Loaded Magazine
April 1998 Issue
Story by Michael Holden
Photos by Jake Walters are available in the Images section
Hardly any animals were harmed in the making of this interview with punk legend John Lydon
It's the spitting that comes as a surprise. "Arooogaghch!" he growls, hurling another ball of mucus, fused in a suspension of full-strength Marlboro tar and Guinness residue, towards the Californian pavement. John Lydon, a legend whose name was made in the phlegm deluge of the punk era, knows the value of a good spit. Along with belching, it is one of the few things he allows to interrupt his conversation. Fortunate, then, that all three are things he does very well. Very little of what comes from Lydon's mouth is wasted. "Bleeerrcha!" roars his stomach as he treads his phlegm into the ground and prepares to speak. "I never did like Terry and June," says the antichrist. "I couldn't relate to the accents."
It's been more than 20 years since the young Johnny Rotten and his band, The Sex Pistols, hit the music scene with the impact of a well-aimed frying pan in the face. The British music industry - and some might say the world - is still vibrating from the impact, and a good thing it is too. "I've no 'eroes," Lydon said at the time, "they're all useless." And so became one himself, not just for the adolescent Gallaghers and Cobains of the world who bore the Pistols' influence so openly in their own work, but for many of us ordinary folk as well. While much of what passed for punk descended into pantomime, Lydon formed Public Image Limited and, with a handful of ground-breaking records and the odd venomous public appearance, retained his credibility as an iconoclast. Something that few of his surviving peers seemed able to achieve.
For over a decade now, Lydon has lived in exile in California. We found him at lunchtime in a dilapidated Irish bar in the LA suburb of Santa Monica, sporting a relatively tame haircut, a jumper, trainers, voluminous trousers and a fiendish grin. As he's clearly a man who doesn't suffer fools at all, let alone gladly, we were relieved at his willingness to meet up for a drink in the first place. Thirteen hours later, his unwillingness to stop had taken its toll. The interview that follows took place during the first part of that meeting. What happened after that, including the pictured act of public indecency with a domestic cat, was not so much off the record as off the memory. It started with the suggestion that LA was a rather perverse place for a man of his obvious intelligence to spend his time.
"Yeah," sighs Lydon. "And I think the same about England too. Ro-yal fam-ily," he says with a manic gleam in his eye, breaking the words up into their syllables and delivering them with a voice like Kenneth Williams reading hate mail from Albert Steptoe. "British govern-ment. Pubs closing early. All these things make England stoopid to me. You make your choices and you stick with what you've got. I'm here because it was much more convenient, and I quite frankly got sick of the police raids. And the lack of support from within the industry itself. That kind of harassment was, if not outrightly condoned, then mildly tolerated by the music press. I know things have changed since. You've got that Oasis singer, for instance, getting arrested with drugs in a doorway while drunk on, was it Oxford Street? And he gets off! Well, my! How times they have a-changed. How nice for him! But what about the rest of civilization? Including me! We'd all be in jail right now. The favouritism that goes on there really pisses me off. That's a class system. Whether Liam knows it or not he's become bourgeois, though he pretends not to be. And living in England will do that."
There are people in England, I suggest, who believe we are living in an age of unbridled freedom because Liam can get off with a caution and we've got a Labour government. Not so, says John.
"No, no. He can get away with it. It's unbridled freedom for him. It ain't for the rest of us. Learn your lessons well. Just visit the law courts. Check that one out. Reality ain't what you read in the Daily Mirror, or even 'loaded'!"
We try to keep reality out of it.
"Exactly. Which is why I'm talking to you! We've circumnavigated an absurdity called reality. Hs ha!" laughs John, who, it seems, is never very serious for long. "In modern-day life, reality just means opinion, and who gets his opinion in first counts most. And it's the same on the Internet - whoever gets their dig in first, counts most. People wanna believe the worst anyway. I know I do."
How much English culture do you subject yourself to?
"Is there such a thing? Seaside Special? Is Seaside Special English culture? What is English culture? Is it Blackpool? It's pretty sorry, isn't it? It's all TV-orchestrated - that's not culture at all. That's media manipulation."
"Sheep-shagging. That's culture. You can do it with a cow too. What grows on the end of your penis afterwards, that's culture."
If you were 16 in England now, what do you think you'd do?
"Just for the sheer halibut, I'd be in the Spice Girls. Well, into the Spice Girls. Ha ha! They're the perfect sham, they're exactly what England needs. They're vacuous, talentless, and what on earth does girl power mean?"
At this point, various patrons of the bar - who have formed something of a court of King John - shake their heads in unison, unable to fathom the true nature of Spicedom. "And it's not questioned, it's just accepted. I've only gotta fart and there's police sirens." At this moment a siren wails down the boulevard. Lydon grins: "Which I think rounded off that sentence perfectly."
Did he happen to see the Spiceys with Nelson Mandela?
"Oh God, well please, Mandela... I said my bit about him years ago. I think he's a complete fake. Anyone that condoned killing and slaughter and all those things that he went to jail for originally. How can he now be a man of peace and wisdom and wonder?"
But isn't that the history of the world? The 20th Century at least?
"Possibly. But if murder was your game way back when and you've found a better way since, that doesn't make you any better. Yer still guilty! Yasser Arafat's in there, any member of the IRA, the lot of 'em. Once you accept that other people's lives don't count half as much as your opinion - you don't 'ave an opinion."
On a tide of Guinness, conversation turns to that old chestnut, the class system. "You're never really accepted," sighs John. "I know poor old fatty Elton John has finally got his Lordship [knighthood], which he's been after for years. But look, he went in through the back door - literally - to get it, and that's so sad. I agree in a weird way - I never thought I'd say this - with Keith Richards when he asked what Elton John's doing writing songs for dead blondes. It's naff. 'Candle In The Wind'! What an insult, really. Was she really that? Was she really that vacuous? I happen to know she was even worse than that. Bluurrghar!" he belches. "She was a candle without a wick. Ooh, I'd love another Guinness, and a quick piss." He skips off, only to return moments later, eager to resume. "Well, shoot me for saying it, ha ha ha." He leans closer to the tape recorder: "She was a thoroughly useless spare tit. Watching that ridiculous funeral, and particularly here in LA watching people crying over their TV sets over someone they didn't understand at all... they just didn't get it. And who paid for the funeral? This has always been my point with the Royal Family - while I'm paying for it I have every right to yap on about it. It's my money as much as anybody else's, and if they don't like it, give me back my tax and you won't get my opinion."
As the afternoon draws on, Lydon's conversation returns from time to time to his beloved Arsenal. It's during this discussion about plans for an exclusively gay toilet facility in Islington that talk turns to Tony Blair. By this point, it should be noted, your correspondent is feeling the pace, and questions begin to lack some of their previous Radio 4 sobriety.
"I hhhhhhhhhhhate Tony Blair so much! Ha ha!" he cries. "I cannot bear him. I want to strangle him slowly to death. I think he's vile. I cannot explain, there's no real one way, other than the way he talks. Really pisses me off. He's like a supply teacher. It's so clear - how come no one sees it? Or is that what people want? I'm all for the Labour Party being up there, but not that Labour Party. And not the old Labour Party, where it was all cloth caps and union officials from somewhere up north. 'Cos I had no connection with them at all. Belligerent bleedin' pen-peckers! Something in between that makes sense. And he hasn't done that, bridged that gap. He's vile, he's awful, he's so Marks & Spencer's."
The mention of M&S brings to mind thoughts of food, but not for long, as Lydon, now in sole financial control of the situation (loaded, having run out of money long ago, much to his amusement - "Should call yourselves un-loaded, skint!") secures another flotilla of pints. Seemingly unaffected by his own consumption, other than saying "Arsenal" louder and more often, his thoughts turn once again to music. Chiefly because I have "made a mistake" by using the word "punk".
"Was there ever such a thing?" he laughs. "I never understood it. I knew there was a Pistols, then you got that very nice middle-class copy called The Clash [he belches in a deafening way that is impossible to relay on paper] which was really a band all about sloganeering. Oi Oi for the upwardly mobile! And then you get all this other stuff, I dunno. I don't 'ave any punk records. Pistols yes, but not punk. I do see a difference... I love a good dance ditty. God, I love disco. I see no problem admiring the Bee Gees and being in The Sex Pistols. But that was apparently a no-no to NME or Melody Maker at the time because they just couldn't accept that you could have it all. You were supposed to have these little categories and ignore everything else... Reggae became fashionable, therefore that was allowed to be reported on. But disco was never fashionable for the likes of those so-called music papers at the time. And it should have been. It's all music, it's all entertainment for your benefit. If you turn your ears off to something just because it's a genre that doesn't fit into your lifestyle, then you don't have a lifestyle at all. You're a slave to a system."
Who, you begin to wonder, does John look up to?
"No one," he says emphatically. "I don't look up to anyone. I look dead level. And then I see what I find, and if I find dishonesty or fakery then I'm out. That's it."
Why should he still subject himself to those standards after all these years? "Because it works. It means I'm not easily led, not easily fooled and my life is a hell of a lot simpler. And I don't have to be pretentious or fake to impress anyone around me because they all know exactly what I am. A big fake cunt." And other people? "Smaller fake cunts."
Then, at last, it happens: "Ooh," says John. "This Guinness is getting to me." About time.
"No. I mean I'm just about to start. Eh he he! I need a few kick-offs, then I'll do lagers, then wine." Which is more or less what happens. We have a row, of sorts, over whether "you" means "you" or "you" plural, in which I am dismissed as "a really annoying git", before reaching the next subject marked for death on the Lydon gallows: live music.
"It's uncomfortable," reveals John. "It's badly done and it all relates to a PA system and a bad engineer. How to get sweaty with people you don't know, bad toilets and a long line at the bar. I can tell you, it ain't good for the band or you the audience."
So it's all rubbish?
"Course not, it'd be absolutely fine, let it trundle on. But don't tell me that's the new thing. 'Cos it ain't. That's the old thing. It never worked then and it's never gonna work again."
So it's impossible for anyone to enjoy themselves at a gig?
"Yes. That's what I'm saying. I'm talking about my gigs. I'm going to make sure. I will end this evil millennium of live music once and for all."
How?
"One live performance," he crows. "You just don't know how bad I can sing. Ha ha, well, you've got a good idea." He reaches for a cigarette and, in blatant contravention of state law, LIGHTS IT IN A BAR!
"I'll 'ave it here 'cos I'm the devil," he mutters. A middle-aged Scouse woman throws us out into the street.
"I don't believe in all that washing shit," he muses, watching the rush-hour crawl past. "I found this stuff called lime juice cordial. You just splash it on all over! Here they're into summer washing. I think it's not healthy. They destroy their natural skin bacteria. If you're gonna crawl into bed with someone they've gotta have that sliminess. Bit of lubrication."
As if by magic, he is spotted by a female admirer who introduces herself in typically twisted Californian style. "You're so funny," she screams. "I have good bloodlines... Sir Oliver Cromwell, bad English blood."
"No blow jobs for us," barks John. "We don't trust yer teeth."
"My teeth are very good, very wide," she says.
"Oorrgarhdagh!" burps Lydon, pulling away from her.
"You're such a nice married man," whines Cromwell.
"I'm not nice, I'm real. Aren't you jealous? Look at you!"
"C'mon Johnny," she pleads, offering her neck. "Gimme a bite right there. C'mon don't be a pussy."
"Anyone got a rubber glove?" he calls back into the bar. "I don't do that animal fing."
"You fucker."
"Won't 'ave it. Stop it. Hack off, baby."
"C'mon, just a little bite."
He walks into the bar, notices Arsenal on the TV, and - much to the puzzlement of his latest victim - holds his Guinness towards the ceiling and yells, "Seaman!" As the sun begins to set on Los Angeles, Lydon's silhouette resembles a statue of an exiled radical, a courageous free thinker, a man of vision. "Orrgargaa!" he belches suddenly. "Anuvver Guinness?" I doubt if revolution ever tasted so sweet.