Anger is an Energy: My Life Uncensored (26 page)

I could plonk a record player on the counter, and a TV with a coat hanger for an aerial between the two windows, which had a semi-balcony outside, and play music as loud as I wanted, and have as
many people as I could possibly fit in there, which often seemed about three to five hundred, haha. In the summer we’d drink up on the rooftop – that was always a favourite with the
chaps.

The word was out: ‘You can just turn up at Johnny’s, he’ll talk to the walls if he has to, but he
will
talk!’ I’m a very quiet, solitary kind of person, but
I’m very open to significant leaps of faith in any direction. And I do love interesting company.

I ran Gunter Grove almost like an open house, with a thriving community spirit about it. I had an awful lot of visitors, all of them
very interesting. What a great
collection of people! Every couple of weeks I’d throw a party on a Friday, and just let all my mates know, and the label people at Virgin, because I had a lot of friends there by now. So
there’d be a lot of music-y people, but ones you would never expect to meet or have anything to do with. There would be disco bands, and unexpected guests like Joan Armatrading, the folkie
singer-songwriter, who I found to be great fun.

There were also film people, authors. I even had the lead singer of the Bay City Rollers turn up with, of all people, John Barry, the composer. What a great evening! Then, later, in the middle
of that pow-wow, Stomu Yamashta, the Japanese composer, dropped in. It was like an otherworldly experience, four very different people, but with a commonality of making music. Thrilling
conversations!

What a marvellous eye-opener to me. After the misery of the preceding months with the Pistols, it began to make everything seem possible again, as I chatted away to people in all walks of life,
musical or otherwise. For me, it was about getting a varied outlook on life. If you do not open yourself up to different outlooks, you are doomed. Doomed to keep repeating the same failures as all
the other idiots.

Originally, I just had this maisonette apartment, the upper two floors of an end-of terrace townhouse. But the neighbour that lived underneath couldn’t bear the noise, and so not long
after I moved in, he sold me his place, the bottom half. I actually had some trouble raising that money, in the light of my court action against Malcy and the boys.

I never lived there completely alone. I’m not that kind of person, I don’t like loneliness. I
do
like variety, so an endless parade of people came through for varying lengths
of time. To start with, I had Dave Crowe, whom I’d known and kept up with since William of York school days, and another friend from Finsbury Park, Paul ‘Youngie’ Young –
the one whose gangster-moll mum ironed his bondage trousers. Paul’s a very cheeky chappie – a snappy dresser, and a complete ladies’ man. Oh, the girls love that fella, and
he’s as smooth as
butter with it. He’s the kind of bloke, if you want to pick up girls, that’s who you hang out with – just stand next to him.

It was great to share with Paul and Dave initially, because we knew each other so well. I’d spend the whole week with Dave and John Gray putting together mixtapes for the weekend.
‘Aaaw, what records shall we have?’ And, ‘How do we back-to-back these?’ Dave had a reel-to-reel tape machine, so rather than going all turntable-y with it, and being stuck
on that all night, we’d pre-record it all, and use the double echo that was on his Revox for the joinings between tracks. There’d be bits of
Ben-Hur
thrown in there, and all
sorts of nonsense.

One of our favourite tunes in those early weeks of 1978 was the dancehall reggae hit, ‘Uptown Top Ranking’ by Althea and Donna – ‘In a mi khaki suit an
t’ing!’ – what wonderfulness that song is! One night that backing track came on because we’d put the dub version in one of our reel-to-reel mixes. Unbeknownst to us, Althea
and Donna were actually in the room, and they jumped up and started singing.

All the time it would be like that, it would be proper joy, loving the music, loving the social scene, and loving the fascinating interest everybody had for everybody else. Proper times.
Precursor of what Rave was trying to do, I suppose. All agendas catered for, except of course for the jealous and spiteful who were never welcome. Hard to suss them ones out, though, from time to
time. You make a mistake, and you think, ‘Ah well, give ’em a chance.’ That’s my way, I’ll give anybody a chance, and if they step wrong with it, well, there’s
the door.

For a while there, it got a little like, Johnny versus the rest of the residents in the vicinity, what with all the noise complaints. The neighbours next door never heard anything through the
wall until builders came in and thinned the wall down for some weird reason. Then suddenly, the noise went straight through. British builders – I tell you, you want to watch them. They were
so bad, removing bricks in an adjoining wall, and they removed them to the point
where I could see them at work from my upstairs bedroom. ‘That’s too much, come
on! How are you going to paper over that hole? Put the bricks back!’ I’m positive it wasn’t an intoxicated vision, by the way – it
was
reality.

Another complaint was hilarious: it was some Italians that lived opposite my back yard. They came over and said, ‘We don’t mind loud music, but what we really can’t stand is
that reggae!’ You’ve gotta laugh. So it was a matter of taste. And of course that didn’t create issues. If people tell me what’s really getting to them, I’m very open
with that. I agreed not to be playing that stuff at 4 a.m.

The curiosity of reggae for me was always that it’s not an aggressive music, the lilting rhythms were just beautiful, but my God, the dialogue was
diff’raaant
– totally
’ardcore. That juxtaposition is alarmingly loud: incredibly sad songs of pain and suffering, or revolution even, inside happy melodies. A very effective way of getting a message across.

A song like ‘Born For A Purpose’ by Dr Alimantado was just life-altering for me. The lyrics, I thought, were genius, and particularly fantastic if you feel you have no reason for
living. Like, don’t determine my life! ‘
Whoah!
Hello, Jamaica! You’ve got some good brains going on there.’ For me it was utterly one of those moments when you hear a
song, and it’s an affirmation of the highest order. Like, ‘Aaah, we’re out there together – people who care and really consider what it is they do, and who know that
they’re on this planet to do something positive.’

Everybody in the reggae world came to Gunter Grove at one time or another, because we certainly had the kind of sound system they’d enjoy, but mainly because it was a house where you
weren’t predetermined or judged. Welcome, one and all, and no troubles, ever.

In the early part of ’78, I actually spent a month in Jamaica. I used to get on with Simon Draper, who was second-in-command to Richard Branson at Virgin. He was an ex-South African army
fella, but he really cared, he was genuine. He knew when the Pistols
fell apart that I could end up in all kinds of problems, so he gave me something to do – go to
Kingston, indulge in the latest sounds emanating there, and help sign acts for Virgin’s new reggae subsidiary label, Front Line. The label, I thought, was a great idea, and I felt a massive
respect to Simon and Richard for what they were doing for me on a personal level.

When the opportunity came up, I said, ‘Look, I’m not going there alone. I know there’ll be other Virgin people, but I need a working crew.’ The crew were people that
deserved to be there, and not much really to do with signing anyone. I wasn’t expecting them to take on that workload; that wasn’t their role. I wanted people directly related with the
place. So I asked Don Letts, the dread-locked DJ from the Roxy club, and Dennis Morris, a photographer who took a lot of pictures of the Pistols towards the end.

Don and Dennis seemed right to me, because they had family there, and that was important. I was thinking from the heart, not from the selfish perspective of a gang of Brits abroad going to
Spain. It wasn’t going to be a holiday of oik-iness. I could have filled aeroplanes full, but I wasn’t going to be like that. I wasn’t going to do this to abuse Virgin either or
take it as an easy ride. I took it very serious. For all three of us, it felt like a musical pilgrimage.

Branson met us at the airport in a 1940s Rolls-Royce with a flat-top roof. It was just amazing, driving through Kingston in that absurdly pompous, Raj-of-India car. Jamaicans being what they
are, they’re very loud – dey let ya know a t’ing or two, mon! It felt like walls of abuse, cynicism and wit being hurled at us. So that was my introduction to Jamaica, and
I’m eternally grateful.

For that, I worked kind of semi-hard for Branson, to make sure he was paying attention to the right bands. It was thrilling to be visiting the different studios and hearing the different styles.
And going to the record stores, and just getting into it big time, and getting to really love many of the people.

The open friendliness of what Rasta was offering then was
astounding. It was, I thought, a good clue to what a proper new world order could be. At that time, as everyone
knows from their Bob Marley records, they were enduring the worst of the worst out there, with all the poverty and political violence, but they’d be waltzing through it with a smile, which
was quite inexplicably excellent of them.

Look at the troubles they’ve had to endure just to be Jamaica, from slavery onwards. My God, them fellas have been through the wringer. With all the wrangling between the People’s
National Party (PNP) and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) (or the JVC, as I called ’em), a civil war was going on. Very chaotic. When a Jamaican says ‘Peace!’ it carries some weight
to me because they really, genuinely mean it. They really do know how to endure warfare. Jamaicans are not cowards, they’re brave fellas, brave men, women and children.

We set up shop at the Sheraton Hotel in Uptown Kingston, and soon found that most of the musicians already knew we were there and were queuing up to see us. That was breaking many social taboos
in Jamaica at the time because there was a very negative thing floating around, where Rasta was associated with dirt and filth and laziness and trampishness.

There was a great record out then called ‘Ain’t No 40 Leg Pon Di Dread’ by George Nooks, which was answering this horrible urban myth that was spreading around, about how a
Rasta was found dead on the beach, and they found centipedes in his dreadlocks. They obviously weren’t in there before he died, but we all know how headlines can take over, and reality is
turfed out the window for sensationalism.

So, there in Jamaica, everybody presumed there was all manner of filthy beasts lurking in the hairdo, and so Rasta was always supposed to keep his locks hidden. You could end up in jail for
flashing them. A yell went up, for instance, when Don jumped in the hotel swimming pool, and his hair was floating on the top, while the rest of him was four foot underwater. When these fellas
came to see us, though, we weren’t having any of that. ‘You can take your hat off . . . Look, I’ll take my coat off too.’

I’d gone out there with next-to-no clothes. I had a trench coat, two T-shirts, a pair of brothel creepers, a wide-brimmed hat – a Lee van Cleef number – and a blue tartan
bondage jacket and not much else. I wasn’t expecting that kind of heat.

As an aside, the bondage jacket came from a suit I’d had made by Vivienne for the American tour. I’d insisted that there be some crotch space in them pants this time! And I
didn’t want the zip to come from the back to the front, I wanted a man-zip,
at the front
. And I didn’t want a silly little towel, I wanted a kilt, and a bolero jacket.
Unfortunately, by the time I got to Jamaica, the bondage pants had rotted out, quite literally, from touring. Not being in any frame of mind to do any washing, all that was left really was the
jacket. That jacket I quite happily sent to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York a couple of years ago, so it’s done its world tours.

Going to the beach in JA, that was a nightmare. I was very body conscious, I still am. I don’t like to strip down and run into the sea unless I can do it real quick, fully clothed. I was
aware of how white I was, and how that would draw howls of laughter, because Jamaicans will tell you straight away. But I couldn’t stand sweating on the beach any longer, so I just did it
– took my clothes off and went swimming, and the howling actually was good. It’s friendly, if you catch it right. They knew I felt foolish, and looked it, and I became very red, very
quickly, because of the sun. And this, for them, was their winter.

We were only supposed to stay in Kingston for two weeks, initially, but we decided to stay on another fortnight, and dug into our own pockets. Don and Dennis took us all to meet some of their
respective families, so it became a family-orientated thing, not just a cold business venture.

One of the worst things that happened was at Dennis Morris’s aunt’s place – or was it his grandmother’s? We went round there
and, you know, people
don’t have money, so when they put a bowl of soup or stew in front of you, you show respect and you eat it. Of course, it was loaded with scotch bonnet – a type of chilli pepper, which
must be the hottest thing I’ve ever known in my life. It was un-be-
liev
-able. In 110-degree heat! So the trenchcoat had to go. Then a girlfriend of a saxophonist called Dirty Harry
came round, and she went, ‘Jahn, ya got nah cloaathes,’ and she bought me this grey top, so I wore that for the rest of the time.

It felt really good to give Don and Dennis the opportunity to meet their relatives. It did Don a world of good – he truly found himself in all of this, even though he had to endure the
wrath of all the native Rastas. They’d be going, ‘Rastaman eat
lobster
?!’ That’s part of the Rasta trip – no shellfish. Fair play, Don stood up and went,
‘Yeah!’ He wasn’t adhering religiously to a dogma that didn’t make too much sense.

His grandparents, on the other hand, didn’t approve of him being Rasta. It’s always hurtful to meet relatives in those situations. At the same time it was something that needed to be
done, and it’s very difficult to say goodbye when you leave – and there I was in my ridiculous outfit trying to blend into the background.