Rotten Quotes

“If you are pissing people off, you know you are doing something right”
― John Lydon, Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs

“Any kind of history you read is basically the winning side telling you the others were bad.”
― John Lydon, Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs

“Chaos was my philosophy. Oh, yeah. Have no rules. If people start to build fences around you, break out and do something else. You should never, ever be understood completely. That's like the kiss of death, isn't it? It's a full stop. I don't ever think you should put full stops on thoughts. They change.”
― John Lydon, Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs

“I'm not very good at handling stupid people. I must admit.”
― John Lydon, Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs

“Before the Sex Pistols, music was so bloody serious, all run by university graduates. It was all head music devoid of any real intellectualism. There was no deep though in it, merely images pertaining to something mystical, too stupid and absolutely devoid of reality. How on earth were we supposed to relate to that music when we lived in council flats? We had no money, no job, no nothing. So the Pistols projected that anger, that rock-bottom working-class hate.”
― John Lydon, Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs

“Ich sag’s ihnen in’s gesicht.”
― John Lydon, Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs

“I was determined not to back down. Again, another sink-or-swim situation. You have to get through it; you can’t run away.”
― John Lydon, Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs

“The idea was to tell lies and play with the myths and cause them to explode. The Sex Pistols were about placing a charge inside your head and questioning what you thought about the world. By blowing it up, you were forced to think about the fragments and what it meant.”
― John Lydon, Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs

“You could just be yourself. That was a very important part of the Sex Pistols era. It wasn’t an antisex thing or a consciously premeditated attitude. We weren’t going to play the games according to the previous shitheads.”
― John Lydon, Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs

“I was a young chap who thought I was severely ugly and nobody would ever speak to me. There was this movement full of people feeling exactly the same way. It was a social way of meeting equally ugly people, the Equally Ugly Club. There wasn’t those prejudices. Sitting in Louise’s, lesbians didn’t have to act butch and beat us up. Gays didn’t have to overreact around us. There was no need to define gay or lesbian, with previous generations trying desperately to be weird just for the sake of it. That was immediately redundant. It didn’t make any difference after that. That was the most enjoyable aspect of it. I used to like that. You weren’t threatened by sexuality from people.”
― John Lydon, Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs

“Basically, I reinvented myself through my punk experience. Think about it. I was this guy in dark glasses managing a shop. Then punk came along and I thought, Fuck me, I’m going to have some of that! I had to feel like I was contributing. I picked up the camera, made The Punk Rock Movie, and documented all the events I thought were interesting and ridiculous. My movie was an example of the whole movement. I was inspired to do it. It became The Punk Rock Movie”
― John Lydon, Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs

“By that time, Sid was just into chaos for the sheer hell of it. Destroy everything. That’s well and fine, but you don’t destroy things offhand and flippantly. You’ve got to offer something in its place. Since I always have to have a point and purpose to everything I do, that’s why people accuse me of being calculated. But it’s the way I am. I always know my next move.”
― John Lydon, Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs

“The fanatics out there take things far too seriously. They’d probably be appalled at the way we view our own material because they see it quite differently. They want us to have their visions and represent their attitudes about our work. Audiences are far too fucking demanding on the people they like and dislike. The truth always lets them down because it destroys their fantasies.”
― John Lydon, Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs

“The folks at the Longhorn Ballroom in Texas had the same opinion as us about New York. Everything that came out of New”
― John Lydon, Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs

“Again, people like their statements sold to them rather than making their own.”
― John Lydon, Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs

“In Glen’s book, he claimed all I ever said to him was “Drop dead.” That’s right, Glen. Drop dead. Unfortunately for him, he doesn’t seem to think I meant it. I fucking well did. Continuously.”
― John Lydon, Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs

“The police caught us and brought Jimmy and me to the front step. My father answered the door. They asked him, “Are these your sons?” “Never seen them before in me life.” He slammed the door in the policeman’s face. There was nothing they could do with us. We were underage, so they had to let us go. At first I was horrified, but later I realized that was the smartest thing I’d ever seen my old man do. He impressed me no end, because he never mentioned it again, either.”
― John Lydon, Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs

“There’s no master conspiracy in anything, not even in governments. Everything is just some kind of vaguely organized chaos.”
― John Lydon, Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs