Dear Editor

It's time for this silly phrase to stop - "they only knew three chords". You used it today in your editorial about the Sex Pistols being inducted into the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame, and I've seen it used elsewhere about the Ramones, the Clash and various other bands. It's a neat way of describing simple music but the truth is somewhat different. Sure Sid Vicious was pretty inept BASS PLAYER (not guitarist as you wrote), but by the time he was in the band they'd stopped writing songs anyway. Glen Matlock was actually quite musical, and his Beatle-esque basslines gave their songs the pop hooks that carried them into the charts.

For the record:
"Anarchy In the UK" = chords G, F, E, D, Em, Dm, Em7, F#m - that's 8 chords.

In addition - pretty much all of the rock music of the late fifties and early sixties only used three chords - 1,4 and 5 in any key. This was because all of that music was derived from the rhythm and blues 12 bar pattern, which only used those three chords. This includes Elvis. Later the Beatles started introducing passing chords, which is why their music was a bit more complex and 'poppy'.