Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984 by Simon Reynolds, a review from Powells.com by Gerry Donaghy.
"There is a saying that when one door is closed, another opens. The door on punk rock was effectively slammed shut in January of 1978, when Johnny Rotten, the lead singer/raconteur of the Sex Pistols, tauntingly asked his audience, 'Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?' at the end of their show at San Francisco's Winterland. It was a salient question at the time. In less than two years his band had gone from guttersnipe musical upstarts to ubiquitous media whores. Instead of smashing the system, they became the lubricant for the machine that is the music industry. Seeing the punk movement he so earnestly believed in devolve into both parody and its own lockstep conformity, Rotten quit the band and immediately distanced himself from punk." Read the entire Powells.com review.