King of punk John Lydon holds forth on everything from the 70s’ endless strikes to state of the music industry
EX-Pistol peers back into his Rotten history with musings of life as the 'King of Punk' ruling over streets of discontent
AUDIENCES didn’t come much tougher than the rowdy inmates assembled at HM Prison, Chelmsford, on September 17, 1976.
But could they deter a certain loud, lairy, larger-than-life rock rebel? Of course not.
“You’re the best captive audience I’ve ever played to,” sneered the Sex Pistols’ spiky-haired frontman Johnny Rotten.
“Boring! You’re boring! I bet you’ve all got piles from sitting down too much,” his wind-up continued before the band ripped into a chaotic rendition of No Lip.
Fast forward to 2016 and Rotten, or John Lydon as we know and love him, remembers the prison gig well.
“Ouch!” he cries when I remind him of his ‘piles’ gag. “I suppose I’ve always been a bit of a natural born comedian (theatrical pause) . . . which would get me into all manner of trouble!
“Whatever came into my head, I would chuck it out there and suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.”
There’s still mischief in the voice coming down the line from Los Angeles where 60-year-old Lydon resides these days.
It’s loaded with the same attitude that tried to rile those Chelmsford lags.
“Oh, it’s all gone quiet,” he told them at one point. “Must be passing round that one brain cell. I wonder what you all get up to at night when you’re lonely!
“Move!” he shouted another time. “It’s not illegal. Are you going to just sit and watch us all night? F***ing move! Wreck the place!”
Lydon’s taking a trip down memory lane because a new box set, Sex Pistols Live ’76, gathers up four of the band’s incendiary gigs from the dawn of the punk revolution.
“It was confrontational, which is what all great comedy is,” he decides.
“I don’t know how half my lines would go down say in stoic Germany but that captive English audience in Chelmsford was greatly appreciative.
“A lot of them were lifers and there was nothing stopping them killing us if they fancied but we treated them as human beings and gave them a break.”
The Chelmsford recording seems like a very British version of Johnny Cash’s fabled live albums At Folsom Prison and At San Quentin, both of which bristle with similar tension.
It’s a notion that tickles Lydon. “Johnny Cash was fantastic. Ours was the English way though and he certainly wasn’t in my mind at the time. He was a lad though.”
You have to consider that Britain was a pretty depressing place in 1976 . . . rocketing unemployment, the three-day week, rubbish piling up in the streets, uncertainty in Government and the Thatcher era three years away.
It explains why the ultimate Pistols anthem Anarchy In The UK epitomised the febrile atmosphere.
Lydon has one word to describe Old Blighty back then: “Calamity! There were endless strikes, confusion and garbage everywhere.
“It explains why we started wearing bin bags. There were complaints about black bags and the Government decided to issue DayGlo pink and yellow ones.
“To my mind that was fantastic: ‘I’ll wear that please, put holes in it, and I’ve got a fashionable top.’
“Punk was all about do-it-yourself. You take what’s available around you.”
Created by flamboyant impresario Malcolm McLaren, the Pistols were an angry, anti-establishment antidote to this nation on its knees.
The music was raw, no frills but the lyrics, brilliantly caustic and venomously delivered by Rotten, packed a telling punch.
The most significant gig in the Live ’76 set took place at Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall on June 4, in the same building where folk icon Bob Dylan was called Judas for “going electric”.
I bought a skin-tight polo-neck rubber top from Vivienne Westwood and after three numbers I collapsed, dehydrated
John Lydon on Sex Pistols stage attire
It’s the stuff of legend, regarded by many as the starting gun for the punk era. A month later, both The Clash And The Damned appeared as support acts at their concerts.
Lydon says: “I mean we didn’t go up there with the attitude of, ‘Let’s start a movement this evening, that’ll be fun’, but a lot of the people there immediately went into music.”
Organised by Pete Shelley and Howard Devoto, who later formed Buzzcocks, other notable attendees were a young Morrissey, The Fall’s Mark E. Smith and future members of Joy Division/New Order.
“The idea of do-it-yourself music was enticing to a lot of young people,” adds Lydon. “There was nothing else to do so why not make some music of our own?”
And what are his recollections of the gig? “Apart from some nonsense outside, the actual gig was fun.
“It was very exceptional for bands to travel up north or for northern bands to travel south in them days.
“We were quite literally in uncharted territory . . . unless you were with the football hooligan mob.”
Lydon says the crowd was more attentive than usual. “It was by far the toughest city we’d played. I always found that the tougher the city and the tougher the audience, the more responsive they were. They had nothing to prove.
“It’s when you played these horrible little villages or the outskirts of some grotty seaside town that you got trouble from the local Mr Big Head.
“But I learned not to laugh at a man with 20 of his mates. There would be some of that and they’d win!”
As you’d expect, Lydon is keen to set some records straight . . . how well The Pistols actually played and why we shouldn’t listen to so-called punk experts who write about the era but weren’t actually there.
“People underrated us. We were a lot better than they thought,” he says, spitting out the words with the old ire.
“There was a hell of a lot of negativity at the time about anything to do with us. And what is playing anyway? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, plus we weren’t fitting into consistent patterns of the day and therefore people said, ‘Can’t play’. Let’s face it, we were never good enough for X Factor.”
JOHN ON BREXIT
I’LL tell you one of the major things that turned me pro-Brexit . . . watching Bob Geldof on that boat on the Thames!
And here we are discussing the Pistols – it’s like our version of the Jubilee. But oh my God, how tame! I mean how daft and silly. When I came back to America, that’s the one thing people wanted to talk about . . . “Is that really how you run the country?” Going down the Thames shouting at each other.
Seriously, you can’t be dictated to by unknown strangers – stand on your own two feet. It’s what Britain did before. It can do it again. If somebody’s got something they want to sell, they’re going to sell it to you. The supply of Mercedes won’t dry up, will it?
Warming to the task and moving through the gears, Lydon continues: “And if you weren’t there and you didn’t do it yourself, shut up!
“Just shut up because all you’re doing is rewriting history and trying to make a bigger place for yourself — who was not there — in it. See it for what it really was and don’t add commentary and opinion.”
It’s strange to think that he long rejected the notion of “punk” but he’s come to accept it now.
“I hated it because it came from Caroline Coon, a writer for Melody Maker, and on their cover, they had a picture of me saying, ‘King of Punk’.”
People underrated us. We were a lot better than they thought
Lydon on the Sex Pistols' perceived musical prowess
The irony wasn’t lost on the man who wrote the ultimate anti-monarchy anthem, God Save The Queen. But now he says: “It was a title that I earned and it ain’t one I’m going to give up easy either. I didn’t get that by invading countries and murdering the local population. I was unanimously elected, so hello!”
Of course the “King of Punk” had to be suitably attired and I ask him to reveal his most memorable outfit.
“For one of the very early gigs, in Kilburn High Road, I’d saved up and bought . . . because we could have anything for half price from Vivienne Westwood . . . a skin-tight polo neck rubber top.
“After three numbers, I collapsed. I passed out, dehydrated, although it did lead on to plastic, which was equally challenging.
“But it felt good and the girls looked great the way they cut things up.”
Another essential punk ingredient was anger and the Sex Pistols channelled it with consummate ease.
Lydon says: “Everybody had a touch of anger. Institutions were my big target and of course religion was lurking in there. I waited until PiL (Public Image Ltd) to really dig into priests.
“We were basically being told, ‘Why bother?’ in schools. Teachers were telling you that you were never going to get anywhere, the best career you could have was in a bank.
“So what was left then? Crime? Then, oddly enough, I was offered the role of singer without anyone hearing me sing, which was great.
“I spent all my early years avoiding singing because I went to Catholic school and if you could sing, you’d be in the choir and the priests would have access to you. So, being very worldly wise, I didn’t allow that to happen. I had to find my voice very quickly and I think I did that from deep research inside my self.
“I didn’t just write these words. I had to present them through my big fat gob in an accurate way. I really got stuck into pronunciation.”
He adds with a wry laugh: “One of the few things I learned at school was English language . . . and indeed, that clarity got me kicked out!”
Lastly, we return to the present day and what motivates Lydon and why he keeps PiL going strong.
He explains: “I’ve learned to write songs properly. I’ve analysed myself and therefore I’m capable of analysing others.
“So now I attack myself personally all the time! I want to improve not only my position in the world but everybody else’s. PiL is a fantastic opportunity to get it right.” Lydon also has something to say about today’s music business. (It’s important to note that EMI notoriously dumped the Pistols after their first single, Anarchy In The UK, before the band signed to Richard Branson’s Virgin).
He says: “It’s as useless, stupid and dumb as ever. As soon as the accountants come in, everything changes and then it’s just about the money and the art form becomes stagnant and sales drop.
“The labels are all oblivious to this until it’s too late and they find themselves facing financial ruin. They need to invest in new, interesting, exciting talent . . . take risks and good things will happen.
“If you follow the route of safety, believe me, you’re not going to be safe!”
Nevermind the b*****ks, Mr John Lydon talks a whole lot of sense.
JOHN ON TRUMP
HIS speech was full of foreboding and doom.
George Orwell (author of Animal Farm and 1984) came to mind. I did notice fascist tinges in it. “I am the one for law and order.” What does that even mean? The law is way out of order in the US at the moment. So it was a very curious, negative thing he was saying. It’s a twisted world we live in.
SEX PISTOLS LIVE '76 (OUT AUGUST 19)
FIVE STARS OUT OF FIVE