16th October 2007

The Sex Pistols new re-recordings of ‘Pretty Vacant’ & ‘Anarchy in UK’ are now available to download via iTunes. ‘Never Mind The Bollocks’ is also available to download officially for the first time in North America.

‘Pretty Vacant‘ & ‘Anarchy in UK‘ were re-recorded especially for use in the forthcoming ‘Guitar Hero III – Legends of Rock’ video game (see News October 14th for more info); and are now available for the first time ANYWHERE as individual downloads exclusively via the iTunes store worldwide. The tracks are also available in high quality DRM-free audio format.

After being approached for inclusion in ‘Guitar Hero III’ by the game’s publishers Activision, it was discovered the original multi-track masters for ‘Anarchy in the UK’ & Pretty Vacant’ had been misplaced. Activision then invited the band to re-record the tracks instead!

In June 2007 – virtually 30 years since they last recorded together – John Lydon, Steve Jones & Paul Cook; along with original producer Chris Thomas – entered The Boat studios in LA to record live studio versions of the tracks. To help maintain the classic sound of the original recordings they utilized an analogue sound-desk (circa 1969); first built for George Martin at Air Studios, London.

Guitar Hero - Itunes SinglesSpeaking of the re-recordings in his recent JL.Com interview John commented: “It’s exactly like how we did it in the first place. With Chris Thomas on the controls; and me, Steve and Paul. That’s it the three. Because Glen wasn’t really a part of the band at that time when we recorded ‘Bollocks’… We had to learn how to do this as a threesome for a long, long time with Sid on stage! You know! We had to record the album in the first place that way. So it flowed really well… It sounds great. It really does. It sounds really great fun…”
Read the full interview here…