Johnny Rotten Quotes

Joe Strummer, Johnny Rotten, and Ian MacKaye were all people who really made me see things differently.

I never met Johnny Rotten, and I didn't want to meet Johnny Rotten.

Punk and all that was just an image that ripped people off. Johnny Rotten's a wanker, and that's all there is to it.

Johnny Rotten. He's a big fan of mine. I used to see him out in the audience in England and he'd stand up and holler. He's funny. Smart too, and a nice guy. Don't think he's a jerk because he isn't.

The first Van Halen album makes Johnny Rotten out to be what he really was and still is: a hairdresser.

I pretty much grew up when punk was big in the UK. The Sex Pistols were heroes for me. I used to run around like Johnny Rotten. I had a jacket like his.

Johnny Rotten isn't punk. Maybe that's punk to somebody, but these people are participating and challenging the corporations that are telling us what punk is and what good music is.

I think maybe what happened was the convenience of technology overshadowed the experience of holding an album in your hands, and sitting on your bedroom floor, and staring at a picture of John Lennon or Gene Simmons or Johnny Rotten. That tangible experience can sometimes become an even more emotional experience, because it's really happening.

As I write, Johnny Rotten's first moments in "Anarchy in the U.K." - a rolling earthquake of a laugh, a buried shout, then hoary words somehow stripped of all claptrap and set down in the city streets - I AM AN ANTICHRIST - Remain as powerful as anything I know. Listening to the record today - listening to the way Johnny Rotten tears at his lines, and then hurls the pieces at the world; recalling the all-consuming smile he produced as he sang - my back stiffens; I pull away even as my scalp begins to sweat.

When I started out, everyone seemed to be adopting these names... Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious. I wasn't really Rotten or Vicious or Nasty, so I wanted something a bit more funny - yet something that seemed real rock 'n' roll... something that acknowledged my ambition.