"Greil Marcus, author of 'Mystery Train,' widely accepted as the best book ever written about America as seen through its music, began work on this new book out of a fascination with the Sex Pistols : that scandalous antimusical group, invented in London in 1975 and dead within two years, which sparked the emergence of the culture called punk. 'I am an antichrist!' shouted singer Johnny Rotten -- Where in the world of pop music did that come from? looking for an answer, with a high sense of the drama of the journey, Marcus takes us down the dark paths of counterhistory, a route of blasphemy, adventure, and surprise." -- from book's end-flap.