Ex-Sex Pistol John Lydon: ‘What I do is keep things short, sharp and sweet’

The last time I interviewed John Lydon, the former Sex Pistol, he was in a field in rural England, smoking and talking about the ads he once made for a Dairy Crest campaign. “That was incredible anarchy, really,” he said then. “Johnny Rotten does butter.” But now he is speaking over the phone from his home in Los Angeles, besieged by heavy storms and mudslides and waiting for our photographer. “I hope they can swim.”

Ever since their live debut at Saint Martin’s School of Art in London in 1975, Lydon has been vivid and loved, not to mention reviled, around the world as the mischievous frontman of the pioneering punk-rock Sex Pistols. After the Pistols’ brief run, Lydon was reincarnated in 1978 — to the consternation of many existing fans — with Public Image Ltd (PiL), a band that blended musical styles without rules.

The move pulled in even more fans, ushering five singles and five albums (including the legendary Metal Box) into the UK top 20. “PiL seems to cater for all race, creeds, colours, genres and genders, a mixed bag of curiosity people,” Lydon says, “from college professors at the back to screaming girls at the front, and everything you can imagine in between.”

Fans can now question Lydon in person as he launches his spoken-word tour around the UK. “I have no idea what questions they’ll throw at me,” he says. “It’s quite terrifying.” Johnny Rotten scared? You heard it here first.

With a shifting line-up and unique sound — fusing rock, dance, folk, pop and dub — the variety mirrored Lydon’s own north London childhood. “My mum and dad always bought records,” he says, “The Beatles, The Kinks, Irish jigs and other mad nutty things. There’d be ska, Turkish and Greek folk music in the neighbourhood, and everybody in the same piss-pot of poverty.”

He contracted meningitis at seven and was in and out of comas for nearly a year. Then, once he was back at school, he was labelled a “dummy” and later expelled for questioning teachers. It all only made Lydon more determined. Meeting Sid Vicious at college, the Sex Pistols were born and Lydon was now Johnny Rotten, his drive, wit and forthright lyrics sparking power and energy into a band that brought a fresh kind of music to the world.

Within two years the Sex Pistols had a UK number-two single with “God Save the Queen” and a number-one album (Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols). “But the Sex Pistols got smeared with the over-exuberance in scandal-mongering,” Lydon says, referring to his appearance on the Today TV show in 1976 when he was goaded into swearing by presenter Bill Grundy. “I felt it was detrimental to the content of the songs because I think those were damn fine lyrics. I terrified a whole nation. Not bad for an 18-year-old.”

PiL’s 11th studio album, End of World, came out last year in the deep shadows of the deaths of his wife, Nora, in April 2023 and John “Rambo” Stevens — Lydon’s life-long friend and longtime manager — in December. “It’s a bit of a struggle emotionally,” Lydon says, “to lose your wife and your best mate. Johnny was so important to the daily runnings of everything and beyond compare in the trust department.”

Was he surprised, then, with the sweetness of mood of the album’s last song, “Hawaii”? “No, it’s full of grief and sadness for my lovely, dear sweet Nora. And she heard it before she died. I’m very content that I did that for her. But it’s impossible for me to perform live. I’m tearing up now, even talking about it. It’s the hardest thing to have to let go.”

I ask what unites the songs on the album, some quite different stylistically. “Freedom of thought,” Lydon says. “Some are like actual hymns to the wilderness.” There is a striking directness in the lyrics of “Strange”: “Between the lines/There is the evil/That jealous fate/For killing people.” “What I do,” he says, “is cut out the verbiage and keep things short, sharp and sweet. I hated my old English teacher, Piss-Stains Prentice, and he hated me. But I adored him saying, ‘The best English is the simplest.’”

Lydon has gradually navigated the music industry. “I learnt from the Pistols that you do not want a large record advance, because it means a large debt if you don’t recoup. Now I like to live on a shoestring making the record, sell it for not an enormous amount and recoup larger from the royalty rates.” And PiL finally managed to seize their creative freedom in 2011. “We’re our own label,” Lydon says. “The last three albums are completely independent of what we call ‘the shitstem’.”

This way the band avoids “death by committee” when record-label executives “sit around a boardroom table and make decisions on your career that you’re not entitled to listen in on — but you get the memos slipped in under the door. It’s the death of art.” He says the record company held back PiL’s first album for a year. “Now we’ve only got ourselves to blame when we’re in the studio — no whispers from executives watering everything down to meet their tastes.”

There are many strings to Lydon’s bow, including his work as a visual artist. What response has he had to the release of his first collection of prints, based on paintings as colourful and striking as the artist himself? He reminds me that he has always produced art. “I’ve done artwork for album covers since the Pistols. The fans know that; maybe the bigger world doesn’t.”

“Yonks,” he replies when I ask how long he’s been stateside. “It’s not like I’ve become American. I’m in England every year.” Has he been drawn into the LA music scene? “I don’t know anything about it and don’t go out to listen to bands. Too many people tapping me on the shoulder, asking, ‘What do you think of Sham 69?’”, the Surrey punk band.

As for US politics, “at the moment it’s ‘polarised’ all to the left or all to the right. I like to be commonsense in the middle,” Lydon says. He’s certain who will win. “It’ll be Donald Trump. That’s who I’ll vote for. He’s awful but not senile. When he was in, he lowered unemployment, never started a war, and gave people an opportunity to earn.” Those wondering how Trump might fit into Johnny Rotten’s definition of “commonsense in the middle” will just have to go to his show and ask him.

John Lydon’s ‘I Could Be Wrong, I Could Be Right’ spoken-word tour runs from May 1 to June 29, johnlydon.com

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Letter in response to this article:

Punk band’s birth pangs struck a discordant note / From Julia Cooper, London SE12, UK