by Lydon, John
PiL, you see, is the full cultures. Lu’s coming in there with everything he really truly understands, from the Muslim world and the former Eastern Bloc. My Irish background is giving me a great sense of open vocal-ness. I might as well be an Arab with a shamrock. What was I buying when I was young? Greek and Turkish folk music, and reggae, and chuck Alice Cooper in there for good measure! It’s not like you have to go on a great learning curve. It’s intuitive, and it comes out of your childhood. I can’t do ‘Do-Re-Mi’, but I can give you an ‘Aaaa-aaaa-llaaaah!’ like you never heard, and yet it’ll still be all right.
So, as the song says, if you’re in a storm at sea, go out to the deeper water, it’s easier to ride it out. Closer to shore, that’s where the danger is. That’s where you get swamped, and there’s Johnny Rotten, going ever and ever deeper and deeper into the wonderful world of music.
PiL, as it is today, is my pride and joy, the culmination of my life so far. But it amazes me when I see these all-time top albums lists, and Never Mind The Bollocks is hovering around Number Ten or Fifteen, or even Twenty. What?! Oh, for fools! Not that I care about the positioning, or chart systems, but come on, that album changed everybody’s lives, one way or another – for or against! It altered your perceptions. It had – phwoooooaar! – seismic repercussions on British culture, then into the outer world.
It’s affected the Royal Family to the point where you can’t really discuss them without the Sex Pistols cropping up in the back of your head. It’s hard to deny, and very hard to avoid. In many ways, it’s an unloving, but deeply personal and well-felt relationship we have with the Windsors. We’re bound together. I almost have a certain affection for them. They’re born into a gilded cage they can’t escape from, and that’s a terrible thing to have to endure. God bless ’em.
As for being an anarchist? Well, there’s so many variants on the word ‘anarchy’, it’s ludicrous. In America, there’s a whole bunch of organisations that are all ‘anarchist this, that or the other’. But they all end with ‘dot org’, which more or less tells you they’re government-sponsored. And they’re all feeding fabulous theories and lies about, ‘Whoa, let’s dismantle society and start again!’ Well, that’s not quite what I’m into, matey. I don’t want the power of the bully with the biggest gun to take over, and that’s what would happen.
What I want to see is a line of sense and sensibility creeping into things, where people start to think what it really is that they do, and realize that every action can have an equal and opposite reaction. Start thinking of yourself as an individual, and then you’ll start respecting others as individuals. You have to learn to love yourself before you can learn to love anybody else. I don’t have a moral agenda: what I have is a set of values, and I value each and every single one of us on this planet.
I won’t use words like ‘legacy’ – I’m still alive! – but we have to look after what we created in the Pistols. We don’t run a museum here, we run a house of accuracy, and we don’t want that ever to be allowed to get out of hand and be misinterpreted. It’s happening all the time.
Awards don’t interest me. Funnily enough, the other day I heard that the council in Tunbridge Wells are discussing whether to put up a memorial plaque for Sid Vicious. I don’t think I ever knew this, but apparently he spent some of his early years there.
If he’s watching out there somewhere, I imagine he’d take that with a great sense of fun, because that’s absurd by any stretch. It’s also perfect, and beautiful! Oh, I’d love to be at the unveiling. I hope it’s a serious ceremony, with old council biddies in fur coats and tiaras. A suit-and-tie affair, hahaha! It’ll be like the opening of a supermarket!
The thing about us is, the shriller and more angst-ridden the opposition gets against something like that, the more you drive and push for it. Suddenly it’s like, why not? Automatically, people like me and Sid have got many issues about things like that, but the more they say, ‘No’, the more we say, ‘Yeeeaaaah!’ And vice versa? Dead right. If these things are not actively appreciating your life’s work and your efforts – I mean, I know we’re talking Sid here, but still! – what use are they? You can’t fluff over that.
But certainly a blue plaque is more than I ever got. There was a suggestion of one years ago in Finsbury Park but the council utterly and completely refused. And I’m very pleased, too.
In October 2013, though, I happily went to the Dorchester Hotel in London to accept the ‘Icon’ award from BMI (Broadcast Music Inc.), who help collect royalties on behalf of songwriters and publishers. It was their highest award for song-writing and it was really the only time I’ve ever received anything from the music industry where I felt like the people actually understood me.
Right up until getting into the ballroom where the black-tie ceremony was held, I was suspicious. Awards go to people that toe the line and do things in a predictable, set-patterned way. A chap like me isn’t like that. I’m incapable of toeing the line because I don’t have the patience to understand what the line is supposed to be.
I turned up with some of the family and a bunch of top lads from my old manor, and we had a terrific night. Being honoured in a room full of fellow songwriters really meant something. I even got to sing ‘EMI’, with one letter changed, to BMI’s bossman Del Bryant. It was a big night for him because he was retiring. He was a great fella and came over and sat next to me and Nora and had a chat, which he didn’t have to do.
So what do you agree to, and what do you not? The previous summer, the Pistols were invited to appear at the London 2012 Olympics closing ceremony. Their idea was we’d be plonked on the back of a truck going around the outer circle of the Olympic stadium. They wanted to deck the truck out like the Marquee club and have us on parade waving at the crowd while doing ‘Pretty Vacant’. It was naff panto. Watering us down to a sideshow.
To be honest, I wasn’t sure about the Olympics. As a whole I felt it was a waste of money that could have been better spent on the NHS itself. I didn’t want to do it live with the Pistols anyway, I didn’t want to do anything with them, because I was firmly into doing the This Is PiL album and touring it, and I didn’t want to be seen as, ‘Oh look, he’s going back to that!’ I wanted that chapter closed.
I only got seriously interested when the director of the opening ceremony, Danny Boyle, took a personal interest in us. I don’t think the closing ceremony people who originally approached us understood what we were about at all. Danny really wanted to include us and just would not give up. He was a Pistols fan and knew the cultural importance of what we had achieved, so we eventually had conversations with him. I liked him, and he told me the whole layout of celebrating the National Health Service. I was all for that – ‘Of course you can use us in a video scenario, that would be delicious, actually!’
Our stipulation was they had to include ‘God Save The Queen’. They were pushing for ‘Pretty Vacant’ only. We dug our heels in for both. They came back with the idea of only using the guitar riff of ‘God Save The Queen’. Our argument was it meant nothing without the words. Quite frankly it doesn’t. Then they only wanted to use two words: ‘God Saves . . .’. They were getting squeaky on us as they knew the Queen herself would be there. But it had to be ‘God Save The Queen’. All or nothing. It took a while but we won that battle. Perhaps we should have also gone for ‘Bodies’ like Rambo had suggested back at the initial meeting with the closing ceremony people. He later told me Anita Camarata had been kicking him under the table as he said it, haha.
In the end we were the first band used on the opening segment – there was a short sharp blast of ‘God Save The Queen’ including those very words as the camera panned up the Thames. A nod and a wink to our boat trip. It shows you how much things had changed. The BBC, who were broadcasting the ceremony, had denied ‘God Save The Queen’ even existed in 1977; now they were showing it on the opening of the Olympics. ‘God Save The Queen’ was followed by a tiny snippet of ‘Under The House’ by PiL. It was Danny’s i
dea to use it – he had told us it was one of his favourite ever songs. I admit I barely heard it, but was happy to know it was there. Somewhere.
‘Pretty Vacant’, which we agreed on for the ceremony, was pretty damn near excellent as a song idea, because the entire Royal Family was sitting there staring at this video – Johnny Rotten calling you ‘vay-cunt’! ‘Nice to see you!’ And there is some possible plausibility in my belief that they might actually have enjoyed it. Because that’s what we British are – we’re kind of nuts. It could actually be taken as ‘That’s very witty’.
So, in this instance, one minute thirty seconds of full-on video screening was a much better way to see me. In America it was actually edited out. NBC, who broadcast it, put commercials all over our part.
I watched the ceremony in a hotel room in Poland. It was very difficult because we needed to get the cable switched on in the hotel – a huge palaver. Very good watching that in bed – I felt quite chuffed. I liked it because of the politics of it, and there was a Dickensian element in it, and it was celebrating a full expanse and range of what British culture is. It’s not all joyous ballet dancers and classical orchestras that make Britain Britain.
The NHS was clearly being celebrated as a major British achievement, and indeed it is. It is an astounding creation. It’s just it should be available to the British, instead of anyone who gets off a plane or a train, which is what’s bankrupting it. It caters for all nations, let’s put it that way, and therefore there’s not enough money to cater for the people who actually support it.
Please, please, don’t go mistaking my views as similar to those of that twot, Nigel Farrage, leader of the UK Independence Party though. It’s the connotations he places on that, that bring up the ugly scenario of racism and nationalism, which is not what I’m saying at all. It’s about: I don’t go to Korea and demand a heart operation for free. It’s opportunists who do this stuff, I’m afraid, and this is what politicians are, they jump on it and swing it to their agenda. Farrage just holds animosity for all things outside – Ausländer, as the Germans would call them. It’s pretty damn fucking disgraceful.
What I’m saying is, please do take care of British citizens first. And emphasize the word ‘citizens’. If you’ve been welcomed in, and you’re in, that’s it. You’re British. Hello, how do you do?
When I was young, there’d be a lot of people from all over Europe who would come to England just on a tourist visa and be claiming dole money, and it was never questioned. It’s the same kind of scenario now. It’s never been properly clearly defined that it’s a no-no. It’s just abuse and theft. It’s been going on a long time and nobody seems prepared to deal with it, because of the interpretation, quite wrongly, that it would be ‘racist’. It’s a minefield.
Who’d be Prime Minister, you say. Well, maybe I would! I’d make this seem very clear, because the situation is clear. It’s because there are so many taboos in what you can and can’t say that it becomes an irresolvable quagmire, because nobody’s actually saying what is really going on.
In July 2012 BBC TV had me on Question Time. To be very honest, I turned up frantic, mid-tour. When I’m touring I find it hard to concentrate on anything else. It’s quite a switch from live gigs to live TV. Your mind needs to refocus. I was excited about doing it but also very wary.
I’d watched the host, David Dimbleby, ever since I was a kid. I was thrilled at the prospect of meeting him, but I was also cautious, as he’s a smart bunny, and I thought he might have it in for me. But he turned out to be such a great fella – we had a good chat after the show. If you wanted to find someone whose political point of view was closest to mine, it would probably be someone like David. He struck me as a person who can sort the wheat from the chaff.
I have met a few exceptions over the years, but in general I don’t like politicians. I know that most of them are in it for the bump-up, which eventually leads to business management, or corporate seating. They’re not my kind of fellas. They’re what keep the country down.
I was on the show with the Labour MP Alan Johnson and the Tory MP Louise Mensch. I wasn’t sure about Alan at first. He was wearing too sharp a suit, and he came across as a bit smarty-pantsy. But I can be that way too at times, haha. I spoke to him and his wife after, away from the cameras, and we really got on well. The Tory woman was harmless enough, I suppose, but I was not convinced by her drug references. Isn’t it funny that when politicians are caught taking drugs it always ends with them having a bad experience, and saying how much they regretted taking it in the first place.
Once the show started, I don’t think I stepped out of line or talked nonsense. I told it like it is, about educating young people about drugs, and the evil of top-flight bankers – the unmentioned dictators of a country’s economic policies.
My only squabble was with a social worker type in the front row, who was trying to lecture me about the damage drugs can do to young people. But the point I was making was that those kids need access to as much unbiased information as possible. They must learn for themselves.
Overall, it was a really very positive thing to do. The next day when we left the hotel, myself and Rambo, and our press agent and friend Adam Cotton, God help him, decided to do a pub crawl all the way back to London – and the show was filmed in Derby, by the way! There’d been a major rainstorm where Derby was flooded. It must’ve been the water that influenced us. And let’s face it, Question Time was a tough thing to walk into as Johnny Bloody Rotten. I needed a break! Every pub we stopped in, people had seen Question Time. It was quite surprising how popular we’d seemingly made the show. People watched because they knew I was on, and they wanted to hear what I had to say. People of all walks of life and all class systems – all were favourable. Not one negative from anyone in the general population.
Right from the minute I adhered rigidly to the nickname Johnny Rotten, I painted a target on my back. I’ve always known that, and no matter how many different items of clothing I go through, or hairstyles, the target remains.
I came out of the paddock full steam, and it created a lot of flurry around me, and a lot of resentment. Who is this upstart? And I still get that vibe from people, they still view me as being negative to their cosy idea of what a musical reality is. And so, by all means, I’m going to get the hammerings. Bloody hell, I’m an anvil: you can hammer it all day long, you ain’t going to dent it.
And in fact, I rather like the attention of resentment and jealousy. When people take it that far, they’re almost rewarding you for your own efforts. It’s complimentary!
To this day, there’s still people that send hate mail. Many, many more send favourable stuff, but there’s always that odd one – ‘I want to kill you’ – that you get in the post. I get that, still. A lot, from the same kind of people. You have to keep in mind that these people can’t help themselves, and at least you’re entertaining them, or giving them a purpose in life, even though it be your destruction and downfall.
One way or the other, I’ve got to look at it like, ‘Well, at least I’m a means to an end.’ There are a lot of things to hate in the world. I don’t think I should be one of them. There’s far better targets, but I’m more than happy to accept it.
Sometimes it can be just too bonkers. There have been women that have come up with fantasies. They send real serious hate mail, and leave things on your front door. Just unacceptable. You hear about the stalkers around Madonna – but I get that too. And it happens quite a bit. There’s always one of that kind out for you in every different country, and you have to protect yourself from it.
At the present time, some of my cases are ongoing, and some have been quiet for a mo. One particular girl used to get very, very insane. She sent letters declaring that she was the real German heiress, and Nora was the fake and had to be replaced, and then we’d fall madly in love, and everything would be all right from there on in. Eh? What?!
She actually ended up working on a music TV show. I talked to her, and
she’d managed to break out of it. Her job required so much energy and effort that she had no more time for that, and saw it as foolish. So hopefully that’s what she actually believes. It’s nutty that it can unfold that way, but once she’d found a career for herself, that was the answer to it.
It’s the problem of the modern human being that we’ve got more time on our hands than we can handle, so it goes into the wonderful world of craziness. And I hope that no one misconstrues that as meaning that we should all be back in slave camps, where there’d be no time for that kind of behaviour! Once we were plebs, but now we’re left to our own devices, and some of us come up with the wrong agenda. It’s a bit like, if you have a late-night club scene in a town, you’re gonna get crime. Are you able to take the crime, because the late-night scene is so good and inspiring and artistically proper?
So, as I’ve said, I don’t answer my own hotel room door. I need a bloody witness at all points. Your open-to-the-public thing is jeopardized by this one lunatic, who, if they really go for it at some point, will try and put a bullet in you – if that be the tool of choice. John Lennon was an example of that. It happens. People attach to what they see as celebrity figures, and it becomes very dangerous. Many people I’ve talked to – actors, even playwrights once – they’re all telling me they get it. Somebody just decides, ‘I’ve got to kill you, because you let me down, you’re not making the music you should. If I was you – blah blah blah!’
I have a great sense of foreboding, fear and empathy for Adam Ant, for instance, because I know he’s had this a lot, and I know what it’s like. It gets very, very dangerous. It seems to come and go, then raise its ugly head again for no good reason. You have to be very aware that everything you say or do is being misjudged by one of those very few people out there with that propensity towards psychopathic behaviour. I don’t know what makes them so lonely and so bitter and twisted, that they spend their whole lives, firstly adoring and loving you, and then spin it, for God knows what reason, to wanting to hate and kill you.
