As front man of The Sex Pistols, John Lydon was the voice of a generation and, if the media was to be believed, a genuine threat to the fragile nation’s youth. After the Pistols imploded, he formed Public Image Limited and set the blueprint for genre-spanning post-punk. Toast gets him on the blower ahead of PIL’s show in Sheffield next month to talk music, politics and the legacy of over thirty years of music…
Words: Rob Nevitt
Hello John, how’s LA this morning?
Well, we’re waiting for the government to close down and America to crash into the ocean. Same as any other day really… That and the nuclear waste from Japan now hitting the California shores. Paradise is not all it’s cracked up to be…
Nice. How’s the preparation been going for the new tour?
Well, getting the funds in is always a big problem, but that’s alright, as we take that as being par for the course. As soon as I get to England it’s slam bang into solid rehearsal and then out we go… Looking forward to it, you know? There’s no problem with hard work, I thrive on it…
Speaking of work, how did your appearance on ‘I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here!’ come about?
I had no concept of how large that show was, as I live in America, but it was clear I could raise a sizeable amount of money for charities of my favour and that’s exactly why I did it. I turned it down the year before, but they kept on pursuing it, I met with their people several times and they seemed to be fair and above board and so I took the venture on. Of course, when I got in the jungle, they changed the game plan somewhat on me. To my mind it was overtly and covertly constructed, which I only really found out when I was in there. Nothing personal against the other people I was in there with, but many of them basically behaved like performing sea lions.
You’ve been quoted as saying “My body and mind is the Sex Pistols, but my heart and soul is PiL” – It’s a nice summation of where you’re at.
It’s as accurate as I can be, because it’s the left wing and the right wing. It’s two different approaches but it’s hopefully the same conclusion. Without the Sex Pistols there would be no PiL, and I’ll always admit that and know that to be true. I learned an awful lot in the Sex Pistols, we had to, we were really slung in at the deep end. I’ve often suggested that the Sex Pistols was really the kick start that the paparazzi explosion needed, because the amount of journalists that would follow us around, particularly to America from England, was quite remarkable. I remember gigs in Texas where there would be at least twenty British journalists with cameras, all waiting for a calamity to happen, and that’s now the current way business is conducted. What a shame…
You only have to look at the recent media circus surrounding Charlie Sheen… It’s kind of pinning someone down and watching them unravel…
Trying to ruin his life… As far as I’m concerned, Charlie Sheen hasn’t stepped one foot out of his personality, he’s always told it like it is. That’s the lifestyle he likes, what’s wrong with that? And you may not agree with it, but you have no business to have an opinion on his lifestyle, because it never interfered with his work too much until the press manipulated it. And then money walks… your backers let you down when they should be behind you 100%, because there goes a real human being, warts and all. None of us in this world are perfect, and I don’t want to be running into perfect people, because they tend to be alleged Christians, and unfortunately as we all know, from experience – me particularly with priests when I was young – those are the worst hypocrites that mankind can produce. The self-righteous – I’ve no time for them.
It’s something we have to ask about – The Country Life butter adverts… Do you feel the need to answer criticisms about that? You’ve been quite open about the motivations behind it…
Why should I not be? For thirty years I’ve been delivering what I know as “The Goods”, and if that can be thrown out of the window by an ignorant remark and a lack of understanding of how on earth I could be financing all of this… it strikes me as deeply, deeply silly. Who else is promoting British products now? Just about nobody. And the fact that a butter company could come to me – and it struck me immediately as the most anarchistic thing I could imagine – utterly and completely appealed to me. Who is to say what you can and cannot do? There’re many assumptions made about me, and most of it comes through books written about me by people who can’t be bothered to speak to me directly. There will always be detractors and naysayers and, god bless ‘em, they have their place in life, but they really don’t run the universe.
It’s also quite shocking that a butter manufacturer is more supportive of you than the record industry is…
Yeah, and that includes the music press, who’re just way too quick to jump on my case at any given opportunity. It’s been like that since the first day in the Pistols until the very last day of PiL. It’ll always be that way and that’s fine. I’ll give you an example – I went to the NME awards recently. Normally I wouldn’t be seen dead at these events, but the opportunity to have a few kind words to say about Ariane [Forster, ex-Slits singer and John’s step-daughter who died of cancer in October 2010] was very much on my mind and that’s exactly what I did. They were also giving my book the award for book of the year, but the painful thing about that was that they didn’t have the courage to give me the award on the stage.
So that was obviously a conscious thing to not let you speak?
Yeah, and I know quite a few of the NME journalists were very upset about that and thought that was underhand and a bad way to treat someone who has really done an awful lot for British culture. Moreso than most… and moreso than anyone in that hall that night.
Given what you’ve just said, what do you think of the current musical landscape?
I just get on with what I believe in. I know, as I did when I first started 30 plus years ago, no matter what I did, no matter what fine example I tried to lead, there will always be the same kind of arseholes crawling up behind me. For every door I’ve opened, there’s been some good people that have come through but there’s been an awful lot of what I call Moo-Moos, who’re still there, still need their awards, still need their ceremonies, still need the accolades and yet they’re the very same people who aren’t creative at all. They’re what I refer to as genre-hoppers, where success matters more than content. That’s a shame, but it’s kind of a reflection on society and the society we’ve allowed to happen. Then I have to listen to Marilyn Manson going out there and calling himself the only true anarchist?! WHAT!? (Laughs) Having the audacity to use those expressions that they would have never come up with themselves, they’d have been far too cowardly. Far too heavy a concept for them to be making light of… I feel the same way now with Royal Family-knockers. It’s so easy for people to do it now, the environment is safe, try doing that way back then like I did, when it really mattered.
As you mention the Royal Family, as people are reading this, the Royal Wedding will have just happened. Has there been much of a buzz in the states?
I don’t mind telling anyone, I think those two people really do love each other, and I think that’s great. It doesn’t mean I support the Royal Family or that I’ve changed any of my views on that situation at all. As an institution I find that very corrupt and unforgiveable. They DO NOT help the people, they help themselves and that is a problem. It’s almost not even of their own making, they find themselves almost caged and living an almost parasitical lifestyle. That’s unfortunate for them and maybe this pair might find a way out of that, but the machinery has already started. There’s an amazing misrepresentation of their marriage in America, it’s astounding. It’s turned into the same nonsense as they did with Lady Di, “the fairy princess”. It’s like attaching a slice of reality to fakeness such as Cinderella and My Little Pony. For me, it’s the emasculation of humanity, it’s reducing us to trivia.
It’s very much merchandise overkill here now. Sainsburys have even been selling a commemorative pie for it…
Well, I said it years ago. “God Save The Queen, cos tourists are money”
What are your thoughts on the current political situation in the UK?
I know what’s going on in England. I’ve been saying this for a bit, in your last election, you all just rolled over, and what you’ve ended up with in your alleged coalition is two cunts for the price of one. But the bottom-line rule in my life and everything I know and all my experiences and all my family and friends has always been this consistent factor – never trust a Tory. And that’s never going to change.
Sheffield is feeling the effects of that perhaps more than many places – we had the Lib Dem Conference here a short time ago, the City Hall had an 8-Foot tall barricade round it…
It’s what happens with those political groups, they promise you the world, they hoodwink you into forgetting what they’ve done in the past and as soon as they get in, they start that “Us and Them” agenda all over again, and they use a police force to protect them. And that’s a police force that you as tax payers are funding so until people understand that the government should work for the people and not the other way around it won’t change. You need to hound these dogs out of office, keep a constant debate flowing, it does work.
You’re playing Sheffield on June 6th. What can audiences expect from this tour?
They can expect an audience participation in this way – enjoy yourself. Enjoy yourself and we will help you enjoy it further. Between PiL and an audience is an amazing bond. What I love most is the variety in the audience, it quite literally is all kinds of people and that’s very very good. There was a problem there with the Pistols for a time, where the audience became very uniformed, too many punk lookalikes. That’s all well and fine way back when, but it became a cliché rather than a badge of individuality. Don’t let the media tell you what you should and shouldn’t be interested in. I’m into breaking down those barriers. Divided we fall. You must open your heart, your mind and your soul to everything, all the time.