“FOR me, the idea of a book is a good one. I know you’ve got modern electronica, multi-media, but I don’t think they have the longevity in them the way a book has. I love holding them, I love opening them, the complete process. Two years ago we put out a personal scrapbook of my life, detailing it, in a limited number of 700. Each book was handmade – that’s how I view life. I love first editions, I don’t own any – have you seen the price? – but I love the idea.”
Thirty-seven years ago when John Lydon exploded into the national consciousness as part of spiky-haired, bondage-clad punk rock group the Sex Pistols, the thought of the singer – then known as Johnny Rotten – waxing lyrical about the seductive appeal of reading would, to his many detractors in the British establishment, have seemed anathema.
Yet the John Lydon of today is an articulate, witty and insightful interviewee, as forthright as ever in his opinions but mindful to give people their due.
At one point the 57-year-old recalls an encounter with Paul McCartney. It was the late 1970s, the Pistols were at their height and Lydon and his partner – now wife – Nora Forster were being driven in a taxi through Knightsbridge. As they passed Harrods McCartney came out of the store and, apparently eager to meet Lydon, the former Beatle chased the cab down the road while its startled occupant locked the door.
“He was being friendly and I was being silly,” Lydon reflects with hindsight. “I couldn’t cope with it at the time. The Beatles running across the street, yelling at me, it was a bit much. I’m a shy bunny on my days off. I couldn’t handle that.”
It seems the two have subsequently met and got on. “I like him – he’s a really friendly bloke,” Lydon says. “I just can’t stand his music.
“That’s a good thing. You can separate the person from the work. My work is a little more personal, it’s not crafting songs in a pretty format. Mine need to be the real deal – and that’s hard to get along with.”
Perhaps equally surprisingly he remembers playing host to 70s pop heart-throbs the Bay City Rollers. “I liked them, they were good fellas,” he says. “The singer [Les McKeown] came round with John Barry, the composer. {I thought] ‘No, this is not right! No-one told me it would be like this!’
“But it was a great opening of minds. The intelligent side of the music industry, it comes from different places – as, I suppose, in life if you have an open mind.”
This month [October] Lydon is back with Public Image Ltd, the band he has fronted since quitting the Sex Pistols on stage in California in 1978 with the parting words “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”
For the first time in his 37-year career he’s without a record contract and clearly enjoying “the opportunity to do what I want, free of restrictions – the obvious one being financial, but there are ways round that”.
Since he reactivated PiL in 2009 after a 15-year hiatus during which he appeared in the TV show I’m a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here and made a series of wildlife programmes and commercials for Country Life butter, the music industry he strove for so long to separate himself from has been keen to garland him with awards. He remains wary, accepting very few. “Every now and again something special comes along, when someone notices I’ve been around for a long time and done some important work – I’m fine with that,” he says.
Now working for himself, he jokes: “I like the way I talk down to myself – that’s fantastic. I’m a very bad boss to me.”
More seriously, he adds: “There’s a great sense of fun and achievement you get, knowing you are responsible for yourself. You tend not to make daft mistakes and moves; you’re more considered and cultivated in your operations. You have less enemies to make – unless I want to take it out on myself one particular evening.
“When you career is subject to the whims of people who don’t know much about you that can be a problem – particularly someone like me who won’t have restraints put upon him.”
Not that the industry doesn’t still intrude from time to time. Last year, having moved the rights to the Pistols catalogue from EMI to Universal, Lydon says he and his former bandmates “fell out quite seriously with the label” when a campaign was launched to try to get the 1977 song God Save the Queen to Number One in the British charts to coincide with the Monarch’s Diamond Jubilee.
“It was doomed to fail,” he says. “God knows who came up with that campaign.”
“Everybody wants to be a Sex Pistol,” he adds. “Too few people know understand what that means. [When God Save the Queen was originally released] it was discussed under the Traitors Act in the Houses of Parliament – that carried a death sentence at the time. I don’t want to see that fuddled up in a record-selling farce. You have to understand the commitment I was making at the time.”
He has even less time for the plethora of punk nostalgia on television these days. It misses the point, he says. “I never considered myself part of a movement; I was part of a band,” he explains. “I don’t think a lot of bands that attach themselves to that category [punk] understand the commitment.
“I was looking for answers to serious questions. ‘This is what I believe in – what do you believe in?’ Most adopted the clothes horse approach.”
He talks with disbelief that when he recently met modern-day punk band Green Day they had misinterpreted his whole ethos. “I was amazed at their ignorance of me. They thought we were a set-up, manufactured boy band. Woah! That’s not right. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion but you’ve got to express the truth.
“I suppose that’s their way of justifying themselves but don’t be treading on my terrain. The risks I have taken. To stand up and be counted is a hard position to put myself in.
“I don’t expect everyone to be like me. I less expect people to dress or imitate the way I am. If you’re going there you’ve got that wrong. I don’t do that to be a version of anybody else.
“Reality to me is absolutely essential, not to be lost in clothes horse delusions.”
Public Image Ltd and The Selecter play at the O2 Academy Leeds on October 17. Doors 7.30pm, tickets £26. www.ticketweb.co.uk
JOHN LYDON IN HIS OWN WORDS
On how the loss of his father and stepdaughter Ari Up impinged on his latest album This Is PiL: “These things were running in my mind but I decided not to deal with them [in songs]. I decided to deal with them in separate ways and not put them on the public. If there’s a bright side in death I definitely want to go looking for it. I wanted to make Dad and Ari happy. I celebrate life.”
On former Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren, against whom he won a £1m court case: “. I don’t want to be speaking ill of the dead. I remember the good bits, though they were few and far between. But I’m sure if I had a cup of tea with Satan I could have a good word to say about him – that’s my way.”
On how time away from the music industry was actually beneficial: “It’s the only thing I am any good at is writing and performing. Record labels put a squash on that for a while. Let’s call it the sojourn. But it was as good a way as any to recharge my batteries. I came back fresher than ever. I lost some useless luggage and gained an awful lot.”
On the Pistols’ shows in Huddersfield on Christmas Day 1977: “Bloody good memories. We’re going through that footage at the moment. The atmosphere was astounding. It was great fun. The kids’ matinee in the afternoon was something I will never forget. In many ways it proved a point to me – the kids get what I’m saying and understand. It’s only adults that take offence, but they’re taking offence at their own wrong moves. I have a child-like perspective. I believe in innocence. It was mad because it was for striking firemen and dustmen and orphans and kids. Huddersfield has got a strong place in me and always will, forever and ever. I even watch the c*** football team and think kindly of them. The people of Huddersfield meant a lot to us. Yorkshire does too. They got us and we got them. They have no time for lying or showbiz arty fartiness. It’s here it is, like it or lump it.”
On PiL: . “Any kind of career began with PiL. I opened my mind and my wallet and my pants. It was not a pop band trying to pretend we were 18 years old again; it was an ongoing force of nature, not pop trivia.”
On education: “I never failed an exam I’ve ever taken, that includes maths – and I couldn’t count past 10. At the same time they kicked me out of school. At 15 I was going to what was called one of those approved colleges of further education. It was schooling for delinquents, though I had no violence in me, I had no crime in me. I was an annoying brat who could not stop asking questions. The simple word’ why’, every child deserves an answer to. It’s good; it shows there’s a bit of brain bounce in there. What’s the real answer? Tell it like it is, not the way you want it to be. Then maybe it will become what you want it to be. Transparency in education is fine, without particular overtones.”
On The X Factor: “It’s how we lose our cultural connection with each other. There’s less opportunity for diversity. That’s the kiss of death. It’s a wary warning of the future – next year’s music will be decided by Simon Cowell and committee? Come on! Get your a*** down to these PiL gigs straight away before everything is taken off you.”
On his recent radio shows for BBC 6 Music: “I have very few prejudices except for stuff I don’t think is genuine. Even a fine crafted thing like Abba I could appreciate. There’s something in the sentiment that bounces well with the human psyche. I pay attention to that. One of the greatest mysteries is why Sid liked Abba. To this day I can’t fathom it. I always tell people Sid was a gentle character deep down inside. These mistaken people who are attracted to him by his tough image would be terrified if they knew the reality.”
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