>I'm not a Pistols fan, but they get a deserve a lot of credit on teaching later Punks how to be Punks..
>The Pistols played and lived Punk, give them their due...

According to who? If that band defined punk for you, that's great. But that's awfully dismissive of anyone for whom the Pistols are not the end-all & be-all, absolute definition of what punk was. "Played and lived Punk?" What does that mean?


>i'll venture that the Sex Pistols embody the spirit of rock and roll far more than some other acts in the Hall of Fame *cough*Eagles*cough cough*.

I'll second that.

>were largely responsible for the birth of the punk movement. it's not every artist you can say were responsible for an entirely new musical genre.

Disagree.

>would there have been a Clash without the Pistols? a Jam?

There was already a Clash and a Jam. And in spite of All Music listing the Pistols as an 'influence' on the Jam, "Holidays In The Sun's" riff was actually lifted by Sid Vicious from the Jam's "In The City."

>i'm pretty certain that Paul Weller and members of the Clash have said that it was seeing the Pistols that inspired them to form their own bands.

In Manchester and other places that's probably true, but in London most of the punk rock bands gave that credit to the Ramones after seeing them the weekend of July 4, 1976. That was the impetus for Joe Strummer leaving the pub-rock band he was in, the 101ers. Some of those bands were around, but were galvanized by what the Ramones did, including the Sex Pistols. Johnny Rotten has said they didn't influence him, which is probably true, in spite of the photos of him talking to the Ramones at those gigs. But he didn't play an instrument. Listen to the difference between the early Pistols demos of songs like 'Submission' and 'Anarchy In The UK' & compare them to what the band sounded like not long afterward, like on 'God Save The Queen,' for instance. Johnny Thunders & the Heartbreakers had an impact also, but their sound wasn't as aggressive as the Ramones. To deny they had an influence on the Pistols would be ludicrous. Outside of a few songs, I don't really hear a major influence by either of those bands on the Clash or the Jam, sound-wise (the Jam mostly weren't that aggressive, & the Clash made great use of Mick Jones' ability on lead guitar). But I do think there's a huge influence in terms of musical approach, attitude, & mindset.



>The Sex Pistols were a marketing ploy that 'punks' ate up. The Ramones and The Clash were real punk bands. The Pistols were made up.

I'd say you don't know what you're talking about.



>I seem to recall that most of Roxy Music played on those Sex Pistol recordings.

No, that would be some of the recordings John Cale did around 1974-75. Is it possible someone in Roxy Music did something on a song or two? I suppose. But I've never read anything anywhere that even suggested this. It's been said for years that Steve Jones did the bass tracks, and Chris Thomas did something here or there, but if you look at footage of the band live, you can see that there's nothing on that record that Steve Jones & Paul Cook weren't capable of playing. Or Glen Matlock, for that matter.