Anger is an Energy: My Life Uncensored (57 page)

After
Psycho’s Path
it seemed pointless to try and be making records because there was nowhere for them to go, but I put out quite a lot of music incognito. It was
mostly dance-y things, instrumentals, and I deliberately kept my name off them. I wouldn’t put my voice down: I didn’t want anyone thinking it was like, ‘Hope you like my new
direction.’ I went through a period there where I thought my name was poison. But I love a good dance night – you know, going to a proper dance club. It was nice to hear some of my
grooves were there rocking the dancefloor, and nobody knew it was me – there was a very nice enjoyment in that. Making people happy, but they wouldn’t have been so happy if they knew my
name was attached to it. Now I might be wrong here, but that’s how I was feeling at the time.

I don’t want to name names of tracks or anything. There were no major hits, but plenty of dancefloor hits. I liked the anonymity. In fact, that whole rave culture – the anonymity was
what I loved most about it. It’s a shame it turned into superstar DJs, but them early-ish days were fantastic fun. And I could understand fully people saying it had a punk DIY ethos about it,
that anyone can
do it, and I loved it for that. And indeed anyone
did
do it. Hello, I can be anyone.

The freedom in that was fantastic, so why go back and stir that pot? I thought I made a mistake when I did that record with the Golden Palominos, years before. I didn’t want anyone to know
I was on that – it was a version of some old California-scene record. I was really annoyed when I got back to London, and I ran into Mick Jones of the Clash, who is always good company, and
he went, ‘I’ve heard your latest release.’ I was furious! I didn’t want it to be known. It’s an attitude I have which I think is actually healthy. He’d bought it
because he knew I was on it and that was kind of defeating the point. I was experimenting, but it was just the name that was the pulling power.

It’s a dilemma of sorts: should I namedrop when I release a record and remind people of who it is, or what I am, and what I’ve done? I don’t know. You’ll always get the
record company wanting to do that – and always the manager! For me, I was quite happy when I set PiL up proper in California, and it was presumed that we were just a brand-new California band
– for quite a long time! Nobody out here had any knowledge of us having anything to do with the Pistols at all. It was utterly fantastic. But when that cat got out of the bag, then I started
doing ‘Anarchy’ live, and I got bored with it, because I thought the audiences were coming in for all the wrong reasons. It’s amazing that I’ve achieved two entirely
separate audiences in my life for two major bands that I’ve been in, that for quite a while there – particularly in the States and certain parts of Europe – people didn’t
realize were fronted by the same singer. So I was both Johnny Rotten and Johnny Lydon.

These were the things I was dealing with. How I could ‘get away with it’. Just that sentence alone, there has been an awful lot of that about me in the music press – thinking
that this is all some elaborate hoax or joke on my part. Well, the joke’s not on you, if that be the case, the joke would be on me. I don’t see what I do as a joke at all. I see it, for
me, for my own personal point of view in it, as
insightful, not only into how I work and operate as a human being, but how you all do, too, by your reactions. By you, I mean
the broad expanse called the human race.

Of all the reasons that I stopped making music, the most important was the arrival of Nora’s grandchildren, Pablo and Pedro. In 2000 they suddenly came to live with us
indefinitely. Their mother, Ariane, better known as Ari Up from the Slits, had been bringing them up in Kingston, Jamaica, and had more or less just let them run free. They were very wild, and they
needed help and support. They couldn’t really read or write, or even swim, at fourteen and a half, when they came to us. They had no comprehension of speech or formulating proper
sentences.

When Ari would go on tour they’d be dragged about with her. If she had a new boyfriend in a different country they’d have to go and live there. They were in a permanent state of
confusion about where they belonged. In Kingston they’d be surrounded by a changing line-up of women and boyfriends – a very confusing position for boys trying to grow up.

They’d stayed with us before, many a time, and we were well accustomed to each other. Nora and I certainly hadn’t been planning on being substitute parents, but the bottom line is,
the twins really needed help. You can’t have any kids in the house and not be paying attention to them. These two were especially needy. So you dedicate your life towards their life.

The whole scenario came right out of the blue. Ari had moved them all to New York and a situation exploded. She had a huge row with them over money that had gone missing in a New York apartment.
I think a great deal of that was to do with the boyfriends and her own clique, and her having no sense of a regular dinner time or food or anything for them.

Ari rang Nora and said, ‘I can’t cope with them, I’m throwing them out of the house!’ And Nora said, ‘What do you want me to do?’ We talked, and while Ari was
still on the phone I said, ‘Send
them here immediately, we’ll take care of them. I’m not having those young human beings abandoned because of your lack of
care.’ It was a big row with Ari. It made life very difficult between me and Ari for a long time. But it always was difficult between her and Nora.

My heart just broke for all three of them – the twins and Ari. The twins needed a family unit at this point, and God only knows where Ari would’ve sent them if not for Nora and me.
They would have been cast off to one of her many distant friends. Even they were apparently all telling her that her lifestyle was incompatible with raising children. It’s very hard for a
young mother to be a pop star – I use the term loosely – and pursue a career and, at the same time, particularly in Jamaica, ’fess up to the fact that you’ve got
fourteen-year-old twins at home. You’re not twenty-one, regardless of what you tell the press. She would deny lots of things, and it caused great pain to the twins, as kids growing up.

It was very hard for them when Ari’s out there living her Rastafarian dream, being a woman warrior, ‘save the dolphins’ and all of that, but showing a complete neglect for her
own children. She just didn’t have the time for them – as a single parent with a libido. That’s very difficult, that aspect of life. ‘Meet your new dad.’ –
‘No, I won’t!’

For so many reasons, being a single mum was too much for her. She found Pablo and Pedro to be uncontrollable. For instance, she’d put their hair in dreadlocks. ‘Mummy, I can’t
live with this hairdo, I’m getting bullied at school.’ Ari could be quite dictatorial in that way, and very unforgiving and rigid.

It’s very difficult with children; you’ve
got
to let them find themselves. You can’t be inflicting dreadlocks on a fifteen-year-old. It’s just not going to work,
unless they’re fully regimed in that particular religious dictate, which of course they’re completely not. They’re so non-religion! It’s one of the things I’m
extremely proud of in them.

I’d be saying, ‘Come on, Ari, Rastafarianism is a religion that
doesn’t accept equality for women!’ All this time, Ari was living off Nora. All
this, ‘I’m free!’ Oh, yeah? Somebody’s always paying for that kind of freedom, and unfortunately that person was Nora, this constant financial drain on her.

The twins’ names were some ridiculousness that Ari came up with. She didn’t want a name from the Bible, so she found Pedro and Pablo, which is indeed Spanish for Peter and Paul.
Aaaargh!
Hippie-minded liberal parents can cause such problems to their kids. It’s been very difficult for them, because they’re not actually Mexican or Hispanic, and living in
Los Angeles, that’s a real problem, because it’s automatically presumed that they can speak Spanish.
Nooo!
They’d come out with Jamaican patois as an answer, and it
didn’t go down well. But Ari wasn’t to know that problem would arise.

We quickly got them into school, and it was very difficult for them to catch up, because they were basically illiterate, really way behind. Ari had this attitude that education was
‘Babylon system’. That’s all well and fine, but you’ve got to be educated enough to know that. In many ways, taking away a child’s opportunity for education is
absolutely
corrupting
them into ‘Babylon system’, making them unemployable. And, in fact, anti-social.

It was very hard for them when they went to school here. They still had dreadlocks at that time, because Mummy insisted on it. It was hell on earth for them, with Jamaican accents in a Los
Angeles school, with a high rate of Mexican immigrant kids . . . Confusion.

Nora and I differed severely with Ari on the dreadlocks. One of the first things the twins wanted to do when they came to live with us was cut them off. They were very upset with what they had
to endure at school with that, because it labelled them, and it made them stand out for something they couldn’t quite justify. It wasn’t their own belief system. It was also extremely
uncomfortable in the heat to carry a bag of hair dragging down the backside of your head. I think all religious aspects in any human being should be self-determined, and so we gave them that
freedom. We gave them
permission to snip ’em off! It was the happiest day of their lives, not having to be dressed up like Victorian dollies, according to Ari’s
whims.

Of course, that drove Ariane nuts-crazy-bonkers. She was furious. I’d be the big bad bunny in all of this but, you know, you’ve got to free yourself up from the dictates of parents
at a certain point. You know, it’s their life. At sixteen they had the right to determine these things, and self-image is very important. It’s where you start declaring yourself as a
human being. Of course they’re going to make foolish mistakes, and look like daft twots, but that’s the privilege of youth and you can’t take that away. You can’t treat your
children like they belong in a monastery. They’re not property, they’re actually human beings of self-determination, if they’re lucky enough to get good guidance.

Poor things, they went through hell there, but they gave us hell in return. It was very hard for them to adjust to the kind of solidarity that Nora and me were offering them. It left them
feeling very confined, when they were used to running in the world, left to their own devices. The reminder came from us: ‘Well, we’re not paying for that, so that ain’t gonna
happen.’ What they needed was boundaries, as do all kids.

We soon moved out to Malibu for a better school, just to help them catch up. Up until that point in their lives, Pablo and Pedro had mostly been in free schools, and Montessoris, which run along
the hippie guidelines of, ‘Oh, you know, they’ll work at their own pace, one day they’ll just want to learn . . .’ That – does – not – happen. It
doesn’t teach a sense of independence and drive – quite the opposite.

So, ugh, I did my best. I spent quite a while trying to do maths with them. Me, of all people! I also did sentence structure, which is more my thing. Then, as that progressed with them in
school, they started to learn things that I didn’t know, and that helped them a lot. ‘Wha’? Ya don’ know dat? Bu’ I know dat!’ I’d be like, ‘God,
you’re so much cleverer than me!’ Then the self-esteem
would creep in. Mainly, it was just about teaching them a respect for others.

One time when Nora was away, I had to go to a parent-teacher association meeting. Haha, the argument I had with the English teacher, who told me sentence structure didn’t matter!
‘What? You’re telling that to a
songwriter
?’

So the twins have been with us all through the 2000s, and they’re still wrapped around us one way or another. They’ve all gone different ways, and they’re all now different
people and not yet fully realized, I don’t think. They were still in a complete state of ruin for many a year, to my mind, and it’s a problem that they’re still to this day trying
to work out.

Also what happened was that Ari’s younger boy, Wilton, came to live with us. He also doesn’t understand what the guidelines are, because there’s never been any.
‘That’s what
I
want!’ ‘Well, what about the rest of us? Why should we suffer because of what
y
ou
want?’ We’ve been trying to introduce that
sense of empathy with other people.

You have to know that I was never being spiteful or resentful or jealous towards Ari. She may have been an inspiring stage persona for many people, but it’s what goes on when you get back
home that really matters. It’s hard to get people to understand that, but such is the simplistic nonsense of pop music. It’s a beast of our own making, all of us that are involved.
It’s our own fault that we don’t show a more open side, but it’s very difficult because you’re judged every time you walk on a stage, you’re judged in every interview,
in every public representation of yourself. You need time out, and that only comes when you get home and, unless you do a Kardashian on it and have cameras following you about morning, noon and
night, you’re never really going to understand what the full experience is. Indeed, then the cameras become your reality and that is in turn a non-reality. Again, Kardashians.

Ari and I always had a deep respect for each other, always. She said many things over the years, but who cares? It was very
important that I went to see her in the
hospital in 2010, the day before the cancer finally got her and she died. What a fantastic, amazing reunion it was – we sang together. The staff were very generous with us, because
we’ve both got big mouths, so the songs we were singing together were loud! ‘Four Enclosed Walls’ was the major feature, with the ‘
Aaallaahhh!
’ I was trying to
get to grips with where the notes were, but Ari was a very good singer and a very good musician. She got it bang-on, even then.

As a life pursuit for the two of us, parenting for Ari’s kids was almost depressingly educational: you have to realize that they come first. That’s very draining on the creative
selfishness of being artistic. Because there is an element of selfishness in writing songs, the luxury of saying whatever you please. You have to get a little more in tune with the domesticity
situations, and understand that you might not be quite bang on the money in that department. When I’m ranting and raving, there are other aspects to consider, and consider them I have.