They wouldn't play my records on American radio because I had spiky hair. They said, 'Punk rock doesn't sell advertising, it won't make any money.'

They wouldn't play my records on American radio because I had spiky hair. They said, 'Punk rock doesn't sell advertising, it won't make any money.'

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.

When the other man has none, you don't need a gun.

Rock isn't art, it's the way ordinary people talk.

I am hopelessly divided between the dark and the good, the rebel and the saint, the sex maniac and the monk, the poet and the priest, the demagogue and the populist. Pen to paper, I put it all down - I'm out on a limb here, so watch my back.

I am quite a romantic person, really, and I should have put that into my music earlier, but I was probably denying it... I didn't want to be soft because I felt I had to be so hard to get people to believe in me.