johnny rotten

Pistol, Hulu’s six-episode retelling of the Sex Pistols’ story through guitarist Steve Jones’ eyes, is hardly the first cinematic rendering of the life and times of England’s most notorious early punk-rock band. But it is the best. Mind you, the competition is hardly fierce. The first, 1980’s The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle, was ostensibly a […]

From Patti Smith and Joe Strummer to Iggy Pop and Keith Morris, see our list.

“Rock ‘n’ roll is supposed to be fun,” Sex Pistols singer Johnny Rotten told British rock journalist Charles Shaar Murray in 1977. “You’re supposed to enjoy it. It’s not about taking a million fucking years to learn a million fucking chords on the guitar.”  That clarion call — sounded as their anti-royalist diatribe “God Save […]

As long as there’s been a punk scene, its denizens have argued as to which city invented it — New York or London? Truth be told, it was neither because history’s first proper punk band was the Stooges from Ann Arbor, Michigan. Which would make Detroit punk’s proper birthplace. But if much of the sound […]

One of punk rock’s original goals was “the destruction of rock ‘n’ roll.” While that didn’t happen, most early punk musicians were rock fans, in spite of their espoused rhetoric. Hence why most early pogo soundtracks were basically Chuck Berry with a Marshall amp. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But this is hardly […]

There are a lot of people out there who know what punk rock is but have no idea how to explain it to a novice or an outsider. It would seem simple enough to define it as “three-chord teenage rebel music,” but what about all those songs that have four or more chords? Or all […]

“Government authorize education/(Don’t mean a thing)/They’ll teach you what they want you to think/(Don’t mean a thing)/Saturation of stars and stripes/(Don’t mean a thing)/The only freedom worth fighting for is for what you think/Why bother spending time/Reading up on things/Everybody’s an authority/In a free land” Those 11 lines comprise the entire lyric of “In A […]

“We’re the Interrupters! We’re from Los Angeles, California!” the young guitarist announces over a fanfare, as the camera pulls back and reveals a four-piece band, plus a singer, and a crush of throbbing humanity in a tiny space. “And this first song is a protest song, but it’s also a unity song. Because there’s no […]

1997: All media is declaring the alternative–rock explosion—for which Nirvana lit the fuse—over. This means the commercial pop-punk wave Green Day touched off was over in their eyes, too. That selfsame media could not have been more wrong. Green Day had just issued their fifth album, Nimrod. The Offspring, the band who made the catchphrase […]

We’re back with another AltPress Weekly. Each week, we highlight the things we want you to check out. We shout out new discoveries and longtime favorites, the best new, old and everything in between. We’ll also always keep you up to date with the latest coverage over at Alternative Press, along with the stories we […]

This past March 5, the French punk label Guerilla Asso quietly slipped a genius album into the marketplace: Rocket To Kingston, credited to Bobby Ramone. The melding of the isolated vocal tracks from nine of Bob Marley’s most deathless classics to edited Ramones backing tracks, it sounds like a joke on paper. The cover even […]

The idea of compiling a list of the greatest punk singers of the ‘80s might seem a bit odd. After all, this was when hardcore rose and quickly dominated all things punk. And let’s face it: Hardcore vocalists are more noted for bellowing than actual singing, per se. Not that late ‘70s punk harbored many […]

1996: President Bill Clinton was squaring off against Kansas Sen. Bob Dole in a successful bid for a second term in the White House. On April 3, former math professor Ted Kaczynski was arrested in his remote Montana cabin, suspected (correctly, it turns out) to be American domestic terrorist the Unabomber. Conservative public policy bulwark […]

Since the world first became aware that there is such a thing as punk, there’s been a nonstop argument about its birthplace. The clueless mainstream media reported for years that it began in England, simply because the Sex Pistols’ snarl was more extreme. Which royally pissed off New York City, the first place to essentially […]

Rock ‘n’ roll had, for the most part, lost its “roll” by 1970. It became rock music—self-serious, dour, pompous, filled with pretensions to being “art.” It ceased being fabulous teenage noise, filled with Chuck Berry’s playful swagger and Elvis’ hypersexualized pelvic thrust and rebel sneer. Kids wanted something loud and flashy, full of energy, something […]

Nashville songwriting great Harlan Howard once defined country music as “three chords and the truth.” Many have said that definition could also be applied to punk rock. Therefore, it stands to reason that the figure writhing behind the mic stand might be the most essential member of any punk band. After all, it isn’t the […]

To consider Alternative Press’ list of 1994’s top 15 punk albums, one has to bear in mind two factors: Green Day’s Dookie was released Feb. 1. Kurt Cobain died by his own hand April 5. The alternative nation’s voice was suddenly, shockingly stilled. After three years of the most popular music being an agonized scream […]

Post-punk had to happen. Punk rock opened all this space for people to make exactly the kind of art or culture that the disenfranchised had been imagining in their heads, and maybe had limited means or skills by which to make it. But what if you didn’t want to crank out recharged three-chord rock ’n’ […]

Earlier this year, we learned that director Danny Boyle is directing a new Sex Pistols mini-series called Pistol exclusively for FX. Now, Sex Pistols fans are getting their first look at the actors portraying Steve Jones, Sid Vicious, Johnny Rotten, Glen Matlock and Paul Cook in the upcoming limited series. Read more: Bad Suns are performing […]