Anger is an Energy: My Life Uncensored (30 page)

So that went off, and that’s not anything actually to do with the PiL gig, but by the time that reaches the newspaper headline area, it becomes like a PiL riot.

We went onstage very late. ‘Sorry, it’s Christmas, fuck you!’ We’d brought in – and this is why it took so long to get ready – a set of sub-woofers that
actually played bass so deep that you didn’t hear it, you
felt
it, and if you stood too close to that, the prospect of shitting your pants was highly likely. Subsonic woofers!
Fantastic! The stage was humming. You could feel it through every part of your body. It was brilliant, beautiful, where sound became really threatening. And it wasn’t the sound, it was the
vibrations.

It was all illegal, we found out later, because it can make you physically ill. It was creating such a feedback onstage that we were feeling ill before we even started. It went,
Bvvvvvvv
!
It was feeding
back and looping off the bass strings leaned up against the amp. Wobble didn’t have the sense to turn the thing off. Or he had the sense to leave the
thing on, one of the two. I suppose there was an element of Can running through my skull at that time, when the bass tones from their PA made the stage collapse at the Roundhouse. In a band like
PiL, you have to find out what the consequences of extreme music are.

In the back of the venue, all through the dressing room area, the window panes were rattling, window frames were coming loose. So there it was, we had a health and safety problem before we even
began our first number! Oh my God, there’s gonna be death in the house! Great! And on we trot, and it was a very insane gig. Above all, the Pistols fans couldn’t understand a damn
thing, because they’d never heard a noise like this before. So it was very much like the early Pistols all over again: ‘What is that?!’

Wobble was new to playing the bass. The concept of turning it off when you go off to wait for the encore didn’t occur to him. The feedback was ferocious. The rattling was severe. If
we’d gone on another hour, the building would’ve fallen down around us. There were complaints, but you’d have to be a sourpuss to do that. What else were you going to do? Watch
Ken Dodd’s Christmas Special
?

W
hen Sid Vicious got arrested for murdering Nancy Spungen in the Chelsea Hotel in New York, Malcolm was just panic-panic-panic. It was the tail end
of 1978, and the whole sordid tale was splurged over the tabloids’ front pages. Of all people, I heard it was actually Mick Jagger who intervened, and put lawyers in to try to help Sid out.
That was a huge ‘wow’ for me, because me and Sid, we weren’t the best of mates at this particular point – we had problems, mainly about his drug nonsense.

One of the last times I heard from Sid, he turned up with Nancy late at night at Gunter Grove. He wanted money so he could buy drugs. When we wouldn’t open up, he thought he could bang the
door off its hinges. Well, I’m sorry, but we had the police to do that for us, and they were very good at it. Eventually, Paul Young ran down the stairs and chased Sid and Nancy off with an
axe – he wasn’t taking any chances because he knew that Sid always carried a knife. The only reason there was an axe on hand, by the way, was because Paul was a carpenter.

I don’t like heroin addicts, but I do like my friends. I wanted to do the best I could for Sid, but Malcolm kept me away from him.
I only found out through my
lawyer, Brian Carr, that, ‘Yes, Mick Jagger got his lawyers involved in it, and they’re looking to protect him.’ So, I asked, ‘What has Malcolm done?’
‘Nothing.’ I don’t think Malcolm lifted a finger. He just didn’t know what to do.

Sid got himself into a terrible situation, revolving around owing money to some serious drug dealers. Now I know this one thing in life: heroin dealers cannot afford to fuck about, and if you
fuck them about, they – will – fuck – you –
out
.

That’s what Nancy Spungen introduced him into when they went to New York. So Sid’s idea of a cool and trendy lifestyle soon became a depressing problem of ‘Where’s the
next fix?’ And that’s how my friend, that silly boy from Hackney, ended up lost and confused in a strange land. You’ve really got to know what you’re doing in this world, at
all times, and you’ve
really
got to know what drug dealers expect from you.

Listen, peoples, do not ever get yourself in the position of owing money to those kind of dealers, because there’s a lot of reputation on the line for them. Sidney should’ve known
that. I know who was out for him, and if you’re talking strictly in terms of moral, principle, right and value, I had no right to stop them, because he’d overstepped the line.
That’s an absolute New York fact.

New York was harder than most towns at that particular time. A lot of it was Mafia-run, no two ways about it. Don’t be telling those guys, ‘Oh, fuck off, I’ve run out of money.
Huh huh.’ Then there’s gonna be a big sweep-up, there’s gonna be a settlement.

The basic truth is, Sid was not ‘street smart’. You have to survive with ‘street smart’, and you cannot survive
without
street smart. But do not ever get yourself
in the position of owing large amounts of money for something so self-indulgent, because you have to be dealt with at that point, because that ridicules the crew supplying the deal, and
they’re never gonna accept that.

When he was first arrested, it was so tragic and sad: Sid’s defence was, ‘I don’t know what happened’ – with a knife stuck in Nancy. Oh, come on. Oh, for Jesus
Christ’s sake. Figure it. Seriously. Over
your head. Warned you. Sidney wasn’t a smart fella. I warned Sidney time and time again. Don’t get in over your
head, not with nothing. Play to your level.

Nancy was killed, and that poor foolish boy was left holding the knife, not knowing what’s going on. To me there’s no mystery in it at all. You owe money, that’s what
you’re gonna get. And there ain’t no police going to hunt it down any different.

The boy’s life was over, and there he was in Rikers Island jail, in New York, with really not much option. As soon as he got out on bail – bang! – he banged up another number
in the vein, and goodbye. He comes out, meets his mum and dies of an OD – he allegedly committed suicide on an overdose of his mother’s own making. Fucking fantastic, huh? What a great
lifestyle. Don’t look for no mystery in it. This is what you get because this is what you want. Get the PiL song now?

Sid’s passing was a pain in my life – a serious one. I wrote songs about him for quite some time after that. They’re all in there somewhere. He just couldn’t see the wood
for the trees. Yet again it goes back to education. Education is not necessarily what the schools teach you, it’s about acquiring this way of having an insight, and being able to gather
information correctly. And Sidney lacked that potential. I always felt like I was protecting Sid, always. Wherever I’d take him, I knew – aaargh! – he’s gonna cause a
problem. But that’s all right!

Once he stepped out of line, and was left to his own devices, oh my God, it became stupid, stupid,
stupid
, no value, principle, system or logicality in it. Don’t mess around with
drug dealers, right? They mean it. They have to. Just say no.

While all this was going on, just the other side of Christmas, there were PiL crises coming to a head at Gunter Grove, between Wobble and Jim Walker. I never understood what
the rows were about – well, I do, sort of – but there was some kind of bullying going on. I suppose Wobble was feeling inadequate about his lack of playing ability, and therefore
somebody else had to suffer.

Jim quit. He had very quickly seen enough, and suddenly, after less than a year, we were without a drummer. I thought that Jim would go on to do other great things in
music. But no, he went off to Israel to work on a kibbutz, and madnesses like that. He’s not actually Jewish, so it was an even bigger move. I believe he does things in film these days.

We tried out a number of replacements, but none of them seemed to stick. One was pure disco, another pure reggae, and neither could adjust to anything outside of that particular format. Another
was just not getting the vibe that was there between us.

For a while there, myself and Rambo were jokingly telling people
he
was going to be our new drummer. Rambo went along with it and it might’ve worked, but he’d have to have
learned how to play within a month. That was way too much pressure for any human being. I’m glad, and I think he is too, that it didn’t happen, because we found a way to work together
that was much more beneficial to both of us, further down the line.

So, it was just a case of whoever responded to the advert.
Exchange & Mart
was our favourite read of the time. If you tried through the music papers, it would always be the wrong kind
of arses. They’d turn up with some silly imagery, rather than content from them as human beings.

We messed around with Richard Dudanski for a bit. He’d been in Joe Strummer’s 101’ers, but he wasn’t really up to it. He was too soft and gentle to really to cope with
our lack of fear. Poor old Dudanski was a bit of a hippie, but then he wasn’t, because he was balding. Hair loss removed his hippiedom.

Most of them felt ill at ease. They’d be noting the tensions going on between Wobble and Keith, me and Keith, Wobble and me, between all three of us at once – a very hard thing
suddenly to be in the middle of. I do understand their position: Sid must have felt much the same when he joined the Pistols. You’re walking into the lions’ den, and the lions all know
each other. Ouch! Heavy, heavy judgemental scenes!

Oddly enough, even though it was down to just the three of us, without a steady drummer, it became more settled and more confident, now that we’d got the first
album out. We’d got into a pattern of recording in bits and pieces, all over the shop. We were never in any one place long enough. We’d be a week here, a day there.

There’d be a lot of night-time sessions at the Town House in Goldhawk Road, Shepherd’s Bush, and those were always very last-minute. The Jam were using it a lot at the time. When
they’d finish in the evening, we’d get the tip-off and could go over and use the facilities, so long as we didn’t touch the mixing board. The Jam themselves were certainly never
in on it. It was a cut-price universe.

So, everything we did was what they call ‘monitor mixes’, rather than going through a big desk. Once you get into the bigger technology there’s all manner of mollycoddling of
sound going on, where the brittle edge is stripped and impossible to replace. That’s what gave those early PiL records their thrilling sound – they’ve got that raw energy of a
band playing live in the room.

The big treat for us was when Virgin would pack us off to the Manor, their residential studio in Oxfordshire. This place was a different universe again, and proper palatial by our standards.
They’d book you in for a few days, and you’d be the only band in there. The whole joy of it was that it was, ‘Do what you want.’ There were twelve bedrooms, so there’d
be an entourage included – bring yer mates! There’d be a pile of people speeding in the living room, and it was endless food and endless drink. They changed that later, but in them
early days, everything was on an open cheque book – they hadn’t got around to tightening the purse-strings.

There were fireplaces everywhere, so the best time to book it was always in the colder months for that good old roaring-fire vibe. The dinners were enormous roast things, traditional English. It
wasn’t exactly a boar on a spit, but it was that kind of presentation. Roast potatoes and a proper roast beef done traditional – semi-raw in the middle – was thrilling to me. I
gained so much weight.

They had satellite TV, which nobody had at that stage in Britain. All of us would be thinking, ‘Great, we can sit in that room and just snuggle up round the
fireplace and watch endless TV!’ But –
grrr!
– it seemed to be the same channels repeated ad infinitum in Italian and Spanish! And channels with nothing but adverts, and
that was it.

But I loved the Manor. It was an absurd, ridiculous ‘harking back to previous centuries’ kind of place. I always felt like, ‘Hey, here’s my chance to be lord of
something’, and I’m damn well sure that was in everyone else’s mind at all times.

Mostly, we’d work the night shift. I’m sorry, I can’t be thinking of running into a studio at 10 a.m. My brain starts to kick into its agenda at around 8 p.m. By 10 p.m.,
I’d be fully focused, and everyone else probably wanted to go to bed. Still, whenever we got these opportunities, the eagerness to get in and record, and the enjoyment and the thrill of
operating machinery and pressing buttons and screaming and playing things, was absolutely the driving force of it. That wasn’t lost, regardless of all the surrounding ugliness. That was the
thrill, the joy, the point and purpose of being in a band, and you can’t take that away.

We knew the stuff we started coming out with would annoy the record company, but my belief was, I’ve only got one opportunity in life to do and say what it is I truly feel, and I’m
not prepared to back off from that, and I’m prepared to suffer the financial and business consequences, because I think in the long run the work will prevail. It would’ve been
semi-useless to be going out there to write a plausibly huge commercial success, which is what the label would’ve wanted and enjoyed. I’m Johnny fucking Rotten, you know, that’s
still me, whatever Malcolm thinks, and
I do what I want
.

For me the success was to do something completely unexpected, and yet a natural progression. The album that became
Metal Box
was not contrived. Contrived would’ve been to have
written an instant hit. Somehow, with all the conflicting lifestyles and personal
situations developing, and the pressure from Virgin, we managed to make a really cohesive
album. It sounds like it might as well have been recorded all at once, from start to finish. It’s a stunning beautiful tapestry of high anxiety.