John Lydon's second memoir, Anger Is an Energy: My Life Uncensored was released last year in the UK and will get a North American release on April 28 via Dey Street Books. It was well-recieved in the UK, here's an exceprt of The Guardian's review:



On the face of it, Anger Is an Energy is true to the form: light on reflection and context, and told with barely a pause for breath. As with other celeb memoirs, it sometimes achieves a tone of self-importance that takes it into the realm of the Pooteresque. But it is a relief to report that it is also fascinating, and stands as a corrective to the idea that Lydon is merely a former pantomime villain. It also amounts to a 500-page yell of insistence that he should be entitled to do what he damn well likes, for two reasons: first, the superlative nature of so much of the music that he has created; and second, the life through which he struggled before music offered him an escape route. In an age in which a caste of privately educated musicians threaten to dominate what remains of British rock while singing about nothing much at all, this is what gives the book its fundamental spark: the sense of raw working-class art, and someone driven to create by the furies to which the title allude.

On the day of release (4/28) at Saint Vitus, Lydon will talk with Pitchfork's Brandon Stosuy. You need to buy a copy of the book to attend. There will be a Q&A portion, but questions must be submitted in advance.

Lydon's first book, Rotten: No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish, was published in 1994 and is more of an oral history, with contributions from Chrissie Hynde, Don Letts, the other Sex Pistols, and more. It's very good and well worth seeking out.

In other news, The Sex Pistols' classic debut Never Mind the Bullocks will be coming out as a picture disc for Record Store Day in the UK.