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Love & Passion Quote by Gavin Rossdale

"I pretty much grew up when punk was big in the UK. The Sex Pistols were heroes for me. I used to run around like Johnny Rotten. I had a jacket like his"

About this Quote

Rossdale isn’t name-dropping punk to borrow cool points; he’s mapping an origin story in costume and posture. “Grew up when punk was big” pins his adolescence to a public mood: a Britain where boredom, class friction, and economic gloom made volume feel like truth. The Sex Pistols weren’t just a band in that context, they were a permission slip. Calling them “heroes” signals something more intimate than fandom: a model for how to exist loudly in a country that often rewards restraint.

The telling detail is the imitation. “I used to run around like Johnny Rotten” isn’t about musical technique; it’s about identity as performance. Rotten’s genius was never polish but attitude weaponized into a persona - the sneer as armor, the body as a provocation. Rossdale remembers copying the movement, not the chords, because punk’s real curriculum was behavioral: how to take up space when you feel powerless.

“I had a jacket like his” lands like a small confession about the way subcultures travel through objects. Clothes become a portable manifesto, a way to signal tribe before you’ve earned your own voice. It’s also a quiet admission that rebellion starts, awkwardly, as mimicry. Rossdale’s later career - arena-sized alternative rock with punk DNA but pop reach - makes the nostalgia legible: punk wasn’t a destination, it was the first vocabulary he tried on. The jacket is the receipt.

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APA Style (7th ed.)
Rossdale, Gavin. (n.d.). I pretty much grew up when punk was big in the UK. The Sex Pistols were heroes for me. I used to run around like Johnny Rotten. I had a jacket like his. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-pretty-much-grew-up-when-punk-was-big-in-the-uk-53176/

Chicago Style
Rossdale, Gavin. "I pretty much grew up when punk was big in the UK. The Sex Pistols were heroes for me. I used to run around like Johnny Rotten. I had a jacket like his." FixQuotes. Accessed February 2, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-pretty-much-grew-up-when-punk-was-big-in-the-uk-53176/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I pretty much grew up when punk was big in the UK. The Sex Pistols were heroes for me. I used to run around like Johnny Rotten. I had a jacket like his." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-pretty-much-grew-up-when-punk-was-big-in-the-uk-53176/. Accessed 2 Feb. 2026.

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About the Author

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Gavin Rossdale (born October 30, 1967) is a Musician from United Kingdom.

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