Anger Is an Energy

The candid, unvarnished, "ridiculously entertaining" memoir by the legendary Sex Pistols frontman (The Telegraph).

When John Lydon first gained the world's attention as Johnny Rotten in the mid-1970s, the Sex Pistols were so notorious and incendiary that in their native England, the Houses of Parliament questioned whether they violated the Traitors and Treasons Act, a crime that carries the death penalty to this day. The Pistols would inspire the formation of numerous other groundbreaking groups and Lydon would become the unlikely champion of a generation clamoring for change.


Lydon went on to form Public Image Ltd (PiL), expressing an equally urgent impulse in his character: the constant need to reinvent himself, to keep moving. He also found time for making innovative dance records with the likes of Afrika Bambaataa and Leftfield. By the nineties he'd broadened his reach into other media while always maintaining his trademark invective and wit, most memorably hosting Rotten TV on VH1.


John Lydon remains a captivating and dynamic figure to this day—both as a musician, and, thanks to his outspoken, controversial, and from-the-hip opinions, as a cultural commentator. In Anger is an Energy, he looks back on a life full of incident, from his beginnings as a sickly child of immigrant Irish parents growing up in post-war London to his present status as a vibrant alternative hero.


"A hilarious and at times touching account." —Rolling Stone

"A lucid, literate pleasure." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Includes photographs