| "Bodies" | ||||
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| Song by Sex Pistols from the album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols | ||||
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| Genre | Punk rock | |||
| Length | 3:03 | |||
| Label | Virgin (UK) Warner Bros. Records (US) |
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| Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols track listing | ||||
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"Bodies" is a Sex Pistols song about abortion from the 1977 album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols. The lyrics contain very graphic imagery about a terminated fetus and feature a great deal of profanity for the time: the third and final verse begins with a couplet in which the word fuck is repeated five times in rapid succession. Along with the later "Belsen Was a Gas", it is probably the most grisly and blatantly shocking Sex Pistols song in both its subject matter and style. Musically, it is also the fastest and heaviest song in the Sex Pistols canon — characterized by ominously thudding drums, relentlessly droning buzzsaw guitar, and maniacal shouted vocals. As such, it can be considered a significant antecedent to the genre of thrash and speed metal that was to emerge in the mid-to-late-1980s.
The song is the only song on Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols on which Sid Vicious actually plays bass, although his part was later overdubbed.[1] The song was, like all other Sex Pistols songs credited to the entire band, though Vicious was in the hospital with hepatitis when the band wrote it. It is mostly about a fan named Pauline, who was (as the song states) from Birmingham. She had been in a mental institution, where she apparently lived in a tree house,[2] in the garden of the institution. This was where the line 'Her name was Pauline, she lived in a tree' comes from. The institution was also where she had apparently been impregnated by one of the male nurses. When she was released, she travelled to London, where she became a punk rock fan. She had several abortions. According to legend, she showed up once at John Lydon's door wearing nothing but a clear plastic bag and holding an aborted fetus in a clear plastic bag as well.
What is known from Lydon's autobiography, is that she would tell Lydon about becoming pregnant and then having abortions and describing them in detail to him. This affected Lydon enough to write the song. Most of the band also had experiences with Pauline,[2] but have spoken less about it.
With its repeated mentions of "I'm not an animal," of "Mummy," and of a dying baby, the song is widely interpreted as being anti-abortion.[3] Lydon himself, in an interview with Spin Magazine, said "I don't think there's a clearer song about the pain of abortion. The juxtaposition of all those different psychic things in your head and all the confusion, the anger, the frustration, you have to capture in those words."[1] In 2006, National Review magazine put the song at #8 on its list of the "50 Greatest Conservative Rock songs", citing a pro-life message.[4] So too, music critic Robert Christgau called it "effectively anti-abortion, anti-woman, and anti-sex."[3]
In 2000, John Lydon went on the record as pro-choice,[5] supporting the choice of a 13-year-old French girl to use the morning after pill without her parents' knowledge. In an interview, Lydon is quoted as identifying himself as neither pro- nor anti-abortion.[6] He believes the decision belongs to the pregnant woman. In the same interview, Lydon speaks of the song in relation to his mother's miscarriage and how one should not misconstrue that incident as being anti-abortion[6].
Lydon wrote and recorded with his band Public Image Limited the song "The Body," released as a single from the band's album Happy? (1987). The song's lyrics are related to abortion. PiL's second album, Metal Box (1979), featured a similarly themed song called "Bad Baby" about a carelessly abandoned newborn child.
In 2005, a "barnyard" arrangement by Steve Jones and Scott Weiland was performed on Jones' radio show, with the use of the word "fuck" changed to "pluck".
The song has been covered by grunge-rock band Veruca Salt, Stone Temple Pilots, Velvet Revolver, Manic Street Preachers, Raimundos, Killing Joke and L.A. band Peppermint Creeps.
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