by Lydon, John
All I know is, it was very pain-driven. I don’t quite know what the pain was, other than stre-e-e-e-esssss. Stress, stress, stress. ‘Be the man, you’ve got to be the man in this situation, you’ve got to keep the band together, you’ve got to run the business, you’ve gotta do this, you’ve gotta do that – aaaarrrrrgh!’
I managed to get a studio built at the house in Venice Beach with my brother Martin. But we got ourselves too bogged down with modern technology, to the point where we had no energy left to do anything with it. You can’t, as a songwriter, be involved with anything other than the songs; you really can’t. You’re doing yourself a disservice. If you’re getting clogged up with business, that’s contaminating creativity.
You could spend the rest of your life trying to unravel this nonsense. Coming to America was no easy move. Having to deal with the accountants, lawyers and managers, who were supposed to navigate me through how things work over here, was a living nightmare. Add in the record company not backing me, and the fact that I still exist at all in any stable form is astounding. The endless stream of managers – I mean no harm to any of them, they all tried their best. I trusted them that they were actually qualified to do the job, but they simply didn’t have the tools.
There was a time back there when I was desperate for a good manager, and I actually thought about approaching Sharon Osbourne – would she look out for my career? – because I love Ozzy. I thought, ‘She’s doing all right for him.’ And this is way before their TV programme. People were saying good things about her, a tough, no-nonsense bird, but it never came to anything. A few years ago, I said something about Ozzy in an interview: I called him something like a ‘senile delinquent’, which really upset his family. I didn’t mean anything by it, I said the wrong thing. I have the most incredible love and respect for Ozzy.
For me, emotionally, the ’80s and early ’90s felt like an incredibly unrewarding period. I was going through managers like Smarties. It was very confusing. I needed help – just someone in the industry – but there was no one really prepared to step up to the plate.
I wasn’t getting any benefits, I wasn’t getting pats on the back, I was isolated. No matter what I would do, there would always be band members to go, ‘Oh, he’s a bastard, he is.’ I came to thinking: a captain of a ship really can’t afford to have friends on board. If there’s not a difference there, then it won’t work at that particular point in life. I’ve found out since that this ideology is unnecessary, because I now work with people I truly love and trust, and hopefully vice versa, but it’s quite amazing how I had to go through all that, to get to this – where I am with today’s PiL. To get to the real essence of what is me, how do you get people to pay attention? Are they really seriously only interested in the scandal-mongering of a nineteeen-year-old? Or do they want to go on a journey of self-discovery? Well, no, they want the scandal. That’s fine.
In the ’80s the publicity machines took over. The frivolous hairdos which we all suffered from in that period led to many, many things, and now it really is all about sensationalist headlines and no content. It’s a curiosity to me, because I was accused of just having frivolous headlines and no content from the day I started, but I think the Pistols were all content. Every single song, and indeed every single word; that was a good springboard for me and I’m still that same fella. Obviously I’ve grown up, I’ve grown sideways and frontwards, and I have a bigger vocabulary, and I can express myself far deeper and more meaningfully, but I’m still loyal to those basic truths in life.
By the early ‘90s, I was getting fed up with all the rubbish that was being put out there about the Pistols story, where my life and everything I stood for were being misinterpreted by an odd bunch of fellas that really should have known better – in particular, Jon Savage. I helped him with his book England’s Dreaming, and when it was published amid loads of media fanfare in 1991, he’d cut out large amounts of my conversation, and just backed up his own philosophy. Well, who the fuck are you, Jon Savage? You were not a Sex Pistol.
His book was over-wordy: to understand it, you’d have to have a Latin-to-English dictionary. He used words that weren’t pertinent to the scenario, and presented himself somewhat as an expert on what was going on. How could he? He was a complete outsider, not part of any inner circle, and in fact not much to do with it at all.
When he was putting the book together, I made him promise that it wouldn’t be that kind of book, and I was horrified when it turned out to be everything that he promised me it wouldn’t be. It was narrow-minded, insular, anti-women, misogynist, and hence had no real understanding of the driving force of punk, that it gave women the opportunity for the first time ever in the history of pop culture to stand on the stage, the equal of men. Up until then, women were just matching hairdos, a trilogy of singers, with nothing to do with the songwriting – they were just voiceovers. Bands like X-Ray Spex and the Slits absolutely went into it, like, ‘We’re blokes, too!’ It was an amazing achievement, one that took for ever and ever, and should be admired and respected – all those great, glorious punk women! Fantastic, amazing things they had to offer the world!
Savage’s view of the world was Gang of Four, smug in-house student intellectualism. And all this coming out of the wordsmith genius of an ex-lawyer. The rumour was he gave up law to write music journalism. See? He could’ve been some use to all of us.
This kind of thing was going on and on left, right and centre, all around. I was furious with people deciding what I thought, and did, and how I was – that my opinion was somehow lesser than England’s Dreaming, and how that was presumed to be the authority on punk. The agenda from all manner of bands of the day – not just the Clash! – was to outdo the Sex Pistols. It was an ugly, ugly world.
You’d have to be some kind of idiot if you’re not going to analyze what your public persona is. That doesn’t mean I have to read the sensational hate-lines on a daily basis. Far from it! But I keep my ear to the ground. When the truth is being swayed off into angles of hatred, for God knows whatever different reasons or purposes, there is a point where you have to stand up for yourself. And you pick the best moments to rally your troops.
So I thought that putting out my own true account of things in a book would be a good beginning towards counteracting it all. It was an issue I put off for quite a long time, until the offer came, and there was a lull with Public Image, so I actually had the time. Then I thought, ‘Yeah, I’ll do this.’
I knew it would be taking on a whole kettle of piranhas. It certainly put a full stop on a lot of the nay-sayers. I called it Rotten, with the subtitle No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, as I’d had to not be Rotten for so long because of the court case, and I’d been focusing on PiL–PiL–PiL, where I was Lydon all the way. It was like reclaiming that part of myself. It was a serious step in my character development, because, since putting that book out, I’ve become very much less fearful of who I am, and what I am. And even though people have tarnished and tried to steal that aspect of me, it is still me, it’s an intrinsic part of me, and I’ve come to realize that as very relevant. I am the elephant in the room.
I gave over a lot of space to other people’s voices. Despite all the allegations out there, I still made room for people like Steve Jones and Paul Cook. It proved the point: whatever you think we are, we’re not. We will always still help each other out, because it’s all about telling it like it is, and not just how others want it to be.
I also included some affidavits from the McLaren court case. I absolutely wanted them in there because it gave you a sense of the scenario – just read them and judge for yourself what you think was going on with all of that. There was Malcolm, declaring himself a competent manager – hmm, very novel. Then there was Vivienne’s hateful nonsense – these were the adults in my life and they just weren’t grasping reality at all. They had no qualms about trying to fuck me out of my own life. They came in hard with that ridiculous court case and left with their arses royally reamed.<
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Then there was a guy from Virgin going on about my ‘unrequited homosexual affection for Malcolm’. Malcolm himself had put out stories – one in particular, in a German music paper – that I’d always loved him, but he had to say ‘no’, and that was my problem. At the time, I thought, ‘He can have his little gay fantasy all he likes, I don’t give two fucks.’ But when he hit back with the line that I’d always seen him as a father figure . . . that was too much, that’s something my dad wouldn’t like to be reading, and I don’t think it should be said. It’s wrong. I don’t care what he says about me, he can lie all day long, but don’t go into those areas. The spite in it and the childishness really ten-folded my contempt for him. I thought, ‘Jesus, listen, we were all really right about what an arsehole he is.’
For me, it was a great book, maybe harsh, but then the situations I had to deal with in it were appalling.
One thing that needs correcting was something the ghost-writers rewrote without asking – they tried changing me coming from Finsbury Park to Camden Town! And their insane justification was that people won’t know where Finsbury Park is, but everybody knows Camden Town because of the market! To try and alter where someone comes from is ludicrous!
After it was published in 1994, the most fabulous thing that happened was the improvement in the quality of the journalists that interviewed me. They were books-y people, so the conversations became ever so much more interesting. I felt, ‘God, I really like doing interviews now,’ and I’ve been that way ever since. Rather than feeling like I have to aggressively defend myself all the time, here was a whole catalogue of eminent whatevers actually giving me the time and respect to allow me to properly answer a really sensibly researched question. Proper lines of communication, and – the very thing I thought journalism was about – a respect for the facts.
In the following years, I tried very hard to get No Irish made into a movie. I got some kind of backing going there. I raised a million or two, but dealing with the script-writers was where it fell apart. It was all just people wanting to rewrite everything in a very ‘David Cassidy’s life story on VH1’ kind of way. It’d be, ‘Well, now we’ve got to have some romantic interest – your book don’t say much about that, let’s make some up.’ ‘No, we will not make some up. You’ll tell it like it is, and that’s that!’ And no matter what it is, or whatever I do, I don’t do kiss-and-tells. And certainly not just to sell books or cinema tickets for money. I don’t hurt people like that, and quite frankly, anyone who has had any physical relationships with me must feel very hurt already. It wouldn’t bode well for the reputation. They’d be contaminated.
My idea for the lead role was Justin Timberlake. I thought, ‘That would work.’ Because Justin at the time was out there, but he was coming to a rough end in his music. He was getting bored and starting to do acting, and he hadn’t got any good roles yet. I thought this would be tailor-made for him, being so fluffy and nice and kind of simple in his approach to life. I thought this would be a real challenge for him to take on, the role of Johnny Rotten, and there was every chance he could sing the songs.
It started as a joke in interviews but then I got deadly earnest and serious about it. I might’ve been shooting at pie in the sky, but I thought, ‘If you don’t aim high, you’re not going to get results.’ It was the powers-that-be that wouldn’t go there. They were talking like, ‘No, well, maybe we should use some unknowns.’ ‘What? What’s the point of this, then?’ They just wanted to keep the costs down, and thereby keep potential out of it. Who needs another B-minus movie.
It never got as far as meeting with Justin. I just shot it out into press statements to see which way the wind would blow. But even if they wanted to respond on his behalf, I knew that our lot, my backers, would’ve negated on it. But such a juicy backdrop of a plot!
I’d been quite outspoken about some of the more escapist dance music of the early ‘90s. There was plenty of rubbish going on. The floppy-hat teapot brigade were back; the lot in the loon pants who’d never lend you a tent peg at the original hippie festivals.
There was, however, another underground clubby scene, where the beats were harder and there was a load more urban grit going on in it – and that stuff I loved.
Leftfield, by chance, I knew through John Gray, because one of the duo, Neil Barnes, had been working at the play centres that I got kicked out of in the mid-’70s. He occasionally used to come around Gunter Grove with John. I was thrilled when he started up with Leftfield, and by the sounds they were coming up with together. I got to know Paul Daley, his partner in the group, and really liked him. It took quite a while to get us on the same page, from the first time they presented me with a cassette and said, ‘Maybe you could help us out with some words here.’ They were getting big in the British dance scene, and there were hardly any singers on the records at that point, in those circles. And so, in I came.
What I loved about that whole rave-y dance scene was that it was wide open, racially and culturally. There were no judgement calls on anything. It’d seemingly come out of nothing. It came out of itself, and created itself really well, and blended really well with punk. I was eager to see that develop, but certainly not move into it or copy it, which was one of my huge problems with getting into doing it. I kept telling them, ‘I don’t want it to be perceived that I’m jumping on a bandwagon here.’ But the boys kept at me, ‘No, no, John, no one is ever gonna think that, you’re the only person that can do this . . .’
As I say, it was a universe of music that was just about beats and things, but with no vocal direction on it, because it was almost impossible for singers to fit into the rigidity of the tempos. Well, we found a way. We found a very good way, and a very natural way. When I was ready, I rung ’em and I went down, and we finished it in a night. Fantastic. A great deal of worry went on on my part, I must say, because I didn’t want to commit and make a twot of it. Fair play to the boys, it would be, ‘No, don’t worry if it’s rubbish, John, we’re not gonna use it.’ Oddly enough, those words are never very comforting.
Lo and behold: ‘Burn, Hollywood, Burn’, or, according to the official title, ‘Open Up’, came into being. It was released in November ’93 – the same week that the hills of Hollywood were actually on fire! I had to deal with the press here in America going, ‘How dare you try to capitalize on a natural disaster?’ Ouch! This is music journalists at work, supposedly in the know, but somehow oblivious to the fact of how a record is recorded a good while before it finally gets released. It was insane and twisted – ignorant fucks giving judgement.
The thing about that particular fire is, it came right down the hills. By then I had a house out in Malibu, on the coast, and the fire wasn’t far away from the front gates. Nora and I thought, ‘What can we pack? What do we need?’ We’d all been told by the police that we’d left it too late and we had to leave, so we thought, ‘Let’s just get in the car and go.’ We drove to the other house and waited to see on the news what was happening – to see if we’d lost it all.
It’s amazing, the vibe you get in those situations, it’s almost like, ‘Well, if it’s gone, so what, we haven’t lost each other.’ That is such a rewarding, weird, strange emotion, where you realize that things like property and personal collections ultimately don’t matter. If you’re faced with a disastrous situation, it’s the missus and the kids, isn’t it? By no means throw your possessions out or sell them off or anything of the kind, because you’ll regret that. But when you’re confronted with what really matters most, that’s a different situation. There’s a puzzlement in there and I know I’ve got a song in there somewhere. Soon to be written.
On top of the fires, there’d been the Rodney King riots in LA the previous year, and all the folk around here in California weren’t too enamoured by touching on the theme of LA boiling over again. They weren’t showing me any love for writing a song channelling a whole series of disastrous events. They weren’t grasping it. I wouldn’t say any of this is to do with
psychic ability on my part, but I think I’m on the pulse of inevitability – consistently. You’d have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to see it happening. I think the problem is, most people in this world actually are deaf, dumb and blind. Facing up to reality is not something many people do – certainly not your mainstream masses, and very few of the bands. In fact, whenever they do want to be realistic, they simply jump on the charity bandwagon, cause célèbre-stylee.
The lyrics of ‘Open Up’ are specifically about an aspiring actor trying to break into Hollywood movies, and they were actually autobiographical. As I said before, it was certainly not something I’d had my eye on when we moved to LA, but things had been unexpectedly going in that direction, with the absence of PiL activity for the time being. I’d even been going to try-outs, learning scripts and turning up to be auditioned. I went to quite a few, and they were all, I’ve got to tell you, the most embarrassing and fundamentally soul-destroying things I’ve ever done. But I thought, ‘I’d really like to see if I can get on with this, because it’s a good angle of work.’ It’s an exploration of sorts.
But, no: massive humiliation in it. It’s so hard to be rejected. I’ve got a great deal of sadness for big actors, knowing what they had to go through to get where they are. Not any of them had it easy. It’s really hard to shape-shift yourself into the mindset of another personality and give up yourself so much, and give so much of yourself, and then face rejection for it. Wow!
One movie I tried out for was about a chauffeur and a butler kidnapping a toy dog from the wealthy owner they worked for, and the calamities that thereby unfolded. So it was mostly comedies like that. Another was a war movie. The scene I was asked to learn, I was dying – and, yup, that’s exactly what happened. Oh, it was murder, I couldn’t grasp it. I had the drive but I didn’t really at the time have the depth in me to take it seriously, because still at the back of my head there was this little thing jumping around like a demon saying, ‘Huurrgh, acting’s for arseholes.’ That was really a cover-up on my own behalf. It’s not taking it seriously and I should have. I should’ve had more power over my own demons.
