Anger is an Energy: My Life Uncensored

by Lydon, John

  Band Aid was all smuggery and naked ambition and self-righteous patting-on-backs. It was unbearable. Not to solve any problems at all, but really self-aggrandizement. Ever since, charity has been sorely affected by pop people. They’re dangerous to any real cause.

  To be honest, I could’ve done with a Band Aid for myself. I came out with a statement saying, ‘I’m my own favourite charity and I’m the only cause I can think of worth donating to.’ I bloody well meant it. It’s a hard enough struggle, but I’m not going to get onto the coat-tails of somebody else, just because that’s what everyone wants to feel good about. It has to actually be genuine with me, and really mean something, really do something.

  A lot of stuff I do is for orphanages. Those kids I feel really sorry for, and that’s something I can do something for, and I try to do that undercover. I’ll donate things and they’ll raise money on eBay, but my name won’t be directly related, therefore ego doesn’t come into it. There’s always people telling me, ‘If you allow us to use your name, it’ll earn so much more.’ That’s never gonna wash with me. I think it becomes damaging and egotistical, and that’s a danger I don’t want to happen. No one person should be bigger than the cause itself. If you’re not prepared to help orphaned kids or starving kids or sick kids without a pop star’s name on it, then you’re an awful person.

  Celebrity branding is cobblers, and it’s dangerous cobblers too. Whenever anyone does something wrong, a week later there’s a press blurb with the charities they’re associated with getting a mention, and that’s used as a cover. It’s very profitable for pop stars to use all manner of charities for their own benefit, and I resent them doing that, because we should not be doing that.

  I say ‘we’, because I feel as guilty as the actual purveyors of the crime, because I should be saying more to tell them not to be doing that. But the more I say, the more I get stuffed and resented. There you go . . . that’s the story of my epic journey, that’s a great part of it, getting my head cut off because I’m the first one to stick it out. I ask for it, and by fuck I get it.

  These days, in the modern world of Google, the letters that come in tend to be begging letters from fake charities. People telling me that their mother’s dying of cancer. It’s all just too much to take on. I can’t champion every individual’s case or cause célèbre. It’s too much. I pick my own causes in that respect. I can’t have my heartstrings tugged too much. There were a couple of them in recent years that turned out to be fake, and that just put a huge smear on the whole thing for me. It’s of course so touching that somebody out there has no other option, but the responsibility that places on me is overwhelming. And are they for real?

  At the same time, during all of this, there’s a lot of death wrapped around me – my own band members dying, my own friends dying, my own family members dying. Some of them because of disease, some of them accidents or whatever, some self-inflicted. I’m not a saint, and I don’t want to see myself cornering off some role as a procurer of good taste. Because I’m not, I can’t do that, I don’t have the energy for that. Hopefully I’ll have a good effect on people’s minds, but I’m not here to bolster their wallets or fill their coffers, because you read a lot of these fan letters, and the intent’s selfish somehow, and they don’t realize that it’s not a rewarding thing to be doing to another human being, to demand that you sign their husband’s birthday card just because he’s a big punk and it would be great. On the one side, you look at that and it’s a small thing, but where does that end? Then you become selective. Are you going to keep doing that? In which case that’s a full-time occupation that don’t pay well, or you just say, ‘No, it’s got to stop, it’s too energy-draining.’

  It’s the same as signing things for people at shows. I genuinely love saying hello to fans. It can be great fun – we do meet some weird and wacky characters. We affectionately call them the ‘Lollipop Mob’ after the PiL song ‘Lollipop Opera’. I’ve literally spent hours after shows speaking to people, even bringing them backstage for a drink and a chat. But it was getting out of hand there for a while. People expect it of you every single night and when I don’t I’m slated by them. They don’t understand it’s nothing personal – far from it: some nights I just need to get on the bus before I catch my death of cold and end up sabotaging the rest of the tour. Where do you draw the line with people?

  There are also a lot of professional dogs out there who you know fine well will put it straight on eBay. They follow us around and ruin it for everyone else; it’s an ongoing battle. And it’s not just the professionals: we’ve actually seen people leave gigs early just to stand at the stage door. What, is my signature more important to you than the gig? I thought you were meant to be fans? Ludicrous. It takes the fun out of it all – it becomes a drain on you.

  The energy goes into the songs – that’s my commitment. That’s my work, my effect on Planet Earth. I don’t want to start charity-hopping. It’s a repercussion of fame, or infamy. One line I actually did contribute to The Great Rock ‘N’ Roll Swindle was, ‘Infamy, they’ve all got it in for me!’ That was Kenneth Williams! I’ve got such a great love of the Carry On thing. As a kid, those movies were hilarious. To a young mind at the time, they made a glorious fiasco of the rules and regulations of society. So, very early on when Malcolm was starting up the movie, long before it turned into The Great Rock ‘N’ Roll Swindle, these are the things I’d be chucking in.

  There’s an awful lot you can learn from humour. Am I gonna learn from War and Peace or Norman Wisdom? Give me Norman, any old day. He’s closer to my life’s experience, and therefore relevant. And the in-depth angst of Russian intellectualism is very far removed from anything I’ve experienced. Although, I may yet get there. If you’re dying of a terminal disease in a hospital ward, that’s where Dostoyevsky can come in. It’s so miserable, it can only cheer you up.

  I did read Crime and Punishment when I was very young. I remember the TV drama, too, starring the English actor John Hurt. He looks a little bit like a rodent – what a great actor he is. He also played the famous homosexual Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant. I met him years later – I really liked him. He reminded me of Keith Levene, in the look, and the greasy-skin persona. But he didn’t have the dead eyes. I found him to be an intelligent man and capable of really good conversation. I liked him. Smart bunny. His wife or girlfriend had died the year before, and so he was going through real sadness. It was very difficult for him to be in a public place. I felt his pain, and one way or another, it’s the pain that goes into my songs.

  Grieving in public is very difficult, and the worst aspect of it is when complete strangers come up and tell you they ‘feel for your grief’. It just reminds you of the very thing that you’re trying to lay to one side for a few brief moments. Eventually you realize that life can be shit, and it can only get worse, so you better be making it better. You have to deal with it. I do the best I can. Internally, inside the skull, when people re-enact those moments, they mean well when they approach you, but they’re reminding you of something that leaves you feeling very exposed and breakable emotionally, and isolated in a collection of strangers. That’s a terrifying thing to endure. Happens a lot.

  But let’s face it, I’ve got a better lifestyle than any one of the alternatives that were open to me. There wasn’t much option. The Antichrist is what I accidentally ended up as, but that’s absolutely not what I set out for. I’ve always loved that song: ‘Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.’ My intentions are good. The Animals cover, wasn’t it? Eric Burdon.

  I loved Nina Simone’s version, too, and I loved her musically. I met her once at a Peter Tosh gig in LA and she was such a bitch to me. ‘Who’s that white boy?’ ‘White boy? I’m in my forties – who do you think you’re talking to?’ She was absolutely giving me the blank: ‘You don’t belong here with black people.’ I suppose everybody has a bad day, but you’ve got to be so wary that your bad day can impose the same kind of reaction in others.


  Oddly enough, here I am, a man who speaks openly from the heart, but I realize that you have to be guarded in them public situations. She’s fantastic and I won’t have a word said against her music; it was just, ‘Don’t honkify me! We all want a world where we’re equal, and you’re throwing that kind of garbage around. Wrong!’

  Fair play, Peter Tosh, him being one of the original Wailers with Bob Marley and all that, wasn’t having any of it. He tried to correct the situation and gave her a bit of a mouthful. Me and Peter were having a disagreement, anyway – it might’ve been to do with the Rolling Stones actually! Listen, we’re all capable of getting up on our high horses, and sometimes those horses are a little too high. Peter was working with them and I was having my say on that.

  I’ve always known, though, that Keith Richards loves his reggae. He’s always been well rooted in it. Musically, that’s not an uneducated fella. I’ve never met him. We probably wouldn’t get on. But it’s the same with, yes, Elton John – there’s another man who knows his chops around other people’s work and doesn’t skip a beat on everybody’s efforts. That always impresses me. It’s a good mark, an indication – nothing to do with praising myself here! – of valuing stars, when I find out they’re like librarians in their approach, that they want to know everything about anyone who works in the same field. That’s how it should be.

  So, good on Keith for liking reggae. I mean: in between yearly blood transfusions, why not?

  10

  HAPPY NOT DISAPPOINTED

  ‘I never thought he had talent, I always thought Sid was the genius.’ That was the sad, sorry, silly indictment still coming in from Malcolm McLaren’s camp. It was Vivienne Westwood’s line, from way back in late 1975, when I wouldn’t comply with her fashion dictates. Thanks a fucking bunch, bitch, you’re flogging my fucking clothes ideas and you have the audacity to say that. The terrible thing is, a lot of people picked up on that, and wanted to believe it and still I’m ostracized from what we could call fashionable society because of attitudes that came down from Malcolm and Vivienne at that time. Tough tits, baby. I’m still here.

  Eight long and hectic years had gone by since the end of the Sex Pistols. I felt like I’d achieved and proved so much in the meantime, but now finally my case against Malcolm was coming to court.

  From the beginning, I was told by my lawyer, Brian Carr, that I had no chance on God’s given earth of winning anything out of it and shouldn’t go forward with proceedings. I insisted on talking to the barrister, because that’s what you need to acquire when you get into these things in England. He said, ‘Oh, it’s very risky. Are you prepared?’ I just dived in.

  Proceedings were concluded a few days before my real triumph – the release of ‘Rise’ as a single. That song was changing people’s perceptions of me towards the positive. We did a great video showing washing lines in some of the more tormented neighbourhoods of London – stirring imagery from the kind of place I grew up in – which actually got us on MTV. We were on Top of the Pops, too, and everyone seemed to be connecting with the song – even the critics! Battling Malcolm just felt like ancient history.

  The ‘trial’ itself, on the other hand, lasted three days, and Malcolm advisedly settled out of court. The whole thing was like a damp squib, a wet fart. I didn’t know what it was I really wanted. I didn’t want any more resentment festering, and I didn’t want to walk off owning it all. I wanted that sense of ‘share’, and ultimately that’s what we got: we four surviving members got to share everything, from the Sex Pistols name, to what was left in the band’s bank account – a large chunk of which went towards an enormous outstanding tax bill.

  Still, it set things up lovely: now we weren’t going to be bankrupt forever and a day. All we had to do was work hard to stop things ever sliding back in that direction. But we took the name Pistols back off mismanagement and, ever since, not just me but the people I work with have been fighting to maintain a sense of integrity about what the Pistols really was.

  People should understand: Malcolm was never out for the money. He was out for the accolades. That’s really what the court case settled – it wasn’t him what did everything, creatively.

  Pretty much the last time I saw him was when the Clash were playing that residency at Bond’s in New York, when we first moved out there in May ’81. Bernie Rhodes was back managing the Clash, and he knew Malcolm was in town too, so he set up a dinner date for the three of us to try and talk us into making peace. I really couldn’t take Malcolm serious. It was the most pointless evening ever. This was the ultimate indication of where Malcolm was coming from: he says, ‘It’s silly, Bernie, we’re never going to like each other, why are you doing this?’ – and we got up and left together. Outside, he turns to me and says, ‘Well, at least we didn’t have to pay for it.’ To me, that was tuppence, not a big victory in life, but it was very much fundamentally Malcolm’s lousy approach to people. Always trying to get one over on them, in that sniggly, ducking-and-diving way.

  All the people who’d been around us at the beginning, all those who were ‘Friends of Malcolm’ – like little Helen Wellington-Lloyd – had become ‘Not Friends of Malcolm’. It had gone from the initial outbursts of ‘Oh, Malcolm’s doing a great thing’, to every single one of them realizing he was not doing a great thing. Malcolm was actually very destructive, to himself and everybody else, and tried to manipulate people’s lifestyles when he wasn’t really handling his own too well. A bit of a disaster. Poor sod.

  Malcolm had a proclivity towards possession. The whole situation was very difficult for Paul and Steve, because their apartment in Bell Street in Marylebone was owned by Malcolm, and they were well aware that any decision on their part to change sides during the case could jeopardize their existence. They eventually switched ships once it began to look grim from Malcolm’s side.

  I didn’t see it as winning anything, rather resolving things properly with Steve and Paul, because they eventually came to see that I had a correct and accurate point of view. Malcolm had sold us down the river contractually. Was there a big joint celebration, with the popping of champagne corks and group hugs? Oh, I don’t think so! Not at all. They’d done so much damage to me with the bad-mouthing. All of that’s still there in me. To this day, I’m aware there’s a lot to be made up for here. But at the end of the day I’ve got no resentment or hatred towards Malcolm, so why on earth would I have any towards them?

  At Brixton Academy, in May 1986, there was a mob of about 100 to 150 that absolutely came down to destroy. These morons considered me, wrongly, as The Enemy. They were spitting and chucking bottles; there was all sorts of crap whizzing past our ears! A bunch of them were constantly trying to get on stage or trying to climb on top of the stage-left speaker stacks. The bouncers didn’t seem to be properly organized, or maybe they were just undermanned. Something just didn’t seem right. It was a constant battle all night. All I could hear was ‘You’re a cunt!’ and ‘Sell out!’ and ‘Boo, hiss!’ – whatever. This was just shit they’d read in the papers – that I’d sold out by starting PiL, by making Album with some fine bloody musicians, and that I wasn’t a punk any more.

  There was such a dark horrible vibe in and outside the building. I’d heard there had been some muggings before the show. Brixton in them days was a dangerous place. The locals saw the average concert-goer as easy pickings. Inside the venue the trouble seemed orchestrated. It was all bollocks, evil and nasty, but it shows how easily people’s minds can be manipulated by the media telling them this stuff. Nothing had been easy since I’d finished Album – I’d had to find a live band very quickly, while the Pistols case was brewing. Now life was being made all the worse by these one-percenters, we’ll call them, that were completely buying the media agenda and turning on their own. Quite frankly, I view them as government watchdogs.

  It was such a shame, because we were offering the crowd something great, really taking PiL to the next level, and the vast majority were completely with us, respondi
ng to the positive energy that came from ‘Rise’ and Album. It was just this certain clique – they were punky new-age squatter types – that were dead against us. A new breed who’d got it all wrong. They created an ugly situation. The security fellas on duty at Brixton that night were mostly from the local neighbourhood. I wasn’t overly impressed with them but some of them were genuinely all right. One of them who I happened to get talking to because he supported Arsenal said to me, ‘Look, John, they’re spitting and chucking things at us too, what do you want us to do?’ My answer was, ‘Just don’t crack any heads!’

  It was a hard one to overcome. I had my work cut out. In those situations, you can easily end up with the responsibility of starting a riot. But, really – the hatred! The game was obvious: ‘Tear Johnny Rotten down! Who does he think he is!’ To which, I’d respond: ‘You’re doing the government’s work, you fucks! That’s fine by me, you ain’t gonna stop me none!’ But when it comes to my band being worried about really serious injury, well, I’m with them in that respect. Then you have to go about it a little differently.

  It was so out of control, no one was listening. The only answer to it was to stop the set. The band went off, and I said, ‘We won’t come back on until that stops. You know who you are – stop it! And if you know who they are, point them out, and we’ll stop them.’ A big punch-up ensued, and a bunch were slung out.

  At that time, PiL was too far ahead for them. What a pity. Still, we were good! It was very frustrating because we were getting into the discipline of playing for a real long time, and really giving you your money’s worth, and trying to keep the ticket prices as low as possible. By doing that, we let in the dogs, the jealous, the absolute talentless lowest denominator. It’s crabs in a barrel – that old expression I use. They just keep pulling you down to their level, because they don’t have an answer. No empathy. It’s a particularly British attitude to success – a hatred towards any of their own achieving anything at all.