Rotten

by John Lydon

  LEE: Some fading pop stars would call the house, and they could never gain access. I remember Nico used to come around and bang on the door and yell, “John, John. You must let me in.” I remember when Iggy Pop used to phone up. I’d answer the phone, a total stranger, and he’d say, “Is John there? I’m thinking of getting a new guitarist. What do you think of Brian James of the Damned?” There were always people begging to come in. John could say one word and diminish people, and we’d have to sit and watch them. It was horrible. There were these lunatics who used to bring these T-shirts around that they had painstakingly hand-drawn and leave them for John. John would just give them away. There was always this guy who phoned up all the time named Victor Vomit. “Hello, Victor Vomit here. You don’t know me. I’m really a punk. I could be good for you.”

  LYDON: A not sane girl came over. She had escaped from the hospital in Durham, then she took a train to London. She told me to destroy all plastic in the house because that’s what they were attracted to. She also said she would kill herself if I didn’t marry her.

  LETTS: That was the best period of my life. People would come around Gunter Grove and would be dying to get in. I remember John abusing these people and me feeling really embarrassed. He sure knocked hero worship out the window. He owned the whole house, but there was this flat below and these people lived there. Imagine all those years not knowing who lived in the basement flat. They must have been terrified of John. He has these massive speakers playing reggae, Peter Hammill, Captain Beefheart, and Can ridiculously loud. They never came up to speak to him.

  The Pistols were doing something, instead of the hero worship, I thought, Hey, I can do it, too. That was the message. It demystified the existing music movement. It was about using what you had to get what you needed. Personally, I saw that the band scene seemed to be covered. I couldn’t play anything anyway, so I picked up a super-eight camera—inspired by John Lydon. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, but somebody from the media saw me and wrote, “Don Letts is making a film.” Hey, that’s not a bad idea. Jeanette used to help with the lights, and I’d run the camera. My only talent was I knew what to point it at. We’d go out and film these bands, then go back to Forest Hill and chop up the film with cello tape, and we made this movie. Basically, I reinvented myself through my punk experience. Think about it. I was this guy in dark glasses managing a shop. Then punk came along and I thought, Fuck me, I’m going to have some of that! I had to feel like I was contributing. I picked up the camera, made The Punk Rock Movie, and documented all the events I thought were interesting and ridiculous. My movie was an example of the whole movement. I was inspired to do it. It became The Punk Rock Movie through the media.… I went on from there to make videos. But from punk, my experience came from John’s culture. At that time there wasn’t many black examples of alternative lifestyles. It was magnetic; I felt an affiliation. The Pistols’ era made people realize the creative potential within themselves. The shit I learned then still works for me now. I make videos for lots of people, but the thing that turns me on lately is I have this high-eight camera and I’ve gone out and started doing this punk stuff again. That’s the stuff that’s really turned me on. I’m telling you this so this book doesn’t become some sort of nostalgic bullshit. What worked then is still really relevant now. It’s obvious in hip hop today, punk’s equivalent today. Until hip hop came along, none of the other movements since punk had that content and weight beyond the music. Again, it’s coming from people who have nothing and use the least to make the most.

  LYDON: The whole point was to get off your ass and do it yourself. If you weren’t doing it, then you weren’t no good only because you’re damned lazy. The whole rock ’n’ roll trip of the previous generation was a cliché. Subconsciously everything was shaken off that happened before. I was a young chap who thought I was severely ugly and nobody would ever speak to me. There was this movement full of people feeling exactly the same way. It was a social way of meeting equally ugly people, the Equally Ugly Club. There wasn’t those prejudices. Sitting in Louise’s, lesbians didn’t have to act butch and beat us up. Gays didn’t have to overreact around us. There was no need to define gay or lesbian, with previous generations trying desperately to be weird just for the sake of it. That was immediately redundant. It didn’t make any difference after that. That was the most enjoyable aspect of it. I used to like that. You weren’t threatened by sexuality from people. You could just be yourself. That was a very important part of the Sex Pistols era. It wasn’t an antisex thing or a consciously premeditated attitude. We weren’t going to play the games according to the previous shitheads.

  LETTS: The English press painted articles on how to dress like a punk. It was amazing how ugly people could make themselves. It amazed me how the ones who picked up the Daily Mirror newspaper secondhand would get the wrong end of the stick. The secondhand punks looked fucking ridiculous. The inner circle was very stylish. Nobody we knew had staples in their noses or mothball earrings. It was based on good common sense because those things bloody hurt. But you’d see the later punks come into the shops and they would have a safety pin in their cheek or their nose. It was all sore and infected. The more they spoke, the more it hurt, and they would suffer.

  LYDON: After the Pistols broke up, Branson wanted to sign up a load of reggae bands, and the only white person he knew in the world who knew about reggae was me. I told him I couldn’t go there alone, so I roped in two associates—Don Letts and Dennis Morris.

  LETTS: I was home one night doing what I normally do—playing reggae—and I get this phone call from John at one o’clock in the morning. “Do you want to come to Jamaica?” I figured his logic was to take black men—dreadlocks are real cool. But I had never been to Jamaica before! I said, “Yes, of course I’ll go.” Luckily I had a passport, and in a matter of hours, I went to the airport with a plastic carrier bag with an extra pair of underpants and my super-eight camera.

  LYDON: We had no visas. We didn’t know the flight stopped in Miami, and the security asked for our visas. We were escorted by armed guards to the transfer flight, and both Don and Dennis are looking at me and saying, “Where are they marching us off to? What have you brought us into?”

  LETTS: I ended up in Jamaica for the first time through John, and it was a major trip! I was going home to my so-called roots because when I landed there it was almost as alien to me as it was to John. I was thinking, Wow! Where the fuck am I? John’s thinkin’, Yah, mon, everyt’ing’s cool. In Jamaica, I met all these people I heard about for years. Branson wanted us to sign up reggae artists, so the word got around: White man on island with lots of money. Every single artist except Bob Marley who was anybody made an exodus to the Sheraton Hotel in Kingston. Branson had taken a whole floor and given John and me each a room. We met Big Youth, U Roy, I Roy, Burning Spear, Abyssinians, Prince Far I. These were all mythical names to me.

  LYDON: We just sat at the pool and ate lobster all day. When it cost two dollars and you’re not even paying for it, we would have two, three, four in the boiler. The staff would look at Don in shock and say, “Rasta eat shellfish? Rasta eat lobster?”

  Don said, “Come and check my accent. I’m an English Rasta. That’s a different culture.”

  They’d ask again, “Really? Rasta in England eat lobster?”

  It was illegal to flash your dreadlocks, so Don had to keep them in a big hat. Rastas weren’t allowed in the hotel, but because Branson was bankrolling it, the whole place was covered with people in queues trying to get a record deal or some bucks. The hotel hated it. You’d see dreadlocks floating around the swimming pool.

  LETTS: Since we were in Jamaica, I really wanted to visit my grandparents, whom I had never seen in my entire life. Who do I go with? Mr. Motherfucker Lydon. What do we go in? A white Cadillac stretch limo with chauffeur in Jamaica in 1978 during the worst political violence on the island. You could literally hear gunshots at night, and we’re cruising to this weird address in the
back of a white limo. The address was like “left at the mountain, right at the bird’s nest,” etc. We were driving up to see the grandparents I’ve never seen in my life. We pull up in front of this hut in this white Cadillac. I met my grandparents, but they freaked. We just stood there facing each other and froze. There was this standoff, and they looked at this limo in the middle of this poor shanty town. The driver was loading mangos into the boot of the limo. It was the most unreal, surreal situation I’ve ever had in my life. I managed to say, “I’m Donovan, your grandson from England.” They looked at me like I was an alien. They looked over at John and back at my dreadlocks—which were anti-Establishment over there. I said, “Look, I’ll come back in a minute,” walked back to the limo, and we drove off. I’ve never seen my grandparents since. I was upset! I couldn’t speak to them and they couldn’t speak to me.

  John and I met U Roy, granddaddy of deejay reggae music. You get up with the sun over there, so we’d go round to U Roy’s and get high with him at eight in the morning. U Roy would make up a big pipe of weed in his backyard. Each cup held a quarter of an ounce of weed and a half an inch of tobacco in it. John asked them why they did that. “Blend, mon. Blend, mon.” I tried to smoke this huge pipe and immediately coughed my guts out. My man John picks up the pipe and somehow draws up the biggest load of smoke. I’m ashamed! The guy upstaged me in my roots backyard. U Roy was saying, “Yes, Rotten, cool Rasta.”

  LYDON: I couldn’t walk, talk, or think for two hours, a major, major puff. I did it because I’d seen the album covers. Big draw, then hand on face.

  LETTS: U Roy ran the sound system, this huge outdoor disco he takes out. We drive about twenty miles with U Roy, fucked out of our heads. While they’re setting up the sound system, John and I sat down underneath a tree and nodded off. We woke up after it was over. The dance lasted for six hours with the loudest reggae music in the world, and we missed the whole thing. U Roy woke us up and said it was time to go. “Good gig, ya.” Embarrassing shit. Everybody fell over themselves to meet us, take us to the most beautiful places, and give us the strongest herb. I got a crash course on my whole reggae culture in four weeks.

  That’s when Malcolm sent Boogie Tiberi to Jamaica. We saw Boogie hiding in the bushes by the pool of the Sheraton with his camera. He’d be filming John up on the balcony.

  LYDON: He never asked my permission to film me.

  LETTS: At night, we’d say, “Where’s the Boogie bunch? Which bush were they in now?”

  The local kids would come up and say, “Ya, mon, some white dudes in da bush over dere.”

  We’d be on the beach and you’d see this skinny white guy in shorts trying to film John. Big Youth rang up to say, “Some white guys are talkin’ about ya. Been sayin’ you give dem permission to talk about you.”

  I said, “No, wrong.” He had them off the island in about an hour and a half.

  See, John fucks up a lot of people, and he got me in trouble, too. John and I got invited to Joni Mitchell’s villa through a mutual Jamaican friend. We were at the house, and there was this music playing. We must have been smoking as usual, and we’re listening to this music and I said, “What is this shit? Why don’t you take it off?”

  Joni says, “Well, it’s my new album, actually.” I didn’t recognize her music because I was so stoned. It was so embarrassing.

  LYDON: We ended up there because we foolishly said at this hotel bar that we liked Joni Mitchell. We got there and both giggled at just how awful the music was we were listening to. We didn’t know it was her new album, but we offended her, so it was time to leave the house immediately. I laughed hysterically.

  LETTS: Punk was weird enough in London, so imagine the ultimate punk being in Jamaica. Some people knew he was Johnny Rotten. Number one. Gold discs. John walked around in a long black coat and a big hat because he didn’t want to get a suntan. Jamaicans have vivid imaginations and are very into westerns, and John looked like the baddest motherfucker around. He looked like Lee Van Cleef.

  LYDON: Walking through the marketplaces in downtown Kingston was always pure hell. They’d seen too many movies.

  LETTS: You wonder what you must have looked like to them! When I go to funny parts of Ireland, they react to me just like that. They like to pull on my hair when I travel outside of Dublin. I think that’s why John and I get on so well. In the development of England’s history, there was a time when John’s mob—the Irish—and blacks and dogs were thrown together. There used to be signs in the hotels and places for rent that said …

  LYDON and LETTS: No Irish, no blacks, no dogs!

  LETTS: I’m not sure who got top billing. Knowing the English, the dogs got the top billing. Irish and Jamaican people are definitely alike in spirit. No two ways about it.

  LYDON: This is why they mate. In all the best areas like Brixton and Kilburn, they get on bloody well with each other in a pub. It gets fucked when people talk English shit. But Irish and Jamaicans definitely have a common bond. Irish moss is a seaweed drink, and when the English used to starve the fucking daylights out of them and steal their potatoes, the Irish ended up eating seaweed. When Don and I were in Jamaica, we would go into town and buy records in a place called Irish Town. We thought it was so ironic; all they had was Jim Reeves records and that was it. The older folks enjoy country and western, Perry Como, and Jim Reeves, and it was outrageous to see the same titles the older Irish people liked.

  LETTS: What about this “shit sandwich” story? Was that ever true?

  LYDON: It was at Nora’s house. I arrived there and she said, “Of course I’m faithful,” and there was Vic Goddard of Subway Sect hiding under the table. That was it. That was your starter for ten. There were all these horrible Hell’s Angels chaps there, and everyone decided an hour later that they were hungry. I was with a couple of mates, and Nora was foolish enough to let us cook the food. Now Nora would never eat anything we cooked in the kitchen, so we served it to Nora’s friends. It was literally a shit in the frying pan cooked in olive oil. Then we all wanked into this fucking omelet—one egg and at least four good doses. They all thought it was the best food they ever ate. The shit sandwich was the killer. It was deep fried and put between two toasted slices of bread. They ate it and thought it was corned beef.

  LEE: I remember us all being in a pub one night on Tottenham Court Road quite far down near Warren Street. We had been to La Scala and we just walked into this pub. I have this memory that John was wearing a white jacket and Sid came into the pub with Nancy. Sid left Nancy alone and came up to our table. I remember John said, “Leave it alone, Sidney. Get rid of it. It’s bad news. Get rid of it.” Nobody liked Nancy. She was such a low-life.

  LETTS: I saw both Sid and Nancy just before they went to America. I had them come to this office to sign a release for The Punk Rock Movie. Sid came up with Nancy, and they both were really out of it. Sid had this knife with a blade six inches long. I was trying to get him to sign something, and he was sticking Nancy with this knife, but not really deep. She was saying to Sid, “Stop it. Stop.” Not long after, all that shit happened. All the things we heard were just headlines in the papers. It was all getting distorted like Valley of the Dolls or something. I remember seeing a screening of The Great Rock ’n’ Roll Swindle and of John playing in America. My heart really went out to John when I saw the images of him playing to the American crowds. I saw newspaper headlines, and the Swindle was my only way to see what happened there. I felt strong emotions seeing my mate in front of all those people—this thing coming to a massive halt in such a devastating way, leaving people dead and all that kind of shit. Here was John, the guy we hung out with in the Roebuck pub.

  JULIEN TEMPLE: The film [The Great Rock ’n’ Roll Swindle] was an interesting document of contradiction—to make the things the band really did seem like lies and make things they didn’t do seem true. We tried to look at different sides of the story as gloriously unstable. The idea was to tell lies and play with the myths and cause them to explode. T
he Sex Pistols were about placing a charge inside your head and questioning what you thought about the world. By blowing it up, you were forced to think about the fragments and what it meant.

  LEE: Just as the movie The Great Rock ’n’ Roll Swindle started, they were dragging an effigy of John through the street. Then they burned it! I was horrified.

  LYDON: The opening sequence was a quality act—the burning of the effigy of Johnny Rotten was excellent. It was also the best thing. It was filmed so brilliantly, I thought, Out, I want to die. It’s the end of my life. Malcolm’s come up with a stroke of real class here. But luckily it didn’t last. From there on in the movie was just rubbish.

  JULIEN TEMPLE: It was a major problem working around John’s nonparticipation in the sense that there were two primal energies, John and Malcolm. At the time I believed in both aspects. When we made the film John had already broken with Malcolm and would have nothing to do with the film, so I tried to represent John in terms of him performing the songs and keep him as an important element.

  LETTS: All this Pistols stuff—hanging out in the Roebuck to playing to the American audiences—only took place within two years. Living it felt like over five years. I’m only realizing now what to tell my kids. I’ll just show them The Punk Rock Movie.

  LEE: What about that fantastic police raid? This was during the early PiL period, probably one of the only times where we had gone to bed that night. Any other day at six in the morning, we would all still be sitting up. I was downstairs, and suddenly I woke up and heard all these feet on the ceiling. I lay there and immediately thought it was a police raid. I jumped up and ran around the house, saying to everyone, “We’re being raided! Get rid of everything.” Dave Crowe had a motorcycle in his room he had started dismantling.