This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages) The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's notability guideline for music. Please help to demonstrate the notability of the topic by citing reliable secondary sources that are independent of the topic and provide significant coverage of it beyond a mere trivial mention. If notability cannot be shown, the article is likely to be merged, redirected, or deleted. Find sources: "Masters of the Backside" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (September 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this message) This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Masters of the Backside" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (April 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this message) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Masters of the Backside was an early British punk rock group. They never released a recording or performed beyond practice sessions, but the group's members went on to greater success: Chrissie Hynde later fronted The Pretenders, and Dave Vanian, Captain Sensible and Rat Scabies were subsequently founding members of The Damned.

The band was formed by future Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren, who wanted to create a band with the sound of Ramones and the style of former Television member Richard Hell, both of whom he had seen perform at CBGB. He initially intended the band to have two singers.

The band is only known to have performed once, before a small invited audience in a church hall in Lisson Grove, London.^[1] They broke up before playing any public concerts or recording any material, after the members became tired of McLaren's need to control their activity. McLaren had more success with his second band, Sex Pistols, and Hynde eventually formed the Pretenders while Vanian, Sensible, and Scabies teamed up with former London SS member Brian James to form The Damned.

Masters of the Backside has since gone on to attain semi-legendary status with punks alongside London SS and The Flowers of Romance.^{[citation needed]}

It is unclear when the band began using the name "Masters of the Backside" as The Damned acknowledge some of their members first performed together in a group with Hynde but they refer to the project as being unnamed, or with Hynde's preferred name Dishonorable Discharge.^[2]