Anger is an Energy: My Life Uncensored

by Lydon, John

  That was the drawing power to get involved in our legendary boat party, both to me and to Sid. It meant we could pick up £25, and then it exploded into the beautiful fiasco it was. There is something beautiful about creating a fiasco and, believe me, it really was a disaster.

  Virgin had finally put out ‘God Save The Queen’ and, lo and behold, it was a hit. Oh no, hold on, it wasn’t, there was no Number One that week – well, not for us anyway! What that did was show – ever so much more than anything we were doing and saying – that the institutions are corrupt. The fact that our band cannot have a Number One on a chart system in Britain showed . . . shenanigans, right? Illicit behind-the-scenes operations, manipulations, telling the public what they could and couldn’t like. And that really gave energy and fuelled the head of steam behind the song.

  Come Jubilee Day itself and our saucy boat party, I was freezing, I was bored and I had hardly eaten for a week. It was all too much of a circus, with the handpicked guest list, and all the press herding around. It was funny to see Richard Branson on there with his beard and long hair, looking like Guy Fawkes, and fair play to him he was up for the fun of it. But Richard got a bit lame when we ran out of booze. I said, ‘I’m not doing it unless a crate of lager magically appears.’ And by some miracle it did, and all twenty-four cans vanished in twelve seconds.

  When we played, we couldn’t hear what we were doing, which was very much like all the early gigs, but we didn’t really care at that point. I suppose it was the only way to get warm. It was a chilly evening – and beyond chilly for me, because I was definitely undernourished.

  We did our best to be disruptive. We’d been up and down outside the Houses of Parliament three times and nothing happened. So we went back for one more – ‘Oh, God, really? Must we? All right, here goeszzz!’ – and it was just at that precise lucky-for-us moment that the police decided to pull up alongside, and go, ‘Stop that! It’s not British!’

  As soon as we docked, and I’ve seen all the police, I thought, Right, it’s either going to happen or it’s not, but I’m not going to get caught up in this crowd of fuss and confusion, so I stormed to the front, walked down, and was the very first off the boat. The first copper I come across goes, ‘Which one’s Johnny Rotten?’ And so I went, obviously, ‘He’s up there!’ And of course they made a beeline for the long-haired one with the beard – poor old Richard Branson – because everyone knew it was long-haired people that were causing the trouble in them days. How fucking hilarious is that? It has been suggested that Malcolm pointed me out to the police, but if he did he did so unsuccessfully. I was long gone.

  In them days, the police were so backwards. They were brutal, there’s no two ways about it. They were schoolyard bullies – hobnail boots and truncheons on anybody who questioned anything about them. But when they raided us at the boatyard when the boat docked, they had no idea what a Sex Pistol looked like. There wasn’t anyone in charge of this fiasco, so they came down looking for the long-haired ones, but also at the same time an awful lot of it has to play into the fact that I was so young – a young kid with septic spots and a dinner jacket and a twenty-inch waist. ‘How’s he a hooligan? Don’t make me laugh, get the older ones!’ Instead, my brother Jimmy got arrested, and a whole bunch of other people.

  That day it seemed there was an amnesty for all except if you were a Sex Pistol. Quite astounding. We can’t even go up and down the River Thames on a boat? We’re in the middle of a river, and someone has decided that’s offended them? Quite frankly, a society that learns to mind its own business is one I’m looking forward to. No grassers here, know what I mean? Take care of our own. Eliminate bullies because we take care of our own. No need for it. No child molesters in a proper manor.

  That night, I wandered around the Embankment for a while with Sid and Vince, a close friend of Sid’s, just looking for something to do. There really wasn’t much to do, because there was no money to do it with. So I wandered my way back to my humble abode. Walked a great deal, I remember that, and I was really annoyed because I don’t like walking when I’m drunk. Because it’s kind of like not walking at all.

  With all the outrage and headlines rolling on, it was a week or two later that I got attacked outside a pub round the back of Highbury Quadrant, near Wessex Studio, where we were recording the album. Dodgy area. Phwoar, you get many mixtures of crews down that way. And – typical me – I picked the pub of anxiety, times ten. I knew what I was doing when I picked it, I knew it would be kind of semi-trouble, but I didn’t think it would be quite like the machetes and Gurkha blades it turned out to be.

  Every now and again there are people that just want to kill you. Whether they’re right or wrong about their determination: don’t doubt their determination.

  To my misfortune, I found myself accompanied by daft fellas that weren’t prepared to defend themselves – Chris Thomas and his engineer, Bill Price. I mean, Chris Thomas, what the hell does he know about life? Not much. How can you make good records with two deaf ears? Actually I’ll take that back: with one deaf ear and one tuneless ear.

  Random acts of violence are what I was well used to from growing up in that part of London. Order of the day. I warned them it was about to go down, and they wouldn’t listen. We were up against a good firm of people, and we could’ve handled them, but those two just separated, and straight into me these lads came. It was a little bit more upscale than the usual, because when people are coming at you with knives and machetes, it’s a whole new level. One of them had this sword thing – I don’t know what the correct term is but it was a long blade. I’ve seen it in jungle films, but I was understandably not expecting it in North London. That’s all right, I’m still walking.

  I got a stiletto blade in the wrist – the exact same hand where I got stabbed when I was out with Paul Cook in early Pistols days, actually. That left hand has really suffered the wear and tear.

  On the plus side, that night I was wearing an amazingly uncomfortable pair of leather pants. They were extra-thick and very difficult to sit down in and they hurt behind the knee. That must have been one big old heifer that they made them out of. Really, industrially strong – if I’d had anything else on, I’d be Ian Dury, or Legless Lazarus. I’d definitely be walking with a gimp or a limp. Then again, if I’d had a lighter pair on I might’ve been able to move quicker. Let’s not be too grateful to fashion, shall we?

  Life’s like that. Situations can come up, and you have to be able to sink or swim by the second, and act very quickly. Sometimes things can be life-threatening or financially threatening or whatever the situation – you have to be fully armoured. So when you go out publicly you can’t really allow yourself to be in any kind of inebriated mentality because you’re making yourself a potential victim. There are people out there who prey on that and they usually lurk in collectives.

  The average Joe on the street may be fine, but I quickly realized that I couldn’t be caught like that any more. I was never going to allow myself to be turned over by a mob of mugs again. From time to time you’re going to run into the real top-level lads, but they tend to be all right – they’ve got nothing to prove, they’re not out for a trophy. That’s the problem with it.

  Back then, I suppose I was the prime target of the moment – and still am, in many ways, that’s never gone away and I have to be aware of that. It’s jealousy, ultimately. Jealous of what? God, if only they knew! Being Johnny Rotten was never easy. To maintain the integrity that I think I have is a daily grind.

  From then on, I knew that I couldn’t be scurrying off to the off-licence out of my mind, wanting a top-up. I get spotted, so I have to stock up when I’m sober. Lesson in life!

  That summer, I have to say, it royally messed up my social life. I couldn’t go out to see bands in the way I naturally would have. I couldn’t go anywhere alone. It was impossible. The animosity would come not even from members of the audience at a gig, but the bouncers at the front door. It would start from there. And the club o
wner harbouring a resentment or an attitude or a belief system that went against my own.

  At the same time, there was sheer glee – because you have to take whatever enjoyments you can out of life. And the fact that I knew I was managing to annoy everybody all at the same time, was all the reward I needed. Wow! From Piss-Stains Prentiss, my old English teacher, I’d gone on to much bigger things.

  Malcolm sorted me out to live in some posh bird’s flat in Chelsea, to hide out from press intrusion. To this day, when you hear about pop stars who’ve got involved in scandals and they go undercover, they’re always in some bird in Chelsea’s apartment – it seems to be where everybody ends up. There must be an entire genre of Chelsea birds with apartments, waiting to hide out apparently troublesome pop stars. Hilarious! But I’m sure that from Malcolm’s angle, it all fed into his big idea of me as the ‘man of mystery’.

  So there I was, isolated in this upper-class neighbourhood, and the most I could come up with for entertainment was the curry house at the end of the road. And it being Chelsea on a Saturday night, even there would be some squawky scene. Working-class Johnny Lydon aka Rotten wanted to go back to his familiar haunts, but he couldn’t because of the public smear of the newspapers, so he couldn’t do nothing. Instead, it was isolation.

  Friends and acquaintances would come over but that would be about it, and very quickly I’d be boring them, because I just couldn’t go out with them. At first they didn’t understand, then it was obviously, ‘There’s no point in going over there, he ain’t coming out – and we don’t want him to!’ And this is from my best friends.

  You have to understand: the animosity against me was so volatile, so ‘up there’, so beyond anything I think had ever been seen, in the post-war ‘tabloid’ era or whatever, and it was very hard to overcome that. At the same time I knew deep down inside I’d warranted this kind of attention. I’d earned the passport, I’d earned the wings.

  I didn’t last long in Chelsea and soon I was hopping all over the gaff – here there and everywhere, from earlier-on squats to rented apartments. Just awful, terrible times.

  Trying to share an apartment with Sid was the biggest mistake, because he was hanging out with Nancy at the time and that was unbearable. That one was in Sutherland Avenue, Maida Vale. It couldn’t have been a worse place, because it was very drug culture-y – as in, heroin-y – around there. You wouldn’t think it, looking at all the nice middle-class rows of houses, but that’s exactly where all the darkness truly resides.

  Where would I be without a witch hunt? After all these years, I’ve grown to like them, and love them, and indeed find them very comforting. My bottom line is, I don’t do anything to hurt anybody, that’s not what I’m up to. So whatever your excuses or reasons for trying to lock me up, well, you can do that, you can imprison my physicality, but you cannot imprison my mind. CANNOT.

  Dealing with the press, and all the ‘foul-mouthed yob’ stuff, we had the perfect reply: ‘Pretty Vacant’. Is that what you think I am? Okay, have a bang on this number! Well, I’m not pretty, and I certainly ain’t vacant, so what do you make of me now? Not so much attack to defend, but it perfectly tackled the agenda that was being put up against us.

  And it was a very powerful agenda. We had Rupert Murdoch and Robert Maxwell, the whole murky scene of the British tabloid press, really on our case in such an enormous way, basically preaching hate and contempt for us, and we had to really swerve healthily around these things that we were being drawn into. We had to pick our battles a little more carefully in order to survive.

  We were being involved in all manner of TV and radio discussions that were just going apeshit wrong. There was one interview, and in it I was asked – the implication was – ‘Is Malcolm the mastermind behind you?’ and I said, ‘Malcolm’s the fifth member of the band, we’re all equal.’ Which of course Malcolm took as a compliment. It wasn’t meant as such – I was trying to diminish their opinion of him. I had to tread politically all the way through this, and at the same time be a ferocious voice of accuracy, but not get pinned down into a corner where they could imply that I was just trivial. You keep the engine burning.

  There was a time there where punk was really exciting. X-Ray Spex, the Adverts, the Raincoats, the Slits – those bands had different approaches that were fascinating to me. They had the feminine influence, which is interesting musically. It was different social learnings going on, different sharings of thoughts, which would normally have been closed to music. Fellas and girls in the same bands, it was an amazing thing. They came across as level – it wasn’t just, ‘Now sing something pretty over the top.’ They were full-on equals, very entertaining and it opened up so many possibilities in the songwriting. What a great time! And that side of it wasn’t competitive, none of us were competing against each other. To me that was punk properly developing into something really awe-inspiring.

  For some reason, however, the Clash started setting themselves up as our competition. There was a headline in Melody Maker from Joe Strummer: ‘We’re going to be bigger than the Sex Pistols!’ It was infuriating, and I talked to him about it. When direct quotes come out that I think are divisive, then something needs to be said because I don’t want to see any of us divided. What attitude is that? None of us are doing this for that kind of chart competition, competing for places. When we start those internal wars amongst each other then that opens the floodgates for the arseholes, and whatever you’re doing creatively, you’ve got to keep a hold on the arseholes.

  There was some rubbish war going on between Bernie and Malcolm, friends falling out, and Bernie was trying to use his band as a weapon to get back at Malcolm. All very stupid stuff, and there I was, a young person watching adults behave like that. What made it all the worse was that certain members of the Clash were actually responding to that rally.

  Bernie was feeding them a lot of politics and Joe would come round to the various houses I lived – even one I had way out in Edmonton – and he’d always have a Marxist book in his hands, and he’d be studying it and writing down notes. Then: ‘Oh, the Six O’Clock News is on, I’ve gotta watch it!’ Rather than be able to take the BBC with a pinch of salt and be able to read between the lines, he’d grab the headlines and ‘be inspired’. That’s what fuelled ‘sten guns in Knightsbridge’ and all of that nonsense.

  It’s not my way. I liked Joe, and I liked Paul, and Mick Jones was such a happy-go-lucky fella, but Bernie was feeding them all that college-union, ‘declare war on society’ stuff. If you wanted a good night out, to meet interesting people, backstage at a Clash gig wasn’t the place. That was full of studious learners: ‘Yes, hmmm, yes, I’m with this programme. Yeah . . .’ DULL! FUCKING DULL!

  Joe had always been so friendly, but as soon as he took the Clash too seriously he became unfriendly and indeed got involved in squabbles with some of my friends. He began to lack a sense of humour about himself. He took himself way too serious as purveyor of some kind of weird socialism, and was definitely out to grab himself a crown. He went too far, in the same way that Hemingway would overdo it. Or, you know that Rodin statue of the man frowning? The ‘Oi’ve bin finking’ statue, as I call it? That’s what he self-consciously turned into. His was a conceit that was very repulsive to me. Phwoar, what a pose. But one thing I’ve learned: we’re all just only humans, we’ve all got our warts.

  The Clash had a very middle-class approach to everything, and their audience shared it, and the smug journalists loved them, and of course they set the scene for all the deadbeats, all the bands that just wanted to do everything at a hundred miles an hour and scream and shout. That lot were of no interest to me.

  Through them, punk grew into a standardized uniform, with the charge led by the mass media. The Daily Mirror would put out articles: ‘How to dress like a punk’. Then those kinds of arseholes would turn up, and the whole thing just turned upside down. Many of the bands that came along then thought that the whole idea was to try to out-Rotten Rotten. And so violen
ce crept in, and before long you had the Sham 69s, propagating violence through ballet. Just arseholes. Dumb, moronic, smashing-their-heads-off-walls-to-show-how-tough-they-were fools. They weren’t listening to nothing. They were incapable of learning, or growing with a thing, or seeing any hope or prospects for the future.

  We were saying ‘No future’ in ‘God Save The Queen’, because you had to express that point in order to have a future. No, this lot really didn’t want one. It’s like runaway horses. Once the stampede starts, how do you get them back in, into the herd? And indeed, why should I? If that’s really what that lot wanted, then fine. Go, charge! And when you’re over the next hill and I can’t see you any more, all the better for the rest of us.

  My mum and dad were very supportive of me through all the vilification that was poured on me, but it was very hard on them. The negative reviews would really upset them. They weren’t great lovers of the noise I was making but they knew the negative press about me being a bad person wasn’t right.

  Mum always wanted to know what my world was – it was a bit of a mystery to her – and so I showed her that it wasn’t deep dark and secretive and a wrong ’un. I took her to see some gigs – Alice Cooper, Gary Glitter, anything that was going on across at the Finsbury Park Rainbow – and yippee-aye-oh, she was well up for it. She was just proud that I, with no apparent talent, could somehow manage to find my way into that world. Because there was no indication for them until the first day I started in the Pistols that I had any interest in being in a band or writing songs or singing at all.

  I’d be more than happy to bring my friends around, oddball collection that they were. It used to always make my mum and dad laugh – my dad, in a deeply sarcastic way – but I always had strange friends. Probably they were the only ones that would talk to me. They were all in their own ways in similar positions, socially. None of us could really find a niche in society.