The Guardian
17th May 2002

'This is my Britain. Our Britain.
Not some German tourist's'

The trouble is, John Lydon says, that the queen couldn't organize a piss-up in a palace. Here we are, golden jubilee and all, and the best she can do by way of a gig is have Elton John tinkle the ivories. "I mean, anyone can rent Elton John these days. They've been planning it for years and the best they can come up with is Elton John."

He's explaining why he has reformed the Sex Pistols for one last glorious bash at Crystal Palace in July. Will the gig celebrate his new status as Britain's leading monarchist? "Hahahaha! Oh yes, that's a juicy one." Lydon, aka Johnny Rotten, the man whose version of God Save the Queen was banned 25 years ago, is choking on his laughter. "You know, I was never pro them or anti them. I just think if we're going to have a monarchy it may as well work properly. I mean, we pay for it, after all. But nobody seems to care about that. Nobody cares about anything in Blair's Britain. They can't even arrange a proper jubilee bash."

He seems genuinely upset by their lack of style. So he is going to show the Windsors how to do it. "I've come to the point of view that, bad as it all is, at least it's my kind of bad, and I have paid for it, and I want to celebrate it somehow. It's my Britain, our Britain, not hers - fucking German tourist."

We are in a swanky London hotel suite. Lydon disappears into the bathroom, leaving us with John Rambo. "All right, boys?" Rambo asks. Rambo is Lydon's minder, his hairdresser, his signet-ring designer, his fellow traveler, his mate. He's wearing winkle pickers, peroxide-punk hair, a broken nose. "Chhhhhhhhuuurrrr." An enormous phlegmy growl emerges from the bathroom. Ah, that will be Lydon clearing his throat.

Twenty minutes later, he is ready to rave - black suit, T-shirt, rainbow-spiked skinhead, barely changed since he spat his witty bile into the mic with the Sex Pistols a quarter of a century ago.

Pretty Vacant, Anarchy in the UK and God Save the Queen were three-minute anthems for an angry generation with an identity crisis - Thatcherism, the end of society and race riots were around the corner, and the old regime seemed to be having a last hurrah in the form of frothy street parties for the Queen's silver anniversary. Punk shook pop like it has never been shaken since. It was an antidote to the banality of glam rock, the pretensions of prog rock, the drippiness of folk rock, the hedonism of disco, the soppiness of soul. An antidote to everything that had gone before it, good and bad.

This was a call to revolution. But the revolution didn't happen. Punk was dead within a couple of years, as was Rotten's cohort, Sid Vicious. By 1978 Johnny Rotten had reverted to being John Lydon, was leading the band Public Image Limited and had begun to recover his life. Another quarter-century on, the same queen sits in state, celebrating her golden jubilee.

Lydon has just flown in from California, where he lives. "I'm part of that exciting new jet generation. I've just woken up and afternoon tea / is the first thing that comes to me ." He often talks like this, in improvised couplets.

"The real motivation for this is that it's the jubilee of the Pistols. Nobody seems to have noticed that. And I think it's quite poignant, you know. Going out properly with a great jubilee bash. Our jubilee bash." Wasn't their jubilee a couple of years ago? "Well, to be honest, I'm lousy with dates. But it's there or thereabouts." Whatever, it's certainly the jubilee of the year when it all happened.

He insists that this will be the Pistols' final show. "I'm not interested in re-forming the Pistols beyond this. I've got too many other interests." Is he in it, then, for the filthy lucre? "Why not? I've never said I'm a communist."

I'd hoped to go down the King's Road with Lydon to revisit the Rotten past, but he's having none of it. He fancies a trip to the salubrious grocery store Fortnum & Mason. Why F&M? "I'm going to all the places I've always been banned from. Self-banned, funnily enough. What you would call inverted snobbery. Really, that's the trouble with this country - people make themselves feel so downtrodden. When you were brought up with our sense of insecurity - you're not quite top notch bracket - it sticks."

He was born to working-class Irish parents and grew up in Finsbury Park, north London. Lydon was bright, and encouraged by his mother. He could read at three. But, he says, however smart they were, he and his mates never expected to succeed in life. When he was seven, he contracted meningitis, spent six months in a coma and almost died.

"F&M, honestly, it sounds like some hooker's bar," he play-rants. I follow him to his bedroom, where he's searching out a jacket. As he swishes through his clothes, he says he never called himself a punk. "I never wore a studded leather jacket, y'know. Ne-va! If I had had the money I wouldn't have spent it on shit like that."

We head for the taxis lined up outside the Grosvenor hotel. "Where are we going lads?" the cabbie asks. "Grannie's disco-teque!" Lydon sneers. I smile, trying to cover my embarrassment. "Fortnum & Mason," I say in my poshest.

Driving through the center of London, Lydon talks about how petrified the place is. "Here people seem to be really, really frightened of change. They are slow-minded; dimwitted." Wasn't it like that all those years ago? Wasn't that what the Pistols were rebelling against? "There was a bit more nastiness to it," he says. " And the enemy lines / were clearly defined. Therefore there was more originality. Now mediocrity is the winner. Any kind of expression of freedom is looked down on." We pass the same shops selling the same trainers and burgers and jeans. "You now live in the world of Beckham. It's lifeless, soulless. It's just pretty images. America is a pretty fucked-up place, but it's amazing to come back and see it done even worse. The 'have a nice day' attitude in America is pretty creepy, but here, Gawddddd! 'Please don't notice me.'"At his campest he sounds like his former manager and nemesis, Malcolm McLaren.

He and Rambo, friends for 30 years, talk about the old days back in Finsbury Park. I say that I once lived there.

"Dunno where you was growing up mate, but you weren't growing up where we were," Rambo says.

Salford, I say.

"Yeah, what part? Don't tell me there's a yuppie part."

Lydon intervenes. "It ain't great, John. Ain't great by any stretch of the imagination. It ain't. It's Coronation Street. Coronation Street is the yuppie part."

"Finsbury Park's gone a bit that way," Rambo says mournfully. "Oyster bars."

"Well, oysters used to be the food of the urchins," Lydon says. "Now they're ever so swish. Everything here's now a facade. A facade of calm gentility. 'We all weally like each other, everything's weally nice, weally fun.' "

We arrive at Fortnum & Mason. The two Johns jump out of the cab. I pay. "It's like a northern bleedin' motel. Look at the nonces round here. They're all shy of themselves. Why feel low about yourself?"

We pass the cheeses and meats and jams on the way to the restaurant. We queue in line. Rambo is unhappy with the record company. It's not like the old days. "Why haven't they booked a table? Wankers."

We are not allowed to smoke. Now Lydon is unhappy. The black waitress carefully explains all the options, including smoking downstairs.

"Would you like tea?" she says.

"Well, I wanted tea 10 minutes ago, not a conversation, thanks."

"Which tea?"

"English. Don't forget where we are."

"I must get you tea from Africa," she says, laughing.

"Yeah. Zulu tea if you have it. I've had it before."

"Well, next time I go home I'll bring some back."

It's as if time has stood still. We could be back in 1977 - language, observations, attitudes, everything.

Lydon looks miserable. He complains about the shabby carpet, the dourness, the tea, the clientele. "What's posh about this? This is waved at you as achievement. I want to smoke. It's hotter than hell in here. I can't take my jacket off because bare arms are not allowed. I'll tell you what I'd call this place: a Michael Caine world. It's very him, isn't it?"

He returns to a favorite subject - class. How would he define himself politically? "Asexual...I don't know...individual." He says he has learnt over the years how to make life better for himself, and he'd love to help do the same for society as a whole. It's a big ambition, I say, how would you set about it?

"You've got to stop interfering with individual space," he says. "You've got to stop telling people what is good or bad for them. If you wanna be a raging drug addict, go forth young man, I'm not stopping you, but I'm not paying for it. Right! Get the poncing off the system attitude removed, and then realize what freedom is. Freedom isn't to do what you want at somebody else's expense."

It sounds like a form of anarchy? "It is, but it's a proper kind. It's not just knock it all down with no set of rules. Rules are important, but they're temporary and they're always supposed to be changed."

Has his philosophy evolved since Anarchy in the UK? "Well, I've watched the anarchy movement for many a year and have found it to be amusing at best - a mind game for the middle class, I said 30 years ago. I haven't seen anything different." Look at the anti-globalization activists, he says. "They all rally behind these flags they buy in chain stores, they fly on planes around America to go to anarchist demonstrations, they've all got laptops and mobile phones, they're all dressed to the nines in corporate clothing. It's all a designer trap. The food they eat - organics only! Well, that's corporate design through and through. The idea of selling you a dirty potato. Hahahaaha!, and making money from it."

In the last US American election, he hosted a TV show in which he interviewed politicians. The only guest he respected was Newt Gingrich, who told him that politicians are, by definition, liars. As well as the telly work, Lydon spends his days painting and reading. He still makes music, but he says what's the point in competing with the dross that dominates today's charts. "It's very odd to see history regurgitated quite so vacuously by lesser mortals who then run off with all the credit. Puff Daddy's a classic example, isn't he? The rap genius! What is he doing? Ooohs and aaahs over Led Zeppelin and a Sting song he makes a real stink of, and both times he gets Grammies as if he's a genius. He did a couple of bathroom moans over other products. That's what genius is now."

Well, I say, we'll soon have you back at number one, according to Virgin. "What!" he screams, appalled. I explain that the record company told me the Pistols would top the charts with the re-released God Save the Queen in this golden jubilee summer. (It only made no 2 in 1977 after it was banned first time out.) "Oh, they told you that, did they? Well, let me tell you, if you want to know anything about the Sex Pistols ask Mr Rotten, who is the Sex Pistols. Do not listen to what Virgin records have to say. That's a pretty damn, desperate, ludicrous statement. I'm really offended by that. I don't release records to be anything but enjoyable. Now you know why I am here - to stop that nonsense...attitudes like that...corrupt...very, very negative. I've not done anything for that kind of nonsense. Not ever!"

He means it in his way, but it's also great theatre. Of course, Lydon is here, courtesy of Virgin, to promote the single and a definitive Sex Pistols compilation. He says the gig is going to be such a great do, such a celebration. "Sourpusses need not apply. Don't come if you're going to be a miserable git. I want to make you proud to be British." He says it with one of his ironic smiles. But I think he means it. There was always something of the nationalist in Lydon. If you listen carefully enough to the lyrics of God Save the Queen, he says, you'll realize he was having it both ways.

How do the Pistols get on with each other these days? "Same as ever. We talk. We'll always be at war with each other personality-wise, but that's what made the band what it was. It would be stupid to pretend we're best friends, but there's never a problem when we hit the stage."

He wants to go back to the hotel. "I'm bored." Bored - such an important word in the punk vocabulary. We get the bill.

I'm struggling to find my money. "I'm sorry, are you hard up for money?" he asks gently. "Cos I'm not. Hahahahha!" He and Rambo fall about. "Actually," he says when he recovers, "it's never been about money with me. No show-off shit, no Ferrari, not interested in that, don't have low self-esteem so I don't need that."

Did you ever have low self-esteem? "After meningitis, of course. I was a zombie. Coming out of it was hell on earth, going back to school. I couldn't speak. It all had to come back." When he came out of his six-month coma, his past had been wiped out. "'Dummy' was the usual chant to me. Bullying and all that, but I stopped it, I fought back." Did he feel angry? "No. I didn't know how to. I just remember it being really painful, and being sad all the time because I just didn't get it. I didn't get anything." What do you remember most about the illness? "Just disappearing. The shadow gets vaguer and vaguer and vaguer till you vanish one day."

Lydon says his meningitis ultimately strengthened him. "We don't wallow in self-pity, do we? We get on with it. I think it makes you better in some way. It makes you focus. Maybe I'm lucky enough to have had a life-threatening illness. It's bizarre that you can say that."

He still suffers the after-effects - headaches, sinus problems. That's where the spitting comes from. "I'm dehydrated every morning and a snotty git by mid-afternoon." He blows his nose to prove his point. "It's a pretty watery one. They're always white and clear. I'm like a faulty tap." And he has a curved spine, which he turned to his advantage on stage. Johnny Rotten was a modern-day Richard III - part terrorist, part pantomime villain. "I saw there was a role model, another bloke with a curved spine. Deformed. De-formed." Did he feel deformed? "Yeah. Very much so. You're made to feel ugly, and I made ugly beautiful. Just by sheer persistence. Nobody has the right to say that I am ugly, and I will not be a professional victim, you know. Sorry! Got a brain, and I fully intend to use it."

Should we go back to the hotel and have a fag, I say. Rambo giggles. "Have a fag. Sounds weird that, dunnit John?" The urbane middle-aged maitre d' walks up to Lydon. "Just before you leave," he says, "can I have your autograph for my wife?"

"A true star was 'ere," Lydon writes. That was lovely, the way he came up, I say. "It is, and damn well right you should do it. If anyone asks for your autograph they're showing you respect and give it back to them. Years ago I was aloof, wouldn't give my autograph, and I tried to excuse that with 'Well, I shouldn't because I'm one of the people.' But you're just being a cunt, arrogant, and it's less arrogant to just give it. It makes us both happy really. I must say, it's a nice feeling."

Rambo spots a cab which has come to a stop for an elderly couple. He runs ahead to snatch it.

"Leave 'em," Lydon roars.

Rambo walks back obediently. A couple of minutes later we're in another cab, and Rambo is laughing. "The old geezer said it's very good of you, mate, I thought you were going to beat us up."

"Aaaaah, no!" Lydon says appalled.

"I feel quite good about that," Rambo says. "Yeh, glad you called on that, John."

"Well, we can all slip up," Lydon says

Rambo is in philosophical mode. "Sometimes you got to take your chances, take the right taxi, if John's security is at risk, but if it doesn't matter..."

"Yeah. Those two were definitely up for it." Lydon smiles. "Ah, the vicious intent, she was getting the brolly lined up. Ahahahaha!" One of the things he loves about America is that he is never harassed. Once, in London, he hung the Italian flag in his window because he didn't have curtains - his house was raided by the police and he was accused of being an IRA member.

I ask him if he actually enjoyed the silver jubilee year when the Pistols peaked. "There was lots of it I missed. I'm not joking. I didn't know it was jubilee year. I had no clue. Well, why would I look at news papers or TV at the time? I was sick of it." He avoided the media because most of the stuff about himself was untrue, and he says it hurt his parents. "I was accused of all kinds of nonsense - like being a heroin addict, and I'd be sitting in the front room with Mum and Dad the very night I'm accused of riotous assembly, and they'd been brought up to believe that newspapers always told the truth."

We arrive back at the hotel. Rambo and Lydon run off to play, while I pay the driver. Eventually, I find them in the bar. I ask Lydon if he ever imagined he would end up the way Vicious did - dead of an overdose at 21 and charged with the murder of his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen.

"No!" he says instantly, as if shocked by the question. "I'm not like Sid. And Sid didn't worry about a horrible end. He was oblivious to that conclusion. Everybody around him told him where that was going, but his arrogance...and he really did believe a lot of the 'You're the greatest.'" Lydon is talking quietly, more to himself than me. "Maybe we brought him in too quickly. What do you do? You can't train people, it's not like a job training scheme. I thought he'd get with the programme just like that. He was a mate. He should have seen the bigger picture, but he fell in love with the pop star idolatry thing. And that's the kiss of death. I remember looking at the likes of Eric Clapton in his heroin-addiction days and being really unimpressed by him for that."

I ask him what has given him most happiness in life. "Loyalty, values, principles worth fighting for, community, reality, not hanging around with people that fantasize," he says. He talks about the community back in Finsbury Park - how they stood by each other, looked after each other, embraced decent values.

Lydon, now 46, has been married to his German wife Nora for 20 years. I ask him whether they have any children. "No," he says, tersely. "Nearly did. Accident. And that's over." You almost had one? "No, I'm not going to talk about that. A bit of a family tragedy, as it were." Anyway, he says, he was young at the time, wild and crazy. He says his marriage has given him stability. "I've said it before, but I'll say it again - when you're gonna make a commitment make sure it's the fucking right one. Anyone can get it wrong, but it's exceptionally satisfying to get it right, so take that little bit of extra effort."

Who would have thought that Lydon would have been giving out handy hints on domestic bliss? He tells me how much he hates lazy people who are unprepared to improve their lives, talented wasters, and thieves. "Never try to look and be like somebody else, and never try to nick their wallet. Jealousy - there's no need for it."

"Not many people you can trust now, is there John?" Rambo croaks.

You're quite a moralist, aren't you, I say. "No," he hisses. "I have values. But morals are Christian. There's no religion here. Values. Don't hurt when you don't need to, but don't let anybody step over that line - it's an invisible line, but it's respect for somebody's space." The anarchist, the traditionalist, the love-peace-and-understanding hippie all seem to happily coexist in today's Lydon.

He says he thinks observing the empty vanities of the pop world, taught him a lot. Ego, he says, it's a terrible thing - a wall you build up, or that is built up for you, to protect you from reality and decency. Again, it sounds strange coming from one of pop's great egomaniacs.

Ach, he says, so much of that is pantomime. He really thinks he's learnt humility? "Yep. That's why I can be so outrageously the other way. There can't be someone that arrogant in real life. It's hard to believe that I'm humble isn't it?"

God Save the Queen is out on Virgin on May 27. The Sex Pistols best of album Jubilee, and a box set, are out on June 3. The Sex Pistols play Crystal Palace National Sports Center on July 27. Details: 0870 400 0688.