame: Johnny really thinks "Belsen Was A Gas" was too tasteless and a cheap attempt at shock value.

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece:
** "Holidays in the Sun" is about the UsefulNotes/BerlinWall, which clearly dates it to before its demolition on November 9, 1989.
** ''The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle'' has Steve Jones and Paul Cook "finding" Martin Bormann in Brazil, based on the belief at the time that Bormann could have survived World War II and escape to South America. This dates it as before 1998, when DNA analysis to some remains found in 1972 revealed them as being Bormann's, thus confirming that he did die during the fall of Berlin.

*** Then again, another version of the story (admittedly told on ThatOtherWiki) recounts a star-struck Johnny going into Queen's studio on all fours, sidling up to the piano where Freddy Mercury was, trying to introduce himself, before going back to the Pistols' studio. In this account, Queen's rather bemused engineer then went next door to ask the band to knock it off.

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: "Holidays in the Sun," due to the demolition of the UsefulNotes/BerlinWall on November 9, 1989.

** The band almost starred in Creator/RussMeyer's ''Who Killed Bambi'' (formerly known as ''Anarchy in the UK''), which he would have co-written with Creator/RogerEbert. Sadly, the film was abandoned. In 2013, Ebert posted his script [[http://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/who-killed-bambi-a-screenplay on his blog]].

** It's been suggested that the band could have lasted longer if they got rid of Malcolm [=McClaren=].
** May even be "What Actually Happened, But Nobody Seems to Know": Johnny Rotten, in an interview with Rolling Stone, once mentioned that in the EMI studio where ''Never Mind the Bollocks'' was being recorded, in the next studio space Music/{{Queen}} were recording, and the band actually invited Johnny to sing backing vocals on one track. He doesn't reveal which song or whether it actually came off in the interview, though he does recount the freedom that Queen was given in recording (specifically that Music/FreddieMercury was allowed numerous takes and their engineer could splice together the best of them to cover flubs) whereas the Pistols were pretty much "one-and-done" and his envy at the latitude {{Queen}} could command.