![](\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/4\/42\/John_Lydon_live_in_2013.jpg\/220px-John_Lydon_live_in_2013.jpg\")
John Lydon may have mellowed a bit, but Rock and Roll Hall of Fame organisers in the States discovered a few years back he could still deliver a diatribe of filth and fury when provoked. After they tried to induct the former Rotten and his Sex Pistol colleagues into their circle, he fired off a hand-written fax to them, explaining in no uncertain terms their hall of fame was \u201ca piss stain\u201d and their museum \u201curine in wine\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not coming. We\u2019re not your monkeys,\u201d the fax screamed as he ripped into them for attempting to charge $25,000 for a table or $15,000 \u201cto squeak up in the gallery\u201d.<\/p>\n
Anyone who saw Lydon in the company of US rights organisation BMI at its annual London gatherings last month might have thought they were casting their eyes on an altogether different chap. The man who three-and-a-half decades ago reportedly had Middle Englanders behind their twitching net curtains fearing for their safety was all humble and emotional as he was introduced by BMI\u2019s top suit Del Bryant and then explained why he was so chuffed to be getting an Icon Award for songwriting from the society.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do none of it,\u201d he said about awards events. \u201cI can hardly bear it. I\u2019m just the shyest bloke you could ever know. I can\u2019t handle it. It\u2019s hard. I\u2019ve been working for now – what – 35 years. No one has ever given me a compliment. I\u2019ve always been seen as the problem. I don\u2019t think I am. I think I\u2019m part of the solution.\u201d<\/p>\n
But in case you thought the old Lydon had really disappeared he did manage to call Bryant \u2018Del Boy\u2019 throughout the proceedings – and when the BMI president said he was going to tell him what the award inscription said he interjected with the suggestion that he might just read \u201ccunt\u201d.<\/p>\n
In an interview later with Music Week the punk legend takes up the theme again about why this particular award means so much to him, noting that \u2013 unlike other ones he has been offered over the years and refused \u2013 it comes from a songwriter\u2019s point of view.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what I do,\u201d says Lydon who gave a demonstration of his art at the US society\u2019s London dinner and awards with a brief rendition of the Sex Pistols\u2019 EMI with an appropriate lyric change to \u201cB-M-I\u201d – but lacking the original\u2019s venom. \u201cThey understand what it is I do, that I don\u2019t tell a lie and I write. It\u2019s the whole truth and nothing but. I\u2019ve been given a wonderful opportunity in my life. From day one in the Sex Pistols onwards it\u2019s always been the truth.<\/p>\n
\u201cI grew up reading and writing. I could read and write at four; my mother taught me. What do I love about books? I love the writer telling me the truth from their point of view. This is how we learn. This is how we should be: transparent to each other, warts and all. This is how I write with that kind of sensibility. This is a boy who lost his memory at seven and had to look at himself.\u201d<\/p>\n
For much of the public their most recent sightings of Lydon would have been the likes of a brief appearance in ITV\u2019s I\u2019m A Celebrity and more recently him being the unlikely star of a TV ad for Country Life Butter. Of course, that sparked cries of \u201csell out\u201d, but when has he ever taken notice of what the critics think? And, besides, the ad ended up given him the financial foundations to relaunch Public Image Ltd, the band that followed the Sex Pistols.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt worked out that way,\u201d he says of the commercial raising money to revive the group. \u201cIt wasn’t done for that. That was done because Rambo my best mate since 11 [and now manager] goes, \u2018This\u2019ll be a laugh.\u2019 I didn\u2019t think it would ever work, didn\u2019t think there would be any money in it. There wasn\u2019t great money. I\u2019ll be blatant with you there. Again there are always rip-offs, but it was enough to get some money put against the record company debt and that opened some really interesting novel ideas about booking the rehearsal and ringing up some proper people I\u2019ve worked with in PiL over the years and that\u2019s Lu, Bruce and we needed a bass player that wasn\u2019t going to charge an extravagant, over-the-top price.\u201d<\/p>\n
He recalls when he originally started PiL, having unceremoniously quit the Pistols at the end of their ill-fated US tour in 1978, he had always wanted it to be \u201can equal opportunities thing\u201d. But according to him: \u201cI already had a reputation going on and the new band members they just wanted me to pay for everything and that more or less bankrupted me. These cheeky mother fuckers are out there to this day bad mouthing me but haven\u2019t put a penny into PiL.\u201d<\/p>\n
PiL\u2019s return album, This is PiL, came out in May 2012 and was released on the band\u2019s own PiL Official label, giving him the kind of independence he could never have achieved in all the years at Virgin Records, firstly with the Sex Pistols, then PiL and his own solo projects.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, I\u2019ve always claimed independence, but that sense of independence I had worked against me,\u201d he says. \u201cThe record companies went very negative with that, yet signed endless bands – Smashing Pumpkins – that would imitate the formats I was setting. It was heart-breaking to have to endure that and then the press out there were given a field day to slag me off because I had no record company support. So when I got into the Pistols I got the Rupert Murdoch shit. Then I start PiL and I get no record company support, music press vendetta nonsense. But it\u2019s made me what I am so I am very beautifully grateful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lydon explains, even when he was signed to a traditional record company, in his own head he thought he had total control over what he was doing, but in reality all he was doing was \u201cgetting further and further in debt\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI began with the Sex Pistol contract, which was very poorly negotiated right from the start. God bless Malcolm [McLaren] and all his fantastic ideas, but he had no brains for business and neither did any of us. I found myself mid-Eighties running two bankrupt bands at the same time. What an achievement! And still to this day the Pistols when we did the \u201996 tour we thought it was going to be great. No, it raised so much financial ruin. All these lawyers and accountants came out of the woodwork and all these clauses started to rear their ugly head and it just got impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since then Universal has taken control of the group\u2019s recorded back catalogue in a 2012 deal pre-dating it completing the takeover of Virgin Records owner EMI. Lydon describes the purchase of his group\u2019s work by the major as \u201cwonderful\u201d, although he did publicly protest about it launching a campaign last year to try to get God Save The Queen to No 1 in the week of the Diamond Jubilee. It failed miserably, rising only as high as No 80 on the Official UK singles chart as the likes of Gary Barlow, Jessie J, Paul McCartney and Madness gathered in front of Buckingham Palace for a concert to salute Her Majesty.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was all for that,\u201d he says of the Universal deal, \u201cand I\u2019m not sure how that will unwind, but it was a way from an initial problem. They bought a debt obviously, but it\u2019s fresh faces. There\u2019s a point where you can\u2019t go on any longer in this coalmine.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he is less certain about what he makes of Universal then going on to buy EMI, the beloved UK record company whom he so famously sang about 36 years ago and who released the Sex Pistols\u2019 first single Anarchy In The UK but then dropped them following the furore surrounding their \u201cBill Grundy moment\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not quite sure all of this is going to balance well in the books inside my head,\u201d he reckons. \u201cThe problem for me is I still have friends because of the way I am and personal attachment with all of those record deals. I can\u2019t slag the record company off total. I can quite easy do that with the accounts department, but not the personalities that were ever so helpful. There was something really, really terrific about what a record company was offering a new band in those early days. It didn\u2019t mean \u2018Here\u2019s a load of money, go and have a party.\u2019 It meant somebody was talking to you as a human being and caring about what you did and wanted to be involved.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although supportive of it, he is also quick to explain the catalogue deal with Universal \u201cwasn\u2019t my idea\u201d and he finds himself in a situation with him on one side and the other Pistols represented by a manager on the other.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou see with the Pistols you have to understand there\u2019s three other people who are connected with a management called Anita Camarata who I cannot stand. To me she\u2019s the antithesis of everything I hold dear in life. Her attitude is, \u2018Let\u2019s turn it into kiss and make some money.\u2019 I can see Steve [Jones], Paul [Cook], Glen [Matlock]\u00a0 they like that. They\u2019ve always seen the Pistols in that way so I was always the problem. To this day, yeah, I am the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
His exit from the group and then what happened still sit very uncomfortably with him with Sid Vicious, his long-time friend, shoved centre stage and a series of singles put out desperately lacking Lydon\u2019s personality and creative input.<\/p>\n
\u201cFuck you. Try and write a song without me,\u201d blasts Lydon, who is published by Warner\/Chappell. \u201cThey had their go. It\u2019s called The [Great] Rock \u2018n\u2019 Roll Swindle. Friggin\u2019 In The Riggin\u2019 was an even better one. It makes you understand how hurtful listening to that was for me at the time and painful because I thought I\u2019d written some really fucking serious stuff and I cared about what I wrote and I still do.\u201d<\/p>\n
He agreed it pissed on the group\u2019s legacy, but he does not blame the other band members nor even McLaren, who passed away aged 64 in 2010.<\/p>\n
\u201c[It was the] conglomerate of all of it put together, this headless chicken and go for gold and try to wrap it around poor old Sid, my mate, who was at the time riddled with drug problems and the Nancy situation. It was like a concrete inner tube wrapped round his neck and how could he cope with that? They dug a deeper and deeper hole for the poor sod and Sid, my fault, I bought him into the band. I feel a sense of guilt. I pushed, dragged him, however you want to look at it, into a band he was ill-equipped to cope with mentally. He was my friend. I\u2019ll love him forever. He knows that, but he couldn\u2019t cope with that. Half-way during his career in the Pistols we all realised he had no sense of timing, [was] tone deaf, [had] no sense of rhythm.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he did look the part.<\/p>\n
\u201cOddly enough, that seemed to have been good enough. How perfect. Sid found at least one thing and you\u2019ve got to have to love him for that, but I feel the pain of his inadequacy, which is why he jumped into the heroin you see. That\u2019s what heroin does. It covers up inadequacies and Malcolm was there with the money to take care of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even all these years later Lydon still finds he is having to deal with a reputation that he believes is unjustified \u2013 him supposedly being \u201cthe problem\u201d as he would put it. That includes when playing live an expectation in organisers\u2019 minds he is going to let them down in some way.<\/p>\n
As Lydon, who played Glastonbury with PiL this summer, notes: \u201cIt\u2019s ridiculous, all the things I\u2019ve done for, what, 35 years now and I still have to prove to promoters and festivals that it\u2019s not the filth and fury. They still think I won\u2019t turn up, yet there is no history of me not turning up ever for anything. You\u2019d have to break both legs, snap off my arms. It\u2019s like that Monty Python thing. That\u2019s how I am.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Source: Music Week<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
John Lydon may have mellowed a bit, but Rock and Roll Hall of Fame organisers…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3738\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}