Wednesday 27 September, 2000
Rotten World
During the 1970s the Sex Pistols, led by Johnny Rotten and guitarist Sid Vicious, became famous for their violently anti-establishment songs and sparked a wave of copycat style amongst young people around the world. Pop music at least would never be the same again.
Vicious died in a haze of drugs and drink but Rotten has grown older and embraced new technology. He talked to Outlook about the early punk years, his current work as an internet political and social commentator, and a TV presenter in America.
In 1976 a group of angry young men burst onto the British music scene. They were rebels who, armed with a song, set out to incite "Anarchy in the UK". Their songs kicked out against society, their look- complete with ripped clothes, safety pins and spiked hair intimidated and when they spoke they shocked the nation. The Sex Pistols achieved instant notoriety by swearing on national UK television, but as every parent across the land shuddered, the anarchic and aggressive approach of the band struck a chord with a disillusioned youth.
John Lydon
Johnny Rotten, whose real name was John Lydon, was arguably the most influential figure of a youth trend called "punk". Like the other members of the Sex Pistols, his background was poor and working class.
His childhood was a happy one, but when he was seven, he contracted meningitis, and ended up in coma for six months. His illness left him with a permanently curved spine, and the beginnings of a burning anger towards
authority. However, despite his frustration he claims that his illness did not change him:
'No self-pity. Yes it was a major illness, I was in a coma for six months, but so what you get over it...am I underplaying myself here?'
He rebelled at school and was expelled for having long hair and for his antisocial behaviour. Of this time he comments:
''[I came from] a very, very low working class Irish immigrant family. All the things that you would have thought would have made me a professional A1 criminal...wrong. I decided that was too lazy and easy and because of the way British society is, quite frankly you were denied an education, so I got one of my own.'
Johnny Rotten
After school he began to make money by busking with a violin on the fashionable King's Road in London. One day, when he was wearing an "I Hate Pink Floyd" T-shirt, he was invited to audition for the drummer Paul Cook, and Malcolm McLaren, the owner of a fetish wear shop called "Sex", who was looking for a lead singer for a new band.
Lydon was extremely shy and so put on a wild act, which he has likened to Shakespeare's King Richard III. He created the persona of Johnny Rotten and shrieked an off-key version of Alice Cooper's song Eighteen. Later McLaren was to describe the performance as:
'Like the Hunch Back of Notre Dame with a handkerchief over his nose, he sang it with some embarrassment.'
| 'I managed to point my anger at quite a lot of things, particularly politics which I managed to skewer quite accurately' | |
The Sex Pistols
At a time when three million of the British population were unemployed, and strikes had brought industry grinding to a halt, the Sex Pistols provided Britain with a alternative National Anthem. It was 1977, the year of Queen Elizabeth's Silver Jubilee, and the Sex Pistols enraged the authorities by singing, 'God Save the Queen, the fascist regime...' The song was immediately banned, which only helped sales, and it went on to become the unofficial number one selling single in Jubilee week.
The band's manager, Malcolm McLaren, claimed to have created the band in his own image, in his eyes the bands success was a 'great rock n roll swindle'. But did they really set out with no agenda?
Lydon comments:
'I managed to point my anger at quite a lot of things, particularly politics which I managed to skewer quite accurately. I did use it [fame] and I thought I used it well...I walked up and down the King's Road with complete anger and resentment. People were extremely absurd and still stuck into flares, platform shoes, neat hair and pretending that the world wasn't really happening. It was an escapism that I resented. There was also a garbage strike going on and there was trash piled 10ft high...wear the garbage bag for god's sake and then you are dealing with it. That's what I would be doing, I would wrap myself in trash.'
After the Swindle
Having caused uproar in Britain the Sex Pistols next step was to tour the US. They made little impact and, following constant rows with their manager, in early 1978 Rotten exited a gig in San Francisco with the immortal line, 'Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?' It was the band's final performance. After only 18 months in existence, the Sex Pistols were over.
A few years later Lydon formed his own band, Public Image Limited. It was deliberately less commercial than the Sex Pistols, and a way of escaping his own public image of the punk Johnny Rotten.
Of this time Lydon comments:
'It is very simple when things wear out their welcome, you get bored and move on. I went on and to form Public Image Limited which is a completely different way of approaching music. Again it's anti-format, anti-chart and anti-dictate ...unfortunately it is being vastly imitated and the real thing is never allowed on radio.'
Having lived in California, with his German wife Nora, for almost 20 years, music is no longer a full time occupation for Lydon. Recently he has been running his own radio show called a Rotten Day; each week he hosts a live internet talk-show called Rotten Talk, which has also been translated to Rotten Television and, perhaps more surprisingly he was an accredited broadcaster at the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles.
Of his political involvement he comments:
'There is no real Democrat or Republican point of view any more. We now want good bits of everything and to totally take over one bit of dogma with all its dog-ends is not tolerable for the future. You need to stop ghettoising yourself. That's how you change the world, not by making people your enemies, but by making sure that they are your friends.'
Could it be that the Godfather of punk is now tame or is he simply trying to change the system from the inside?
'I've never done anything deliberately, I just speak my mind and that is what I consistently do and will always do in any way shape or form that I can.'
|
 |
 |
|
| Anti-Drugs |
 |
|
|
In 1979 the Sex Pistol's guitarist Sid Vicious died in New York of a heroin overdose, while awaiting trial for allegedly murdering his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen. Lydon himself is a self proclaimed 'anti-drug person' and he has recalled how he tried to deter Vicious from heroin:
'I tried to stop him. Don't do that Sid. When we were on tour in the States I even made him sit next to me all the time in the bus. It was Nancy who got him on it. She was saying Lou Reed did it, and Sid really bought into the romance. He was always trying to parody people anyway.' |
|
 |
|
|
|
| Leaving the UK |
 |
|
|
Lydon left Britain to live in the US in the early 1980s. His move followed a series of unprovoked street attacks which resulted in him being stabbed in the leg and having his wrist tendons severed. Even now he finds it hard to drink in a bar as
'there's always some drunk with a bottle who wants to out-rotten Rotten.' |
|
|
|
