Submission – Sex Pistols – Bass cover, tab & lyrics

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"Submission" is a song performed by Sex Pistols from their only album "Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols" (1977).

Malcolm McLaren asked the band to write a bondage and S&M song called “Submission” to apparently help move product at his fetish shop Sex. Matlock and Rotten thought the idea “naff” and instead wrote about a sexy submarine mission. Despite being a put-on, the repeatedly detonating guitar and rhythm section’s rugged undertow (with Jones also on bass) made it the heaviest, potentially funkiest song on "Bollocks".

The original UK album (Virgin V2086) contained only eleven tracks, before the group changed their mind and decided to include "Submission".

However, Virgin had already pre-emptively produced stampers for the eleven-track version, and by early October 1977 had already pressed 1,000 copies. Rather than scrap these, Virgin released them anyway, initially as promos, then commercially, as an attempt to counteract a sudden flood of imports from France, where a twelve-track version of the album (including "Submission") had been released in mid-October by Barclay Records.

In response to this, Virgin also brought forward the album's intended UK release date by a week, and instead of waiting for the twelve-track album to be mastered, issued further copies of the eleven-track album (reportedly 50,000 copies, although some collectors now dispute these official figures as on the high side). Most of these copies included a poster and "Submission" as a freebie single.

Some of the initial 11-track copies were privately imported to Sweden and sold for a few weeks at a record shop in Stockholm. The poster and "Submission" were not included at this stage. An article in a local paper warned people not to buy this "faulty" issue and advised them to wait for the 12 track issue that was about to be pressed. The article also had a quote from Virgin in London, which said that all production and sale had been stopped, but some copies had unfortunately leaked out through their export company. This issue had a blank back cover and matrix numbers A-1 and B-1.

The twelve-track UK version began appearing in early November 1977.

As a result of the track listing confusion, several variants of the UK back sleeve exist: completely blank, omitting "Submission", including "Submission", and a misprint including "Belsen Was a Gas" and omitting several other tracks, based on artwork for an earlier rejected track listing.

Song info sources:

https://www.last.fm/music/Sex+Pistols...

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/mu...

Lyrics:

I'm on a submarine mission for you baby
I feel the way you were going
I picked you up on my tv screen
I feel your undercurrent flowing

Submission going down down
Dragging me down submission
I can't tell ya what I've found

You've got me pretty deep baby
I can't figure out your watery love
I gotta solve your mystery
Your sitting it out in heaven above

Submission going down down
Dragging me down submission
I can't tell you what I've found

For there's a mystery
Under the sea in the water
I wanna share it

Submission going down down
Dragging me down submission
I can't tell ya what I've found
'Cos it's a secret
Under the water in the sea
An Octopus Rock

Got me pretty deep baby
I can't figure out your watery love
I gotta solve your mystery
Your sitting it out in heaven above

Submission going down down
Dragging me down submission
I can't tell ya what I've found

Submission
Going down down under the sea
I wanna drown drown under the water
Going down down under the sea

Timecode:

00:00 – Titles
00:17 – Intro
00:44 – Verse 1
01:00 – Chorus 1
01:11 – Post-Chorus 1
01:19 – Verse 2
01:35 – Chorus 2
01:46 – Post-Chorus 2
01:54 – Bridge 1
02:05 – Interlude
02:13 – Guitar Solo
02:28 – Chorus 3
02:40 – Post-Chorus 3
02:48 – Bridge 2
02:59 – Interlude 2
03:07 – Verse 3
03:22 – Chorus 4
03:34 – Post-Chorus 4
03:42 – Outro