Rotten

by John Lydon

  Though not in a Protestant type of way, there was a kind of paradoxical punk ideology at work. There were the unspoken rules. Anything was possible, a rule in itself. There were the unspoken perimeters, like not having to be Phil Collins or Paul McCartney to be a musician.

  CHRISSIE HYNDE: The thing about the punk period was that to be a musician went against the whole idea. The minute anyone got serious about their musicality, they lost what was interesting about the punk scene. Not having a fucking clue and getting on stage and just doing it was what made it so exciting. I was down at the Roxy Club every night for the first six months. I used to just stand there and laugh. Don Letts was the disc jockey in the box. We’d smoke a spliff, and then he’d be in the box and I’d be out front. We’d be looking at each other, and some nights I would be crying. It wasn’t a matter of being so bad as it was being so “out there.” I can remember one band coming off and asking the guitarist, “Is that some special tuning you were playing in?”

  Turns out they just didn’t know how to tune their guitars. It wasn’t a matter of being judgmental, it was purity and innocence.

  All the second-generation bands of that era have since invented nonsensical rules, like not living like a rock star or not dealing with Americans. Originally, with the Pistols anyway, there were never any of those “us and them”–type barriers. We were more pissed off at the people we had liked in the past who had gone sour. We weren’t pissed off that these people played in huge places so much as it was the type of music they played in those huge places. The Genesises, the Yeses—it was all redundant garbage. The Pistols had nothing to do with the fact that you shouldn’t play in a big place or you shouldn’t be on “Top of the Pops.” That was nonsense. The idea was to do as much as you can, get in there, shake things up, the fly-in-the-ointment approach.

  As far as the music being academic, at the time very little of it seemed so. The references to the Situationists—I’ve only read about that in the last three years! Everybody knew about the Surrealists and Dadaists, but who the hell were the Situationists? I don’t know if Malcolm or Bernie ever talked to the Pistols about all of that, but I don’t think it would have stuck. They would have gone down to the pub—certainly Steve would have. Steve wouldn’t have grasped it for a second, he wouldn’t have wanted to know. Rather, everything was much more intuitive and exciting; it was never preconceived or manipulated to cause any kind of intellectual outrage. It was clever and smart, while it certainly didn’t have a political philosophy behind it.

  CAROLINE COON: Malcolm and Bernie were anti-intellectual.… That’s why they went into Situationist politics. Situationist politics is merely sloganeering—second-rate sloganeering at that—all pulled out of the sixties dust bin. However, there was a positive side, it being graphically quite interesting. Yet it was also incoherent.

  PAUL COOK: Situationism had nothing to do with us. The Jamie Reids and the Malcolms were excited because we were the real thing. I suppose we were what they were dreaming of. We didn’t spend any time philosophizing, nothing was contrived, and everything just happened quickly and naturally—which is how things should happen. We were out there doing it.

  As for “God Save the Queen,” there’s always going to be this aristocratic segment of English society who are untouchable and unflappable. They wouldn’t know what you were talking about should you attempt to even comment on their atrocious behavior. They just don’t see it. It’s all a part of their blinkered upbringing. The whole British class structure is alive and well today to the point that one of the fundamentals of pop music is that it’s still a great escape for working-class people. Either it’s music, football hooliganism, or boxing.

  RAMBO: There were a lot of punks over at Arsenal. We actually adopted a Pistols football song:

  We’re so pretty,

  We hate Man-City,

  We’re violent,

  And we go spare!

  Perhaps it’s crime. Obviously that was Steve Jones’s background. Or there was the reason people would move from the inner city out to a suburb like Bromley—to slowly rise up and become some deputy executive assistant in an insurance company. That’s a black-collar job that’s dead end forever. Those were your choices in England. That’s why these suburban towns breed so many pop bands. You don’t get many opportunities to do something with your life.

  Apart from happening in the middle of one of the hottest summers in 1977, the Pistols rose to prominence right in the midst of one of our worst recessions. I remember nobody having any money. If the Pistols were being paid thirty pounds a week, that was a lot. Obviously it wasn’t a lot for what they were generating in terms of revenue and importance, but it was enough to live on. That was a lot more than we had at the time. But you made do. You survived. It was a reality that you had no money, but you were young and you didn’t care. That’s where John and I are similar. We both come from London Irish families. John was brought up in Finsbury Park. I was born about three miles west, in Archway. While my Irish connection isn’t as strong as his, it still touches me. What we call “London Irish” is a particular emotional base that’s peculiar to our generation.

  Whether he likes it or not, John was the icon for that period, and through that one person you have the identity that epitomizes the chaos that was going on. I don’t think John invented the chaos of the Pistols era, it just happened. Things sometimes need a figurehead. Maybe that’s where it all went wrong. Maybe Malcolm was jealous that he wasn’t it. Come to think of it, I can’t think of any other reason why Malcolm would want to go out and make his own records afterward.

  CAROLINE COON: To see Malcolm wanting to become like Johnny was very interesting. Malcolm copying Johnny was bizarre. I have this scenario about Malcolm. He had to fight hard. He could not intellectually face the dire circumstances of his childhood. He had horrendous, tough shit to deal with but didn’t. There he was, floating around.…

  SEGMENT 12:

  SHOOTING IN THE DARK

  The press reported a ruckus at London’s Heathrow Airport before our flight to Amsterdam. Tales of vomit and drunkenness. Now what are ashtrays for but to spit in? You do that, some old woman gets offended and there’s forty journalists there to blow it out of all proportion. Suddenly you’ve vomited all over the airport. Okay, Steve did vomit in Heathrow Airport. What was he supposed to do? Why was it news?

  I never liked playing in Amsterdam or Holland. The Dutch were too hippie and laid back for us—the audience tended to be a hell of a lot older than us, too. They looked like a bunch of Grateful Dead rejects. The young kids weren’t allowed into the halls because the shows would start very late. The smell of incense, the joss sticks, and the hash-burning counters pissed me off. The whole scene struck me as retarded or stuck in a time warp. Every time I’ve ever been back there, I still have that same vision.

  I preferred Scandinavia because they were much more hard and brutal. Playing there was like going to a Viking beer monster’s tea party. The Scandinavian tours were wild and crazy events. The crowds would be well sozzled, very much younger, and way more aggressive than British audiences—but not violent, at least not to us. They weren’t out there to kill us, but to be with us. Big difference. A long time before the British, Scandinavian audiences were the first ones who clocked on to what the Sex Pistols were about. Absolutely. We were still having trouble with London audiences. They were fashionably overdressed. Up north, English kids were still into long pudding bowl hairdos and booing and hissing. But Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark were so bang on the money. They all had the attitude right from the start and understood the energy. They were sick of the long hair too: “Look how badly I’ve hacked my hair off!”

  Londoners would call them disasters and suggest, “Why don’t you just dab a little pink here or quiff it to one side?”

  Scandinavians were already punked out without the clichés and trying to follow a set image. They were completely on their own, and I loved going back there. The music media’s opinions
meant nothing to them. The girls were phenomenal. You could get raped and have a sauna at the same time. Buxom beauties, every single one. They destroyed that ridiculous, thin model look. Malcolm only came out once with us. Scandinavia wasn’t for him because it was too far away from the fashion world of London and he couldn’t pull any strokes out there. Nordic people are more interested in the guts of the music while Malcolm would be completely absorbed with the trimmings.

  A lord provost in Scotland spoke out against the Sex Pistols in one of his speeches, saying Scotland had enough hooligans without importing them from south of the border. That was odd. I’d always seen these people as the powers that be, people we’d never have direct contact with at all. But when they started screaming and shouting about the Sex Pistols, the titillation level rose.

  After the release of “God Save the Queen,” we got beat up on the street. That’s another reason I tended to hang around with large amounts of friends, particularly hooligan elements. They would stop that. It was physically impossible for me to walk around the streets on my own. I would be attacked. High visibility and all this daily nonsense in the newspapers. If I farted, it was an affront to society and I had to be chastised. You always get this in England—gangs of drunks roaming the streets who think that they’re there to protect society. Lo and behold, that’s what happened. Some of the attacks were quite severe. I was stabbed right near the studio, while we were recording the Bollocks album. This is before the record was even fucking released. The singles were out, but the album wasn’t. We went to a pub around the corner—not far from the same old Arsenal area in Highbury where I was brought up. This bunch of bastards just tore into us with gurkha knives, blades, razors, the lot. I was with the producer Chris Thomas and Bill Price, the engineer. We managed to run into the car park and lock ourselves in Chris’s car. This mob smashed the car and windscreen to shit while we were inside it. They broke one of the windows and stuck a blade in. I had on a pair of very thick leather trousers at the time. It went straight down them. If I’d had on anything less, it would have probably ripped my leg out. The blade stuck in my knee. I got a stiletto blade pushed straight into my hand, next to my thumb. It came out the other side by my little finger. That affected the tendons in my left hand. I’ll never play guitar again because of that. Boo. Hiss. I can’t close a proper left fist. That’s a bit hard because I’m left-handed. I thought I was going to die. Pretty damned close to it. Yet the police didn’t want to know.

  “Look at the state of ya!”

  Thanks very much. I’m not a fighter. I’ll defend myself, but there’s not a lot I can do against that kind of artillery. There was at least twelve of them. They taunted us.

  “We love our queen.”

  That struck me as very odd. It was such a stupid thing to say. I’m sure they made her proud that night.

  BOB GRUEN: In America, whether you liked the president or not, you could at least say whatever the fuck you wanted. I can’t imagine somebody at CBGB’s saying they hated a band because they’d insulted the president. But in England, other musicians were genuinely incensed by the Pistols’ attitude. It was interesting to see kids so volatile and emotional over something political like the queen. In America, it was sex, not politics, that created controversy.

  Later on it was very hard for any of the Pistols to go out socially anywhere or sit in any of the pubs around Fulham, King’s Road, Ladbroke Grove, or any of those music areas. We would get criticism from these so-called long-haired, rebellious rock bands. They all stood behind the Union Jack and the queen. There they were standing up for the very things that kept them down all their lives. The Pistols made clear that we didn’t need to be kicked in the teeth and accept it any longer. We wanted to stand up and see it for the rubbish it was. Physical violence, like what the Pistols experienced, is very rare. I don’t think that’s ever happened to a band before or since. There hasn’t been a band on this planet that enticed that kind of response and attitude. Quite frankly, I wasn’t happy with it, either. Knives hurt.

  BOB GRUEN: Once I was in a bar called the Speakeasy with Steve Jones and Johnny Rotten. Steve and I went into the bathroom, into the stall to smoke something. We could hear two people washing their hands and talking. Since this was a rock star bar full of musicians, I assumed the artists at least got along with each other and had a sense of free thought. But these guys were talking about how angry they were and how much they hated the Sex Pistols because they’d insulted the queen. I couldn’t believe it. Steve and I were listening to all this anger. I didn’t get it at all. That’s when I felt like a tourist. Musicians angry at a band because they sang a song against the queen? I guess Steve had a better idea of what was going on. Afterward we went back out into the bar and were drinking beer out of these big, heavy beer mugs. To me, it was still just a bar full of musicians, but Steve was aware of the undercurrent. Johnny Rotten was a couple of feet away from us talking to somebody. All of a sudden Steve said, “Get down, there’s gonna be a fight.”

  Just as we ducked under the edge of the bar, every glass in the place went flying in the air. It was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. From every direction, heavy beer glasses came crashing down on us, smashing against the walls and pillars of the bar. Within seconds the place was ankle deep in broken glass. I asked, “What the fuck was that for?”

  Steve answered, “Some people don’t like us.”

  My father saw Malcolm unable to maintain control. The violence was really severe, particularly when I got slashed outside the recording studio. Sid and I were living in Chelsea Cloisters. We weren’t like Paul and Steve. We didn’t have any permanent place to stay, so we were more open to being victimized. When I was slashed there was a problem at the hospital and they wouldn’t treat me. Malcolm wouldn’t even organize a cab to take us anywhere.

  One photo session originally done for the Daily Mirror had me tied to a crucifix. It seems hard to believe that in 1977 it offended so many people. Again, it made any kind of public social activity almost impossible. I don’t know what it is with the English. They’re so easily outraged. Ironically, this is the kind of stuff Madonna does now, and it’s all considered very chi-chi. Now it’s called market planning and self-promotion, and she’s given more than a nod and a wink. When we shot the photo in 1977, the photographer had a cross set up on the corner.

  “Would you like to stand in front of it?”

  “Oh, why not.”

  It wasn’t a setup, but it didn’t occur to me or the photographer that this would be a total catastrophe. If it annoys people that much, then you know you’re doing something right. No great planning or no Malcolm involvement there.

  My mum thought the Pistols were amusing, but she felt sorry for Sid. Both she and my old man always thought he was a bit thick. When I got Sid into the Pistols, my mum sighed. “What kind of wicked reasons have you got behind that?” I didn’t have any wicked reasons at the time, but I think my parents spotted it as a bad move. I was too young to know at the time. At that age, you can’t hold yourself responsible for other people’s behavior.

  My parents didn’t turn up at any Pistols gigs, while my brothers did. Perhaps Mum might have seen us once. I really didn’t want my parents there. It was too chaotic. To be frank, I don’t think they would have got it. They certainly couldn’t have coped with the audience and the sheer abandon of it all. It was no tea party. Maybe I should have invited my parents. But it was something I didn’t want to happen. Deep down inside, it would be something to be ashamed of. Isn’t that odd? Exposing yourself to the public is one thing, but to your own parents, you just can’t do it. It’s not the same. They would have been like your most severe critics—they’d see right through me—and I could not have that happening at eighteen or nineteen years old. No fucking way! I had an arrogance of being a self-made man, but when I look back on it, it’s so stupid.

  But you have to go through that stage. It’s so relevant. If you can’t get through it, then there’s nothing for y
ou in the future. That was Sid’s problem. He just couldn’t get through the concept of self-identity. He hadn’t formed enough of his own personality to have enough self-esteem in himself to go forward. That’s why he was so easily led.

  CHRISSIE HYNDE: I knew how close John was to his mother. I remember embarrassing him one night—or impressing him—early on in the Roxy Club. He had a new watch on, a digital one with a red face that would light up when you pressed a button. He was standing there and I asked, “Is that what your mum gave you for Christmas?”

  I knew by the look on his face that, indeed, that’s what his mum had given him for Christmas. After that I knew he was close to her.

  My parents did see the Pistols on the telly. My father would yell, “Oh, Jesus!” while my mummy would be knitting a cardigan, look up, and say:

  “Oh, that’s nice.”

  She had the “why do you have to scream so much?” approach, but whatever extremes I was up to, she just let me get on with it. That’s what my mum always did. She didn’t ignore me. She would never be so trite as to tell me I was just going through a phase. There would be some very subtle hints, however imperceptible it was to someone outside the family unit, but I definitely knew, I could just feel it. Sometimes when people say nothing, it says more than reams of sentences. She thought the swearing was terrible. Mum never liked swearing. The Grundy TV incident would have been unforgivable, yet she convinced herself that it wasn’t me.