The Sex Pistols: "God Save the Queen" 7" (A&M) – $22,172.38

The final price of this auction won't be known for another week, but out of the gate, we've already topped £6000, which is roughly what the last copy to hit the open market went for. [This auction closed on March 2nd, 2006 with a final bid of £12,675 ($22,175). The money and the single have changed hands, and a Lisa Wheeler article about the sale will appear in the April issue of Goldmine].

Early in March of 1977—just days after the botched sacking of Glen Matlock for Sid Vicious—A&M records signed the white-hot Sex Pistols for the still-obscene sum of £150,000. Malcolm McLaren had been negotiating this contract for weeks: immediately after EMI dropped the Pistols in January 1977, unable to cope with unending bad press and boycotts surrounding the Today/Grundy "filthy lucre" fiasco and Heathrow "puking" incident, McLaren met with A&M's top brass, including London office director Derek Green, and the label's co-founder Jerry Moss. We may never know what possessed Green and/or Moss to offer a six-figure contract with half the money guaranteed to a band EMI had essentially lit £50,000 on fire for, with only one single^[1] to offset their considerable embarrassment. Jerry is unlikely to address it when he's inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame next month.

After an awkward drunken contract signing in A&M's Rondor offices on March 9th (charmingly animated in The Great Rock N' Roll Swindle), and Malcolm's fantastic restaging the next morning in front of Buckingham Palace, the band made a massive error in judgement. On March 12th, at London's Speakeasy club, Sid and Jah Wobble got into it with Bob Harris and his friends in Cliff Williams' appalling Bandit.

According to Dave Goodman (and few would know better), someone threatened to kill Harris during the macho verbal fracas. Harris was powerful enough as a BBC presenter, but he also happened to share management with A&M's golden goose: Peter Frampton, who recorded the Best Selling Album of All Time to that point, Frampton Comes Alive! (which has yet to crack 20 million in sales, but still ranks in the top 15, alongside Boston's debut). In deference to Harris and Frampton^[2], and fearing the band could take the whole company down in a PR scandal, A&M dropped the Sex Pistols on March 15th, shelling out £75,000 for a 25,000-copy run of "God Save the Queen"/"No Feelings" they ordered destroyed at the pressing plant two days later. Goodman's recollection of this event is high comedy:

03/17/1977 | A&M pulp the 25,000 "God Save the Queen"/"No Feelings" singles and destroy the metal masters. Boogie and Reid put on boiler suits and attempt to rescue copies from the vinyl recycling centre — they break down in giggles, however, and are ejected. Apart from two A&M "God Save the Queen" 45s sold by Phil Strongman to McLaren, only half a dozen others have ever been seen, and these were allegedly given to the longest-serving staffers after A&M closed down its UK operation in 1998.

I sent a very polite letter to MD Derek Green pleading for one, before they were all trashed, but I never even got a reply. Malcolm suggested that we drive down to the factory at night and break in and take what we could. He knew the exact whereabouts of the records and reckoned it would be a cinch, especially if we took Steve along. I should have gone for it but had cold feet.

How many copies survived is a source of continued debate. Goodman mentions a box of ten making its way to a stall on Berwick Street, but an unsurprising series of bootlegs have clouded things over the years. House history at A&M, on the other hand, is crystal clear: 12 copies of the single were ceremoniously distributed to a select class of employees eliminated during PolyGram's 1998 closure of A&M's London office. Most collectors infer from this that less than 20 copies were kept in the A&M vaults.

The most recent auction of an A&M "God Save the Queen" was also on eBay, in early 2004. trakMARX set it up, and maintains a page dedicated to its staggering £6300 sale. With the farewell letter and custom wallframe, it's a far stronger package than this lowly mailer-sheath and Record Collector haul, but this is a legitimate copy.

^[1]"Anarchy" is culturally more than "one single," obviously—to many people it is the single—but it only got to #38 before EMI dropped the Pistols. The label subsequently sold the rights to Virgin, barely recouping their investment.

^[2]I've been informed by Leslie Pfenninger, proprietor of the excellent On A&M retrospective site, that Captain & Tennille and the Carpenters also implored Alpert and Moss to drop the Pistols. According to Leslie, the A&M family generally does not care to discuss the Sex Pistols' incidental tenure with the label, which I can understand. People often forget that A&M was a pure indie, and a very close-knit company. From their side of the experience, I would probably have a hard time finding humor in the band's disrepectful treatment of my fellows.