[2] The Germs, comprising four teenagers, formed not long before the recording of the single: David Bowie-worshipping friends Jan Paul Beahm and George Ruthenberg met Belinda Carlisle and Teresa Ryan while staking out Queen's Freddie Mercury at a Beverly Hills motel, and decided to start a band.
Vocalist Beahm changed his name to Bobby Pyn (he would soon become better known as Darby Crash), guitarist Ruthenberg became Pat Smear and bassist Ryan transformed into Lorna Doom.
[9] The B-side, "Sex Boy",[10] was recorded live to cassette at the Roxy nightclub in West Hollywood during the filming of the Cheech & Chong movie Up in Smoke.
"[14] Heylin regards the song, whose chorus declares "I'm your gun/Pull my trigger", as a vehicle for Pyn to enact a punk version of Bowie's provocative Ziggy Stardust persona.
[15] Comparing it to The Damned's "New Rose"—the first single from the English punk scene—Jon Savage wrote that it articulated both its specific subcultural context and the broader punk notion that artists do not have to master their craft before seeking an audience: "As the riff churns repeatedly at the end, Pyn delivers a critique of the band's performance: 'The drums are too slow, the bass is too fast, the chords are all wrong, they're making the ending too long—Aaah I quit!
'"[16] Claude Bessy, founder and editor of the local punk scene's leading fanzine, Slash, described the "Forming" 45 as "beyond music...mind-boggling...inexplicably brilliant in bringing monotony to new heights".
[9] Retrospectively, popular music historians Brendan Mullen and Marc Spitz characterized it as a "surly drone ... with a tempo that could be kept by a wind-up, cymbal-crashing monkey",[6] while Clinton Heylin finds it most notable for its "ineptitude".
[17] "Sex Boy", he wrote, the "hilarious, chaotic" B-side, features "bottles breaking while Crash practically attacks the audibly scared audience".
The A-side was this amazingly low-tech approach to "stereo"—vocals in one channel, music (or three-chord sludge, as it were) in the other, with the singer matter-of-factly pointing out that "whoever would buy this shit is a fucking jerk".