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“Anger is an energy. It really bloody is. It’s possibly the most powerful one-liner I’ve ever come up with. When I was writing the Public Image Ltd song ‘Riseâ€�, I didn’t quite realize the emotional impact that it would have on me, or anyone who’s ever heard it since. I wrote it in an almost throwaway fashion, off the top of my head, pretty much when I was about to sing the whole song for the first time, at my then new home in Los Angeles. It’s a tough, spontaneous idea. ‘Riseâ€� was looking at the context of South Africa under apartheid. I’d be watching these horrendous news reports on CNN, and so lines like ‘They put a hotwire to my head, because of the things I did and saidâ€�, are a reference to the torture techniques that the apartheid government was using out there. Insufferable. You’d see these reports on TV and in the papers, and feel that this was a reality that simply couldn’t be changed. So, in the context of ‘Riseâ€�, ‘Anger is an energyâ€� was an open statement, saying, ‘Don’t view anger negatively, don’t deny it â€� use it to be creative.â€� I combined that with another refrain, ‘May the road rise with youâ€�. When I was growing up, that was a phrase my mum and dad â€� and half the surrounding neighbourhood, who happened to be Irish also â€� used to say. ‘May the road rise, and your enemies always be behind you!â€� So it’s saying, ‘There’s always hopeâ€�, and that you don’t always have to resort to violence to resolve an issue. Anger doesn’t necessarily equate directly to violence. Violence very rarely resolves anything. In South Africa, they eventually found a relatively peaceful way out. Using that supposedly negative energy called anger, it can take just one positive move to change things for the better. When I came to record the song properly, the producer and I were arguing all the time, as we always tend to do, but sometimes the arguing actually helps; it feeds in. When it was released in early 1986, ‘Riseâ€� then became a total anthem, in a period when the press were saying that I was finished, and there was nowhere left for me to go. Well, there was, and I went there. Anger is an energy. Unstoppable.”
― John Lydon, Anger is an Energy: My Life Uncensored

“I never felt Irish. I always felt, ‘I’m English, this is where I come from, and that’s that.â€� Because you’d be reminded of that when you went to Ireland: ‘Ye’re not Oirish!â€� the locals would say. So it was like, ‘Bloody hell, shot by both sides here.â€� I still love that Magazine song â€� so relevant to me, those lyrics.”
― John Lydon, Anger is an Energy: My Life Uncensored

“Johnny Rotten slouches at the front of the stage, propped up on the mike stand. He's leaning so far forward he looks as if he might topple into the empty space in front of the audience. · His face is pale and his body is twisted into such an awkward ugly shape he looks deformed. He looks ordinary, about the same age as us, the kind of boy I was at comprehensive school with. He's not a flashy star like Marc Bolan or David Bowie, all dressed up in exotic costumes, he's not a virtuoso musician like Eric Clapton or Peter Green, he's not even a macho rock-and-roll pub-band singer â€� he's just a bloke from Finsbury Park, London, England, who’s pissed off. Johnny sneers at us in his ordinary North London accent, his voice isn't trained and tuneful, it's a whiny cynical drawl, every song delivered unemotionally. There's no fake American twang either. All the things I'm so embarrassed about, John's made into virtues. He's unapologetic about who he is and where he comes from. Proud of it even. He's not taking the world's lack of interest as confirmation that he’s wrong or worthless. I look up at him twisting and yowling and realise it's everyone else who's wrong, not him. How did he make that mental leap from musically untrained, state-school-educated, council estate boy, to standing on stage in front of a band? I think he's brave. A revolutionary. He's sending a very powerful message, the most powerful message anyone can ever transmit. Be yourself.”
― Viv Albertine, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys