Anger is an Energy: My Life Uncensored

by Lydon, John

  I turned up late to the new PiL’s first rehearsal, and I’m really glad I did. When I walked in, they’d gotten into ‘Albatross’, off Metal Box, which I didn’t even put forward as a thing we should rehearse, but they were rehearsing it. It was a dead straight line from the studio door to the mic. I asked the crew if the mic was on, walked right up, turned to face the drummer, and – bingo! – just dropped straight into it, and I knew instantly that we were the band. It really was a most excellent moment. It was much better than I ever remember it before – more solid, much more deliberate, pointed and purposeful. That’s what Scott’s done, he’s added that clarity to the bass. In the early days it was always distracted and fractional, because the bloke was learning.

  As soon as we got out there playing, in the run-up to Christmas ’09, we’d got the patterns tightened somewhat, and that allowed all manner of flexibility for the vocals. The flexibility in the past was all in the instrumentation, which was flopping all over the place, but that’s how it worked. This was a much better way and just sounds tougher, and the words land better. I’m given more space, and I can sing better because of that.

  It felt just magical to be playing those songs again. They’re the story of my life, almost. Stuff like ‘Death Disco’, about my mum. I’d have tears in my eyes most nights. On ‘Public Image’ Lu would play a Turkish saz, wired up like an electric guitar. He’d have a vast array of instruments up there, because he was very bored with regular guitar. They were just getting him to where sonically he feels the most honest to his heart and soul.

  We did what you might call ‘more challenging numbers’, like ‘USLS1’, to give people’s heads another space to explore, and to show that I’m not a one-trick pony, by any means. It’s not all a juggernaut trundling off down the highway relentlessly. I’m a bit of a tourist, when I travel, and I stop off at all the right sites. We really pushed some of these songs to the limit, like ‘Flowers Of Romance’, where Scott added upright bass, and ‘Religion’, which we made into an evil crescendo, with extra-heavy bass, and my sermons about the Pope, and paedophilia in the Catholic Church.

  We were playing for two hours or more a night, closing with a riotous ‘Rise’ and ‘Open Up’. The only problem with those first shows was that my voice got sore towards the end – who doesn’t in December, in England? What a clever sod I was to do my reactivation tour then!

  The following year we went on and played all over – America, Japan, every nook and cranny of Europe – and I’m glad to say everyone was pleased to see us. At Shepherd’s Bush Empire in July, we went off after the main set, and there was a really large fella being given oxygen and resuscitation, because he’d had a heart attack during the gig. There he was, being oxygen-ed up, and he pushes the mask off and goes, ‘Johnny, can you give me your autograph please!’ I went over, and the paramedics thought I was trying to kill him or something. ‘Go away, John!’

  I got into a controversy by refusing to pull out of a festival in Tel-Aviv. All these hippie groups, and Elvis Costello, were claiming that by playing in Israel, it was like I was supporting apartheid. I’ve been accused of many things in my life, but that one topped it. ‘Don’t go to Israel, Johnny, it’s a fascist state!’ But how can you call a Jew a fascist after World War Two? Huh?! Such ignorance.

  Before we went to Israel a group of protestors turned up at a few shows. What a strange bunch. The threat of violence was zero. They were probably demonstrating in the ’60s and now they were in their sixties. They reminded us of the Sally Army. There were people on stilts and dressed as fruit. It was like a circus carnival with the most Blue Peter sticky-back plastic placards you’d ever seen. In Liverpool they organized themselves into a church choir and were singing outside the venue: ‘Oh no John, no John, no John, no . . .’ Absolutely hilarious. Nice people though.

  It wasn’t the Israeli government sponsoring us, it was a promoter. We were going there to play for people, not politicians. In my book, it’s an act of cowardice to deny a population access to something that could really oil the wheels of change in that part of the world. That’s how it’s done, one-on-one communication. It’s surely better if people are there listening to the ideas from me, from my mouth, rather than the only thing they hear is that you don’t want to play there. It doesn’t matter about the reasons – you’ve just negated them as human beings. It’s not ever a population’s fault or responsibility, it’s the politics that dictate to them.

  The irony was, we were doing ‘Four Enclosed Walls’ at the time, with its ‘Aaaa-aaaall-llaaaah’ call-to-prayer refrain. The Israeli government certainly weren’t sponsoring that. In fact, I’d love to go to Palestine and play for people, but I’m still waiting for the invite.

  We conducted two solid years of touring in the most brilliant and happy environment I’ve ever known. Musically and in all ways, our DNA seems to sync so well together. This, to me, was finally PiL fully realized – a cohesive unit of people that really get on well with each other, and don’t let tiffles cause fraction. None of these people hold resentments, and neither do I. It eats up too much energy. Get it out, shout it out, it’s gone. It’s what I’ve always wanted it to be, in every band I’ve had. You won’t achieve it by bullying or snarkiness or backbiting. Or wage demands. You achieve them out of respect, and by God, we really do respect and love each other.

  In the summer of 2011 I came back to England to start work on the first PiL album in almost twenty years. I’d done my homework, but God had other plans. I’d racked up quite a few song ideas on my own, but they all got burned in a horrible house fire at my place in Fulham. The only really important thing here was that Nora didn’t die in it. That would’ve been the end of my life. If it’d been the end of hers, quite clearly it would’ve been the end of mine. I’d not have been able to cope with that.

  The fire was caused by an electrical fault in the tumble dryer. We knew there was a problem with it, but we didn’t think it would set the house on fire. It completely destroyed the kitchen, and to this day, we barely have a kitchen, because some three months prior, we’d cancelled the insurance policy, thinking it was a waste of money. Life bites you on the butt. And we really don’t have the time or inclination to rebuild the kitchen. We’ve found that we can live quite happily with a two-ring electric cooker and a mini fridge. The only trouble is, we might want a sink put in, because we’re using a little vanity bowl in the downstairs toilet, and anytime anyone comes over, they’re looking at dishes and can’t wash their hands.

  There was a certain tragedy in losing all that work I’d amassed on various CDs and in notebooks – they were literally all lying there on the kitchen table – but it seemed pissy in comparison to the narrowly averted death of a human being, particularly one who is so precious to me. In a way, though, it really was for the best, because it was quite literally, for all of us, start from scratch. Start all over again. We found that environment incredibly refreshing. You get handed these bombs, these grenades, and they blow up in your face, but, from the splinters, you can pick up new ideas. So everything works out for the better if you’re open-minded enough to adapt.

  The whole disaster actually gave me the confidence again to realize that I know how to write a song, and I didn’t need the safety blanket of a bunch of old ideas. I had to start afresh, and the pure joy of knowing that Nora wasn’t burnt to death gave me the kick, the energy and the joy to say to myself, ‘This album’s going to be about life!’

  We’d booked a studio converted from an old farmhouse in the Cotswolds, called Wincraft. It belongs to Steve Winwood – him again! We didn’t go there for the sheep and the bushes, but by the same token, we didn’t want to be in the inner city, with all that traffic-jam stuff. It’s a distraction and it tires you out. There, we could meander in and out when we felt like it. It was a matter of the four of us committing to our future, being 100 per cent dedicated. Nora stayed in London. She would’ve loved to have been in the Cotswolds, but it would’ve been wrong. It would’ve mean
t that my activity after hours would’ve been all revolving around her and me, and therefore I wouldn’t be 100 per cent committed to the project.

  Everything for the album that became This Is PiL was written and recorded on the spot. There was no ego involved when we put songs together; it was like experimenting all at once, and hovering around a basic principle of a song, but expanding it into all the wondrous things that music can offer. The total joy of freedom. That’s what our favourite one of the lot, ‘Deeper Water’, is all about. It’s about smiling in the face of adversity – ‘Face the storm/I will not drown’. It’s like our band’s anthem.

  It was inspired by a little pattern that Lu was playing on guitar, and a whole heap of conversations that we’d had with each other on the tour bus. Obviously, I’ve been getting into going out on the ocean in boats, but also, Lu is celebrated for having admirals in his family tree. When he was very young, his family bought a yacht and they all sailed around the world.

  From that, I quite literally wrote the lyrics down, and we went straight into it, in a very live format, and in front of a load of British journalists who Rambo – and our wonderful press agent and radio-plugger Adam Cotton – had brought down to check out PiL in the recording studio. So the pressure was unbelievable, and yet we thrived in the fear of falling flat on our arses, and ‘Deeper Water’ was born. Fantastic! It was a day where we knew just how good it can get. It’s a song all of us feel very deeply emotional about.

  We’d never try to duplicate that moment, however. We now know we have that potential in us, so we don’t force it. Anything is possible. The more you pile the pressure on, the better the work. And the further inside yourself you go, the more outwardly you can project.

  The whole album was a live production, with some twiddly bits done afterwards. Some of it was even influenced by our surroundings. ‘Terra-Gate’ started out as something Lu had said to me: we were watching the lambs and the sheep in the neighbouring fields being separated one afternoon, and you could hear the mother sheep baaaa-ing, like, ‘Where’s me young ’un?’ It was really upsetting, and Lu explained that it was because of the shedding gate. They separate them, and off to the market go the nippers, or the mothers that have had their quota of young. Hence, the terror gate. Us as a population, we’re basically treated this way, too – we’re divided, we’re separated, and taught not to like each other.

  ‘Human’ came about one beautiful summer’s day out there in the Cotswolds, drinking cider. I just thought, ‘I’ve got to grasp this mood,’ because it reminded me of hot days when I was young – how we’d mess about on the bomb sites, and what fun it was when you were carefree, and how it isn’t like that any more. I’m not five years old any more, and I’m aware of so many problems around me.

  The five-year-olds in big cities in Britain nowadays also don’t seem to have the same sense of freedom we had back in the early ’60s. Then, there were hardly any cars on the streets, and there were just piles of kids running around everywhere. Now, people are frightened to go shopping because of gangs of youths gathering on the corner. But what else have these kids got to do? This institutionalized, ‘caring’ government, and surveillance cameras on every corner – it’s all created a really, really tense situation. There’s no jobs, no prospects, no sense of community. There’s just division, derision and chaos. Not healthy.

  I suppose it’s all dealing with what I see when I come back here. I loathe and despise the bastardization of pubs, for instance, which used to be our community centres, into swine bars and gastropubs. Those can be fine, too, but there’s too much of it, and it’s all so cold and indifferent. So, all that explains the line, ‘I think England’s died.’ And there’s a real longing for the place I remember from childhood: ‘I miss the roses.’

  Some of the other songs are about the London I love. ‘One Drop’ has Finsbury Park as the backdrop, and growing up, and your childhood experiences, and how you see yourself fitting in – how coming from something has coloured your perspective, for life – for better and worse. As it says, ‘We come from chaos, you cannot change us.’

  The song is also about getting on the good foot, and finding the groove in life. You don’t have to be running around causing commotions all the time. It can be amusing occasionally, but if you really want to solve life’s bigger problems, you have to understand the flow of nature, and learn to go with it, and not be constantly swimming upstream against the current.

  I will always believe in the multiculturalism I grew up amongst. ‘Lollipop Opera’, to me, is the soundtrack of my youth. It’s a juxtaposition of all the musics that surrounded me growing up in Finsbury Park – everything from Jamaican and African, to Greek and Turkish. All those influences, sounds and noises – the chaos of it all, yet the fun in it.

  And then there’s one about Reggie, my mate from Finsbury Park. My parents were Irish, his were Jamaican, and it never bothered any of us. It really was a very mixed bag, and you didn’t feel like you were in any way special or different for hanging out together. Reginald views Finsbury Park as the Garden of Eden, which is hilarious. That’s why he deserves a song, because of his lifestyle and the way he experiences life. He won’t let the bastards grind him down. He’s always a bag of entertainment. He is absolutely to me the epitome of what makes Britain great. I’d better not say any more – he doesn’t want much of a public eye on himself.

  This Is PiL is full of heart and soul. I think it’s the most serious body of work I’ve ever been a part of, with absolutely serious players. And every single one of us feels like we’ve been chiselled by the alleged shitstem.

  Even though we are our own label we use outside distribution to make sure the records are in the shops and available online. It’s no use making a record if no one can buy it. Cargo, our UK distributors, did a fantastic job on This Is PiL. The distributors in Europe, Japan and Australia were good too, but for whatever reason, America was an uphill struggle. Hardly anyone could find it, even in independent or chain stores. Which was bitterly disappointing. The distributors we ended up with – who shall remain nameless – really seemed to drop the ball. But we live and learn. Having our own label has been a real learning curve; it’s been very hard work, but ultimately very rewarding.

  Who knows what the public want, but it’s about time in my life that I declared what it is I want. Public Image is a hole I chuck money into. I have no expensive hobbies or habits – except PiL. I know the songs really truly mean something. They always have, but they’re ever so much more positive now. We’re looking now for answers, not just tearing the arse off issues.

  Is there really a generation of people out there still listening and paying attention to music? Well, I know there is, the amount of young kids that come to modern PiL gigs, and they’re all so eager to run off and start their own bands. That’s the reward – not the money, not the chart position – because it means I’ve got good records to buy for at least the next five, six, ten years. Fantastic.

  I still buy records. If I’m going to eat a chicken, I want the breast and the thigh also. That’s my approach to music. I will always want that variety. I’m a consistent purchaser. I do not go to record companies for freebies. In fact, I resent freebies. I like the fact that I’m paying out of my own wallet, and I like to know that that money is going back to the band one way or another. That, however low the percentage is, I’m helping them. I like to feel a part of that.

  I don’t believe in illegal free downloads. These are creative people who have done marvellous things, and if you want to possess and own that slice of their achievement, please put some money in their pocket. Because otherwise they ain’t going to be able to afford the next one. Every time you listen to something amazing in music, it inspires you to do something amazing in your own life. That’s the pay-off of your investment, pure and simple.

  What’s happened via the internet, causing small and creative record companies to fold, is such a catastrophe. That’s why if you look at the Grammys these da
ys, it’s forever Taylor Swift and Jay-Z, and it always is going to be. They’ve hogged the top line. That was exactly the position when we first started with the Pistols. All the top spaces were filled, and the industry didn’t want anything to challenge that dictatorship.

  Beyoncé, Rihanna, Jay-Z: they’re all Las Vegas – big production and lights and fireworks. It’s all distractions. It’s not really about very much else. Dancers. Showbiz. I’ve seen them live – Nora likes all that stuff – and the songs become very empty and pompous in a live performance. It’s actually assumed and accepted that nobody sings live. I see no culture, there’s no learning in it for me. They leave me so cold.

  Music in the ’70s was thrilling because there were so many differences, and I mean extreme differences, not like modern times now. There’s this propensity to mélange everything into one prevailing sound. Modern music just sounds like shifty blends – more like elevator music – and I think it’s to the detriment of music in the future. A very ugly pudding comes out of it.

  Most of it is just metronomes on a computer, beyond personality, humanity or involvement. It’s all part of this attitude, ‘Music can’t change anything, why bother?’ It’s all part and parcel of the same agenda, to take away the power of music from us. I’m firmly entrenched in the belief that a bloody well-written lyric to a bloody fine tune gets a bloody good response.

  In the face of all that, I’ve played some of my favourite ever gigs in latter years – the two nights at Heaven in London 2012 were astounding, particularly the second. We had a great crowd at Glastonbury 2013, too, and we definitely rocked it. People who see us know they’re getting the top class.