by Lydon, John
The word was out: ‘You can just turn up at Johnny’s, he’ll talk to the walls if he has to, but he will talk!’ I’m a very quiet, solitary kind of person, but I’m very open to significant leaps of faith in any direction. And I do love interesting company.
I ran Gunter Grove almost like an open house, with a thriving community spirit about it. I had an awful lot of visitors, all of them very interesting. What a great collection of people! Every couple of weeks I’d throw a party on a Friday, and just let all my mates know, and the label people at Virgin, because I had a lot of friends there by now. So there’d be a lot of music-y people, but ones you would never expect to meet or have anything to do with. There would be disco bands, and unexpected guests like Joan Armatrading, the folkie singer-songwriter, who I found to be great fun.
There were also film people, authors. I even had the lead singer of the Bay City Rollers turn up with, of all people, John Barry, the composer. What a great evening! Then, later, in the middle of that pow-wow, Stomu Yamashta, the Japanese composer, dropped in. It was like an otherworldly experience, four very different people, but with a commonality of making music. Thrilling conversations!
What a marvellous eye-opener to me. After the misery of the preceding months with the Pistols, it began to make everything seem possible again, as I chatted away to people in all walks of life, musical or otherwise. For me, it was about getting a varied outlook on life. If you do not open yourself up to different outlooks, you are doomed. Doomed to keep repeating the same failures as all the other idiots.
Originally, I just had this maisonette apartment, the upper two floors of an end-of terrace townhouse. But the neighbour that lived underneath couldn’t bear the noise, and so not long after I moved in, he sold me his place, the bottom half. I actually had some trouble raising that money, in the light of my court action against Malcy and the boys.
I never lived there completely alone. I’m not that kind of person, I don’t like loneliness. I do like variety, so an endless parade of people came through for varying lengths of time. To start with, I had Dave Crowe, whom I’d known and kept up with since William of York school days, and another friend from Finsbury Park, Paul ‘Youngie’ Young – the one whose gangster-moll mum ironed his bondage trousers. Paul’s a very cheeky chappie – a snappy dresser, and a complete ladies’ man. Oh, the girls love that fella, and he’s as smooth as butter with it. He’s the kind of bloke, if you want to pick up girls, that’s who you hang out with – just stand next to him.
It was great to share with Paul and Dave initially, because we knew each other so well. I’d spend the whole week with Dave and John Gray putting together mixtapes for the weekend. ‘Aaaw, what records shall we have?’ And, ‘How do we back-to-back these?’ Dave had a reel-to-reel tape machine, so rather than going all turntable-y with it, and being stuck on that all night, we’d pre-record it all, and use the double echo that was on his Revox for the joinings between tracks. There’d be bits of Ben-Hur thrown in there, and all sorts of nonsense.
One of our favourite tunes in those early weeks of 1978 was the dancehall reggae hit, ‘Uptown Top Ranking’ by Althea and Donna – ‘In a mi khaki suit an t’ing!’ – what wonderfulness that song is! One night that backing track came on because we’d put the dub version in one of our reel-to-reel mixes. Unbeknownst to us, Althea and Donna were actually in the room, and they jumped up and started singing.
All the time it would be like that, it would be proper joy, loving the music, loving the social scene, and loving the fascinating interest everybody had for everybody else. Proper times. Precursor of what Rave was trying to do, I suppose. All agendas catered for, except of course for the jealous and spiteful who were never welcome. Hard to suss them ones out, though, from time to time. You make a mistake, and you think, ‘Ah well, give ’em a chance.’ That’s my way, I’ll give anybody a chance, and if they step wrong with it, well, there’s the door.
For a while there, it got a little like, Johnny versus the rest of the residents in the vicinity, what with all the noise complaints. The neighbours next door never heard anything through the wall until builders came in and thinned the wall down for some weird reason. Then suddenly, the noise went straight through. British builders – I tell you, you want to watch them. They were so bad, removing bricks in an adjoining wall, and they removed them to the point where I could see them at work from my upstairs bedroom. ‘That’s too much, come on! How are you going to paper over that hole? Put the bricks back!’ I’m positive it wasn’t an intoxicated vision, by the way – it was reality.
Another complaint was hilarious: it was some Italians that lived opposite my back yard. They came over and said, ‘We don’t mind loud music, but what we really can’t stand is that reggae!’ You’ve gotta laugh. So it was a matter of taste. And of course that didn’t create issues. If people tell me what’s really getting to them, I’m very open with that. I agreed not to be playing that stuff at 4 a.m.
The curiosity of reggae for me was always that it’s not an aggressive music, the lilting rhythms were just beautiful, but my God, the dialogue was diff’raaant – totally ’ardcore. That juxtaposition is alarmingly loud: incredibly sad songs of pain and suffering, or revolution even, inside happy melodies. A very effective way of getting a message across.
A song like ‘Born For A Purpose’ by Dr Alimantado was just life-altering for me. The lyrics, I thought, were genius, and particularly fantastic if you feel you have no reason for living. Like, don’t determine my life! ‘Whoah! Hello, Jamaica! You’ve got some good brains going on there.’ For me it was utterly one of those moments when you hear a song, and it’s an affirmation of the highest order. Like, ‘Aaah, we’re out there together – people who care and really consider what it is they do, and who know that they’re on this planet to do something positive.’
Everybody in the reggae world came to Gunter Grove at one time or another, because we certainly had the kind of sound system they’d enjoy, but mainly because it was a house where you weren’t predetermined or judged. Welcome, one and all, and no troubles, ever.
In the early part of ’78, I actually spent a month in Jamaica. I used to get on with Simon Draper, who was second-in-command to Richard Branson at Virgin. He was an ex-South African army fella, but he really cared, he was genuine. He knew when the Pistols fell apart that I could end up in all kinds of problems, so he gave me something to do – go to Kingston, indulge in the latest sounds emanating there, and help sign acts for Virgin’s new reggae subsidiary label, Front Line. The label, I thought, was a great idea, and I felt a massive respect to Simon and Richard for what they were doing for me on a personal level.
When the opportunity came up, I said, ‘Look, I’m not going there alone. I know there’ll be other Virgin people, but I need a working crew.’ The crew were people that deserved to be there, and not much really to do with signing anyone. I wasn’t expecting them to take on that workload; that wasn’t their role. I wanted people directly related with the place. So I asked Don Letts, the dread-locked DJ from the Roxy club, and Dennis Morris, a photographer who took a lot of pictures of the Pistols towards the end.
Don and Dennis seemed right to me, because they had family there, and that was important. I was thinking from the heart, not from the selfish perspective of a gang of Brits abroad going to Spain. It wasn’t going to be a holiday of oik-iness. I could have filled aeroplanes full, but I wasn’t going to be like that. I wasn’t going to do this to abuse Virgin either or take it as an easy ride. I took it very serious. For all three of us, it felt like a musical pilgrimage.
Branson met us at the airport in a 1940s Rolls-Royce with a flat-top roof. It was just amazing, driving through Kingston in that absurdly pompous, Raj-of-India car. Jamaicans being what they are, they’re very loud – dey let ya know a t’ing or two, mon! It felt like walls of abuse, cynicism and wit being hurled at us. So that was my introduction to Jamaica, and I’m eternally grateful.
For that, I worked kind of semi-hard
for Branson, to make sure he was paying attention to the right bands. It was thrilling to be visiting the different studios and hearing the different styles. And going to the record stores, and just getting into it big time, and getting to really love many of the people.
The open friendliness of what Rasta was offering then was astounding. It was, I thought, a good clue to what a proper new world order could be. At that time, as everyone knows from their Bob Marley records, they were enduring the worst of the worst out there, with all the poverty and political violence, but they’d be waltzing through it with a smile, which was quite inexplicably excellent of them.
Look at the troubles they’ve had to endure just to be Jamaica, from slavery onwards. My God, them fellas have been through the wringer. With all the wrangling between the People’s National Party (PNP) and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) (or the JVC, as I called ’em), a civil war was going on. Very chaotic. When a Jamaican says ‘Peace!’ it carries some weight to me because they really, genuinely mean it. They really do know how to endure warfare. Jamaicans are not cowards, they’re brave fellas, brave men, women and children.
We set up shop at the Sheraton Hotel in Uptown Kingston, and soon found that most of the musicians already knew we were there and were queuing up to see us. That was breaking many social taboos in Jamaica at the time because there was a very negative thing floating around, where Rasta was associated with dirt and filth and laziness and trampishness.
There was a great record out then called ‘Ain’t No 40 Leg Pon Di Dread’ by George Nooks, which was answering this horrible urban myth that was spreading around, about how a Rasta was found dead on the beach, and they found centipedes in his dreadlocks. They obviously weren’t in there before he died, but we all know how headlines can take over, and reality is turfed out the window for sensationalism.
So, there in Jamaica, everybody presumed there was all manner of filthy beasts lurking in the hairdo, and so Rasta was always supposed to keep his locks hidden. You could end up in jail for flashing them. A yell went up, for instance, when Don jumped in the hotel swimming pool, and his hair was floating on the top, while the rest of him was four foot underwater. When these fellas came to see us, though, we weren’t having any of that. ‘You can take your hat off . . . Look, I’ll take my coat off too.’
I’d gone out there with next-to-no clothes. I had a trench coat, two T-shirts, a pair of brothel creepers, a wide-brimmed hat – a Lee van Cleef number – and a blue tartan bondage jacket and not much else. I wasn’t expecting that kind of heat.
As an aside, the bondage jacket came from a suit I’d had made by Vivienne for the American tour. I’d insisted that there be some crotch space in them pants this time! And I didn’t want the zip to come from the back to the front, I wanted a man-zip, at the front. And I didn’t want a silly little towel, I wanted a kilt, and a bolero jacket. Unfortunately, by the time I got to Jamaica, the bondage pants had rotted out, quite literally, from touring. Not being in any frame of mind to do any washing, all that was left really was the jacket. That jacket I quite happily sent to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York a couple of years ago, so it’s done its world tours.
Going to the beach in JA, that was a nightmare. I was very body conscious, I still am. I don’t like to strip down and run into the sea unless I can do it real quick, fully clothed. I was aware of how white I was, and how that would draw howls of laughter, because Jamaicans will tell you straight away. But I couldn’t stand sweating on the beach any longer, so I just did it – took my clothes off and went swimming, and the howling actually was good. It’s friendly, if you catch it right. They knew I felt foolish, and looked it, and I became very red, very quickly, because of the sun. And this, for them, was their winter.
We were only supposed to stay in Kingston for two weeks, initially, but we decided to stay on another fortnight, and dug into our own pockets. Don and Dennis took us all to meet some of their respective families, so it became a family-orientated thing, not just a cold business venture.
One of the worst things that happened was at Dennis Morris’s aunt’s place – or was it his grandmother’s? We went round there and, you know, people don’t have money, so when they put a bowl of soup or stew in front of you, you show respect and you eat it. Of course, it was loaded with scotch bonnet – a type of chilli pepper, which must be the hottest thing I’ve ever known in my life. It was un-be-liev-able. In 110-degree heat! So the trenchcoat had to go. Then a girlfriend of a saxophonist called Dirty Harry came round, and she went, ‘Jahn, ya got nah cloaathes,’ and she bought me this grey top, so I wore that for the rest of the time.
It felt really good to give Don and Dennis the opportunity to meet their relatives. It did Don a world of good – he truly found himself in all of this, even though he had to endure the wrath of all the native Rastas. They’d be going, ‘Rastaman eat lobster?!’ That’s part of the Rasta trip – no shellfish. Fair play, Don stood up and went, ‘Yeah!’ He wasn’t adhering religiously to a dogma that didn’t make too much sense.
His grandparents, on the other hand, didn’t approve of him being Rasta. It’s always hurtful to meet relatives in those situations. At the same time it was something that needed to be done, and it’s very difficult to say goodbye when you leave – and there I was in my ridiculous outfit trying to blend into the background.
The Jamaicans are so funny. They’d say to me in the street: ‘Are you a gunman? From May-hee-ko?’ But then U-Roy, the DJ originator, was like someone who’d just stepped out of a Clint Eastwood movie. A great fella, mad as a hatter, but full-on with the Rasta thing, and I had lots of puzzlements. There was a hammock in the yard and I asked about it, and it turned out that’s where his missus had to sleep at night, because when you’re on your period, you’re not allowed inside the house. That’s, y’know, grrr, kind of a deal-breaker for me, innit? I’d see parts of that aspect of Rasta in other people we’d meet – the woman would have to walk behind the man by some distance.
I thought you can’t have those divisions and then rail against inequality in your music, because you’re enforcing it on other people yourself. So I saw a lot of problems with Rasta. To my mind they’ve got to bring the women and children in on an equal level with them. Room for improvement! And dangerous bugger that I am, I had to tell ’em!
Then we’d go into these very precarious ghetto areas and meet people like Tapper Zukie. He’d be very proud to show you his gang and their guns, and waltz up and down the street waving them. I’m like, ‘Oh my God, what am I doing here, there could be a gun war at any second?’ That’s Jamaica, and these are very dangerous situations we got ourselves into. Open-minded foolishness really was the only passport in and out of them. Sometimes, if you’re too aware of your surroundings, the good things might not happen for you, never mind the bad.
We went to quite a few sound systems. Typical Jamaica, though – these things don’t start kicking up until about midnight, and you’re so stoned by then, to the point of barely being able to speak or even stand. I’m sorry, but that pipe will knock you out. It’s a hard thing to become accustomed to, and being the white boy in the house, it’s shoved in your face straight away. There’s your manhood challenge. I’d be mixing that up of course with Heinekens, and at that time beer was frowned on in reggae circles, but still it earns you brownie points – two things to put you flat on your back, both at once. Well done, John!
My favourite people were probably the Congos, a vocal group who recorded one of their greatest albums at Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s Black Ark studios. I loved them and their families, and just their generosity in life. It was inspiring to be honest and really frank with them. All judgement went out of the window, as soon as you’d sit and talk with these fellas, truly classic examples of passive resistance at its finest. Meant no harm to no one – superb, my kind of people.
We actually went to the Black Ark. I even tried to record with Lee Perry, but I couldn’t get to grips with him. Too many distractions, too nervous
and too stoned. I was trying to fiddle about with the Pistols song ‘Submission’, to do a Jamaica-inspired version of that. You’re trying to lay down a vocal, and there’s just too much going on. There was a guitarist there called Chinna, and he had one of them wah-wah mouthpieces you put on a guitar. That was his big toy, and it was so distracting. It was a sound I didn’t like.
On a lot of Perry’s mixes from that era, you hear this creaking noise in the background. I found out it was the studio door, the hinges were rusty, and it was just people coming in and out, which they seemed to be doing most of the time. His equipment – or lack of – was very, very primitive but achieving outstanding results. Admirable. And it was all one-take.
Perry went mad not long after I was there and burned down his studio. He’d supposedly had an argument over money with Island Records, and apparently painted over all the masters with green paint, so that they couldn’t take them off him. Rather than having his music stolen, he destroyed it.
When I was there, the bigger the bong, the more active he became. Don’t know how that works for them fellas. I still don’t know to this day how you can smoke the weed at all without destroying your voice. It takes the top end right out of me, and all that flows out is a scratchy noise. I don’t have the pipes for that.
To be very honest, it came as a surprise when I was asked to Perry’s studio. I didn’t get my chops together. I wasn’t prepared for it. Ouch. Tail-between-the-legs time.
The funniest moments were probably with the bass and drum supremos, Sly & Robbie. They were fully affiliated with Island, so it wasn’t really about work, it was just social. They really are like the Nile Rodgers of Jamaica. They ribbed Don no end. They ribbed me too. ‘C’mon mon, what you wearing dat big coat faaar?’ By the end, I was down to flip-flops, shorts and a T-shirt, because that’s how it should’ve been right at the start. I was terribly self-aware of just how white and pale my skin was. I was looking like a cross between a concentration camp victim and Dracula.
