by Lydon, John
I know I’m pretty damn hard work. It must’ve been a bit of a nightmare for Steve and Paul and Glen to cope with something a little bit different, something not ‘off the shelf’, like I am. The problems they have with me might be absolutely firmly rooted in the fact that they had a band before me, and they think I came in and spoilt everything. I can only garner that from interviews all three of them have done over the years, implying that the Sex Pistols could’ve been a really great rock ‘n’ roll band, but for me. Well, there you go.
One way or another, I think I would’ve been a creative person, with or without them originally paying some attention to me. There might possibly have been better options out there, from other people that might’ve had similar aspirations in my direction. Who knows? That was the first option, and I dived in. There was something special between us – I can’t describe what that is. You can’t describe charisma. But it most definitely was there, and still is, in my mind. There’s that little spark that I know is burbling around in all their little heads. Perhaps one problem is Paul and Glen still living in England – England will age you like nothing on earth.
I want us to be friends, I really do. I want us to respect each other, but I can’t get them to break that barrier, that wall that’s always put in between me and any one of them, individually or together. They just won’t open up with me, and that’s, I think, unfair. I have to learn to accept that, I suppose. For years I’ve endured it, and it was a good endurance, it definitely teaches you stamina and staying power. But it always comes down to the same conclusion when I rattle this in my head: I’ve done the best I could with these fellas, and I’ll always love and respect them. And that’s it. The End.
That year, 2008, really wasn’t a good year for me. In the early months, I lost my dad. He died suddenly. Apparently, he’d had an argument with the woman he was living with, Mary Irwin, and her son. Dad slipped, cracked his head, had a bit of a heart attack, and – dead. The only silver lining was that, at the autopsy, the pathologist said, ‘I know it’s terrible, but it’s kind of good he did die quickly like this, because he was riddled with cancers, and otherwise he would’ve died a very slow, painful death.’ Like, ‘Pffff, that’s good news, is it?’ Yep, apparently so. It was blindingly painful.
Mary Irwin, his girlfriend, was related somehow to his cousins – keep it in the family, I suppose, the Lydon way. It was nearly thirty years since my mother’s death, and I never had any resentment for his girlfriends. I expected him to be a human, but I never liked this particular woman because I thought she had a very bad nature. She was very pushy, and mean-spirited. The problems began when she said, ‘I’m your mammy now!’ You know?! ‘I’m a grown man, I’ve done a lot. What do you take me for, a fucking idiot?’ I think she was hoping she was the true love of his life, and not just some old biddy you bunk up with when you’re old. That’s what Irish people do, and I’m sure it’s the same everywhere else – when you’re old, don’t die alone!
My dad never said much to me, but he guided me well, and subversively. As I said before, later in life, we got very close. Two years before he died, I declared in an interview that he was one of my best friends, so it was all the more shocking the way he died and why he died and how much I missed him. It tore my heart apart. I didn’t think it would do that, but it really did.
When he died, I flew to London immediately and went directly to my brother Jimmy’s. I was so overtired I fell asleep on the couch there. I felt terrible about that, because I knew Cathy, Jimmy’s wife, loved her couch, and I hadn’t washed in a couple of days. So then I went home to our house in Fulham, and I put a chair in the middle of the room, and I just tried to talk to my dad. ‘Hello Dad, blah blah blah.’ Whatever it is you do.
I never feel they come back, the people you love. They don’t come back to you – they’re gone. That’s such a hard thing to deal with. It’s the same with your enemies: when they’ve gone, you miss them. You can’t honestly be a human being and say you don’t.
I was telling you, ‘I see things.’ It’s never about specific people, it’s about energies, feelings that you pick up. But with my dad, I knew he was gone, his energy was no longer around, and that was the loneliest, loneliest thing I’d felt, ever since the death of my mum. Just sitting there on a chair in the front room. I deliberately placed it right in the middle of the room – almost dramatic, I suppose. I was going to put on records and play music, I’d set the system, but I couldn’t get around to it. So I sat there in silence for ages – I found out later it was something like eighteen hours. My brother Jimmy came and picked me up. He went, ‘I know what you’re doing, let us in!’ And he was dead right.
At Dad’s funeral, I was borderline passing out with tears, which I never did with my mum. I was expected to give something of a speech. I couldn’t, I just couldn’t. Words fail you. I walked up when I felt like it – I got really bored of the priest yabbering away – and I leant into the coffin, and I kissed my dad’s dead body on the cheek. I looked down and went, ‘That’s me dad!’ and broke apart. I missed him so bad.
The saving grace was that the press didn’t attend. Maybe there was some kind of respect there, as a lot of the journalists who would normally be well up for sticking a knife in me were really good and left me be. Maybe there is a kindness in there, and they know there’s a line not to be crossed, because I’ve seen them rubbish other people’s funerals. The prospect of a journalist running up with a camera going, ‘So, what do you feel like now your dad’s dead?’ didn’t bear thinking about. It has become that grotesque.
Afterwards, we held a wake, to celebrate Dad’s death, in a North London pub not far from where I used to live in Benwell Road. It was a great turn-out for him. It was a community thing – that’s why so many people came to pay their respects. We’re all interrelated; it’s an astounding affirmation of community in the most painful way possible. So many people cared. It was a real gathering of the clans, working-class style, taking place in this pub that’s a well-known gangster hang-out!
I was standing next to some top lads who turned up for my dad – proper Arsenal. They loved him because of the manor, and what we are, and the community spirit therein. And where does the trouble begin? From the Galway second-arse cousins. They were disgraceful and disgusting. Here I am trying to celebrate the death of my dad, and one of the daughters of a cousin stands in front of me, raises her dress and does a clippety-cloppety dance, and asks me, ‘Look, Oi can daance! Can ye get me oan X Factor?’ The answer was ‘No!’ and her response was, ‘Yer a cunt!’
That’s how they behaved with us. How ugly is that? There’s some serious sickness in people. It’s like, we are meant to be the Irish abroad, and we’re getting Irish from Ireland behaving not very Irish at all. I felt like I had to run auditions at my own father’s funeral. She wasn’t the only one. There was a couple of them that stood in front of me and had the audacity to sing ‘Danny Boy’, a song I don’t particularly fucking like.
Jimmy, at the time, was recovering from cancer – we didn’t know if he was going to fully recover. Ouch. Double ouch. The loss of my mum was a hard one, barely into my early twenties, but the loss of my dad left me feeling for quite a bit that I had no point or purpose. I don’t know how I would’ve got through it, but for Nora reminding me that she’d gone through this too.
I feel really sad talking about this, and I know I’m boring you. People can fuck off if they don’t want to read it, because – this – is – life. All these fucks can run around with their punk agendas, but they don’t understand what humanity is. My idea of punk is humanity, it’s not vacuous nonsense like, ‘Are you wearing the latest outfit? Cool, dude!’ Everything I do is always about my community, my friends, my family – and my family’s gone, but for my brothers. I want you to understand what life can be like. Thank you for listening.
The truth, I’ve found, is far more interesting than the tittle-tattle they fill history books with. Nothing is as easily explained away as the p
owers-that-be would like it. The American Civil War was not really at all about freeing the slaves. That’s nonsense. No war is ever fought over moral issues. It’s always about economics. You only have to look at history.
It’s fascinating finding things like the Irish used to be called ‘black’. They were viewed as black Americans, too, in them times. Black was an all-encompassing term for lesser mortals.
My association with Bodog extended beyond just their Battle of the Bands. Around that time I was working on a series for them called Johnny Rotten Loves America, which never came to fruition. The idea was to explore bits of American history that are little-known, or swept under the carpet. They wanted us to track down ‘buffalo soldiers’ – black US cavalrymen, who are often written out of history – but Rambo suggested black Confederate soldiers instead, because no one believes that they even existed.
We tracked down a retired schoolteacher called Nelson Winbush, whose African-American granddad fought in the Civil War against the North. I found him to be one of the most absorbing fellas I’ve ever had a chat with. He still remembers his grandfather, and was in attendance at the funeral, where there was a Confederate flag draped over his coffin. Nelson got his flag out, and pictures of his grandfather. He showed us the pension book his grandfather got from his Southern State. They didn’t usually give pensions out, because the place was ravaged in the War, and there was no money, but he still got a pension for his services to the Confederacy.
I was fairly gobsmacked not knowing any of this. American history isn’t so easily explained then, is it? There’s a great sense of intrigue. I’m naturally nosy and want to find out what’s really going on here. We began toying with the concept of putting together a separate programme on the true history of the Civil War, absolutely from a black perspective, but then the Bodog thing dismantled itself very oddly and sadly the show never got made. I’d love to go back one day and revisit it.
I was receiving other offers for TV work, but they were impossible to take on, because they’d demand that I sign long-term contracts, and not work anywhere else, and not choose my own issues in the programmes, and basically be led by the nose with a financial contract as the carrot, and that was very uninteresting. They’d have rights to me, and basically I do what I’m told. And that’s impossible for me! I can do one-offs on subjects I really like, or maybe just one series, but I’m not going to be anybody’s puppet for years on any TV network, and basically do any old crap. No, no, no, I’m not quite ridden to the knackers’ yard that way.
Presumably because I’d been in I’m a Celebrity I got an offer to do a thing called Celebrity Circus. I dislike circuses intensely – that’s an A1 route to cruelty to animals. I also have an absolute hatred for zoos – I see them as prisons for wildlife. It was like they hadn’t paid any attention to the content of the nature programmes I’d already done. You get really angry with them, but at the same time you have to sit down and explain to them why this is horribly wrong. And you know at the end of the day they’re still not listening. You’ll get some ridiculous remark, like, ‘Well, we can put more money in.’ Sorry, no, I mean what I say.
And it’s not like I could go and raise money myself for a TV production, because I’m obviously going to put anything like that into making music.
That’s when the advert for Country Life butter came along, for British TV. I understood all the pitfalls in it, and hummed and hawed about taking it on – it just seemed so nutty. It was a case of, ‘What? They’re prepared to put their faith in me to help sell their butter?’ From the first meeting, the respect coming from the ad company, and from Country Life themselves, was almost overwhelming. They were taking a real risk with me, and were going to give me pretty much a free hand to be myself, without much tedious scripting. They were really upright and correct and professional with me, unlike anything I’d experienced from a record label. There was no dishonesty, or bribing you, or forcing you into situations you didn’t like. No trickery in the contract wording. So refreshing.
Then I began to see it from their point of view, and saw the fun in it. It began to seem so perfect, so utterly, mindblowingly right – the most anarchistic thing I’ve ever been presented with – a butter campaign! Wow, what a challenge! How was anyone going to cope with that? But then, after the initial shock, you look at it and think, ‘What’s going on in this? Well, I do eat butter, I do like butter, and you can’t make a good curry without butter – or without ghee, which is clarified butter. Ever tried eating baked beans on toast without butter?’ Hmm. By God, these boys had got me.
This wasn’t the same thing as using an old Pistols song to sell cack, which would ruin that song forever and erode its seriousness in many fans’ minds. I was very happily buying into the line that we were going to promote British farming. Indeed, that’s exactly what we did, we bolstered British industry! The ads were about buying British, and I thoroughly enjoyed larking about in the fields in a country gent’s tweeds – in fact, I found those to be much more practical for protecting yourself against freezing, drizzly British conditions than any nylon skiing gear. The rapport with the people involved became mind-alteringly open, in what could easily have been a corporate debacle. I think we turned it into something really impressive. Fortunately for the British farming industry, it did them the world of good too.
The ads went so big, so quick. It almost felt like I’d lost the reins, it just became so enormous. Of course there was the negative hatred, and again this thing of ‘You’ve sold out’. I’ve had to face that nonsense all my life in making music. There will always be the naysayers out there but, at the same time, you’ve got to say, Mr Rotten managed to put up British butter sales by 85 per cent. ‘So there is an audience out there!’ People are aware of me, and I am respected.
Then, lo and behold, I found myself in the middle of a butter war with New Zealand Anchor, putting out all manner of insults over the internet. Even Ireland’s Kerrygold had a dig at me: ‘If you claim to be Irish, you should’ve backed Kerrygold!’ Well, you know, none of them asked me. Suddenly, I’m a valuable commodity!
You take on something risky like that, and then one thing leads to another. Suddenly a huge opportunity in your creativity opens, and all of a sudden people are paying attention again. I was still at a stalemate with record companies, and any time I tried to get anything off the ground I’d always run into a financial barrier that you had no way of overcoming.
So every penny I earned from those ads went straight into reactivating Public Image Ltd. There was enough there – not an enormous amount, but a bulk lump sum – that I could put up to get a band together and into a rehearsal framework. From there, it worked out that we could actually survive on touring, and get enough together to record, and make an album our way without having to have a record label. In the end, it worked out fine: we’re now our own label, PiL Official Ltd, and we have our own publishing company. All that freedom, thanks to those ads.
WHO CENSORS THE CENSOR? #5
PASSIVE RESISTANCE
People I admire: Christiane Amanpour, the CNN journalist. I love her because she stops the corruption of history in the making. Whenever she’s on TV, I find her riveting. David Attenborough, because of his passion for nature, naturally. Gandhi is my ultimate hero. If you’re gonna have one, have one with absolutely no weapons other than wisdom.
For me, it’s the effort that counts, not results. Never mind winning cups and leagues, strugglers are worth more emotionally than achievers. I really admire strugglers, I have empathy for them, people who are trying to make a change rather than sitting on the laurels of victory. That value is in all of these people. They put great trains of thought into your head and get your mind spinning, and that’s wonderful.
I’ve got an open mind but a closed heart to politicians. And I have a definite closed door on all religions, especially new-age head rubbish. I can’t suffer that. All their psychic leanings drive me crazy because it’s such a waste of good energy. They’re just ad
vertising agencies, selling us the same cack regurgitated. This adoration of a higher power that makes all the decisions for you. That’s ball-cutting stuff, and I like my testicles very much.
Anything that properly gets my brain twirling, negatives included – especially negatives, sometimes – is all to the power and benefit to me ultimately. Know thine enemy: the more you get to know him, the more you realize he’s really your friend. You start having empathy – that word, again – and therefore the bitterness of us-and-them is dissolved, and you find ultimately you can have common ground.
Of course there are philosophies out there that I could never contend with, racism being one of them. It’s absurd: we all come from the same bottleneck way back when. You judge a person by their deeds, and nothing else really accounts for very much. The bottom line is: is that a good person, or a bad person? Is that a liar and a cheat and a fraud, or someone genuine?
Being brought up in a very mixed neighbourhood I never had to contend with, ‘Oh look at them, they’re all different.’ The thing was that we were all very different, but all very much the same. We all had the same problems, all had the same kind of schools to go to, living in the same kind of housing. What’s the point in squabbling amongst each other over that? For me, the focus would be on – putting it very nicely – the bastards what put us there, whoever’s responsible for our serious lack of opportunities. Because it’s not us, we’re industrious, thank you. We want to get ahead in the world.
Of course, you’d always get the ‘Send ’em back’ brigade, and it’s still going on, isn’t it? And send who back? You tell me: who can really account for being 100 per cent British, and what does that really mean? It’s an island that has been very open to all manner of race, creed and colour, for pretty much as long as it has been populated. The English language itself is an adaptation of European languages, mixed with a bit of this, that and the other. If you’re going to go all the way back, is it Albion we’re talking here? Just the Saxons? What about the Angles before them? The Celts? And who was there before the Celts? Where did all these folk come from?