by Lydon, John
In amongst all that, certain band members were taking advances off the road manager. When you have to come in and say, ‘Look, we ain’t got the money to be doing that any more, you’ve had your share, and in fact you’re already in debt even by the end of the tour when it all racks up – so stop it’ – well, then you have a big problem.
I don’t want to be the hardcore businessman, I don’t do it for that, yet somebody has to. You’re the lead singer, but at the same time you’re the one that’s at the helm here, and as much as you don’t want to be bothered by financial dips, you have to be, and it can affect your work ultimately, and it can affect your relationships with band members. I’m not saying that was anything at all to do with little Allan Dias – he would have been the least of them, actually. Poor old Bruce Smith was the biggest problem – but we’re still working together to this day. Bad bunny.
I know they say the captain of a ship should never be friendly with the crew – well, I’m consistently trying to challenge that perception.
The longer I worked with John McGeoch, the more problems he created for himself with alcohol. His nerves were terrible, much worse than even my own, and he became very absorbed in the idea of sticking rigidly to a schedule. Now: on tour, things change, buses don’t arrive exactly on time, planes get delayed, but all of these moments would drive him crazy with his particular phobias, so he’d be starting to yell at the tour manager, ‘But the book says 8.30, and it’s now 9.40, I can’t work like this . . . I need a Martini!’
I know we’ve all done it, but John got used to it, and then became unworkable. When Lu was still in the band, he’d have to take over parts that John would start to forget, or mistime. I had such a row with him on one gig, where he forgot a certain part in ‘Seattle’, and he went, ‘Stop, let’s start again,’ and we were already into the second chorus! I gave such a hateful glare. My message was clear, and my band knew this too – you don’t stop! Once you’ve started a song, you do not stop it, not ever. People have paid money for this. Everybody makes mistakes, go with it. Wait for the beat to come round, there’s your spot, and you’re back in. That can actually be really good in a live performance, because it’s adding flavour to the song.
After the 9 tour, Bruce Smith had his other things to get involved with, and I couldn’t keep up a regular wage packet for him as a retainer, because there wasn’t the money there for that. So we had a pleasant parting of the ways, but I always kept him and Lu in mind.
By this point, our batteries were really low, all of us. We’d toured a lot, and the travel wears you down. You lose your sense of base, of home, and thereby, purpose. I’m a bit of a gypsy and a wanderer myself, but I do need to have the sanctuary of somewhere solid to go back to – to get a plug-in. I’d been ‘working in music’, for want of a better phrase, for fifteen years now, and the smart thing to do is to take a break, as a human being.
Unfortunately, it’s a very forgetful industry, where if you haven’t heard of someone for a year, you presume they’re dead. What kept us moving was ‘Don’t Ask Me’, a terrific single which Allan Dias wrote mostly on his own. He had a good chunk of lyrics there, which I felt needed to be bumped up just that extra notch but not too much. I was chuffed to pieces with it. You know, ‘What’s it all about?/They scream and then they shout/Don’t ask me, cause I don’t know/No UFOs to save us/And do we really care?’ It’s a very long song vocal-wise. Hundreds of words but they’re all poignant.
We did a terrific cover for it, emulating the Metal Box. It was in a small round little metal tin. We also did a great video, which was directed by Bob Dylan’s son, Jesse. It started going up the charts, but somehow or other Virgin muffed the whole thing, by failing to press any more copies, because they weren’t expecting it to be a hit.
Their big plan was to release a Greatest Hits compilation. It was an idea that came from Gemma Corfield at Virgin – a very crazy lady, and a friend of sorts, who’d always had something to say about my career, going back endless albums. Somebody did a Christmas prank on her, I think, and I’d seen it in the corner by her desk. It was a mocked-up poster that said, ‘Gemma Corfield’s Greatest Tits’, and there was a fake picture of her with her tits out. So obviously I wanted the album to be called Greatest Tits, because I thought that was exactly right. Right up to the last minute, that was going to be the approach, but then it was altered, not to my liking, and I was furious about it.
It seems a silly thing now, but it took away my willingness to go out and promote it. We didn’t play at all, to coincide. What started us back up again was an offer to do a song for the soundtrack to a Keanu Reeves movie, Point Break. That absolutely puzzled all of us. God, what are we gonna do? What a challenge. Somehow or other we wrote this song, ‘Criminal’, and it was actually used. My problem was, I sang too high. Maybe I was rusty, but I was developing these extraordinarily high notes that were unlistenable. Bloody hell, glass-shatteringly piercing, but that’s the experiment I was running, juxtapositioned with this bassy woof/thuddy pattern underneath. It just about worked.
I couldn’t really get any involvement from McGeoch in the studio. He was just into this layering and layering endless overdubs to form his familiar blancmange, and so there’s a dissipated energy going on in that song, where it’s not quite finding itself.
So, after that, when we got back together for the sessions in LA which led to the That What Is Not album, the idea was to leave everything at a bare minimum, and let the silence in between things actually fill your head with wonderful ideas. Less is best sometimes. You know, don’t send 70,000 troops in with machine guns to break up a Boy Scout reunion.
I saw it not so much as a reaction, just the next level for PiL. I thought I’d been indulgent enough and learned enough in the area of technology and verbosity to know I didn’t want to pursue it any deeper. That was fine for the element I was trying to express at that point. Communication is like this. You can get bored with the way you keep endlessly repeating yourself and so you end up thinking, ‘What if I change the sentence structure somewhat?’
I wrote the songs for the album and put the general music guidelines together at home in Los Angeles before we started recording. We did no rehearsals, because we were all living in different corners of the world.
We had a producer, Dave Jerden, that Virgin had recommended to us. I didn’t like him, and he hated me. He got big because he’d worked with Jane’s Addiction and Alice in Chains. What I didn’t expect was him wanting a Slick Rick kind of poppiness. He was firmly planting his buttocks in the American pop of that time – like ‘Jessie’s Girl’ by Rick Springfield.
As soon as we started laying down the backing tracks, I had issues, and it was politely agreed via the record company that the best thing would be if Jerden would pay attention to what I was saying. I’d take a week off, and not be in the studio while they laid down the backing tracks – which was a great idea because that can be very boring. The week turned into something like two weeks, probably longer and, by the time I got back in, the direction of the songs had changed, the tempos were changed, patterns were altered – just not what I’d had in mind when I wrote them.
Jerden was trying to restrict me to, ‘Yes, that’s a great song idea, but I thought if we put it in this key . . .’ I’d be like, ‘Well, did you ever consider that I can’t sing in that register? And now I’ve only got two hours to do the vocals on three songs, and you’ve altered the range.’ This would be a serious fucking dilemma. Time and money was running out, and rather than just start again with someone else, which was my suggestion, with both arms handcuffed behind me, we had to make the best of it. So Jerden killed the life out of it, and that’s why I called it That What Is Not. It feels restrained to me – the savage edge as delivered by Abba.
Using name producers was always a problem. You try to avoid them, and produce yourselves, as we did in the early days, but then up comes an opportunity of trying it with someone else, and you think, ‘Why not? There’s every chan
ce this might actually work.’ You entertain the idea seriously and you go ahead with it, and then when you leave the studio that mélange of what I think is killing modern music creeps back in, and you’re expected to adapt to that. It’s like, ‘I didn’t write this song for your version to dominate!’
I hated the rows revolving around the album, but I do still love a lot of the songs. I am still proud of it. There is some seriously underrated material on there. ‘Cruel’ is the most perfectly tragic love song I’ve ever been a part of. I just adore it. Of course it’s melodramatic, but that’s the joy of it. It brings me back to those ’60s songs that were all just so sad, stuff by the Bee Gees, at their best, or even Roy Orbison. It’s a very sad song: there’s the battle of the sexes in there, and all manner of deceit and treachery. But it sounds beautiful!
My other favourite is ‘Acid Drops’. That was all about capitalism going out of control, and not serving the people. I felt like no one was dealing with it; it was all blandly ignored by every single other band out there, including those professional preachers called U2. Censorship’s in there, too: ‘Who censors the censors, can I do that myself, make up my own mind, like anyone else?’ That whole ethos was kind of negated in the album’s very making, but then it wasn’t, because it ended up being a most excellent song.
‘Forget me, forget me not/Remember me like acid drops’: I think I quite skilfully handle the venom in them lines as I’m delivering them. I was like, eyeballs firmly on Jerden – ‘Don’t you yank my chain and don’t you tug me strings, ’cause I ain’t got none.’ At the end of the song I wanted the end refrain from ‘God Save The Queen’ – ‘nooooo fuuuuuture’! That to me seemed absolutely appropriate. That’s my satisfaction in delivering a thing properly. I hope he remembers ‘me like acid drops’.
‘Think Tank’ was about the rewriting of history that was going on with all them idiot punk books, put out by people writing themselves in a bigger part in the story than they really had, and thereby altering the truth. Yes, I’m talking about Jon Savage’s England’s Dreaming. It was a terrible thing for someone who loves to study history – me – to see their own altered right under their nose.
Frankly, I look through that period at the turn of the ’90s and think, ‘How the fuck did I survive that?’ It was rigorous, everything came painfully. The punches were not pulled, and the backstabbing was non-stop. I was being painted as the all-time bad boy – but not in a good way. Written off as talentless, pointless and actually not a big participant or player in my own universe, which is a fabulous lie. It does get to you; it makes you feel, ‘What is it they’re really trying to say? Have they a point? Should I analyze myself?’ And of course, being me, I do. Well, I’m glad to report that I came out of my own self-analysis rather favourably.
When That What Is Not came out in early ’92, the media response, if there was any, was mostly negative. The vague idea seemed to be that I’d timed my run to coincide with grunge. Really, I’m not one for keeping my finger on the pulse of what’s currently trendy. In fact, that just never bothers me at all. I’m absolutely oblivious to music working in things like trends. There’s always a couple of bods out there with an original idea, and then there’s 200,000 bands that want to copy that and then declare that those are indeed the new rules of music and everyone should sound like that. That’s why trends do not interest me.
Unfortunately I’ve made myself into a bit of a trendsetter over the years and it’s the one thing I hate the most about what I do – having to listen to the influence I’ve had. It’s not at all rewarding. Imitation is not the greatest form of flattery. Somehow it indicates to me that the people doing it haven’t clearly understood. If I’m trying to be preachy in any way at all, I’m telling you: find your own sound, find your own soul, find your own words, and your own way of seeing the world, and then share that with us. That’s how we all live and learn.
In fairness, a lot of the bands in America absorbed the energy of punk, and loved its ethos. Of course, there were the Boo Monsters, the people forever stuck in the heavy-metal universe, but soon the punk influence began to shape-shift heavy metal into a much more broadminded thing, and so I’ve got a great deal of respect for a lot of the bands that did that. They stopped the heavy-metal crowd from hating punk and opened their minds to it. The English lot, like Def Leppard, definitely opened some doors there, and introduced the concept of unity. They’re good fellas – they have come to our gigs.
A year or so later a guy called Tim Sommers – who I had been talking with at Atlantic Records about doing a solo album – actually tried to set me up for a meeting with Kurt Cobain. I was meant to meet him and Courtney and the baby at the La Brea Tar Pits. Well, I’d done the tourist shit, I’d lived in LA long enough, and I wasn’t going to look at dinosaur bones one more time. In many ways, I’d have loved to have had a chat with Kurt – but about what exactly? It struck me as, ‘Are they gleaning me for ideology, and then they’re gonna dump me?’ And my answer was, ‘Yeah, that’s exactly what was gonna happen.’ So, bollocks – I cancelled. Actually I think they cancelled, which made me very happy. Mentally inside, I didn’t want it. I don’t like that kind of thing.
Going on TV and radio was even harder than getting a decent review. I did a beautiful black-and-white video for ‘Cruel’, and The Chart Show, which was a programme on British terrestrial TV with massive ratings, refused to air it, because it was shot in black and white. They said their policy was colour only. You could go into the history and say, ‘Well, two weeks ago you played a black-and-white video, so it didn’t seem to bother you then . . .’ It certainly didn’t stop U2 circa Rattle And Hum. It was a fabulous lie. You can go on like this, but you end up back to bad dentistry and pull all your teeth out with anxiety over it. The point was that it was a damn near relentless resilience against whatever I was doing.
I think it was just fear of what the content really means or is, without basically listening. Here I am now after all these years and there’s still this suspicion, is this some kind of elaborate joke on my part? Am I having a wheeze on the wonderful world of music? Yes, I am. And what is wrong with that? Because in the meantime, I’m telling it like it really is. Like it really is, and I’m being honest and truthful with everything I do. Is that a problem? Is that so wrong?
And all the way through, from Album onwards – hello, we’re PiL, we look damn fine, but because there was a social issue in our songs, we were ignored. So did the world erode the importance of Johnny Rotten, or did Johnny Rotten just carry on doing what he knows he does best, and therefore become too ‘out there’? I think it’s six of one, and half a dozen of the other. I’ve got to be honest about that.
Everybody backed Sting and didn’t back Johnny Rotten. But that’s okay, you get what you deserve in the end.
There were some really good gigs, but I don’t remember a lot of fun touring that album. Mike Joyce from Morrissey’s band was in drumming with us for a short bit, and he and McGeoch were terrible with their Catholic-Protestant arguments. McGeoch would be, ‘I’m blue through and through’, and Joyce would be going on about the wearing of the green! Jesus Christ, what is it you’re going on about? I’d be going, ‘My favourite piece of clothing in the skinhead days was a green and blue mohair suit – remember them suits? Fine, excellent suits, tonics, which were double-shaded, so it reflected green sometimes, blue at others. My tonic was both blue and green! Think about it . . .’
In interviews, I carried on plenty about Virgin’s lack of support. I never held back. I suppose I always had great support there on a personal level, but by that point there was definitely something missing at the top, which made it very difficult to be on the label.
The next thing I knew, Virgin was being sold to EMI. Of all people! Oh, for fuck-off sake! You wake up one morning and find you’re back in the enemy’s encampment, and Ken Berry’s running EMI at the time – I mean, what?! At PiL’s remaining gigs on the ’92 tour we’d finish the show with ‘EMI’. It was an ab
solute reminder of, ‘I was in this situation once before!’
We’d completed the eight-album deal PiL had signed up for in ’78, and signed a new deal in 1987, but it soon became apparent EMI wanted rid of us. So I was in a kind of limbo. It’s painful when you’re in that position. It’s like, what’s this been all about?
So thank you, record label, and all my alleged friends there. I’d liked it at Virgin, but how many heads of department had changed on me through those years? After I moved to LA, every two years there was a different chairman and different underlings, and I never knew a name or title for any of them. I began to treat them all as transient.
Then, of course, Virgin went into that robot answering thing, so I couldn’t actually speak to anyone. The people I knew from the beginning like Simon Draper and Ken Berry – and they really were friends – they couldn’t pick up the ball, because nobody wanted to accept the responsibility of working with me, because the blacklist had taken its toll. By the end, they were all going off to fresh pastures, and I had no real communications with the new people at the top.
I would never give up the ghost, but of course I felt defeated. But I knew: by sheer persistence, whatever it is I think I’m doing, I’m not gonna stop. Not at all.
11
Johnny Cuckoo
My life at that point didn’t paint a pretty picture: my band PiL falling apart, the record company deals chiselling me, endless changes of management, exhausted from trying to keep the money together. I’m not one for self-pity, but some of it must have crept into me. I didn’t see a way out for ever such a long time. The whole thing was just constantly on us. It was so hard for Nora to have to deal with this.
At the same time, I remained kind of creative. I kept writing. I always burn stuff I’ve written if it doesn’t get recorded soon after the time of writing, but I’ve still got at the back of my head some of the songs from that time, and they’re schizophrenic in the extreme. I’ve certainly never gone back and used them as ideas. But at some point when I feel clean enough that I can go back in and investigate what was going on in me there – oooooh, ha ha, that’ll be intriguing!