Malcom McLaren on Punk Rock

(Punk) "It actually gave people who would never ordinarily have had the opportunity to express themselves an absolute right to do that. And people believed in it. I think punk rock really gave people a fundamental belief in themselves. That's really what was at the core of it."

from this interview

(Punk)"It was an event. It could have been a story, it could have been a movie. It wasn't a musical landmark, it couldn't be, you were only still presenting the same rock and roll chord structures as albums and previous groups had before. You weren't singing blues, you were ranting and raving and you were getting away with it, with a couple of pop twists here and there, and ideas. But what you had was an immense look, a look that unquestionably was going to change the way people were going to think about themselves. A new generation wanted to ally themselves with a new look, and this was the new look, and it was the look that was a hit. And the new look did not depend on you buying the record. It just depended on you turning your jacket inside out, you know, putting your hair up, or wearing a dog collar, or smashing your shirt and scrawling with Pentel a circle with an A in the middle! Or wearing a chaos armband or raiding your mother's closet for safety pins, or literally just leaving school at 15 rather than 16 and sleeping in the park. Or starting a group by stealing a guitar out of Woolworths, or whatever it was. It didn't depend on you buying the record, it wasn't that kind of act, it could never be. So no-one was running around buying Sex Pistols records. People were very much wanting to be there at the event, and the fact that they couldn't be at the event made the event an enigma that could never be resolved. And that's what kept the Sex Pistols on the top of the media pile for eighteen months."

from Julian Temple, director "The Great Rock N' Roll Swindle
"He saw the front pages of the daily newspapers as a blank canvas on which to create havoc."
from this obituary in The Guardian