I love being alive so much. When you come out of comas in your childhood, every moment awake is a joyous occasion.
— John Lydon
It's volatile, the marriage. Which one isn't? Nothing better than a good, full-on row. Get it all out. Say rude and nasty things. And then be sorry. Genuinely sorry, afterwards.
I've never done anything deliberately; I just speak my mind, and that is what I consistently do and will always do in any way shape or form that I can.
Punk was never about one particular clean-cut imagery... it's about many, many individuals coming very loosely together.
Every single lyric I've ever written I meant.
'Lollipop Opera' is the backdrop to Finsbury Park. A place that is very thriving, interracial and lot of music stores, Greek, Turkish, all sorts of immigrant music. It's utter Englishness. It blends the Jamaicans, the Irish. It's like what Jim Reeves did with American country music.
You have moments of grief in life, and if you can put pen to paper and capture that, that's something wonderful. I can revisit actual songs about past deaths, and I know that emotion is as true now as it was then.
I always find the mirror in the dressing room is where the best artists are.
Pop music I have always loved best. But the more extreme, fascist-led examples of the music business I tend to detest the most.
I'm sort of of the belief that people kill themselves from the inside out. When they're unhappy with what they're doing, or not achieving things - when your focus is off-kilter. The thing that keeps me ticking is my values. And I maintain them, because they're worthy. I like to wake up and feel I've done no wrong. I like that feeling.
Any new ideas go into PiL. My inspiration is everything that the human being gets up to. I don't listen to any music when I'm in PiL-zone, because influences can poison your well. Otherwise, I listen to anything.
It's quite clear to me I'm not a sexist and I'm not a misogynist.
It's nice to be irritated. It's a very joyous thing.
The joy of life is in the work.
I have one major problem with the Internet: It's full of liars.
A record company used to be a very good thing, but they ended up soul-destroyingly trapping people in the accounting department. And you couldn't get any further, and the heads of each department were changing all the time, so you couldn't have any permanent relationship within the corporation.
There's many, many ways to write a song. But generally, sitting down at a table and writing is not one of them.
My inspiration is everything that the human being gets up to.
For a gun-toting nation, Americans are surprisingly passive.
All the things that you would have thought would have made me a professional A1 criminal... wrong. I decided that was too lazy and easy, and because of the way British society is, quite frankly you were denied an education, so I got one of my own.
I've always said, I thought the Sex Pistols was more Music Hall than anything else - because I think that really, more truths are said in humour than any other form.
I'm 100% proud of the TV work I achieved. The work I did on shows on insects and Great White sharks... stuff that's in school curriculums in England. Now they are showing up on Discovery Channel.
I went to visit Alcatraz years ago when I was on tour with the Pistols, and I really liked the atmosphere of the place. I genuinely, really, thoroughly enjoyed the whole morning there. I just liked the quietness and stillness of what is basically a cruel prison complex. I still found some kind of joy in that. That's how I am.
Move to Italy. I mean it: they know about living in debt; they don't care. I stayed out there for five months while I was making a film called 'Order Of Death,' and they've really got it sussed. Nice cars. Sharp suits. Great food. Stroll into work at 10. Lunch from 12 till three. Leave work at five. That's living!
I showed what I can do with butter, right? Eighty-five percent increase in sales. I'm very proud of them Country Life ads. They were funny and clever and classy like the Toblerone ads I grew up with.
I've done no harm to no one. In fact, I think I've improved the world.
I don't have huge bank accounts. I'd love one. But it wouldn't change much. I don't have any expensive habits. I'm not a car collector or any of that nonsense. But I'd love to be incredibly wealthy for no reason at all.
Having a birthday cake squashed into your face by young kids? Delicious. I always don a Santa suit at Christmas. Remaining childish is a tremendous state of innocence.
I don't think there's any such thing as rock n' roll anymore - it's an amalgamation of business interests.
I love discordancy. It makes people ill at ease and wakes up a part of their brain that's normally asleep.
I was brought up and raised in Britain as a Labour man, and that quickly changed. And I find there are more working-class people in the Conservative Party than the Labour party.
You gotta bear in mind, the youth - and this is just in Britain alone - have nowhere to go in the evenings. They've closed all the social centers. There's not even a patch of grass to kick a ball on.
I think there's something basically wrong with the general public that they do need their icons.
My biggest fear is mindlessly and stupidly repeating myself.
I don't believe in pets. I like animals to be wild and free.
When you grew up like me and my four brothers, you end up feeling somewhat inadequate, like somehow you don't count. I was very ill as a child and in and out of hospital. That sort of alienates you, and in my songs I put that to good use.
I love consumerism, TV culture, shopping malls. There's nothing I'd ever buy, but I like being there. It's wacky.
I wanted to wear the most impenetrable suit of armour ever known to mankind. 'Hello, Mr. Rotten...' You can't say anything about me. You can't put me down in any way shape or form - I'm rotten to the core... you know, what's left for you? Pleasantries? I suppose the worst insult you could sling my way is 'Oh, he's really nice, him.'
I've helped launch 49 careers - those that have been in PiL. To me, they are my babies; whatever they get up to, they know I love them. They've been living in my pockets, and they should show more gratitude.
Some song ideas absolutely require a kind of rigid discipline, and others require absolute chaotic abandon. The form is only valid if you know how to un-form it. I don't mean to sound like an intellectual here!
I'm not great at dealing with death, I have to say. I find death very hard: my mum, my dad, Sid Vicious. I'm not a monster; I feel it and it scares me. One death at a time, please, is all my heart will bear.
I have values. But morals are Christian. There's no religion here. Values. Don't hurt when you don't need to, but don't let anybody step over that line - it's an invisible line, but it's respect for somebody's space.
The so-called alleged 'art' of the video - well, the video has killed the radio star, but the video star killed the live musician, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Oscar Wilde turned the world upside down and was able to laugh at it, and hopefully by the time I'm 120 and worn out, that's what I will achieve. I love being alive so much.
My entire life, socially, was all around the Maggie era. That was the great challenge as a Sex Pistol was how to deal with Margaret Thatcher. I think we did rather good.
People think I hate the Royal Family, but that's not true.
I've created several musical trends, really. That's not because I'm so far out and fabulous. It's because most bands have no ideas of their own. They're so desperate they'll grab at any old straw.
Obama's dense as a doorbell; not much going on up there - it's a wooden top.
No matter what you experience in life, it incorporates political tendencies, and in so many ways.
I like crazy people, especially those who don't see the risk.
