Anger is an Energy: My Life Uncensored (18 page)

She never ever understood the human shape, and, I think, bitterly resented it. She certainly never had any concept of where men’s goods are supposed to go. That’s what happens when
you live with Malcolm as a lover: she performed expensive castration on her adoring fashion-worshippers!

The strap between the legs, that’s one thing, right? For me, having a football culture background because of where I came from, the idea of ‘I can’t run in these so I have to
stand and fight’
was a very good one, but that’s not what she was doing this for, because when it came to the zip, listen, my testicles were unfeasibly bothered.
Her answer would be, well, then, leave the zip open! Now: I tried that at one gig, I think it was Leeds. No, Middlesbrough. I wore a pair of bondage pants, and what happened was, because I left the
zip open, the chafing at the zipper each side of my genitalia was like a pair of saws cutting in from either side, and led to a really major infection. Within two days, you’re doing an
interview with an incredibly important music magazine, and they’re asking you, what’s it like to be a rock star? Hahaha! Come on, John, all the girls must love ya! You’re
thinking, There’s no way I can show two half-sawn-off nuts to a woman. Me meat and veg were jeopardized.

Ah God, and if you were unlucky enough with that zip, that ran from the arse to the front, that was very painful, and you had to watch the way you sat down. They were completely cut for women.
But the way Vivienne would explain it was, ‘That’s all part of the bondage experience.’ I quote directly. The woman was hilarious!

But soon everybody was tripping over their leg straps. All over the world! It’s an aside but it’s a great story: a really good friend of mine, Paul Young – not the pop singer
– bought a pair, and his mum ironed them! Creases down the front! She meant well, someone was caring, but my God, is that painful on a teenager? Don’t worry – an hour in a pair of
bondage pants, and the sweat would have ironed that crease right out of them.

I’ve got to say, however, her T-shirts were amazing. I liked the idea of two squares sewn together, that was a Vivienne idea, and then the dialogue written on the front or whatever, but
the concept of breaking up a T-shirt into two squares sewn together from the neck to the arm, and from under the armpit to the bottom, is excellent. What do you need it shaped for? I liked that,
except onstage, when you’re giving your biggest, hardest running-around bit, and then there’s a photo of what looks like a beer-belly, when you’re only twenty. You know,
too
short
.

The consistent problem I had with Vivienne’s designs was that the aesthetics counted more to her than the actual physicality of a human being. And also the
unravelling, because seams would never be finished. Then again, she didn’t really have the money to pay for proper seamstresses, and proper finishing, so it was all happenstance. I mean, she
really did survive a universe of adversity there. I’ve met her since, and she’s said very bad things about me over the years, and I’ve said very bad things about her. I still
respect her. Who else is, like, walking that edge? Who else? That’s the joy of what we do, that when we talk about each other, we’re teasing each other into the next element. But it
gets mistranslated in the press as a bitchfest.

Vivienne was always a very difficult character, though. Very unforgiving and judgemental, and very hard to get on with. At the same time she’d be standing there, yelling abuse, looking for
all the world like a turkey! One particular outfit – she was yelling abuse at me before some gig, and she was wearing a full-body, one-piece, zip-up-the-back rubber suit, and it was
flesh-coloured, and where the nipples were there were red rings, and it went all the way up to the neck, and she had her hair stuck up, and she
did
look like a turkey – an emaciated,
plucked turkey. Her wrinkly old neck was trying to hover out of the top of this thing. It was before Sid joined the band. I didn’t know what she was going on about. Who cared? I was just
looking at this absurd thing in front of me, and Sid went, ‘Oh, shut up, turkey neck!’

I was now living in an apartment with Linda Ashby in St James’s, just behind Buckingham Palace, almost opposite Scotland Yard. Linda hung out with some of the Bromley
Contingent. She was a working girl, basically, and all her friends were that way too. I really liked their company. I found them to be really open, honest people. Once they’d got the drudgery
of sex, the daily grind, out of the way, they were great fun to hang out with, because you didn’t have to have any secrets about yourself with them.

We met through some of the girls who used to come to Pistols gigs, through the lesbian connection. There was always a great lesbian attachment to the Pistols, and I liked
lesbians very, very much. They really are touchy-feely, warm people. I understand that what they give to each other is something men don’t give them. More power! It’s wonderful to be
sitting on the sofa between two lesbians – you’ve never known such warmth in your whole life. It’s incredible how open that emotion can be. You know, where you don’t feel
ashamed of yourself, that’s the key to finding quality people in life – always hang out with people that don’t feel ashamed about themselves, whether they be lesbian, gay,
straight, black, white, whatever – fucked up, mentally insane, twisted, or just straight normal. If they mean what they say, and are what they are, it’s a very comforting
environment.

I really, truly enjoyed Linda’s company very much. I loved her to pieces. We had no ‘relationship’ of any kind, other than equal nutters, I suppose. She was a lovely girl who
got me into some really great situations.

For instance, Linda once introduced me to Jeremy Thorpe in the bar at the Houses of Parliament. He was the leader of the Liberal Party in Britain at the time, but his career was soon ended in a
gay sex scandal. There was a late-night drinking thing in Parliament and she had access to it, so she took me and a couple of other people. A few pennies a pint – outrageous, brilliant, what
a great place to drink! There we were, looking out at the River Thames under a brolly, the Houses of Parliament overshadowing us, surrounded by all these MPs who all day seem to squabble and hate
each other, but there
they
were, discussing who’s going with what escort.

The idea of dirty MPs was always tenfold compounded into me, watching them when they were off guard. I suppose they thought I was a male prostitute, with a slightly different way of dressing.
I’ve never dressed overtly sexual, so I’m lucky – I don’t attract that kind of attention. I’m just off-putting.

That night, I was free of MP gays. I certainly wasn’t what Jeremy Thorpe might’ve been looking for. And look at the scandals that unfolded just a couple of
months later – for both of us! He was so famous for his tweeds – you know – British tweeds, that was his thing – and his silly little hat. When I wore tweeds years later in
the Pistols in 2007, when I waltzed out in that outfit, I was thinking of Jeremy Thorpe in the back of my mind.

By the end of the summer, the gigs were getting very pressurized. The one at the Screen on the Green was full of music industry people, A&R men and what have you. It was a very strange gig,
everything about it. I wasn’t happy with Malcolm’s idea of screening Kenneth Anger films before we went on. ‘Oh, bloody hell, it’s gay boys dressed up as Hell’s Angels
sucking each other’s willies. Really, Malcolm, is that Art?’ But the Screen on the Green was run by a really nice fella called Roger, and that was his job, to promote these insane
far-out movies. I suppose I’d rather they got an airing at a Sex Pistols gig than in between Donald Duck and Bugs Bunny.

I sat in the crowd, watching these films, wondering, ‘What are people thinking?’ People weren’t thinking anything other than, ‘Look at these old farts trying to be
impressive.’ That was the general attitude of the youth crowd; it all looked somehow jaded, like a James-Dean-gone-wrong vibe. I remember saying all this to Malcolm. It was so funny. John
Gray was sitting next to me, and he went, ‘Where’s the girls in this film, Malcolm?’

I had no concept of how you put record deals together at all. Of course, Malcolm was doing all this behind the scenes with
his
lawyer who I’ve never seen eye to eye with. From the
start I had great doubts about the value of that EMI contract, me not being legally represented by my own counsel. I always kept that in mind as a reference point for later, that if problems arose
I’d have some kind of legal backing here. That there were holes in the contract. I got it all wrong as usual, when it comes to the law.

Be very careful what you sign, everybody in the world! Even though you think you know what it’s all about, you’ll find out you
didn’t know nothing! The
wording in contracts is so riddled in tangles and lawyer-ese – it might as well be Vietnamese. What you think you’re clearly understanding is not right at all, it’s something
completely different. You get caught up and tangled in these things and then for years later you’re trying to unravel them. You go through that and here it is, it’s your first record
deal, and you’re absolutely thrilled. No two ways about it, you think you’re made, you’re set up for life. Yippee! Achievement Number One. But it isn’t. That’s what
life is, a series of set-ups and kick-backs.

There was talk of other labels like Harvest and Chrysalis, which I’d loved when I was younger, but they were still very entrenched in hippiedom and obviously weren’t the place for
the Sex Pistols. This is a whole different genre and you’d be asking everyone from the toilets in the basement to the attic storeroom to change everything to accommodate a completely
different approach to life. So, a no-go, really.

It was very hard to tell what was going on, other than how jaded and old EMI was, and how lost. They had no concept of how to invest in a future. They probably just saw us as, ‘Oh look,
that looks like it could be a movement. Let’s get in on it!’ We weren’t the first punk band to sign a deal. The Damned did that some time before us, which was bizarre –
using our punk moniker and beating us to the alleged punch. I don’t know if they were very happy with their situation either. Not much was said.

I suppose EMI thought it would be a gigglefest and they really, really couldn’t cope with what it actually was. The hardcore edge just rocked them to their foundations, so it was get out
of EMI quick. And in many ways it was great, because the recordings that we did for EMI were shit, really were, they were so badly demoed, we’d have buried ourselves into a hopeless corner.
What came over was just talentless noise.

There was an infamous early version of ‘Anarchy’ that was such a balls-up. It never got released at the time, and thank Christ for that. It put our tails between our legs because we
all felt ashamed
at just how awful it was. So the next outing to record it, with Chris Thomas, was bang on – you know, ‘Get this tight, get this right.’
And you could do that with bum notes, it wasn’t about that – it’s the timing of the thing.

My voice went crazy in places: ‘Is this the I-R-
Aayyeeaaaye
’, but that was the magic of it. That’s exactly how I was feeling it at that precise moment, and it
wasn’t going down well with the studio guys. ‘
Iiiyiis thii-iis ver . . .
’ ‘Oh no, you can’t do it like that, John.’ ‘I just did. THE END.’ One
take is all I needed. And many producers, when I worked with professional producers, have insisted – or asked kindly, which is nicer – that I go back in and try it another way. But I
haven’t got another way. That’s the way I wrote it. I’m not Roy Orbison. I found my own voice, my own way, and my own style, and my own set of scales, and I’m gonna stick to
that because it’s where I feel healthiest.

When it came out, there was no change for us, no sudden influx of cash for yours truly. I paid no attention to chart positions or anything like that. I was just fully involved with the daily
grind of trying to find the next sandwich. These sarcastic bastards would have us on TV shows – and this includes doing
So It Goes
with Tony Wilson, later of Factory Records –
and there’d be an intellectual wit – Clive James comes to mind – absolutely trying to slaughter us before we did our rendition of our song live. So I’d have a verbal row
with that fella, and point out what’s what, and I became known as ferocious in that respect. That’s how I am: I will stand up and defend what it is I do. So rather than them admit that,
you know, the boy’s making a good point, it went into foul-mouthed rants.

We didn’t even ask for the Bill Grundy
Today
show thing. It came as a surprise. We only got it because the band Queen cancelled at the last minute, and they were on EMI. Half an
hour later, I’m in a TV studio, and I’m enjoying my days off here, and I’m challenged by this fuckwit drunkard. I’m not having it.

If you look at the Grundy interview nowadays, you’ve got to
understand the context of it then, how disciplined everyone was, so overtly, Britishly polite, and
everybody knew their place. That was the thing at school: know your place, you were always taught that. We didn’t know our place, and we were the real deal. There’s no showmanship in
that, that’s an accurate portrayal of young men trying to make it in a world that’s absolutely dead set against the truth. If I do anything, it’s by truth. All’s I want is
the truth. John Lennon. Thank ya!

We had to be there at four, then wait around – the show aired live at six. The green room was full of free alcohol, and I’ve got to say, Bill Grundy led the charge. ‘Drink up,
everyone, drinks for everyone!’ He had a few himself, and he wasn’t shy of overtly leering at Siouxsie Sioux and the Bromley girls, because we’d rung them up and said, ‘You
wanna come to
this
?’ We turned it into a party, thought it would be a bit of a hoot, and it turned out to be exactly the kind of hoot that we needed – a severe dose of,
‘There may be trouble a-
head
!”

It was actually me that swore first. Grundy goes, ‘What was that?’ ‘Er, a rude word!’ I didn’t really want to be the first arsehole out the door with it, but there
you go – he goaded me into it, so there it is. ‘You asked for it. It’s not my fault at this point onwards, your honour. I am innocent.’ If you really understand the way the
conversation’s going, it’s deeply fascinating. It should be in a psychology course, because of all the different things going on in all of our minds at the same time. It amounts to this
Harold Pinter kind of scene.