... 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.

Lipstick Traces : A Secret History of the 20th Century (1989), p. 1.