THE INTERVIEW
So how's the book being received, and why do it now?
“It's received incredibly well,” Lydon says, beaming. “I'm
surprised...because of people talking shit for so long, that I thought
nobody had any time for reality. I found that to be really wrong.”
Is he surprised that his longtime sparring partners at New Musical
Express (NME) dismissed the book as so much sour grapes – when
this guy had been stranded in America without money, or means of
transport?
“Thank you for observing that,” Lydon says with a shrug, “but
they fail to notice these things. In fact, I doubt if they read
the book, actually.” (Later he makes his opinion clear
in a rhetorical question: “What would the NME be without
their advertising? All those rock publications should be viewed
for what they really are...as a collection of adverts with a few bitchy
remarks in between, and possibly a chart compilation at the end, and
that's about all you get.”)
By Lydon's account, the birth of Rotten was
hardly easy: “It
came about slowly but surely over a three-year period. Originally,
I sat down and literally wrote it, but I had just trashed it all of
it because it ended up as pontification. I just found it much
easier to talk into a tape recorder and type out what was said as it
was said. It's not the written word; it's the spoken word, as
people really are.”
Was it difficult to win his father's cooperation?
“First, he was totally against doing anything, but he came around. Then
I found that I couldn't actually interview him. Hence, Keith
and Kent Zimmerman. They did a lot of those little situations
because I couldn't interview my own father! It just doesn't work.”
Doesn't feel natural, does it?
“No, it doesn't,” Lydon says, laughing, “because
he's a smart bastard, and he plays games with me, has all his life,
and it wasn't working.”
Did talking into that tape recorder help him come to terms with the
past?
“Probably so,” allows Lydon. “I'd never reviewed
myself quite that thoroughly. I don't think anybody else really
does.”
MEET THE PISTOLS
As Rotten's chief
protagonist makes clear, music was definitely a marriage made in
heaven, but not a planned one. Lydon's audition
for the Pistols consisted of bopping up and down madly in a pub, miming
to an Alice Cooper single.
When did being in a band start to feel natural?
“It never did, ever,” Lydon declares. “I was
totally unprepared for it, and it just seemed to get more chaotic,
and worse, and worse, and worse. The backstabbing and bitching
sessions that were going on were just childish, really. It's
amazing that you think you're growing up, but you're not! You
get more and more puerile as the years go by...a minute felt like a
year. It was an intensely lived period.”
As the public pressure grew
tighter, it became physically difficult for any of the Pistols to
go out socially – the price of growing
up in public?
“Yeah, and I'd go unprotected,” says Lydon. “To
feel that constantly exposed – and indeed, physically threatened
all the time – it was just a bit much for any person. I
don't think, really, ever, in the history of popular music, has a band
been so roundly hated!”
By his own account, the
Pistols' working atmosphere was a chaotic one, marked by great teamwork,
and great conflict. Does he hold
any regrets about how the conflict overwhelmed the teamwork?
“Well, the conflict is always useful,” says Lydon. “It's
a useful tool. It does make people work better – and I
will say that, in retrospect, we did put together some excellent songs. For
instance, Glen Matlock – I mean, I don't like the guy at all,
but I work really well with him.”
Even Matlock's book, I Was A Teenage Sex Pistol, grudgingly
admits that.
“Well, I think his (book) is more of a pamphlet!” Lydon
laughs.
By the way, if the man has an all-time favorite Sex Pistols song,
he's not naming it here; surely, the Book Of Lists compilers
will be annoyed?
“You can't pin it down to one word,” he responds. “You
can pin it down to one album, 'cause that's all we ever made!”
KINGS OF PUNK?
At what point did the promise of punk evaporate?
“It never had a promise,” barks Lydon. “I've
never accepted the term 'punk.' It was given to us by Caroline
Coon (whose comments also appear in Rotten), of all people,
in a Melody Maker article. She called me 'the king of
punk,' which I took to be offensive. I mean, it was! It
certainly had nothing to do with me. I never ran around calling
myself a punk.”
And, in Lydon's view, the
numerous bands who accepted that “p” word
to describe their music didn't help matters.
“I think there was the Sex Pistols, and then a whole bunch of
copyists,” he says. “They were the punks. Before
us, really, we didn't have anything to model on, nothing, 'cause everything
was so awful. None of it worked, all that horrible hippiedom,
and spoiled rich kids...”
Not to mention Eddie & The
Hot Rods, who bounced the Pistols from one of their gigs in the early
days?
“Yeah, well, that was pub rock – that was another thing
that was even worse,” says Lydon. “They were all
so much older than us. We were just practically tiny tots. The
only comparison around our age group would be the Bay City Rollers,
and they were old men to us! I do think at the time, we were
judged very, very unfairly and weren't given any credit for the sheer
audacity to jump on a stage in the first place, let alone attempt to
write songs and perform them.”
However, whether it's then, or now, Lydon acknowledges that he has
learned to live with unfavorable opinions.
“The narrow-minded – they will always wear blinkers, and
they will only see what they want to see,” he says. “And
indeed that refers directly to the NME to this very day.”
While the Pistols got there
first, they didn't stay lonely for long. By
July 1976, their major rivals had emerged.
“The Clash introduced the competitive element that dragged everything
down a little,” Lydon writes in Rotten. “It
was never about that for us.”
So what made him dislike the Clash? “Not as people, ever,” he
says. “But the political ranting and sloganeering, I just
found offensively dull. It's no use to anybody in this world
to be yapping on about Karl Marx, and just taking quotes completely
out of context and wrapping songs around them. There's nothing
to be learned from all that bollocks!”
On the other hand, it was
the Clash's manager, Bernie Rhodes, who spotted Lydon in the first
place and encouraged him to audition for the Sex Pistols. Potential
inconsistency of thought?
“Uh, I like Bernie, but if left up to his own manipulations,
you end up with things like the Clash,” Lydon says, laughing, “a
band that took themselves far too serious. They were completely
humorless and really just a pop band after all. And if you're
going to deal with politics, I think at that age, you should be dealing
with personal politics. 'Sten guns in Knightsbridge' (a key lyric
from the Clash's “1977”), and all the rest of that crap...oh,
it's just so childish.”
OF SID AND NANCY
In March 1977, Matlock either handed in his cards or got his walking
papers, depending on the account – an event that cleared the
way for Lydon's college friend, John Beverly, to join the group. The
world would come to know him as Sid Vicious, whose public persona first
assumed one of a happy-go-lucky loose cannon – until his American
girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, entered the scene.
Could anything have been done for Sid?
“Not really. Not that I'm aware of,” says Lydon. “I've
thought a lot about this. I just don't see what I could have
done. But it still doesn't take away that feeling of guilt that
you have. It's like a cloud – I can't see through it.”
From all indications, Sid was extremely likable, when he wasn't on
substances, but once he got on them, he was impossible to deal with.
“Uh, yeah, he'd become extremely arrogant, and extremely irritating,” says
Lydon. “Sid's problem was, he always wanted to be made
a fuss over. He loved to be the center of attention, and the
drugs helped that. They petrified the darker recesses of his
mind, I'm afraid.”
And once Nancy Spungen got him in her clutches, that was it?
“Oh, yeah, she seen it in him right away,” Lydon sighs. “That
wasn't a human being, that was a vampire. She was quite prepared
to take as many people down with her as she could on a very, very,
slow, deadly, spiteful death wish. Horrible person.”
Mention the book written by Spungen's mother, And I Don't Want
To Live This Life, and Lydon audibly recoils. Having read
the book, he doesn't put much stock in its accuracy.
“I thought, 'What a bitch!'” says Lydon. “It's
not really Nancy's fault at all for being so despicable, but she really
worked had at eliminating any redeeming qualities whatsoever. She
perfected the art that her mother had institutionalized her with, and
I think that's the correct term.”
Alex Cox's 1986 film Sid & Nancy still visibly rankles
Lydon; the film caused controversy for its decided looseness with key
facts in the Pistols' story and reportedly gave the singer cause for
a possible legal action.
Adding insult to injury,
Lydon recalls, Cox actually did contact him – after
the film had been completed.
“Out of the goodness of my ego,” he sneers, “I attended
the meeting and was appalled by what I found out. I think it's
very, very disgusting that people can inflict their opinions on your
life that way and be arrogant enough to think that you don't
have a say in it.”
Lydon confirms that he found
Cox's actions infuriating enough to risk a lawsuit. However, he adds, the idea foundered, for a rather
basic reason: “I'd have to have raised an awful lot of money,
and that's really been a side of my life that pisses me off. People
seem to be able to stop me on a whim, and I'm constantly in and out
of courts, arguing and fighting these stupid pie fights with people. But
it doesn't seem to work in my favor at all, and it's all down to money,
really. I mean, I live on shoestrings.”
So how do [drummer Paul] Cook and [guitarist Steve] Jones view their
respective positions in the band? “You'd have to ask them,
really. I mean, I gave them the opportunity in the book, and
they seem to be wanting to talk about other things!” Lydon chuckles.
Such tendencies seem in keeping with their nature.
“It certainly is,” says Lydon. “I
mean, in a second flat, I think both of them would reform the Sex
Pistols, which to me is an awful idea.”
But how awful would such
a prospect be? Cook was last spotted
drumming for Bananarama; Jones has grown a truly awesome set of long
hair, and hangs around with [Guns 'N' Roses vocalist] Axl Rose; Matlock's
last major project lay in a mysterious 12-inch in 1990, with input
and backing from Bernie Rhodes. Just how terrible would
a reformation be?
“You can't repeat it,” he says. “It would
be really, really fake, phony. It would be embarrassing – a
bunch of 40-somethings pretending to be 18 again! I mean, the
chants of 'wheelchair, wheelchair' would be deafening!”
When the mutual laughter
subsides, Lydon turns a tad more serious in pursuing his point: “I don't think you should repeat. You
should move on. I mean, you could do the occasional song and
throw it in for a laugh, but don't reform and go out and fake it all
because it would be so clearly cynical. It would be dead set
against what we were doing in the first place.”
CELLULOID PISTOLS
Lydon has never had much
luck with movies – whether it was Cox's Sid & Nancy,
or The Great Rock N' Roll Swindle (1980), whose muddled creation
became one of the final wedges between Lydon and McLaren.
Originally intended as a definitive account of the group, McLaren
soon wrestled control of Swindle, running through roughly
half a dozen directors before Julien Temple helped oversee its completion.
Some 250 hours of Swindle outtakes still languish in the
vaults, but Lydon has no plans to reedit the movie.
Lydon reacts with mock horror upon being told that a similar effort
by the Rolling Stones, 25 x 5, runs nearly three hours.
“Oh, no, God, never! Never! The idea of putting
together things that long, I think, is awful,” he snorts. “Short,
sharp and sweet, and to the point, thank you.”
Well, how about a 90-minute release, then?
“If! If! There's no point in being tedious,” says
Lydon. “You don't want to depress an audience, and thats
what happens when you go on and on and on. It becomes filler,
where you think every precious second has to be immortalized. Piss
off!”
Fair enough.
HE DIDN'T GET IT
The self-serving, contradictory nature of Malcolm McLaren runs like
a red thread though Rotten, whose prime voice issues a strong
indictment against the group's manager as a person who started out
with subversive ideas, only to fall victim to the twin vices of greed
and ego.
Exhibit A: Lydon's January
12, 1977 bust for speed, an offense for which McLaren actually fronts
the bail initially. On hearing
that his charge would have to pay a 40-pound fine, McLaren claimed
he didn't have the money, then returned barely 10 minutes before the
courts closed to pay it, sparing Lydon the possibility of having his
conviction upgraded, and being returned to jail.
After anecdotes like those,
how can he expect readers to believe that he holds no animosity against
Malcolm? Isn't that stretching
things a bit?
“No, I merely tell it as it is,” he says. “There's
a big difference between just being malicious and being accurate. He
was one of the key players in that situation, and I think that was
in definite need of contradiction – because, for too long now,
he's had his say, and now it's my turn. That's all it is. There's
nothing personal in there.”
Going back to that final
fateful tour: Why did McLaren get so fixated on Ronnie Biggs, who
hadn't even helped to plan The Great Train Robbery Of 1963, and didn't
appear to be rolling in the money – he was
living on a shack in the Brazilian beaches?
“No idea. All of that was nothing to do with me, nothing
at all,” says Lydon.
Fair enough. The notion of “Ronnie Rotten” was absurd,
at best, anyhow. But couldn't there have been some way of pulling
the situation together?
“Yes, if we'd have done what should have been done,” says
Lydon, “go straight to Sweden to finish a tour we'd obligated
ourselves to complete.”
He remains doubtful if another
tour would have bonded the Pistols together again, but adds that
a long break after its completion might have been a good idea – especially
when he made it clear that McLaren shouldn't continue managing them.
“I had no communication with Steve and Paul at all,” says
Lydon, “and Sid was out of his face on drugs. To get him
out of America as quickly as possible would have been very wise. But
nothing seemed to have happened. Paul didn't want to listen,
because McLaren's putting them up in very nice hotels, while I was
basically in motels with the road crew.”
The trouble with Cook and
Jones then, adds Lydon, was their willingness to accept McLaren's
dictates – so long as he kept giving the
red carpet treatment.
“I mean, everybody really, really disliked Malcolm by that point,” he
says, “even Steve and Paul – but Malcolm was flashing money,
of course, they're absolute whores for that stuff. If there's
an opening of a wallet, at that time, both of them would have
been in full attendance.”
It took them awhile to come
around, but their decision to abandon McLaren and back Lydon's legal
argument proved key in resolving the eight-year “pie fight.”
“Yeah, but I don't think they really understood was going on,” says
Lydon. “'Malcolm's our friend, he wouldn't do that!' But,
as I say in the book, I really got the vibe from Malcolm that he just
wanted to destroy it all. Or, at the very least, get rid of me.”
For those reasons, Lydon dismisses Swindle, and the book England's
Dreaming, by Jon Savage, to which he similarly gives short shrift.
The Pistols' collapse, Lydon
says, “didn't stop him (McLaren)
from grabbing the glory and waving the flag and saying it was all him. And
I see, quite clearly, the contradictions there, but others don't. And
that's the difference, let's say, between England's Dreaming,
and my book. You've got to bear in mind that Jon Savage and Malcolm
are very close friends, and that's what you get.”
NEVER TRUST A HIPPIE
As Rotten winds up discussing that final American tour and allows
its readers a brief look into Lydon's opinions about the current music
scene, it's obvious the man who altered the popular landscape so irrevocably
in 1976 is anything but pleased.
“After the '60s,” Lydon writes, “some took the attitude
that nothing could surprise them any longer. They were very wrong. But
the current crop of bands, particularly from England, have no bollocks. No
guts. They're all young, bored, and fed up with their lives. But
they don't sing about it!'
Sadder still, perhaps, is
the current major rock 'n 'roll landscape, whose primary forces have
never seemed more arid. Pink Floyd
tour on the strength of dazzling special effects, despite the absence
of primary concept guru Roger Waters, while the reunited Eagles rake
in $100 per ticket without complaint. There's even a regrouped
Fleetwood Mac trundling the circuit; surely such events are cause for
despair. The '70s are back!
If that's the case, though,
Lydon doesn't mind: “Personally,
I wasn't out to destroy them (the 'dinosaurs') – merely not to
be told that's all there was, and enjoy. I wanted an alternative,
that's all. I mean, they can trundle on relentlessly; it doesn't
bother me. Not one bit. If that's what people want, then
that's what people deserve. I just come from a different point
of view. I've met some of Pink Floyd; they're very nice chaps. I
just don't like what they do musically, that's all.”
He seems to say that about a lot of people.
“Well, I think that's important,” he responds. “But
the trouble is that most people in this industry take it all so damn
personally. It really doesn't matter at the end of the day – people
are people, and you should separate them from the job. Or at
least be able to separate yourself from it.”
THE LEGACY
So what did the Sex Pistols
accomplish? What's it all add up
to, some 16 years later?
“I've no idea. We opened the door a crack, and everybody
slammed it in our face, says Lydon. “I think that's the reality. You
offer people a bit of hope, and they don't want it.
“At the moment, it's all bands posturing, whether it's Nirvana,
or Guns 'N Roses – but, for saying that, people will say that
I'm not entitled to that opinion. And it's that posturing which
creates that attitude in people.” |