John, it happened, had a bag of lyrics – just sheets of paper in a plastic bag – and he pulled something out and he said, ‘I’ve been waiting for you to come up with something because I’ve got this idea.’” “I had half an idea for a big overture, and I just started playing that descending chord progression and everybody picked up on it and said, ‘Where’s it go next?’ And I sort of geared it as we went along.
The song began to take shape in the summer of 1976, as bassist Matlock told Rolling Stone in 2018. It had a difficult gestation as Rotten, Steve Jones, Glen Matlock and Paul Cook – Jones was 21 at the time, the others were 20 – struggled to crystallize their intent. What’s often overlooked is the 3-minute 31-second song itself. Within days the establishment were railing against the shocking working-class uprising represented by the song within weeks the Pistols had become icons of the British class war within months hundreds of copycat groups had begun expressing extreme emotions in their own ways and as the years passed the impact of “Anarchy” became clearer and its value increased. The aim was to shock and awe and as frontman Johnny Rotten ( John Lydon) spat out the opening words “Right now,” the aim was achieved. The band had been put together by impresario Malcolm McLaren, whose ambition in part was to promote the fashion and lifestyle shop, Sex, he ran with his girlfriend Vivienne Westwood. When the Sex Pistols’ debut single “Anarchy in the U.K.” arrived, it represented a fully-fledged cultural revolution. 26 had been about teenage angst rather than societal anger.
Until the 26th of that month, though, the movement was a form of nostalgia, looking back to simpler times of the ‘50s rebel movies of America and the four-on-the-floor pub rock bands of Britain. In the United States and the United Kingdom – particularly in New York and London – the concept of punk had been bubbling under for some time before November 1976.