Despite his less than desirable public image, Sex Pistols legend John Lydon tells Tim Hughes he doesn’t have a spiteful bone in his body – and all he really wants is to be properly understood

Johnny Rotten is a happy man. The punk rock icon is doing what he loves best – being hard at work in the studio, putting the finishing touches to a new album.

He’s also struggling to stay warm.

“Must grumble... must complain...” he says cheerily when I ask how he is.

“It’s freezing outside but we are working away merrily and enjoying ourselves no end. It’s great fun doing it.”

The studio – Steve Winwood’s Wincraft Music Studios in the heart of the genteel Cotswolds – seems an odd place to find a man fixed in the popular imagination as the snarling face of the Sex Pistols. But then appearances can be deceptive.

Far from the wide-eyed anarchic outsider of popular imagination, John is erudite and well-read, still at the cutting edge of music with his band Public Image Ltd (PiL) and with a successful career in property in sunny Los Angeles, where he now lives.

“I’m staring at the sheep for inspiration,” he says, making himself a cup of tea (“more milk than tea”).

“I don’t miss the English countryside because it’s always there. I was brought up in Finsbury Park. I know it sounds nice but the reality was very different, and the countryside was a great mystery to us.

“Even when we went on holiday, it was to Ireland, which was a very different scene, or Southend. But that does make it more exciting.”

John is an enigma. Growing up in poverty in North London (“me and half a million others”) he was a child prodigy, running rings around his teachers.

He suffered spinal meningitis aged seven and spent a year in hospital, subject to painful treatment which left him with a curved spine and visual difficulties.

He also lost his memory. It took him four years to get it back, during which time he had to re-learn everything. He was left with that distinctive Lydon stare.

“I was reading and writing at four and that was stolen from me,” he says. “But by 11 I was back up there, much to the chagrin of my teachers.”

He worked from the age of 10 – as a minicab dispatcher – and at 15 was thrown out of school. He died his hair green as an act of defiance after being ordered to have his long locks cut, and moved into a squat with the chaotic John Simon Ritchie – aka Sid Vicious (who was named after John’s pet hamster). He went on to work at a children’s centre but was fired after complaints about his hair.

The Sex Pistols were formed in 1975 by Malcolm McLaren, who ran a clothes shop called SEX on London’s Kings Road with the designer Vivienne Westwood. John describes the poor quality of the clothes, which needed holding together with safety pins – the universal symbol of punk rock.

He aquired the name ‘Rotten’ because of the poor state of his teeth, and was recruited as frontman to replace singer Wally Nightingale, alongside Steve Jones, Paul Cook and Glen Matlock – who was, himself, replaced by Vicious.

They gained notoriety in 1976 after swearing live at presenter Bill Grundy on Thames Television’s Today show.

The press stoked public outrage – again attacking the band after rumours surfaced of them vomiting while boarding a plane to Holland.

Their fame peaked with the release in 1977 of God Save the Queen, which coincided with the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. When the band then played a boat party outside the Houses of Parliament, the craft was raided and McLaren arrested.

Their landmark album Never Mind the B******s, Here’s the Sex Pistols was released later that year, but cracks began to show. John accused McLaren of failing to pay them properly. The band only lasted two-and-a-half years.

After the Sex Pistols broke up, John formed PiL. The band ran until 1993, having its biggest hit with This is Not a Love Song in 1983.

In the meantime he appeared on a number of films and TV shows – including nature programmes (John Lydon’s Megabugs, John Lydon Goes Ape and Shark Attack) and, in 2004, I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here.

Musically he collaborated with Leftfield and hip hop legend Afrika Bambaataa and even joined a revived Sex Pistols, with Glen Matlock on bass to replace Sid, who died of a drug overdose in 1979.

Oxford Mail:

John with PiL: picture Paul Heartfield

He re-entered the public eye through his tweed-clad appearance in the Country Life butter adverts, which he says helped pay off the band’s debts and reform as an independent entity. He says the ads are “his greatest pieces of work”, adding: “Every now and then I still have a bit of butter. I even use it as aftershave. It keeps my skin smooth.”

John’s story – from impoverished childhood to national treasure, is the subject of his new autobiography Anger is an Energy. It paints a picture of a man who is still fighting to be understood. And it is full of surprises.

“I have my book,” he says. “It’s a story I haven’t been too quick about telling anyone. It might surprise those who still think I’m some weird, ugly, nasty thing.” It is also a riposte to what he calls “the knockers”.

“In my walk of life you are going to get a lot of that,” he says. “We live in a world of innuendo, gossip, spite and sin, and there’s always someone trying to stick a pin in you. You have to face up to it and have a good response to get on the defence – and I do that with my workload.”

“I wrote a song in my youth called Pretty Vacant,” he goes on. “But I don’t think I’m pretty or vacant.”

He goes on: “I’ve created the most perfectly vile character in the world – but I don’t have a spiteful nature. You can’t keep maintaining that amount of angst.”

He will be discussing the book before an audience in the unlikely setting of Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre on Monday. He admits he can’t wait – though instructs me not to tell him anything about the venue, insisting he prefers to be surprised.

“I’m sure they don’t normally let in oiks like me,” he says. “I like these things though, as they are lively and interesting. It’s like going to a friend’s house – but with hundreds of them. I like that feeling of being squeezed. It should be good. And Oxford is great fun. There are all those great pubs down tiny alleyways which open up to brilliant sun decks. And I always meet good people around there.”

CHECK IT OUT

  • John Lydon discusses Anger is an Energy, at the Sheldonian Theatre Oxford on Monday. Tickets are £5 or £20 including a pre-signed copy of the book.
  • PiL play Indigo in London’s O2 Arena on December 13. £28.90-£57.10 from axs.com
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