Everyone thought in the early days of punk, certainly once English punk got going, and even American punk, everyone thought it was a horrible right-wing Nazi thing – violent, racist, and against everything good in life.

So punk wasn’t about decay, punk was about the apocalypse. Punk was about annihilation.

That record became very key for me, not just for what it said, and for how great it was, but also because I heard other people who could make good music without being any good at music. It gave me hope.

Bob Gruen: La gente veniva da noi per farsi mordere, non per farsi accarezzare.

Rispetto a quello che stava succedendo nel mondo reale, la decadenza sembrava un vezzo. Quindi il punk andava oltre la decadenza: il punk era l'apocalisse. Era l'annientamento. Non funzionava più niente, e allora tanto valeva passare direttamente all'Apocalisse.

Ed Friedman: [talking about Patti Smith] One time she told me, "Allen Ginsberg thought I was a cute boy and he tried to pick me up, so I said, "LOOK AT THE TITS, ALLEN! NOTICE THE TITS!

Hippies survived Nixon, but punk caved in to Ronald Reagan, know what I'm saying? Punk actually couldn't take a good challenge.

The only thing that made the music different was that we were taking lyrics to places they had never been before. The thing that makes art interesting is when an artist has incredible pain or incredible rage. The New York bands were much more into their pain, while the English bands were much more into their rage. The Sex Pistols' songs were written out of anger, wheras Johnny was writing songs because he was brokenhearted over Sable...