|  The
enigmatic Johnny Lydon. Dubbed 'The Messiah of Punk' by those who only
thought in clichés, he was catapulted into a situation that left
him very little room to move. The popular media's concept of Lydon and
co. (disgusting, depraved, subversive and devoid of all talent) ultimately
became too restrictive. Trapped within this 'public image', which only
occasionally extended further than the colour of his barnet or the nature
of his attire, Lydon became a monstrous figment of the public imagination.
Largely to blame for this
however was that Svengali-type figure and apparent puppet master, Malcolm
McLaren. It was Lydon (a.k.a. Rotten for anyone with severe amnesia)
who finally rebelled against the group's manager, and this rebellion
eventually culminated in the breaking-up of the Pistols, with our hero
stranded penniless in San Francisco. But concealed beneath McLaren's
expertly engineered facade lies something infinitely more subversive
than the (ultimately) superficial threat posed by the media's overkill/distortion.
So for those of you who gleaned your rotten information from the daily
tabloids, here is an opportunity to reevaluate.
Mr. Lydon's Chelsea dwelling
is situated in the seamier part of that noble borough. Comfortable it
may be, but no ostentation. No Habitat fixtures here, man. The freezer
is full of lager, bass player extraordinaire Jah Wobble is full of fast-as-lightning
quips, and to complete the picture guitarist Keith Levene (who was in
the first Clash line-up) enters on his newly acquired skateboard. Levene
has neatly separated himself from a long and draining amphetamine habit
that constantly retarded his career (he actually sold the guitar that
The Clash gave him as a leaving present of sorts to support said addiction)
and he now looks, feels (and plays) better than he ever has done.
The stereo spills forth a
highly edible diet of roots reggae, and after we've managed to suss
out the complexities of my borrowed cassette recorder, the 'interview'
proceeds.
Well, I thought it best to get what may be construed as the bad points
off my chest as early as possible, so, holding my breath, I gently approach
the subject of 'The Cowboy Song'. This was the somewhat controversial
b-side of the excellent debut single, and I wondered, could it have
possibly been some gigantic if obscure hoax cum self-parody?
Lydon is adamant. "You
can dance to that song, and it cost us approximately 1 pound to make."
(If you believe the latter part of that statement naivety doesn't come
into it.) "It's just a jolly good disco record and it came about
'cos we were bored and couldn't think of a b-side."
Later on, John plays me the backing track from the aforementioned song,
and he was dead right, you can dance to it! So with that out of the
way, I venture to ask about the forthcoming Rainbow concerts. For some
reason or other (possibly my own empty pockets) I felt that the 3.50
pounds ticket prices may prove a little prohibitive for some. The subsequent
demand proved me to be completely wrong anyway, but Lydon filled me
in on the details.
"You try self-promoting
and putting on a load of bands at the same time. Now most bands charge
6.50 pounds for a show like that, and this is on Christmas day! I'm
going out of my way to even walk out on a stage knowing that three-quarters
of the audience won't be there just to listen to us, but to slag us
off and survey and suss it out etcetera. I think I'm doing you all a
great favour even bothering. It costs double to do anything on a Christmas
day, and like I said, we're putting loads of bands on. I'm already running
at a loss, and I've only just started organising it."
I ask if there are plans
for any further gigging or even a tour?
"Tours are old-fashioned.
Mass tours are rubbish, we'll just play live in different places when
we feel like it and, you know, do gigs occasionally. But I will not
personally go through the shit of a tour again. It destroys the band
totally. You begin to hate each other."
When I venture that I thought
a lot of bands wrote their songs on tour, Lydon retorts: "Oh yeah,
that might be the old hippy philosophy, but how can you write songs
on tour? Me personally, I come off stage and I can't get to sleep 'til
seven or eight the next morning. By then you have to leave for your
next gig, so you get no sleep at all and you're a total wreck."
Here Lydon's voice leaps almost an octave into total send up terms.
"And the company you're forced to keep is always poor, to say the
least..."
So to get away from the subject
of John's travels and back to the matter in hand, namely Public Image,
I ask John if he was at all worried at the possibility of audiences
overlooking the other three members of the band? The reply is immediate
and Lydon's voice is, for once, completely serious.
"In this band we are
all equal. No Rod Stewarts. We all do equal amounts of work, we all
produce equally, write songs and collect the money equally."
How much control did he feel
he had over his own situation at the moment?
"I don't have 100 per
cent control, but I do know that record companies are your own worst
enemies. What they think is for your best advantage is usually for your
worst. They always, like, try and make things softer. Like the posters,
they tried to grain them down, you know, so it made it slightly softer.
The original idea was that it would be extremely intense."
A good example of the above
record company 'interference' was Public Image's debut single. Mr. Lydon
expounds: "'Public Image', right. We mixed it to our own requirements.
Then...Virgin tried to change it with a special letter to the factory.
The complaint was that you couldn't hear the words on the first hearing
and that the bass was too heavy."
He ends with a groan of disgust.
So things weren't running all that smoothly with the third record company
he's been involved with? Right.
"Oh shit, they're quite
the Commune, Virgin. A load of groupies as secretaries, and they're
all disorganised and they're all Hampstead hippies. I mean, The Slits
wouldn't go on Virgin, but mainly because it's too close to me. (laughs)
Anyway, The Slits have gotta do things for themselves. They should try
managing themselves for a start, instead of the incestuous connections
they have with Malcolm McLaren, which I find quite disgraceful!"
Next subject on my mental
list is the now notorious Mickie Most connection. What really happened?
Wobble: "I'll tell you
what really happened, we met him and I borrowed a fiver which I never
paid back!" (Mucho laughter all around.)
Lydon, who as soon as Most
is mentioned growls "that cunt", takes up the story: "We
had previously arranged that an entire programme of 'Revolver' would
be in our control, we would produce it totally, decide what bands would
be on it, plus we would be in it at some point. We set up and then Virgin,
in 'our best interest' (characteristic Lydon sneer here) decided to
ring the 'Revolver' people up and ask, was it at all possible that we
do ONE song on the programme? So 'Revolver' immediately cancelled what
we'd arranged."
 Back
to Wobble. "We'd gone straight to Most, right, and we'd sweated
it all out with the headman. So it's all settled, THEN Virgin ring up
and go (adopts abject grovelling tone): 'Sorry to ring you up and bother
you like this, but would you mind if Public Image crawl their way in
under the floor?' So they blew it all out 'cos the TV people think 'Oh,
we're dealing with mugs!'"
John again. "So as a
kickback, because we saw that as a personal insult, we let Virgin arrange
it all with Mickie Most, both of them thinking they were doing us the
world of good. So it's all arranged and we had them send over a coach
to take us up north, and we hijacked it and went on holiday to the seaside
for a day. And we had whoopee fun!"
A hugely humorous tale, and
one that both relate with obvious relish. But it did have serious overtones.
Lydon explains how those were countered (again with barely concealed
relish).
"The result is that
Most threatened to ban us from all TV work ever, which is exactly why
we put that film out on 'Saturday Night People'. Just as a message to
Mr. Most, 'Oh look Mickie, we just can't get on telly anywhere!'"
While John is finding the
video of 'Saturday Night People' to run for me (I'd missed it, ain't
got a telly, see), Wobble reminds me of the night almost a year ago
when he'd crashed at the house I was staying in. He was pissed out of
his skull and celebrated the fact by puking all over the place. This
greatly displeased a certain Sebastian Conran (whose house it happened
to be), especially when the ghastly Habitat heir had to clean up the
mess himself. I too was an unwelcome guest, but that night Wobble, Strummer
(a slightly more welcome resident of the same period, now squatting)
and myself had stayed up until dawn, talking and drinking. It was a
good night and I was well chuffed that it was remembered. A subsequent
meeting that Wobble had with the lisping millionaire's son was even
funnier. In a crowded Dingwalls, Sebastian Conran attempted very rashly
to gain some form of physical compensation for the mess that Wobble
had made. Sebastian was always a loser.
Anyway, we all sit around
and watch the video. Public Image are great, but the following chit-chat
between Russell Harty, Janet Street-Porter et al. is insulting and vicarious
in the extreme. I ask John how he feels when he sees himself scrutinised
by arseholes?
"Well look, Russell
Harty doesn't matter anyway. His view is irrelevant, you've only got
to look at the geezer to realise that. What I find really offensive
is Janet Street-Porter desperately trying to defend me whilst wearing
a Zandra Rhodes outfit costing several thousands of pounds. The irony
in that situation is immaculate. Perfect. That film should be kept as
an art treasure, it's" (and here his voice rises in a triumphant
shout) "the ULTIMATE IRONY!"
More beer is brought from
the freezer, the reggae is cranked up a few more decibels, and the interview
as an ordeal is no longer. Lydon sprawls beside me on the settee, affable,
articulate, serious and amusing, but always discernable is a certain
intensity that leaves one in no doubt at all that beneath the multifarious
accents and the sometimes yobbish exterior, there lies a person of (cough)
depth and sensitivity. The threat has not been abated. I ask him idly
if, in any way, he regrets the demise of the Pistols?
"I thought it was unnecessary
at the time, and all down to Malcolm." His tone is almost wistful.
"Listen, the crunch of the matter was that they (the other three)
trusted Malcolm and his every move and I didn't. Therefore I was the
problem in the band and had to go. And I went freely, but I expected
to be given what I thought I fucking well earnt. Then there was that
Rio stuff...and I found that insulting." Now his voice is bitter.
"Meeting Ronald fuckin' Biggs. Big deal, he failed. He hasn't got
the fuckin' money. I'll talk to the cunt who's got the money, not the
fucking cunt that failed to get it!"
He lights another Dunhill,
offers me one, leans back and frowns. "See, what Steve and Paul
could never tolerate was that I actually knew what I was talking about
and could keep it to basics without running into sort of ... being obsequious.
Plus they were jealous 'cos they thought I was taking all the fucking
limelight off 'em. And I told them time and time again, well boys, that's
only fair because you don't DO anything. On the 'Bollocks' album and
the singles, they'd just about manage to turn up to twang a guitar and
bang on a drum, then they'd leave. Never gave a fuck about the mixing
of anything. Couldn't be bothered. So I was left there, the only one...
Sid was usually out of his brains on smack, which annoyed me greatly.
Malcolm protected him etcetera, but that's another story. So I'd be
left there making sure that Chris Thomas didn't fuck us up and make
us sound like Roxy Music, and then finding out that that was exactly
how Steve and Paul wanted us to sound! So I'd completely fuck up the
mix and make it sound like a rock album should. The result was that
Steve, Paul and Malcolm would sneak in the next day while I was asleep
and remix it and not say anything."
So who won this battle of
the mixes?
"Well, I won on 'Problems',
'Submission' and 'Bodies'... none of the others could even be bothered
to listen to 'Bodies'. You ask them to recite the words to any of our
songs, I dare you! They could just about manage on 'Lazy Sod', the most
abysmal song I've ever heard. That was Steve and Paul, it appealed to
their basic instincts or something. God, and it is basic. And there
was all that Small Faces trash they used to try and make me listen to.
I'm not interested in digression or mod period music or rock'n'roll.
It's boring. I got pissed off listening to Steve run through Chuck Berry
riffs and then gradually changing to Peter Frampton riffs. It got depressing."
 Lydon
didn't really want to talk about Sid's current dilemma, and I found
that reasonable enough. They were very close friends, and even though
they may have drifted apart (largely due to Nancy Spungen and her introduction
of smack to the previously straight Vicious) it was plain that Lydon
was more than distressed by the tragic chain of events taking place
across the Atlantic. I didn't push the matter.
Instead we turned the tape
off for a while and John (with some justifiable pride) played me a few
tracks from the forthcoming Public Image album of the same name. I kid
you not, this was the highpoint of the entire evening for this dilettante
scribe. The cuts that I heard ('Religion', 'Annalisa' and 'Attack')
smashed me right between the eyes like the clenched fist of a Kung Fu
devotee on sulphate. I wish to fuck I'd had a bit of suss and left my
tape running. 'Religion' is just the kind of vitriolic, angry attack
that you would (or should) expect, and it possesses and eerie, almost
hypnotic quality that is all but tangible. Levene's guitar drones away
somehow sitar-like, while Wobble pounds his bass with near psychotic
anger. The drum sound of Canadian Jim Walker (who has a room below the
one we were in, and knocked on the ceiling at regular intervals to demonstrate
about the volume) is the final brilliant touch, and grab these lyrics...
"This is religion and
Jesus Christ
This is religion cheaply priced
This is bibles full of libel
This is sin in eternal hymn
This is your religion
And it's all falling to bits...
Gloriously"
Going from the two hearings
I had of this song I can only say that it's one of the best things I've
heard for ages and ages. 'Annalisa' is equally as powerful in its own
way, with loads of treble on the guitar. The lyrics are aimed at the
parents of a German girl who died tragically last year from starvation.
She believed herself to be possessed by the devil, and instead of seeking
psychiatric help her parents turned to the German Orthodox Church for
help. Consequently she died. Very heavy subject matter that is handled
with sensitivity and real concern. My feelings after hearing these tracks
were basically exhilaration coupled with an odd twinge of verification.
It's like, yeah, Public Image Ltd. are as good, if not better than I'd
hoped they would be. A good feeling.
Anyway, the tape goes on
again (I'm still kicking myself) and we continue with the 'interview'.
John is eager to talk and genuinely pleased that I like the music, a
fact that surprises me somewhat. Somehow I'd had the stupid idea that
he wouldn't have cared, but fuck, after all it's HIS music. Right now
he's enthusing on the art of 'overkill', you know, actually forcing
people to sit up and take notice, because there simply are NO ALTERNATIVES.
With a Machiavellian gleam
in his eye he explains: "Ideally I would have liked the 'Public
Image' film to have gone on 'The Old Grey Whistle Test', 'Top Of The
Pops' and the Russell Harty thing all in the same week! Now that would
have been a laugh. That would have been mass-overkill, which I love.
Overkill is brilliant. If only I could coordinate it so that every magazine
brought out an article on us in the same week, and at the same time
everything would be on telly. Can you imagine how awful that would be?
I mean sales would suffer because people would lose respect, but the
point is that people would then eventually have to suss out for themselves
that the media is corrupt. It would be marvelous. Mass confusion. But
people would realise immediately."
Did John still retain that
faith, that people en masse could be shown, or realise for themselves
the massive con being perpetuated upon them?
"If it's on that kind
of scale they have no option. At the moment they won't, because they
have an alternative. And, like, everything is controlled. Anything for
instance written in the dailies has to be written in such a style that
it's devoid of any intelligence at all. They make everything appear
to be uninteresting and just consistent, so you flick through it in
your tea break. There's nothing that will get your brain thinking very
heavily about things, because once people started to do that they'd
develop their interests in other fields, and that would be the end of
that."
This is a highpoint for me,
simply because we both know that what he has just said, in its utter
truth and stark simplicity, gives both of us at least something to live
for. Something to fight for.
He continues. "TV is
the same, everything must have a good ending or a hook line. Like 'Coronation
Street', it drags you in. I mean I watch 'Coronation Street' (laughs)
and I'm dragged in too. You know, it's on and you think what's the alternative,
'Panorama'? It's all mass hypnosis and mass manipulation."
Does he hold any hope that
he can alter that situation, make people more aware, actually change
things through the vehicle of rock music?
"Well, it doesn't happen
through books, does it? Who reads books except the chosen few who know
already anyway. They're just confirming their thoughts. You can't get
some slob sitting in an East End pub for instance to read books on philosophy
and free thought. They wouldn't know where the first page was. People
shouldn't be bourgeois about music and see it solely as an enjoyment
source. There should be alternatives, and lots of them."
John Lydon has long been
providing those alternatives, but is Public Image Ltd. a permanent fixture
for the foreseeable future.
"We're just the beginning
of a huge umbrella, we can each do our own solo ventures to our own
amusement so long as they don't infringe on the band as a whole. I want
it to spread out. I know that might sound a bit idealistic, but we do
intend to have our own studio, so that everything will be totally contained.
And that studio when we're not working will be rented out to other bands,
to rehearse and come to understand... that a mixing desk is not a complicated
procedure, very easy in fact."
Lydon himself was never one
to be intimidated by the complexities of studio equipment.
"I never felt overwhelmed
by the studios, I just went in and said, 'Oh look, pretty knobs, they
don't fool me, it's obvious that these are the level controls, what's
this for, ah, echo on the bass.' It's simple."
There's a lot of noise on
the stairs and suddenly Leo bounces in, rasta friend of Don Letts (who
was art director on the 'Saturday Night People' PIL appearance). Leo
also used to work for The Slits. I ain't seen him for ages, but he can't
stay long and he soon bounces out again and I'm back to work. Meanwhile
though, Wobble (who only started playing bass this year and is amazingly
competent for the length of time) has been telling me a little about
his long, and recent, spell of homelessness. Apparently he even had
to stay at Salvation Army hostels ("hurts your pride that does")
on occasion, and all the time there was Sebastian with that great big
house virtually empty. All wrong, ain't it?
Keith wanders back in, and
when asked where he's been for the last half hour he retorts slyly,
"Well, there's this little opium den..."
Lydon sends Nora out to get
more cigarettes and then tells me all about when he used to have long
hair!
"It was when I was about
fifteen and I used to have it way down here," gesticulating to
halfway down his back. "That's 'cos it was outrageous at the time,
it annoyed and it wasn't how they saw fifteen-year-old Catholic schoolboys
in my school, which was exactly why I did it. Anyway, North London was
always like, whatever you wanna do just do it. It used to be funny going
up Arsenal then, so many drugs floatin' about, you wouldn't believe
the number of acid casualties that came out of that ground on Saturday
afternoons! (laughs) Still, I never used enough to get 'urt by it."
I ask if he'd ever consider
doing a Bryan Ferry and compile an album of his favourite tunes?
"I might for a laugh, but Sid sort of put the mockers on it. I
don't think 'My Way' was as good as it could have been. But then again,
I remember the geezer tellin' me he only did it for a poxy 200 pounds!
Which I thought was really funny!"
What about the long awaited and much talked about Pistols film that
has had more lawyers working on it than extras?
"Malcolm has lied about
the film continually. I just decided that I would not be part of the
film, seeing as how the band fucked off and left me penniless in San
Francisco. I was not pleased. I met Malcolm two months later when I
went back to LA courtesy of Warners, and Malcolm shit hot bricks 'cos
Warners told him that unless he stopped playing the cunt with me they'd
stop his film. He's still playing the cunt. So they stopped his film.
It's as simple as that. The Warners dig is, they will not buy the film
unless I'm in it. I refuse to be in it 'cos I will not make money for
Malcolm, he hasn't even paid me what he owes me!"
And it was about there that
my tape ran out. I had a fucking good innings too, plenty of lager and
a chat with someone who's got something to say. Public Image Ltd. are
a shit hot band and their album will be out real soon. What else do
you need to know? |