Rotten

by John Lydon

  Chrissie Hynde and I became friends. One reason I hung around with her was because Malcolm and Vivienne didn’t like her, and that was a good enough reason for me to be intrigued. Chrissie was a hard girl. She played guitar and bounced around between Akron, Ohio, and London, a woman without a country. She lived in Paris before she came to London and hung around the Sex shop with her friend, Judy Nylon. Chrissie fell out with Vivienne Westwood because Vivienne apparently had a fight with Judy over nothing in particular. Vivienne suddenly ostracized the both of them because, well, that’s her thing. Banned from the shop!

  “You go with the flow,” as Vivienne would say, pointing towards the door, “and it goes that way.”

  CHRISSIE HYNDE: One day I walked into the shop and Vivienne asked, “Chrissie, what are you doing here? I thought you’d gone to France.”

  “I did, but I’m back,” I said.

  “I want you to get out of my shop,” Vivienne yelled. “You’re a despicable little piece of shit.”

  I never knew why they were mad at me. I never saw her again until ten years later when she spoke to me and we’d become friendly again. I always admired and looked up to Malcolm and Vivienne—to the point where I thought, Why should they like me? Maybe I am a despicable little piece of shit. Look at my clothes. I’ve got no style. On the other hand, I was the girl who was musical. Vivienne was shocked when she saw me play a guitar.

  “You really can squeeze some chords out of that thing, can’t you, Chrissie?” They were all surprised that a low-life like me actually could do something.

  I couldn’t get Glen or Steve to teach me, so Chrissie offered to give me guitar lessons. We’d sit and play acoustic guitars on the grass together at Clapham Commons. I knew it intensely annoyed Vivienne, who insisted at every opportunity that Malcolm sack me from the group. She felt I must be no good because I was hanging around with Chrissie Hynde, that bitch from hell, which started the Vivienne vendetta against me.

  CHRISSIE HYNDE: Malcolm got pissed off when he found out I was trying to show John how to play some chords on the guitar. Pissed off! According to Malcolm, John was not to be the guitar player, he was to be the poet, and Malcolm didn’t need someone like me interfering. Even so, I would meet John on Clapham Commons, where we would sit down together and I would try to show him how to play. Unfortunately he was left-handed and all fucked up, but I was determined and he wanted to learn. However, he lost interest early on, even though he desperately wanted to become a little more musical. Maybe John thought playing guitar would help him write songs. I’d also showed him the Bhagavad Gita and I tried to get him interested in my little spiritual trips. John was into beautiful, colorful pictures. He loved colors. That period of minimalism never seemed to appeal to him—he liked opulence. Of course, that didn’t go down a storm with Malcolm and Vivienne, either. They were very protective and didn’t like people entering their inner circle. Malcolm was possibly afraid I’d influence the guys musically.

  When I started bringing Sid out to the gigs, that was Vivienne’s opening. “Get rid of John! Sid will do because he doesn’t hang around with Chrissie Hynde.” That’s the kind of childishness that used to go on with Malcolm and Vivienne. There was that kind of subterfuge going on. Here I am at seventeen and eighteen thinking, My God, these are old people in their thirty-pluses. They should know better, such an unrealistic outlook on life.

  After I left the play center job, and just around the time the Pistols started rehearsing, Chrissie got us house-cleaning jobs. Sid got the job first after working at Heals, the health food restaurant. I didn’t like cleaning office buildings. Too much stuff would go missing, and they would point the finger at me while Sid would stand there, sheepishly innocent. Then Chrissie found this other cleaning agency that specialized in doing residences. We only worked together once, then it was on to solo jobs. That was hell on earth. I usually worked for old rich bitches, gray-haired, overdressed, with Harrods bags everywhere, the kind of domineering old biddies that England seems to have an overabundance of, usually unmarried.

  The agency would give me an address, and I would show up at these women’s doors.

  “Hello!”

  “Arrgghh!”

  I was well and truly odd looking at that point, just after my green hair phase. Invariably these old battle-axes in purple rinses would follow me around their house, convinced I would steal something, pointing angrily at the dusty spots.

  “Look at that there! You didn’t do that properly!”

  I was desperately earning money to live. I would make their beds, do the laundry, clean up the kitchen, and scrub the house down. It was a full day’s job that they usually wanted done in an hour and a half because they always had someone coming around for tea, and could I put the kettle on while I was about?

  The money wasn’t brilliant. But the sheer nausea used to thrill me in a perverse way. They were such cows, especially to young boys they didn’t find attractive. Barbara Cartland with a battle-ax.

  I didn’t stick with it very long, sorry to say. Chrissie got the best job of all—Keith Richards’s place. I could have definitely had a fun time doing nothing there. You can’t tell me he knows the dust is piled up in the corners.

  CHRISSIE HYNDE: I got John a job at one point cleaning houses, but I don’t think he lasted very long. I got Sid a job modeling at St. Martin’s art college. We were all low-lifes, so we’d do what we could for each other. I was the only one who didn’t live at home with my parents. Sid lived in a tower block with his mum. I remember all of us would be looking for something to do and Sid would say, “We can always go to me mum’s and smoke hippie drugs.”

  Before the Sex Pistols, music was so bloody serious, all run by university graduates. It was all head music devoid of any real intellectualism. There was no deep thought in it, merely images pertaining to something mystical, too stupid and absolutely devoid of reality. How on earth were we supposed to relate to that music when we lived in council flats? We had no money, no job, no nothing. So the Pistols projected that anger, that rock-bottom working-class hate. I don’t think that had ever been dealt with in music outside of a “show bizzy” way. Rap had that initial anger when it started, that rock-bottom gut feeling. Now rap’s become show biz as well, all about making money. The Rolling Stones did live in a hovel, but wasn’t Mick Jagger from a nice wealthy family? Before the Pistols, most of these dropout people and their hovels were self-inflicted. Being an economics graduate is not quite the same thing.

  CAROLINE COON: During the sixties, it was rock ’n’ roll that saw the class system breaking down. It was rock ’n’ roll that served as counterculture class politics and therefore instrumental in breaking things down. Mick Jagger faked his accent to sound more working class. His view of what it was to be working class was that you should be thick and stupid, yet another conceit about the English class system.

  I was pushed out into the world. I’m sure there was a lot more to do with it than just hair, although the hair broke the camel’s back. My mother, when we’d meet, was always supportive. She agreed that it was right that I go out and make my own way. While I tried to agree, I felt horribly neglected. Looking back, I think it was a very sensible thing to do. You can’t have intelligent children hanging around the house. They’ve got to go out and live in the real world. Now I appreciate it. It was very good for me. I have no regrets.

  As for not going out and becoming a drug addict, all you have to do is look at them. Look at them! Where’s the enjoyment, the pleasure, the point, the purpose? There isn’t one.

  In the beginning, I hated the music the Sex Pistols were playing. Musically they were a nightmare. They tried so hard to play in a boxed-in, pedestrian, nicey-nice way. I wanted a bit more shambolic chaos. The better gigs were when things were so fucking out of tune. It was excellent fun to confront an audience and watch them just stare. The best gigs we’d ever done was when the audience didn’t even bother to clap. Those gigs were usually at the universities. Outside of the u
niversities, you’d find that people were a bit more understanding. Isn’t that odd? Our worst enemies were university students. They thought they knew it all with their Emerson, Lake and Palmer albums. Places like St. Martin’s College—which was literally across the road from where we rehearsed. It was funny, walking across the street with amps and guitars to our first gig. St. Martin’s was an art college that Glen Matlock went to. We got the gig there supporting Bazooka Joe, with which Adam Ant was a member. I was nervous as hell.

  BOB GRUEN: Johnny Rotten was standoffish at first, everyone else was quite friendly, having drinks, chatting, pretty loose. Steve and Paul chatted up the girls, trying to score for the night. Johnny was more aloof, with his wild, angry eyes. I remember my first response being, “What’s his problem? Who’s he pissed off at? I don’t even know the guy. Why is he looking around like everything sucks?” He had this angry attitude about everything.

  I really do think the crown and glory of the Sex Pistols is that we’ve always managed to disappoint on big occasions. When the chips were down, we never came through. We were so bad, it was gloriously awful, as it should have been. You can never change anything by playing nice melodies and singing lovey-dovey lyrics to people, that is, unless they don’t want it. Details were never ever worked out properly. Things such as road crews, equipment, PAs, monitors. That would be the screw-up right there. A lot of our gear was stolen, though not by me. They had most of it—their guitars and things—before I joined up. A singer doesn’t need anything, does he? A bloody microphone, which most of the time we’d borrow from the main band and proceed to destroy. I did that a lot. I would stick the mike into the monitors until it fed back and blew itself up. It was wonderful.

  STEVE JONES: As a juvenile I had a criminal record—fourteen convictions. I went away to a proovy school for a year and a half, but I never actually went to prison. Most of the stuff I did up until the age of seventeen was as a juvenile. I got popped for stolen equipment. After eighteen you go to prison, and the Sex Pistols kept me out. After the band happened, I didn’t steal that much afterward. It saved me.

  Steve stayed in the rehearsal studio that Malcolm had rented. Paul lived with his mum and daddy. I squatted with Sid at Hampstead. Finally I’d decided I’d had enough of that, so Malcolm got me a flat in King’s Cross. I proceeded to move in something like forty people.

  I’m not much of a loner. I love company. Love it. It was around that time that the yobs and boot boys around Finsbury Park where I had grown up began to like me and my friends. They never used to. They always thought us weird, but they started hanging around, poncing free drinks. But who cared?

  So I kept to myself and my own set of pals, away from the other Pistols. But what did they want of me? All during the Sex Pistols—Malcolm, Steve, Paul—would go to parties all the time. The socialite Andrew Logan affairs, whatever. I wouldn’t be invited, so what was I supposed to do? Stay at home and watch TV? Bollocks to that. I’d be out on the town with my mates. If they resented that, well, that’s too fucking bad. Soon it became a matter of indifference to me what they thought.

  STEVE JONES: I was a real pussy hound. It was an ongoing thing for me—I was constantly looking for anything to fuck. I was molested [as a child], so that had a lot to do with it. I kept thinking if I could get laid, then I must be all right. Some people have to be validated constantly. John gets that feeling in other ways—like having people tell him how wonderful he is. I’m sure he won’t like to hear that, but that’s what I think. He was an outsider like I was an outsider in the band—by choice. I didn’t see myself as a social person; I used to leave on my own after the gigs, too.

  There was rarely a time when the four of us were friends. Right from the start at rehearsals, I’d go out to the toilet—or tell them that—and listen at the door. I would hear them say, “That cunt. Fucking hell!” Then they’d go off, pack into someone’s car, and leave me standing behind. I’d go home by myself on the train. That would be it, night after night after night. It was always like that, me being the outsider.

  As for why I was ostracized, Malcolm told me that he wanted me to be the “mystery man” of the band, which of course I didn’t want. That meant I didn’t go anywhere. It was unfair because people complained that they never saw John. Nobody ever got to know me. On top of that, Steve, Paul, and Malcolm had known each other a lot longer. I was the new boy. They’d already formed their little thing and they weren’t going to make room for another, particularly someone as bad as me who wouldn’t take the shit.

  In Glen’s book, he claimed all I ever said to him was “Drop dead.” That’s right, Glen. Drop dead. Unfortunately for him, he doesn’t seem to think I meant it. I fucking well did. Continuously. But, out of the lot of them, I must say this about Glen: he was the only one who attempted to kindle any kind of friendship with me, which is odd because I despised him so. Everything he stood for was wimpy, poncey, just dull. He didn’t like to offend. He wanted everyone to like him and to have a good time. So boring.

  I had nothing to do with the Sex Pistols’ music at all. I couldn’t play. I didn’t understand what they were doing. Tuning up, to me, was a waste of time, something very annoying. As the years went by with the Pistols, all two of them, I got more interested in the music. I bought the book and got addicted to music, which I never was into before. Up until then, making music meant little to me, although somebody must have realized I was on to something good. It couldn’t have been Paul or Steve. It must have been Malcolm. I knew very little what the band felt about me apart from the times I’d listen from behind the door. But somebody must have realized that I had a different angle about me. If the Pistols had taken any other route, you wouldn’t know them today. That’s not me praising myself. They were just so different from me that the extremes put together worked exceedingly well. It’s nothing you can plan; it just happens. Out of all shambolic glory, something lent itself to chaos.

  I always wrote the lyrics and insisted on that right from the start, which infuriated the band no end. They all had these daft covers, silly love songs they wanted me to sing. But I just wouldn’t, couldn’t. I don’t believe in that kind of love. Very few songs that sing about love are real. It’s not love, it’s something else—a false emotion, opium for the masses, not accurate, a deceit.

  Early on, the band wanted to do a song by the Small Faces. The lyrics went something like “I want you to know that I love you, baby/I want you to know that I care.” Well, I couldn’t have any of that, so I changed it to “I want you to know that I hate you, baby/ I want you to know I don’t care/So happy when you’re not around me/I’m so glad when you’re not there.” The exact opposite seemed to work much better.

  SEGMENT 07:

  STONE-COLD DEAD SILENCE / A JOHN AND PAUL SUMMIT

  PAUL COOK: Glen Matlock attended St. Martin’s College, and he set up our first gig there in November of 1975. We rehearsed across the road and wheeled all the equipment down Charing Cross Road about six in the afternoon. We set up and played for twenty minutes. Total chaos. None of us knew what we were doing. We were very nervous and all over the place. We played cover versions like “No Lip,” “Satellite,” “Substitute,” “Seventeen,” “Whatcha Gonna Do About It.” We were still learning our trade.

  JOHN LYDON: There was not one single hand clap.

  COOK: People yelled at us to get off because they wanted their Bazooka Joe. We nearly had a fight with them. They thought we were an oddity because of our attitudes.

  LYDON: The college audience had never seen anything like it. They couldn’t connect with where we were coming from because our stance was so anti-pop, so anti-everything that had gone on before. Adam may look back on it all rather sweetly by saying he split up his band after seeing us play, but the reality was that he was very bitter and annoyed with us—as indeed most bands were that played with us. Adam Ant’s band was furiously jealous because they spent so much time sewing up those silly silver jackets.

  COOK: We weren’t b
eing nice. That was the main difference between us and them.

  LYDON: I didn’t care. We didn’t do it to be loved.

  COOK: That was outrageous for 1975. You have to understand what it was like at the time. Everything was so conventional—

  LYDON: So English. Nobody wanted to offend anybody, and everybody was bemoaning their sorry lot, but never doing anything about it. If you stood up to express an opinion, that would be offending someone, and therefore that wouldn’t be British, a terrible thing to have to fight against. Quite frankly, looking at Britain right now, that’s what it’s all reverted to. Everybody wants to be nice again.

  COOK: We used to turn up at college gigs opening up for hippie bands. We weren’t booked at a lot of those gigs because they wouldn’t have us on. We would play unannounced at places like Holborn and the Central School of Art and Design. Holborn was arranged by Glen’s friend, Al MacDonald. Then there was Finchley, Queen Elizabeth College, Chelsea School of Art, Chislehurst Raven, St. Albans, Aldgate, and Kensington. These were just learning gigs around Christmastime of 1975. The strange thing was that people latched on to us straight away. We got a reaction wherever we went; a lot of it was positive.

  JOHN GRAY: There were always two types of fans in the audience. There were the ones who took it at face value—the yobs, pretty vacant thickos. Then there were the ones who could see it for what it was—very powerful rock music. The early gigs with Glen Matlock were tight as hell. There was no mucking about. Glen was a workman musician; a bit boring, but he made the group start on time, end on time, and keep the melody intact. John could then go wild when he knew the background was stable. As long as he had an anchor, he could go wild at any point. If everyone was wild, it truly was chaos. Also consider that Steve and Glen weren’t coming from an improvisational school. Chaos is okay in a jazz sensibility. But with three thickos bashing away trying to be chaotic, that would have been ridiculous.