Anger is an Energy: My Life Uncensored (71 page)

London has tended to be work, over the last decade, but for the
last couple of Christmases, we’ve been back to see my brother Jimmy, whose cancer is now in
remission. Last year we had a beautiful Christmas party at his house, and we love it. His kids come over, Katie and Liam, with their significant others, and it’s a house of really happy
people.

And so this is the way we are, just quiet – in our loud way. Quiet for me, I’ve got to be fair, is fairly
un-quiet
. I can see that now, but that’s only because I’m
in moments of contemplation, putting this book together.

When I’m out in the public eye, that’s full-on John! The only things I’m ever secretive about are my domestic scenarios, which I don’t think anybody in the public has any
right to. I’ve always gone out of my way to keep my family out of the gossip magazine nonsenses: the
Hello!
’s of this world. You have to have a reality to go home to, not a TV
crew.

The foregoing pages have, I think, let a little light in on my life. If that isn’t met with all due respect, then we’ll just close the shutters again. We’re not bad people, us
lot. Generally speaking, we’re very good-natured and mean nothing but joy to the world. As far as I’m aware, I’ve brought nothing but joy to the wonderful world of anything
I’ve ever touched.

When the offer to appear as King Herod in a US-touring production of
Jesus Christ Superstar
came in, my initial reaction was, ‘Stop it, Rambo, you’re teasing
me again.’ Then, shock-horror, I thought, ‘Oh no, this git, this instigator, really is stirring my pot, like he did with
I’m a Celebrity
.’ Right off the bat, I
obviously said there was no way on earth it could ever work, but he goes, ‘I think it could,’ and Nora said the same. It was their common sense that got me around to thinking,
‘You know what, I could do this.’ With all the scripting and stage directions, it was essentially forcing myself to take orders. Very seriously: the
Final Challenge
!

So I’m doing a musical and what better one to do than
Jesus Christ Superstar
? Ah, the hate mail. The naysayers had already made
their minds up anyway. As
Forrest Gump said, ‘Life is like a box of chocolates,’ and them lot are the delicious soft centres. It is a reward to be chastised by the ignorant. You know, it’s all right,
there’s nothing wrong with rock ‘n’ roll musical theatre. I liked
Quadrophenia
very much – well, maybe the first hour.

The shock value didn’t matter tuppence to me, really. It was about what I’d get out of it as a human being. My learning journey through life. I just love the commitment, and the
challenge, and the grate on my nerves.

I didn’t know any of the other cast personally beforehand, but I didn’t underrate them at all. It was a really mixed bag. Brandon Boyd from Incubus was going to be Judas. Michelle
Williams, the girl from Destiny’s Child, was playing Mary Magdalene, JC Chasez of *NSYNC would be Pontius Pilate and Ben Forster had already played Jesus in the UK production. And John Rotten
Lydon would be King Herod. I’m here to sing with the King of the Jews – who could ask for anything more?

In April 2014, there was a press launch event in New York. On the day before, I had a costume fitting and then a bunch of us were invited out for a meal including myself, Rambo, Ben, JC, Brandon
and the promoter Michael Cohl. I met Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber for the first time backstage right before the press conference.

At the event itself, there was a bit of an atmosphere. When you meet people for the first time and nobody knows what they’re doing, certain types of personalities can take offence where no
harm was meant. It was six of one, half a dozen of another.

It was all jolly hockey sticks, and all very theatrical with all the Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber people. The whole cast was nervous. They reinforced that thing I always suspected: we wallow
in the fear, we can’t avoid it. In fact, we go looking for it, and then can hardly handle it, it’s so tense. We’re addicted to self-inflicted torture!

It felt like a band-on-tour vibe. Everybody was really excited. It was going to be six to eight shows a week – proper hard work. I was
only going to be onstage to
do my one song, but that was almost an extra pressure – I better get that one thing right.

From there, I dived right into it. Rehearsals started in New Orleans in June at a wonderful old converted fire station. It was the perfect place after all the hustle and bustle of New York. I
left my ego at the door. I went into a genre, and a type of singing, that I had nothing but negative feelings about, and I found it to be a very generous and rewarding world where people really do
share.

I was careful
not
to check out previous performances of ‘Herod’s Song’. Rik Mayall RIP had done it in one UK stage version. He used a lot of early Rottenisms,
apparently, so that way I could’ve ended up parodying myself, by default, without even intending to.

In rehearsals, the female singing instructor said, ‘Don’t worry, John, we’re not going to bother you with the “do-re-mi’s”.’ I’ve been singing for
nearly forty years, and yet I was really worried about hitting a bum note in practice, before I even sang the song. And I couldn’t go into my usual trip of not talking and sitting there
shaking with nerves, because that would’ve been unfair to everybody around me. We were doing it in fairly tight quarters.

At the core of it, I wanted to understand stagecraft, and not from a cynical outsider’s point of view. It was a bloody great opportunity to just
fiddle about
in a proper way. I had
good chats with Laurence Connor, the director, who I found very helpful and great to work with, and the bloke playing Jesus, Ben Forster, came down to help me – he was fantastically friendly.
Everyone was willing you to do your best. I only ever thought that happened with panto. There was a great sense of ‘bond’, and ‘ensemble’, which to me had always just
conjured visions of pianos falling down staircases.

It stops you being shy, which is always gonna be a problem of mine, but it also stops you being an egomaniac, which is also a problem of mine. And one, sadly enough, is a direct response to the
other. With both of those things left to the side, it was a delicious learning curve.

Within two days I found myself bouncing around, learning
dance moves, and being very happy doing it – very happy adhering to somebody else’s song. And being
able to shape-shift in and around that, and being given the space to do so. They were saying, ‘Well, now you can add your flavour, if you want, John.’ Fantastic generosity, sharing and
camaraderie.

They wanted me to play King Herod a bit like a slimy game show host, but with a Rotten twist. The clothes were an important part of that. I
had
to be involved in the design. I
love
my clothes. I needed to feel I was wearing the outfit and it wasn’t wearing me. I didn’t want anything that had gone before in previous productions. So I worked closely with the
production and the design teams to come up with something special. I probably drove them mad, but it had to be right. I’d originally toyed with the idea of doing it as a slick ’50s
Teddy Boy but in the end we decided on a variation of a nineteenth-century Southern gentleman kind of look. Do you want a bit of detail? Johnny will give you attention to detail! Tangerine, purple
and mauve paisley brocade jacket – with black satin lapel, collar and cuffs – embellished with Swarovski Crystal sequins. White butterfly-collar shirt with a thick purple Ascot knotted
cravat-type tie, and an orange-gold waistcoat. Black trousers and patent leather Prada brogues. We had the suit made up in New Orleans and when I saw it on my arrival it was exactly how I had
pictured it. When I put it on I fell completely into the role.

I practically ran to the rehearsals each day. Everybody was so ripe and ready for it, and then –
bang!
The promoter, Michael Cohl, decides to pull the whole tour.

I was in my room doing phone interviews, and I was angry because I wanted to get to rehearsals – I wanted to do some work around the old piano with the vocal coach and the piano player, in
advance of actually fully rehearsing. I’d got dressed early – I wanted to go down early. I went into Rambo’s room, and he was in there in a meeting with two of the tour’s
management team. They were all very quiet, and I bounced in – ‘Hello everybody!’ – and Rambo stood up and went, ‘I’ve got some bad news – it’s
off.’

I thought he was joking. No, he wasn’t. My face hit the floor. It was really, really sad. Rambo says he almost saw a tear in my eye. They filled me in, and it was a
dizzy moment in the head. My first thought was, ‘I’ve got to go and meet the crew and cast, to see how they feel.’ They were all gathering in the hotel lobby, and we sat around
the bar and just talked. It was very, very, very sad. But then we started to break the ice with bad, dark-humour jokes, and then eventually – ‘Well, let’s go out and have
lunch.’

Eventually, the production company took us all out to an afternoon lunch/dinner, the last supper as we called it, and that went on to ‘Well, let’s go clubbing,’ and quite
frankly you couldn’t pick a better place than New Orleans in the entire world for that. We really had a laugh – this huge mob of theatricals, which I was more than happy to be one of.
It was like one of those dance movies, where everybody gets up and dances out on the street – that’s kind of what we did. We danced away to the clubs, and danced from one club to
another.

It was such a tragedy, because to my mind this was going to be a most excellent tour for me. I didn’t have the responsibility of ‘leadership’ here, I was just ‘one
of’. It was a very good feeling. I knew what my role was, I knew what my part was, I knew how I had to do that, and not let everybody down by showing off and being a ridiculous whatever
– but then all of that was taken away from all of us. Amazingly catastrophic.

At the same time, I met some really excellent people. My God, my heart goes out to them, because everybody had committed, we’d all given up lots of work, and lots of other things we
could’ve been getting on with, and the cheque’s just withdrawn from you, and you’re facing financial ruin, in some cases. Some of them had rented out their apartments and had
nowhere to go.

This is what happens in life. It would have been a sensational production. It would have worked. I can happily say it wasn’t any of
our
faults.

For the moment, of course, that now leaves the way clear for a
new PiL album, which we’re hoping to start around the time this book lands in the shops. It’s a
pity that it comes in on the tail of a letdown, but I won’t be using that as a backdrop. Disappointment to me is a constant. All that work and learning won’t be wasted. I’m going
to pull all the positives out.

I’m also looking back at acting in a different way now. It’s given me a confidence to accept those challenges and to work inside other people’s scripts. I think I have enough
going on inside my own head now, that I can take those challenges on without challenging the challenge.

I love my life. I manage to get myself in all manner of pickles, usually of my own making. I can’t forever and a day be out there – duh! – left to my own devices, because
I’m used to Johnny Rotten, but I don’t want Johnny Rotten to be just Johnny Rottenisms in another field. Because that’s not how this is going to work. In the same way as when I
did shows like
Shark Attack
,
Goes Ape
, or
I’m a Celebrity
, I had to leave my ego outside, and get on with what I was doing, and just be myself, and actually learn to like
myself.

That’s all been very good research, and I found out a great deal about myself. I’ve got to get over this self-doubt thing. It’s still there. It always will be, that fear of
letting people down. It’s a hard anvil I’ve tied around my neck. But it’s what gives me the energy to go on and go forth. Like, if there’s more wild and crazy offers there
in the future coming out of this, then I’d be more than happy to take ’em on.

It’s that endless challenge of ‘What’s next?’ You know: ‘Okay, done that . . . what’s next?’

Actually, what
is
next?

Come ooooooon, what’s next???

One last thing I want to see in this life is for me personally to hit the highest note possible. And if that requires that I burst every blood vessel in my body, and my brain
pops out of my ears, that would be for me the most wonderful way to die. I don’t necessarily mean on a stage, in a theatre or an auditorium; I could do that on my death bed. But to finally
reach that note that connects with God . . . spelled backwards is still ‘dog’.

But that’s serious, right? I know I’m wrapping that around a cocoon of, ‘Wow, is that boy off on something!’, but I’ve given myself this job of singer, communicator
– translator, really – and that’s what I’m still searching for. That final note. I can feel it in me. It’s about finally reaching something that’s, aaah, beyond
human, beyond your alleged capabilities, and you don’t know what that is, but that’s what you’re striving for.

I think that’s what everybody strives for. What was that Andy Williams song: ‘To dreeeeeeam the impossible dream’. As an idea, it’s on the lunatic fringe, I understand
that, but I don’t know anyone who isn’t a lunatic, frankly. We’re all striving for something we can’t possibly get to. For me, it’s hitting that note that only a dog
whistle can reach, or the lowest bass note that’ll
make your bowels drop out. None of us have those capabilities, but if you can actually feel that you’ve
reached there, that’s the perfect time to die.

And this is what it’ll say on my gravestone: ‘That last note was
unlistenable
’ . . .