girl was on a slow suicide mission.... Only she didn't want to go alone. She wanted to take Sid with her.... She was so utterly fucked up and evil." "God Save the Queen" On 10 March 1977, at a press ceremony held outside Buckingham Palace, the Sex Pistols publicly signed to A&M Records (the real signing had taken place the day before). Afterwards, intoxicated, they made their way to the A&M offices. Vicious smashed in a toilet bowl and cut his foot—there is some disagreement about which happened first. As Vicious trailed blood around the offices, Rotten verbally abused the staff and Jones got frisky with a woman in the ladies' room. A couple of days later, the Pistols got into a fight with another band at a club; one of Rotten's pals threatened the life of a good friend of A&M's English director. On 16 March, A&M broke contract with the Pistols. Twenty-five thousand copies of the planned "God Save the Queen" single, produced by Chris Thomas, had already been pressed: virtually all were destroyed. Vicious debuted with the band at London's Notre Dame Hall on 28 March. In May, the band signed with Virgin Records, their third new label in little more than half a year. This was around the time that Lydon personally enlisted Dennis Morris as the band's official photographer, with Morris being constantly by their side for around 7 months. Virgin was more than ready to release "God Save the Queen", but new obstacles arose. Workers at the pressing plant laid down their tools in protest at the song's content. Jamie Reid's now famous cover, showing Queen Elizabeth II with her features obscured by the song and band names in cutout letters, offended the sleeve's plate makers. After much talk, production resumed and the record was finally released on 27 May. The scabrous lyrics—"God save the queen/She ain't no human being/And there's no future/In England's dreaming"—prompted widespread outcry. Several major chains refused to stock the single. It was banned not only by the BBC but also by every independent radio station, making it the "most heavily censored record in British history". Rotten boasted, "We're the only honest band that's hit this planet in about two thousand million years." Jones shrugged off everything the song stated and implied—or took nihilism to a logical endpoint: "I don't see how anyone could describe us as a political band.