John Lydon opened up this week in NME about becoming a full-time carer for his wife Nora who has Alzheimer’s. In this time of putting others first and  National Carers week which runs until June 14th, here’s a little chat we had with John a couple of years ago – another one of our favourites.

Four decades since violating the national consciousness as a Sex Pistol, John Lydon opens proceedings by spilling the beans:

“I’ve dribbled my PG tips all down my tits!”

A slightly incongruous way to start an interview, no doubt. These days the Public Image Ltd lead singer lives in sunny Los Angeles, and as he calls Buzz for the interview, it’s tempting to imagine him snarling down the phone in typically antagonistic style whilst relaxing by a poolside.

This writer was fortunate enough to catch Public Image on their last visit to Cardiff, and what was clear then was just how much emotional energy John Lydon gives to his performances. “It’s draining. I can barely think when I come off, but Cardiff is definitely a bang-on good audience – just makes you go that extra bit, you know.”

PiL’s influence has long been acclaimed: one of the progenitors of the icy-cold post-punk that took over after the initial punk wave of the late 70s, and as one of the UK’s longest-running bands (albeit with a break of a solid 20 years after 1992’s That What Is Not. Yet Lydon feels characteristically unimpressed with those accolades. “It’s kind of nice to see you’ve had your influences there, but it’s kind of nicer when the bands openly admit that and then that’s alright. Otherwise, if they’re not admitting and using the ideas, then it’s blatant ignorant thievery isn’t it?

“Everything triggers a thought and that’s why none of us live in a bubble without outside influences being incredibly important and relevant. It’s coming in touch with your own emotions and learning how to control them and understand them. It’s the same thing as being directly influenced by everything you hear, see and touch and feel.”

After two decades out of the game, 2012’s comeback record This Is PiL marked the beginning of this current iteration of Public Image. How did it feel coming back to the band after so long?

“We were furiously eager to get into the studio and still are, and that’s carried on to the next one. It’s a different world now. I’ve learnt you can actually work with your real friends who really do care about you on a day-to-day basis. Very different points of view, but there’s no animosity there.”

Going back to John’s early life, even a brief glance tells you it wasn’t that much fun. At the age of seven, he contracted meningitis, and as a result lost his memory. He calls it “the most frightening experience I’ve ever had to endure. My memory came back in tiny fragments and I was then thrown back in school at eight and completely incapable of handling that. The isolation is something that I still have terrors about… the loneliness of that is incredible, as are the feelings of guilt when your personality comes back because you know the hurt you’ve caused all those around you.

“But what doesn’t kill you make you stronger. For me, I’m kind of grateful for it, because it helped me to sort myself out at a really important part of my life. I don’t suppose I would be the person I am today without enduring that; it was very important in that period that to believe what everyone around me was telling me was true. I learnt a great deal of respect for telling the truth. Trying to make up and remember all the lies you told the day before – that’s not existence, that’s prison.”

 

Going to a Catholic school, Lydon didn’t have the greatest of times at the hands of the teachers. Amongst a litany of injustices was the fact that the nuns provoked fear in the boy by suggesting that his left-handedness was a sign of the devil. “At the time I was very isolated because of it and the other kids would have anything to do with me because I was somehow cursed.”

Libraries provided a great escape for the young John Lydon, allowing him to regain himself.  “I was curious about the power of letters and how they could give information from what looked like, you know, mad irregular patterns to me. The schools were no good to me, preaching Catholic nonsense which was utterly irrelevant to me when I needed help proper, and I only got that in the library.

“Every book is an opening to someone else’s thought process. That cannot be regarded as unhelpful, or old-fashioned or irrelevant because it’s the opposite.  It’s absolutely important to develop character, to search and find out what something is really about rather than just accepting the current manifesto.”

That questioning attitude of course played much into the John Lydon who has since become a national figure. One particularly infamous moment in Public Image Ltd’s career happened when they appeared on American Bandstand, with an audience of millions across the States, and instead of miming proceed to roll about looking deranged.

“It was hilarious that day. They tried to operate us into miming and you can’t mime to PiL songs. We turned miming into a mockery and somehow or other that won us over an enormous audience. They loved the sense of fun of it. They were big things, those pop-shows in America, you know. They’re very corporately orchestrated. It’s risky business to take a chance like we did, but that’s the devil-may-care in us.”

The legacy of hellraising that the Pistols took part in has at times come across like an albatross on Lydon’s back. Before the formation of PiL, there was a long, drawn-out court case between Lydon and Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren, which Lydon described now as “extremely frustrating and nerve-racking [as well as] unnecessary”, but the police interference that followed the Pistols as they attempted to gig in the UK also followed Public Image, partly prompting Lydon’s move to the US 30 years ago.

“It was impossible for PiL to get any gigs.  We were still facing the harassment nonsense from local lawmakers and police who said ‘no crowd trouble’. We couldn’t get the insurance so we couldn’t play.  And so it goes, the Sex Pistol legacy backfiring on us. Moving to New York seemed like the only thing to do. And it was great: we would load up the transit and could drive in any particular direction every night of the week. Never spent a penny on rehearsals, all our rehearsals were live on stage. Interesting period. Quite literally writing songs on stage in front of an audience!”

Politics has always been a key element of Lydon’s music – the Sex Pistols were nothing if not political, but Public Image saw a distinctly more nuanced approach from the singer. Rise’s elusive lyrics were written directly about apartheid – what motivates Lydon’s desire to write about such topics?

“If you want it to be so blatant it might as well be three words. ‘Apartheid is wrong!’

There you go. It’s a song that’s connected to both sides. The interrogation techniques were not only used by the police against Mandela – I also got references in there to Mandela not being such a lovely person either when he was out running around. He was locked up for a little bit more sauciness than politics. Sometimes these revolutions lead to innocent people’s deaths and for me those human causes isn’t worth anything at all if it causes the death of anyone.

“That’s why Ghandi is so all-important to me. Passive resistance. I think he proved it’s a very viable commodity and it really does work. You just have to deal with people’s greed. It’s not very easy to get back into the Garden of Eden. But,” he laughs, “I’ve booked a place for myself… and some choice friends.”

 

Words: Jaydon Martin