Anger is an Energy: My Life Uncensored

by Lydon, John

  I love to go out signing autographs and talking with the fans at gigs, but I have to be aware that in that element there is that danger, that lurking propensity towards ultraviolence. They don’t even understand what it is they’re doing themselves. They feel completely justified. Psychotic! I don’t have any disciplines really to steer that away, other than the way I am. Look what Adam had to do – he had to leave Los Angeles. Christ! And he ain’t no wanker!

  At the other extreme, I’ve been getting untold grief over the years from the so-called ‘authorities’, particularly when trying to clear immigration.

  Coming into America, they’d pull me over every single time, even though I was an ‘alien resident’ green card holder. I was viewed unfavourably. I’m not making a special case of myself, but I did get extra-frustrated with delays. I can’t sleep on planes. I’m uncomfortable. I ache. It doesn’t matter what I do or take, it doesn’t work. All of those things that are supposed to help you relax and sleep just annoy me. They only make me extremely tired and bad-tempered when I’m facing an immigration official.

  That’s when they want to ask me foolish questions, and things can go wrong. You have to bite your tongue, and I’m the kind of bloke that can’t do that. They’d take me into a cubicle, and it’d be like, ‘Yeah, you live here, but why haven’t you applied for full citizenship?’ I later found out that this was partly because of my old amphetamine conviction in 1977 which still showed up despite me holding an American green card.

  They’ve made my life hell in US immigration. Every single time, I was made to sit there for two hours, with the other undesirables, most of whom couldn’t speak English. The immigration officer would go, ‘Well, it’s because the English won’t drop the file on your conviction.’ Law can be tediously cruel.

  So, enough was enough, and I applied for US citizenship. It was then they told me about the open file, and yet they still allowed me to go through the procedure, even though I’d delayed it so long. It wasn’t an easy decision. In my heart and soul, I feel like, ‘Have I walked away from something here?’ Yes, I have – I walked away from unnecessary abuse. I’m the same person, but I’ve just now got bigger guns. And I’m a pacifist and all that, but you’ve got to stand up for yourself. If that’s your only alternative then you’ve got to take it. Sorry, but my days of anal searching are gone. I won’t allow myself to be physically and mentally abused any longer.

  Then, there would sometimes be problems at the other end, arriving in London. The worst time was when my father died, and I was absolutely distraught. I got on the first plane out, and of course got pulled up at Heathrow. I’m in bits at the airport, and they’re absolute cunts to me. Just being wicked.

  After that happened I got to the point where it’s like, ‘If you don’t want to let me back into England, I don’t give a fuck. I’ll turn around and go back.’ There’s nothing in that society that stood up and defended my rights. Obviously, all this goes back to ‘Anarchy In The UK’ and ‘God Save The Queen’ – of course it does! What a fool I’d be to say otherwise. Even though those songs are now how everybody thinks – it’s ‘shoot the messenger’, really. When I go back and see everybody taking a pop at royalty on English TV, I think, ‘Where were you when it counted?’ Bunch of second-rate cowardly comedians. Now they do it in this personal-attack way. I’ve never tried to do anything in a personal-attack way. I’ll say it again: it’s the institution, not the individuals involved.

  And so my personal freedom has continuously been assaulted and abused because of everything that I ever did and said.

  England is absolutely dedicated to humiliating you into old age. It kills and stifles creativity. You’re supposed to be dead at forty, and the rest of your life you’re supposed to rot in misery. It’s always, ‘Why bother, it’s all been done before’, or ‘Act your age’ – those are such passion-killer statements. It’s a fear of change, a fear of anything new and exciting. Thank God for California. Johnny Rotten definitely gives this place accolades. They go bungee-jumping here at eighty-five, they’re diving off mountains – it’s full-on activity, keeping the brain alive. England just doesn’t seem to want that.

  It took me a long time to become an American. I finally completed the process in late 2013. Now I feel like I was born an American. The rights and freedoms of all, and the belief that all of us are born equal – these aspects are in the American ideology. It’s not perfect in its working relationship with its population, but it’s a hell of a lot better than the shit I’ve had to endure all my life under a British government.

  I’ve never had that problem with America. It’s always liked me. Bizarre as the governments here are, and how they don’t like anyone to be anti-American or whatever, I can say what I want. It’s appreciated as being a vital part of the Constitution, so in many ways I’ve achieved incredible success being accepted in America. This is the country that fought against the corruptions of monarchy and imperialism and the British Empire of that day, and the trouble that created for everybody around the world. Not that America is completely innocent itself in that respect, but what a fantastic place to live.

  Nora and I once drove all the way from New York to LA, just the two of us staying in the motels. It took about a week, just exploring that terrain. It was a complete adventure. I love not only the impressiveness of the cities here – the difference between New York and LA and New Orleans – but also the landscape. Driving across the country, how it changes from state to state. Every thousand miles is a completely different climate. It’s utterly fascinating to go from pine forests wrapped around San Francisco up north there, into the deserts of Utah and Nevada. Phwoar! And the swampiness of the south-east – wowzers!

  My God, this country’s nuts! The natural disasters here – they don’t happen on a small scale. It’s not like in England – ‘Oh my God, look at the flooding’ – here, everything is industrially bigger. Earthquakes, fires – they’re all seriously major. From an English perspective, when I was young, I’d think, ‘Oh, those Americans are always showing off and making a big scene out of it.’ Well, you need to! It’s such a big place geologically, that mad things happen.

  Mentally and physically it’s improved my health, improved my outlook on life, and it’s taken away the opportunity of despondency. In many ways, I miss the culture in Britain, and in many ways I don’t need to miss it, because it’s in me. It’s firmly there, the good side.

  I know many English people who’ve not been able to make it work, living here, and have eventually gone back. There’s a very big English community here around Santa Monica, and their problem is, they’re trying to be English in a non-English situation. Big mistake. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. It doesn’t mean you’re going to lose your identity. You’ve gone to live abroad but you’re refusing to acknowledge newer, better or different ideas as even a possibility, and so you hoodwink yourself into your own prison and failure.

  Nora and I don’t hang out with expats. We have a very small circle of friends – one or two, say. Apart from that, it’s what me and Nora want to do. We do everything together. I don’t really like or want a large collection of acquaintances.

  Here’s the laugh of laughs, though: not far from our house in Malibu is Herb Alpert – the Latin-jazz trumpeter who was also the ‘A’ in A&M Records! There’s some difference in the size of our respective properties, let me tell you. He has half a mountain. But I know it more than bugs him that I live here. Talking with the neighbours, they’ve told me so. Well, that’s your comeuppance, you fuck.

  London has tended to be work, over the last decade, but for the last couple of Christmases, we’ve been back to see my brother Jimmy, whose cancer is now in remission. Last year we had a beautiful Christmas party at his house, and we love it. His kids come over, Katie and Liam, with their significant others, and it’s a house of really happy people.

  And so this is the way we are, just quiet – in our loud way. Quiet for me, I’ve got to be fair, is fairly un-quiet. I
can see that now, but that’s only because I’m in moments of contemplation, putting this book together.

  When I’m out in the public eye, that’s full-on John! The only things I’m ever secretive about are my domestic scenarios, which I don’t think anybody in the public has any right to. I’ve always gone out of my way to keep my family out of the gossip magazine nonsenses: the Hello!’s of this world. You have to have a reality to go home to, not a TV crew.

  The foregoing pages have, I think, let a little light in on my life. If that isn’t met with all due respect, then we’ll just close the shutters again. We’re not bad people, us lot. Generally speaking, we’re very good-natured and mean nothing but joy to the world. As far as I’m aware, I’ve brought nothing but joy to the wonderful world of anything I’ve ever touched.

  When the offer to appear as King Herod in a US-touring production of Jesus Christ Superstar came in, my initial reaction was, ‘Stop it, Rambo, you’re teasing me again.’ Then, shock-horror, I thought, ‘Oh no, this git, this instigator, really is stirring my pot, like he did with I’m a Celebrity.’ Right off the bat, I obviously said there was no way on earth it could ever work, but he goes, ‘I think it could,’ and Nora said the same. It was their common sense that got me around to thinking, ‘You know what, I could do this.’ With all the scripting and stage directions, it was essentially forcing myself to take orders. Very seriously: the Final Challenge!

  So I’m doing a musical and what better one to do than Jesus Christ Superstar? Ah, the hate mail. The naysayers had already made their minds up anyway. As Forrest Gump said, ‘Life is like a box of chocolates,’ and them lot are the delicious soft centres. It is a reward to be chastised by the ignorant. You know, it’s all right, there’s nothing wrong with rock ‘n’ roll musical theatre. I liked Quadrophenia very much – well, maybe the first hour.

  The shock value didn’t matter tuppence to me, really. It was about what I’d get out of it as a human being. My learning journey through life. I just love the commitment, and the challenge, and the grate on my nerves.

  I didn’t know any of the other cast personally beforehand, but I didn’t underrate them at all. It was a really mixed bag. Brandon Boyd from Incubus was going to be Judas. Michelle Williams, the girl from Destiny’s Child, was playing Mary Magdalene, JC Chasez of *NSYNC would be Pontius Pilate and Ben Forster had already played Jesus in the UK production. And John Rotten Lydon would be King Herod. I’m here to sing with the King of the Jews – who could ask for anything more?

  In April 2014, there was a press launch event in New York. On the day before, I had a costume fitting and then a bunch of us were invited out for a meal including myself, Rambo, Ben, JC, Brandon and the promoter Michael Cohl. I met Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber for the first time backstage right before the press conference.

  At the event itself, there was a bit of an atmosphere. When you meet people for the first time and nobody knows what they’re doing, certain types of personalities can take offence where no harm was meant. It was six of one, half a dozen of another.

  It was all jolly hockey sticks, and all very theatrical with all the Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber people. The whole cast was nervous. They reinforced that thing I always suspected: we wallow in the fear, we can’t avoid it. In fact, we go looking for it, and then can hardly handle it, it’s so tense. We’re addicted to self-inflicted torture!

  It felt like a band-on-tour vibe. Everybody was really excited. It was going to be six to eight shows a week – proper hard work. I was only going to be onstage to do my one song, but that was almost an extra pressure – I better get that one thing right.

  From there, I dived right into it. Rehearsals started in New Orleans in June at a wonderful old converted fire station. It was the perfect place after all the hustle and bustle of New York. I left my ego at the door. I went into a genre, and a type of singing, that I had nothing but negative feelings about, and I found it to be a very generous and rewarding world where people really do share.

  I was careful not to check out previous performances of ‘Herod’s Song’. Rik Mayall RIP had done it in one UK stage version. He used a lot of early Rottenisms, apparently, so that way I could’ve ended up parodying myself, by default, without even intending to.

  In rehearsals, the female singing instructor said, ‘Don’t worry, John, we’re not going to bother you with the “do-re-mi’s”.’ I’ve been singing for nearly forty years, and yet I was really worried about hitting a bum note in practice, before I even sang the song. And I couldn’t go into my usual trip of not talking and sitting there shaking with nerves, because that would’ve been unfair to everybody around me. We were doing it in fairly tight quarters.

  At the core of it, I wanted to understand stagecraft, and not from a cynical outsider’s point of view. It was a bloody great opportunity to just fiddle about in a proper way. I had good chats with Laurence Connor, the director, who I found very helpful and great to work with, and the bloke playing Jesus, Ben Forster, came down to help me – he was fantastically friendly. Everyone was willing you to do your best. I only ever thought that happened with panto. There was a great sense of ‘bond’, and ‘ensemble’, which to me had always just conjured visions of pianos falling down staircases.

  It stops you being shy, which is always gonna be a problem of mine, but it also stops you being an egomaniac, which is also a problem of mine. And one, sadly enough, is a direct response to the other. With both of those things left to the side, it was a delicious learning curve.

  Within two days I found myself bouncing around, learning dance moves, and being very happy doing it – very happy adhering to somebody else’s song. And being able to shape-shift in and around that, and being given the space to do so. They were saying, ‘Well, now you can add your flavour, if you want, John.’ Fantastic generosity, sharing and camaraderie.

  They wanted me to play King Herod a bit like a slimy game show host, but with a Rotten twist. The clothes were an important part of that. I had to be involved in the design. I love my clothes. I needed to feel I was wearing the outfit and it wasn’t wearing me. I didn’t want anything that had gone before in previous productions. So I worked closely with the production and the design teams to come up with something special. I probably drove them mad, but it had to be right. I’d originally toyed with the idea of doing it as a slick ’50s Teddy Boy but in the end we decided on a variation of a nineteenth-century Southern gentleman kind of look. Do you want a bit of detail? Johnny will give you attention to detail! Tangerine, purple and mauve paisley brocade jacket – with black satin lapel, collar and cuffs – embellished with Swarovski Crystal sequins. White butterfly-collar shirt with a thick purple Ascot knotted cravat-type tie, and an orange-gold waistcoat. Black trousers and patent leather Prada brogues. We had the suit made up in New Orleans and when I saw it on my arrival it was exactly how I had pictured it. When I put it on I fell completely into the role.

  I practically ran to the rehearsals each day. Everybody was so ripe and ready for it, and then – bang! The promoter, Michael Cohl, decides to pull the whole tour.

  I was in my room doing phone interviews, and I was angry because I wanted to get to rehearsals – I wanted to do some work around the old piano with the vocal coach and the piano player, in advance of actually fully rehearsing. I’d got dressed early – I wanted to go down early. I went into Rambo’s room, and he was in there in a meeting with two of the tour’s management team. They were all very quiet, and I bounced in – ‘Hello everybody!’ – and Rambo stood up and went, ‘I’ve got some bad news – it’s off.’

  I thought he was joking. No, he wasn’t. My face hit the floor. It was really, really sad. Rambo says he almost saw a tear in my eye. They filled me in, and it was a dizzy moment in the head. My first thought was, ‘I’ve got to go and meet the crew and cast, to see how they feel.’ They were all gathering in the hotel lobby, and we sat around the bar and just talked. It was very, very, very sad. But then we started to break the ice with ba
d, dark-humour jokes, and then eventually – ‘Well, let’s go out and have lunch.’

  Eventually, the production company took us all out to an afternoon lunch/dinner, the last supper as we called it, and that went on to ‘Well, let’s go clubbing,’ and quite frankly you couldn’t pick a better place than New Orleans in the entire world for that. We really had a laugh – this huge mob of theatricals, which I was more than happy to be one of. It was like one of those dance movies, where everybody gets up and dances out on the street – that’s kind of what we did. We danced away to the clubs, and danced from one club to another.

  It was such a tragedy, because to my mind this was going to be a most excellent tour for me. I didn’t have the responsibility of ‘leadership’ here, I was just ‘one of’. It was a very good feeling. I knew what my role was, I knew what my part was, I knew how I had to do that, and not let everybody down by showing off and being a ridiculous whatever – but then all of that was taken away from all of us. Amazingly catastrophic.

  At the same time, I met some really excellent people. My God, my heart goes out to them, because everybody had committed, we’d all given up lots of work, and lots of other things we could’ve been getting on with, and the cheque’s just withdrawn from you, and you’re facing financial ruin, in some cases. Some of them had rented out their apartments and had nowhere to go.

  This is what happens in life. It would have been a sensational production. It would have worked. I can happily say it wasn’t any of our faults.

  For the moment, of course, that now leaves the way clear for a new PiL album, which we’re hoping to start around the time this book lands in the shops. It’s a pity that it comes in on the tail of a letdown, but I won’t be using that as a backdrop. Disappointment to me is a constant. All that work and learning won’t be wasted. I’m going to pull all the positives out.