Anger is an Energy: My Life Uncensored (58 page)

If anything, it means I’m much more thoughtful now when I put a song together. I love hurting institutions but I don’t want to actually hurt people. Yes, now there is some
forethought, some perspective.
Whoooaaarrr!
How do you say, ‘I’m a very nice person’, without dying of laughter? Quite frankly, if I wait for others to say it, it’s
never going to be heard. There’ll always be that element out there imagining I’m just the world’s nastiest bastard. And why not? I suppose there must be that element to me,
somewhat, and thank God for it, because it’s him what did it, Officer. Not me – blame God. That’s a double-barrelled gun, you see, that whole thing of ‘God made me,
I’m an act of nature’. ‘Thank you! Then blame God, it’s him what did it . . .’

The house was certainly cosy with the kids around. I loved that time, because it gave me that sense of family. I love kids around. I’m one of those people – not always, but mostly
– who doesn’t mind the screaming and the shouting and the squealing and the yelling, so long as it’s happy sounds I’m hearing.

However, the situation with Martin’s family living in the outhouse in Venice Beach did get unbearable after a while. Sometimes, trying to live with family members
is a waste of time. Because you all end up at each other’s throats and the over-familiarity can lead to all manner of problems. There’s no hate in this, it’s just that when Martin
developed his family around us, and then the twins arrived – the whole thing just piled up into a zoo-like atmosphere. You try concentrating in that. Having a recording studio built into the
room between the kitchen and the front room is like trying to make a record on a subway station.

So things fell apart in that way and, at the same time, the necessity to make records in my own living room became less and less interesting. It becomes too much of an infringement on your
personal life. You have no escape from it. There’s moments when you’ve run out of ideas and you need the pressure lightened. A moment of reprieve which you don’t get when the
equipment’s all wrapped around you. There’s nowhere to turn, so it’s not a good idea, home recording. Not unless you’ve got a shed at the end of the garden – something
not attached to the place you actually live in. Maybe get an allotment. Because it turns you off the very thing that got you involved in it in the first place – the love. The love becomes
cumbersome, and that’s not right.

Martin’s got two children, and they’re both now working here in Los Angeles. Martin himself just does odd jobs here and there. Very early on, he got American citizenship. He decided
he never wanted to go back to London. There was nothing there for him. You know, ‘No future’. Quite literally, just no jobs. Nothing. No interest. There’s no way out of the trap.
The tedium of council flat existence – it’s an incredibly unfair universe, Britain. You’re led into a life of crime, accidentally, against your wishes. It’s the only way to
make the money.

So Martin’s seen no reason to go back, and never did. He’s happy here, and he turned out to be a really marvellous father. It’s wonderful to watch. As for the eldest of my
three brothers, Jimmy: as madcap as he is, he’s a wonderful dad too, and so is Bobby, the
middle one. These days, Jimmy’s painting and decorating, any old job
that a working-class lad can get up to. Bobby’s moved to Northern Ireland. He married a Northern Irish girl – out there, he repairs burglar alarms, he did a bit of plumbing, he’s
a bit of an electrician – a very technically minded and quiet person, if prone to the killer one-liner. Wit does run in the Lydons.

Like Martin, Jimmy and Bobby both raised kids really well. Smart kids, not one of them is a duffer. I’m really proud that my family endures and brings forth very good people. That bodes
well for humanity in the future.

Me and Nora, we couldn’t have children after problems when we were young. Nora had a very difficult childbirth with Ari and, to cut a long story short, it hasn’t been possible since.
Looking back, our lives wouldn’t have allowed it, anyway. I was constantly touring in them days with PiL, just constantly too active to give the proper attention to what a child would need,
to be in this world. It’s 100 per cent, a kid.

Rambo never saw himself as management material. I always pushed for him to step up to that role. He started out just wanting to do security, but eventually, round about the
year 2000, he moved up. As situations developed, the opportunities were there, and I’d keep pushing him because I know he’s got what it takes. Anyone who can organize a coachload of
football scoundrels can do anything. To keep that well in order, that’s a skill in itself.

In the past, before he came on board, situations would arise where I’d just go, ‘I can’t cope!’ and just sit around for years. I got very tired with everything being done
in a business-like way. I find that if it’s done by the book, it doesn’t work. This kind of industry is not the place for set rules. Problems can shape-shift on you instantly and you
have to be able to react to that and not just be pedantic. That’s not slagging anybody off, just me myself – I can’t work with a strict businessman, it slows the process down an
enormous amount. It becomes very tedious.

Rambo’s a stickler; it’s one of the greatest things of working with him. I can tend to fob it off with an ill-phrased expression. With me, the paddy can lurk
in there and I’ll hum over the details. That can lead to confusion. Sometimes, what I see as relevant is actually not. When you work with a bloke like Rambo, it’s got to be 100 per
cent. His stamina and commitment are irrepressible. He holds himself fully accountable, and that’s an amazing concept.

Doing my security, he was the best. He taught me a lot. Like, you don’t want to leave yourself open 360 degrees, so you narrow it down. When I was on Skinner and Baddiel’s
Fantasy
Football League
on British TV in 1998, it all got messy. I weren’t gonna toe the line with those pompous stuck-up alleged comedians, mocking old England players, turning football into the
farce that it’s become. In the press the next day they even started accusing me of attacking a producer.

What really went on was that I wouldn’t play by their rules – they didn’t like me outsmarting the presenters. When I went off during the break they locked the doors and
wouldn’t let me back on the show, so they brought in their security which involved all these lumps trying to come and smack my head. Rambo quickly took charge of the situation – in the
corridor there was a right turn, so we went in the corner, and they couldn’t get at us, all these professional lumps. We stood our ground and held firm. There was only one way to us and that
was full-frontal into us, and they couldn’t do it, they couldn’t risk it –
wouldn’t
risk it. It’s football-crowd skills, but you can apply that mentally.
That’s a physical reality that you have to deal with, and that’s a very useful way of lowering the odds of getting hurt. We slowly marched out the building with our heads held high
– with a ‘good night and a good evening’ to the security.

Rambo’s a difficult fella for you to get around and understand, but I’ll tell you what, once you do, you will love him forever. He’s a fucking diamond, a man as good as his
word. There ain’t nothing wrong going on in him, and he’s the most hardcore fuck there
is. He knows me not as Johnny Rotten, he knows me as John the human being.
A small amount of people would just have him down as a thug ambassador, but he’s not, he’s much, much more than that. He’s John, the Rambo.

Around the time that Rambo took over, I was getting more into the world of film and TV – far more than I ever did, ironically, when we were talking so much about it in
early PiL days. I got this offer to do my own programme from VH1, which was like an MTV for older viewers. Given the chance, I obviously jumped straight in.

Immediately it came down to scripting. The stuff that was put in front of me – ha! I kept some of it because it was so silly, but I look back at it and think, ‘Thank God I avoided
that!’ So basically I approached the head office, in a big board meeting, with the idea that there’d be no scripts. Scripts are not my thing, they’re too limiting. I don’t
mind a rough idea, but as for writing dialogue and expecting me to
verbiage
that back at a camera? That’s never going to happen. It doesn’t work like that with me.

The leeway they gave me was this: okay, do what you want, but we’re not paying so much for it. ‘Okay, that’s fine with me’ – I can make an excellent, low-budget
work. I loved the challenge. I also liked the people I had lined up to work on it with me: a guy called Rob Barnett was very good fun, and a fella, Jay Blumenfield, who’s gone on to become
quite a big producer and director. Together, we just had fun with it.

The most difficult part was putting together the presentation reel. That was a pretentious lack of fun, limited to this studio-type warehouse place which had a big multi-purpose screen at the
back. I was expected to walk across in front of different images projected on it, waffling lyrically about why this was a must-see programme, with no actual programmes already made. It was like
advancing the theory before you even have the theory. I understand that for people forking out money, you’re not gonna be stupidly risk-taking willy-nilly, so I’m not moaning about it.
I kind of like budget
restraints, I can work very well in that, but I cannot work under content restraint. That I will never accept.

Again, it came down to problems about my dialogue. ‘Here is a list of words you cannot use!’ It was all the usual ones: ‘fuck, damn, cunt, bastard’. ‘Twot’ is
a big word not to use on American TV. To me it’s a casual expression: ‘Oh, shut up, you silly twot!’ Here in the States it means a vagina. I suppose it does in Britain, too, but
not to the same degree of, ‘I’ve never been so mortally offended.’ The level of angst the Americans place on that word is
ridiculous
.

In the first proper episode, I sat in a tank and exploded a blowup doll covered in priceless Sex Pistols memorabilia. That was one of the best things. I’ve always wanted to be in a tank. I
used a wonderful Alan Stivell theme tune for the show – I love Alan Stivell’s music; it’s Breton Celtic, very old traditional folkie stuff, but with electric guitars – used
in a bad way, sometimes, but mostly very interesting. It can be quite cinematic. And it blended well with a bloody great big tank, let me tell you. Ploughing up a field with all manner of armoured
vehicles was just a dream come true. We picked out targets, and of course it would be blasts from the past, like some of the no-no’s of the Sex Pistols – like Sid’s alleged
suicide note. Why not throw bombs at all that? If anyone can, I can.

I really would have loved a studio audience, but what it turned into was filmed escapades – just going out and doing interesting things, and trying to find people worthy of a conversation.
I could talk to the Devil, but once the camera’s on, I find I’m looking at this person and I’m not the slightest bit interested in anything they have to say! I don’t want to
hear the same old answer that I’ve already researched in my notes. I like the element of surprise and unfortunately with cameras, people become incredibly unnatural. I know this happens to me
from time to time. They make you dive into a box of phobias.

On the other hand, I had the opportunity to turn the coin, so rather than be interviewed by what I thought were halfwits, as had
been my experience for twenty-five years,
I’d actually indeed be doing the interview. It was role reversal, and I found that I didn’t like it at first. It’s something where you have to dig deep inside yourself to find the
motivation. Now I’m perfectly fine, but at the time it was all too much pressure on me. It seems silly to now think, what the hell’s difficult about sitting down and asking a couple of
questions out of anybody? Well, at the time, quite a lot, because all my worries were, ‘My God, look at that septic spot, I’ll be laughed at.’ And, you know, ‘Are my ears
too big for a camera close-up?’

There was definitely an outbreak of spots when we went up to the Sundance Film Festival. I had a serious food allergy at the time, and it only got worse freezing up there in a fabulous ski
resort in Utah. We were up there because the Sex Pistols documentary,
The Filth And The Fury
, was getting its premiere at Sundance.

A lot of work had gone into that movie. We dug out some amazing old footage, and we Pistols all appeared as blacked-out silhouettes on camera, which I think was just down to the low-level
lighting that was available. No, I jest. The idea was to do it like a
Crimewatch
kind of programme, where informers are blacked out to protect their identity. It was the same kind of thing
as the
Never Mind The Bollocks
cover looking like a blackmail note – that teasing with criminality, but hopefully never actually being criminal – except musically! The thing is,
we’re seen in all the video clips, and everybody in the world knows what we look like, so why give you more of the same? Try and put a fun twist on it, as opposed to Malcolm in a bloody
rubber face mask.

I think I was very open in the parts where I was interviewed. The tears for Sid – I
meant
that. The death of anybody bothers me, particularly friends that I felt really close to.
There’s no point in trying to fake a thing like that. I’m like that, I cry like a baby at funerals, I cry like a baby at the death of anybody. It really gets to me. I feel a terrible
sad loss even for complete strangers.

I didn’t think it should come as a shock. People try to chisel you
into a cartoon image of yourself. The narrow insular selfish little git that people wanted to
believe Johnny Rotten was. Mr Annoying Man. My songs were echoes of rebellion and empathy for people, and certainly not as the work of some sneery, selfish little turd.

Anyway, so through
The Filth And The Fury
we basically blagged our way into Sundance, and documented it for
Rotten TV
, all wrapped around the most wonderful ski holiday I’ve
ever had. At the hotel we booked into, I could ski right from the front door down the mountain and take the cable car back up. I’d do that three or four times every morning, then off to do a
little bit of work.