Rotten

by John Lydon

  During the American tour, Tom Forcade from High Times was definitely after Sid, trying to interview him. While I didn’t know anything about the magazine at the time, Forcade wanted a drug scandal, which is what this magazine dealt with, the recreational use of drugs. It was difficult to keep him away from Sid because he followed us from hotel to hotel. I found it curious that he always knew where we were. He would always turn up. He tried to bribe Noel in order to get him to cooperate, but he did keep him away. There was one instance when we found him in Sid’s room. Sid had let him in. You couldn’t turn your back on Sidney. Sometimes he was so stupid. “It’s press. You’re ruining my career!” Oh, Sid! There were fisticuffs and some camera bashing before he was physically ejected from Sid’s room.

  Sid had become like a wild animal unleashed for the first time. He believed that’s what it was all about—to be a rock ’n’ roll hero. He had an inflated ego, and all of that was cultivated by Nancy before he left Britain. “You’re the star, Sid! You don’t need these guys. That fuckin’ Johnny Rotten. Man, he’s bad!”

  Nancy was excess baggage—definitely not wanted on this tour. That annoyed Sid no end, but that was just too bad. It was quite simple: if he was going to bring Nancy, then I was going to bring a couple of my mates. Sid wouldn’t want that because these were people who were cruel to Nancy. Big guys, fighters these people. They love their physical stuff. Nancy was a horror freak show, just crying out for a slap in the kisser. Many of us, at one time or another, actually physically hit her because she was that pushy. I know I did.

  “Oh, don’t hit her!” quoth Sid. “You mustn’t!”

  Do you think I was going to put up with that garbage heap?

  I can’t have people flitting around when I write songs. There has to be absolute silence. Sid would get very angry—more like jealousy—on the bus.

  “What you writing there?”

  When I showed Sid, Paul, and Steve the lyrics to “Religion” on the bus, their only response was “Whoa!” It was now time for the serious stuff. The Sex Pistols had never dealt with those topics before. I tried to get Steve and Paul involved. We had a very long wait at the San Antonio gig when we got there very early. I wanted them to listen to what I was doing, but they wouldn’t have it under any circumstances. I knew it was over with Steve and Paul from that point onward. We never spoke much after because the next day they started to fly everywhere. They went off with Malcolm and I was left with Sid, the Hell’s Angels on the bus and a couple of journalists.

  I always get sick on tour, but the Pistols’ American bus tour was largely due to a total lack of discipline. I would drink too much the night before and not eat enough because of the late night performances. There was rarely any food around during the gigs, never any money and the booze was always supplied free by the local promoter. I ran myself down. With the Pistols, it was pointless to moan to anyone about it because nobody gave a fuck. I got more and more ill.

  I began coughing up blood at one point and thought, Fuck, is this cancer? Then I started getting nosebleeds. Turned out it was the constant air-conditioning. Since it was the first time I had ever been to America, I didn’t realize I was straining myself night after night with a totally dehydrated throat—a severe case of Vegas throat. I was ripping the back of my tonsils out. To this day I can’t have air-conditioning anywhere when I travel. I can’t stand it, even on short flights. It fucks me up in thirty minutes. I gag up huge snotty lumps.

  Quite frankly, whatever illness I had on the road in America didn’t compare to Sid’s. The dear boy was coming down cold turkey, and it was tough as all hell. I could hardly sit there and moan, “Ooooo look, Johnny’s got a sore throat.” I couldn’t be doing that, even at my cruelest.

  But it did get to the point where I finally said, “Look, I’m actually starving to death here and now. Could somebody get me some food?” I never had more than ten dollars in my pocket on the road in America. Any money I had was what I took out with me from Britain. Money wasn’t exactly floating around in large amounts within this organization. We weren’t being well paid for these concerts. We should have been receiving rather large amounts for the size of the crowds we were pulling in. The sheer campaign of it all seemed bigger than the Stones by that point. I shared the cover of Rolling Stone with Willie Nelson, and here I am broke, hungry, stuck on a bus, dehydrated—with a junkie. Seriously, Sid had come off by that time and he was settling down. A few beers would be enough for him to pass out. We had a lot of fun at the truck stops, and we would talk. Even the Angels’ security would be horrified at our behavior in these places. It was mostly Sid. He loved to approach these Dolly Parton look-alikes and their trucker boyfriends with the big cowboy hats. Remember, fifteen years ago and today are two different cultures—it was way redneck back then. Sid and I would sit among these people, and they were appalled because they didn’t know where we came from and couldn’t understand the image or the look of us. There was nothing like us in America at the time—much less in the truck stops.

  There would be some fights in the redneck truck stops. They would stand up and say, “I think you insulted my wife!” Sid, of course, didn’t have the common sense to back down and say, “No, I didn’t, and sorry if you think so.” He’d say something daft like “I think her wig’s an insult enough.” To Sid, it was all just fashion statements. He didn’t realize that these people lived and died by their hairdos. Just like Sid himself.

  BOB GRUEN: Half the time we were riding on the bus; Noel wouldn’t let the band get off. If we pulled into, say, a truck stop, Noel would go in and come out with a menu, as if we needed one. What else do you order at a truck stop besides hamburgers? He’d bring the greasy burgers back to the bus and we’d eat on the highway. One time early in the morning Noel was sleeping as we pulled up to a restaurant. I got off the bus with Sid and we sat down at the counter and ordered hamburgers and a steak. There was a cowboy sitting nearby with his wife and kid. He recognized Sid and invited us to come over and sit down. The guy said something about Sid being vicious and then put his cigarette out on his own leathery hand. Sid, who was eating his steak and eggs, casually took his knife, sliced his own hand open, and kept eating while the blood dripped into his food. The cowboy took his wife and kid and left the place.

  I was well into reggae a long time before the Pistols, but Don Letts just carried it ten stages farther with the road tapes he gave us for the American tour. Deep grooves on the southern highways. That’s all I played on the bus during that tour. If Steve and Paul didn’t like it at the time, they should have said so. I would have played it regardless. All they had was bloody Iggy Pop and the Stooges and the New York Dolls. I had heard that a thousand times before. Now Paul is totally into reggae—fifteen years later. Sid loved the reggae bass lines. It was much easier for him to get a reggae groove going.

  Noel Monk was just doing his job when it came to protecting the band. He had to cope with extreme chaos. He didn’t understand us, and we didn’t understand the American way. He was very uptight and thought we would all be murdered at any one point. It was his job to make sure we weren’t. He decided to misdirect our routes and stay in out-of-the-way motels because of the amount of press following us, mostly British. All of them were looking for a scandal, and if they didn’t get one, they would invent one. That kind of exaggeration could put us all in jail, and none of us wanted that to happen. I didn’t fancy meeting Mr. Big in a Texas penitentiary. It wasn’t my idea of heaven. It was common sense, the way it had to be. Otherwise we were unprotected.

  BOB GRUEN: Noel switched things around a lot. We had a complete itinerary of where the bus was supposed to stop, where they had reserved rooms for the night. But Monk would pull into town, check out the venue, and then divert us to these dumpy motels. He’d hide the bus behind the motel and book the band into it, the result being that nobody knew where the band was. That way he was doing his job. It got to be very boring because we were alone a lot of the time.

  Our coach
driver was quite worried about driving through some of the places we were going through. He would say so.

  “I don’t like my black ass down here.”

  Sid thought it was hilarious. He offered to sit up front with him. Sid didn’t have a clue about the racism in the South. He saw all these John Wayne films and that was it for him. I don’t think Sid met real hatred in his entire life, and if he did, he wouldn’t notice it. He could be quite dense about things like that. He could judge individuals, except when they were en masse or in groups. He never ran with mobs of people or went to football matches. He didn’t have that kind of street education, where you move on so you don’t get your head whacked.

  BOB GRUEN: Johnny had a more serious side, whereas Sid didn’t have much of a clue. Everything was coming at him so fast. He didn’t know what to do except to get high with Nancy. She was the only real feeling he had in his life, but she was back in England. They would talk on the phone once in a while. The band wouldn’t let her on the tour, nor would they allow any dope. Hence Sid spent a lot of the tour crashing the dope, ultimately getting sick for a few days, after which he would drink peppermint schnapps, which was like sucking on a candy cane full of alcohol. It’s disgusting stuff. You might put half a jigger in a holiday mixed drink, but here was Sid drinking this sticky, sweet liquor straight out of the bottle.

  Sid was naive but full of wit about things. Excellent person, but drugs did him in and turned him into a deeply unpleasant Mr. Hyde—one who would make us “hyde” from him at times. It’s not nice to be with someone talking ga-ga and gibberish and being belligerent about his own hangovers and hang-ups. There’s a terrible incoherence that comes in with drugs. Any kind of addiction is self-torture and slow suicide.

  Before drugs, Sid was such a funny chap when he was on a roll. He could take the piss out of anyone and anything and totally have them down. Again, he had great perception with people. He knew their weaknesses straight away. Steve Jones can be like that, too. If Steve gets on a roll, he can really murder someone verbally. In that respect, the Pistols were quite a literate band. We were very good at being sarcastic, and I think my qualities in this area can speak for themselves. Paul would stay quiet and not understand why we would rag on people that way. It’s a “dissing thing,” isn’t it? You notice it a lot in black culture in America these days, this thing of putting each other down all the time, and whoever comes out with the best one-liner—that’s it—and you burst out laughing. “You can’t top that!”

  That’s the game that used to go on with the Pistols. Used to. It all went sour some time before we left for America. The lack of playing in England did it in. It ended up backfiring and destroyed the band. It broke our spirit because the very thing that we were always good at was being on stage. That was the unification, and if you take that away from a band, then they will start to separate and be suspicious of each other because there’s nothing else to do. Our minds wandered because we were bored.

  We could hardly go out and socialize with other people at that time because the animosity from the British public was so intense. It became impossible. How do you lock four people up in a room and tell them they can’t do anything? What are they going to do but turn sour? A good manager would have occupied our minds, got us working on a new album, or got us thinking long term. Malcolm wouldn’t tell us anything he was up to, so we all felt manipulated and fed up. There’s no point in rehearsing if you don’t see any long-term prospects on the horizon.

  Sid and I never had the chance to speak with Malcolm on the road. He wouldn’t look at me, and I wouldn’t look at him. Paul and Steve had a different situation, and that used to piss Sid and me off a lot. We felt we were alienated, and I couldn’t quite see Malcolm’s percentage in allowing that to happen. He found that out to his detriment when he took Steve and Paul to Rio. It was a horrendously bad flop. There wasn’t anyone with enough intelligence to carry it off.

  STEVE JONES: John was more worried because he didn’t trust McLaren. I didn’t mind him. I didn’t give a fuck. Anything I got was better than where I came from. I really didn’t ask any questions, even though we got screwed. The real musicians always get the short end of the stick. It’s been happening for years to folks like Little Richard and all those guys in the fifties. Like most musicians into their thing, I’ll just fucking sign anywhere like a moron. I don’t think sincere rock ’n’ rollers are business oriented.

  During the beginning of the American tour, somebody from Warner Brothers came out to one of the gigs, and I distinctly remember one of them saying, “Well, you’re not so special. All you’ve done is imitate Rod Stewart.” That’s when Malcolm picked up on the Rod Stewart put-down. They said my hairstyle was an imitation of Rod Stewart. Malcolm took it farther and decided that I had become Rod Stewart. It’s beyond me how he concluded that. When people want to be nasty they’ll see just what they want to see.

  If at any point he’d just sat down with all of us and discussed things, everything could have been cleared. If we did decide to go our separate ways, we could have done it properly instead of through the noncommunication courtroom bullshit. It was cowardly of him to have run away when it got too hot. To this day, I don’t understand it. Maybe he couldn’t confront us. He could tell Paul and Steve anything he liked. As long as Sid was being pumped up with drugs, he would go with the flow. Sid at the same time violently hated Malcolm all through the American tour. Sid would want to attack him on site.

  Another stupid idea Malcolm had on the American tour that caused friction was that he was going to ring up Charles Manson. What a great idea! Somehow he was going to take part in the film or, worse, produce the next record from prison. This was Malcolm’s silliness. Nonsense, fantasy, none of it reality based.

  Malcolm flew everywhere with Paul and Steve. I stayed on the bus with Sid and the Hell’s Angels road crew. Sid loved the jive these people used to feed him. “Oh, us bikers are so tough. We don’t dare wear our colors in this town.” Sid was wide-eyed. By the next stop, of course, Sid had to buy a pair of biker boots because that’s what they were wearing. He already wore the proper leather jacket. This was the impressionable Sid at work. I’m watching all this. Where’s the fucking money? Why don’t we have a hotel room? Why don’t we get to fly? I had to take the bus because Sid would never travel anywhere with Malcolm, which put Sid’s problems on my back. That was fine because he was my mate. Malcolm didn’t have the knack to deal with people. He was only good when he had a receptive audience. Otherwise it was a tantrum and running off screaming like a spoiled, vindictive little schoolgirl.

  PAUL COOK: In retrospect, breaking up was a hasty decision. Our final band meeting was really awful. John finally made his way over to the hotel. Malcolm was totally pissed off at him, and Steve and I were totally pissed off, too. When John turned up at the Miyako, Steve and I had been up in Malcolm’s room telling him how pissed off we were. I don’t know what happened between John and Malcolm regarding the trip to Rio. But John didn’t want to go, and Steve and I wanted to go just to get a break because we were all supposed to fly back to Sweden for another tour. There was no way we could have done that with Sid being the way he was. Still, we thought that by going to Rio, we could get away from everyone, have a break, and relax. I would rather have gone there than go back to England, tour Sweden, or stay in America.

  Malcolm, Steve, and I went downstairs to the hotel lobby, and John was there. Steve said to John, “It’s getting too much. We can’t see it going on much longer. It’s falling apart.” I said I agreed. To give John his due, he tried to hold it together. He told us we were stupid and we should get rid of Malcolm and carry on. Steve and I told him we didn’t think that was the answer. In the end, John turned out to be right.

  When I got to the Miyako Hotel in San Francisco, nobody said anything to me about Rio other than Joe Stevens. Malcolm wouldn’t come out of his room to speak to me. I had no idea where Sid was when he OD’d. None of Malcolm’s people would speak to me, so I didn
’t know. I had no hotel room in the Miyako, and nobody who knew anything was speaking to me. I had no plane ticket in my possession. When I rang up Warner Brothers in Los Angeles, they told me over the phone I wasn’t me. They knew for a fact that I had gone back to London. Record companies will mostly deal with the manager. They never like talking to the act themselves. If you look at it sensibly, it makes sense. The secretary on the other end was laughing: “Oh, yeah, sure. Johnny Rotten’s on the phone. Ha, ha, ha. As if he can use a phone.”

  SEGMENT 17:

  GROUNDHOG DAY 1979

  When I got back to London after the American tour, Vivienne Westwood had sprayed on her shopfront: “John Fucks the Pope.” That was supposed to offend me. Silly cow. She couldn’t have got it more wrong. It amused me no end, silly bitch.

  After the sixties, some took the attitude that nothing could surprise them any longer. They were very wrong. But the current crop of bands, particularly from England, have no bollocks. No guts. They’re all young, bored, and fed up with their lives. But they don’t sing about it! Modern music is terrible. They don’t do anything to change it. They just go along with the system in a happy-go-lucky disco-beat way. It’s very sad. As much as I hate heavy metal, I prefer it anytime over that. Isn’t heavy metal a joke? Long hair, flappy flares—but at least it’s a vicious joke and there’s a nastiness to it.

  After the Pistols that term New Wave was the kiss of death! Elvis Costello into Joe Jackson into Tom Robinson. Poncey journalists who read all the right mags came up with that term. The first time I heard the term it sickened me and turned my stomach. If you settle for something so flimsy and vacuous as New Wave, you certainly don’t deserve to buy anything I put out. I’d be appalled if that was my audience. I don’t want them, they can go to hell quick. Modern New Romantics. New Wave turned disco. That was another farcical wimp-out. It’s all so limp-wristed, there’s no energy in it.