Sex Pistols - Submission - HD Video & Audio

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Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren owned a store called SEX that sold various fetish items. He asked the band to write a song about bondage and sadomasochism.

Lead singer John Lydon (a.k.a. Johnny Rotten), having already grown tired of McLaren, wrote the lyrics not about a sexual submissive, but about an underwater vessel, the first line of which is, "I'm on a submarine mission for you baby."


John Lydon and original Sex Pistols bass player Glen Matlock wrote the song, composing the lyrics at a pub after their bandmates Steve Jones and Paul Cook didn't show up for rehearsal. They traded lines back and forth over a pint, then Matlock worked out some chords when he went home. Matlock and Lydon both have fond memories of composing the song.

Glen Matlock tells the story behind the song -

I went to a rehearsal, at a place called the Roundhouse, which is a place in London, in Camden. We were rehearsing there for a bit - the rehearsal room was downstairs. I met up with John, and Steve and Paul didn't turn up.

So, me and John went over to the pub to have a drink, and he said -

Have you seen Malcolm?
Yeah.
What's he got to say for himself?
Oh, he has an idea that we write a song.
What about?
He had a title - 'Submission.'

And John went, 'What? All about domination and all that sort of stuff? I'm not having that.'

So we sat down, and I can't remember which one said, 'What about a submarine mission?' So, we traded line for line, and wrote the song there and then. Then, I went home that night and worked out the music. The next time we rehearsed, I said, 'Look, we have this idea. It goes like this...' And it went like that, and that was it really. The song is basically about taking the Mickey out of Malcolm McLaren."

Lydon said this was the closest thing to a love song the Sex Pistols ever wrote.

Part of the band's debut album, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols, "Submission" was also part of an early demo of the album Malcolm McLaren peddled to record companies in the Summer of 1976 (he found a taker in Virgin). This demo later appeared as a bootleg called Spunk.