Something's Rotten in LA

{Johnny Rotten, aka Lydon, Q'n'A'd for playboy.com, prior to the Sex Pistols reunion tour a couple of years back ... Yes, I'm temporizing until I churn up some of that "fresh meat" I keep promising to throw on the grill ...}

He proclaimed himself an anti-Christ in the first sentence of his first record. “Anarchy in the U.K.” was a snarling smash-up that made the once and future Johnny Rotten not merely a reviled or adored iconoclast, but a cultural symbol that transcended the brief, chaotic and abortive career of the Sex Pistols – which ended in January 1978 with a calamitous American tour. Bassist Sid Vicious was dead just over a year later, victim of a heroin overdose while awaiting trial for the murder of his girlfriend Nancy Spungen. It was an ugly, scandalous, blood-spattered ending to “The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle,” as the band’s apocalyptic art project was termed. But, over the years, the Sex Pistols never really went away, their saga recurring in films (such as Alex Cox’s “Sid and Nancy” and the Pistols-approved documentary, “The Filth and the Fury”), books (Greil Marcus’s epic “Lipstick Traces,” Jon Savage’s “England’s Dreaming”) and song. “The king is gone but he's not forgotten,” Neil Young once declared. “This is the story
of a Johnny Rotten.”

The story isn’t over. The offstage John Lydon, now a happy resident of Los Angeles and former television persona (he enjoyed a brief run as the host of VH-1’s “Rotten TV”), is up to his old tricks. The Sex Pistols have reunited! Actually, it’s the second time around on that front, as the band also reformed in 1996. Then as now, original bassist Glen Matlock fills the Sid-slot, while guitarist Steve Jones and drummer Paul Cook assume their old roles. With a 12-city U.S. tour
Beginning August 20 in Boston, the band is keeping it nasty, brutish and short. That’s just as their fans – whom Lydon insists now includes a good number of angry middle-aged housewives – would most likely prefer it. But there’s another twist to the tale: Lydon plans to take Baghdad. That’s right, the Pistols are campaigning to play an Iraqi charity gig. Politics occupied his thoughts as much as the punk-rock legacy left in the Sex Pistols wake: a legacy Lydon views as thoroughly dubious. He speaks in a constantly modulating voice, shot through with the rough wit of working-class England and a highly animated quality that inflects many of his comments with knowing mockery and exaggerated attitudes. He is, perhaps, the most Swiftian of rock stars, an intractable wrench in the star-making machinery.

Me: John, how’s it going?

Lydon: Well, we got this little’ tour coming up. But it’s quite amazing the bleedin’ obstacles put before us. We’ve gone through tour managers at a relentless pace. They seem to come in, look at it, and run. Record companies, no interest at all from them. As far as sponsorship goes, nobody wants to have a tax cut on our name. Even Tampax turned us down. Sanitary napkins? We’d be more than happy! I know I’m one of the disenfranchised and always will be. And so what? I don’t care. That’s our audience also. And there are many like us. We’re the majority.

Hasn’t it always been thus?

Yeah. I don’t expect no help from this industry, I don’t care for it. You’ve got your Rock and Roll Hall of Shame, and if that’s what people are going to judge reality by, that’s a world I don’t need to live in.

I’m surprised you haven’t scored a sponsor.

It’s the way we are. We tend not to give a shit. And I suppose we went fishing a bit too late. The second they heard I was ferreting into playing in Baghdad, wooo. We’re talking some unreturned phone calls.

Was there a political backdraft there?

I don’t know. What do any of us know? I’m not going over there to play for the troops. I can play to the troops in their own countries. I’d be going there for the people. I don’t see a problem in it.

How tricky is that to set up?

You wouldn’t believe it. You would not believe it. I don’t mean to be paranoid. Hello, we’re probably being monitored right now. And so what? Tits! Tits! Tits! Let’s just talk tits and cunts!

Can’t you ring up your friend Tony Blair to sort it out?

Ah, ha ha. I do not see eye-to-eye with that man. I don’t like socialism. We’re not all equal. We’re not supposed to be.

So, then, do you prefer the British class system to the more Darwin-like American –

I cannot stand the class system. I’m not talking that. I don’t like that kind of oppression. Right? But I don’t think to fight that you say, “You’re not spasticated. You’re just vertically challenged.” I think you’re not facing up to something when you talk like that. And that’s a hypocrisy.

You’ve been in Los Angeles for a long time. There must be something here you like?

I like Americans very much. No problem. [Belch]. I like England, but I don’t like the government. And the government here is as wack as anywhere else. Ain’t no different. I don’t know where that lot [the Bush Administration] go to breed. It’s ridiculous. I suppose in England they vote in idiots that can talk clever or sound clever, and have a bigger vocabulary, but it’s still an idiot. At least your idiots can’t spell potato.

So you’re still untangling the red tape to get to Baghdad?

Gawwww. [Laughter]. Last week, I was asked that. I said, yeah I got bigger scissors. It’s now a fucking chainsaw. There are internal and external negatives coming at me. But that is not a silly novelty trick. I don’t do things for those reasons. I would like to see the Sex Pistols become the Iraqi Water Pistols. They’re still thirsty!

Are you sure it’s not going to be like Sting waltzing into the Rain Forest, glad-handing the pygmies?

No waaaaay! I’m not doing this for publicity! I don’t mind telling you though. And I don’t mind it being filmed. No, this isn’t one of those sanctimonious – this is not a fund-raising expedition. This is charity gig, mate, off our own back. And we can hardly fuckin’ afford it. That’s the difference between us and the rest of the pack. You might see the Sex Pistols as negative, nihilistic and a bit of a con and a swindle, but you’d be wrong! The whole point, when we told you those things, you were supposed to understand irony.

I think a lot of people got it.

I think so, too. But a lot of journalists don’t.

After “The Filth and the Fury,” the Sex Pistols documentary that came out a couple of years ago, it would all seem pretty clear, right?

There’s an entire cottage industry out there that’s turned into actually a city of rip-off merchants. This entire punk movement: Look, this is a title given by Caroline Coon in Melody Maker. Years ago she called me the King of Punk. I had a blazing row with her, because I didn’t like that term. And ever since then, that term’s been applied to a genre of music and it’s transformed into a uniform and a list of rules and regulations, and rigid attitudes, and humorless, and bland outright copying, and fake – and I don’t like it. It’s the enemy.

When was the first time you realized that was the case?

Probably two days before I started the band.

Do you feel like you – yourself – have continued to be swindled over the years? I mean beyond [former Sex Pistols manager and self-styled svengali] Malcolm McLaren, whom you sued and beat in court?

I was swindled the first day I signed the contract.

We all know that part.

I’ve had a very serious learning curve! At a very, very early age. Seventeen, 18, to be thrown in to that. It’s like this: I don’t go along with all these junkies in this business, blaming the industry for the pressure. I’ve got even worse pressure than anyone, really. Being Mr. Rotten was a fucking heavy load to carry at 18. And I’m here, and I’m no junkie.

What was the hardest part of that?

Loneliness. You do get yourself isolated. ‘Cos who do you trust? Everybody’s out to steal from ya. But you get used to anything, I suppose.

Last time the Sex Pistols toured, the slogan was “Fat, Forty and Back!” --

That was because the British press were very negative before we started – and still are –

They’ve never been nice to you, have they?

No, they haven’t, and in a way that’s been really useful. Whether they like it or not, they’ve given me a wonderful career and it hasn’t cost a penny. I knew at that press conference that they were going to go into whatever, so I initiated it. I just stood up and said, look: Fat, forty and back. We’re here for the money. So what? And the joke is, how could we be? Really? There’s something more in it, there has to be. There’s a deep loyalty between us, to each other. We know what we’ve gone through. We don’t like each other, but there’s something better going on.

Has your relationship with the other band members
ever approached friendship?

It’s everything all at the same time. Human beings are volatile creatures. We’re all over-selfish at times, and we’re all over-generous. Hate to me is such a waste of time. It just requires too much energy.

Would you say anger is more useful?

Anger is, yes. Anger you can work out and see more clearly. This isn’t for everyone, this is just how I work. I’m a victim of meningitis in a coma! A six-month coma when I was 7. So, I have to get my brain to do something right.

Do you enjoy getting on stage, still?

Not the process beforehand. I’m nervous all day, and panicked.
Always will be. Can’t eat. Shakes. Stage fright, I suppose you call it. But one song. Cor! Love it. Love it! And why not? Someone like me given a chance to say what they think, it’s incredible.

What did you think the first time?

Well, I never thought that Kelly Osbourne would be describing herself as a punk all these days later. That one’s difficult to come to terms with.

See what you wrought!

I know. Daddy must be turning in his … drug dish? It’s kind of silly. What do they think it means? What’s the joy of grabbing at a category like that, and calling yourself something that someone else has done?

Given all the mediocrity out there –

Good word! That’s a very good word because it’s led by “media.”

And followed by “crit.” Is there anyone you respect musically?

Probably. Not off the top of my head. Every now and again there’s a little gem. Even if there’s highly corrupt, formulated boy bands or girl bands, every now and then they make a really great record. What’s the harm in that? You can’t yin without a bit of yang.

The Rev. Horton Heat’s on your tour? He must be OK.

Yes! Raging nutcase. Love him. Kate Bush I respect. Always will. Tori Amos, confused about. I don’t get it. To me, she’s like an American Kate Bush but without the content, without the genuine heart. Things that move me, people screaming about wanting to die, things that sound like they mean it. You can tell emotion, and emotion doesn’t come note perfect. Never does. Listen to someone crying.

Of your lyrics, which lines would you like to be remembered for?

“Could be wrong. Could be right.” It’s up to you. It’s not for me to judge myself. I just do the best I can with it. I don’t do no wrong, but if you wrong me, you got a fucking enemy for life. And that’s how it should be. There’s a line, a wall of respect, and if somebody trips over that – kill ‘em.

In that case, how would you resolve the Iraq situation?

I don’t know if I would have started it, quite frankly. Resolve it? There’s only one way and that’s shitloads of money. If you don’t get the UN in to share that burden, you’re really silly. Look at Afghanistan. They’ve been knocked back five centuries. And that’s not helpful. You’re not gonna answer men on the back of donkeys and camels with airport technology and surveillance equipment. I mean the last lot did it with plastic knives! Forget it. They’re attacking you with plastic cutlery! Get wise. If somebody’s angry, find out why they’re angry and solve that. But I don’t think 100 tanks blowing down the street does fuck-all. But sometimes it might. I’m up for getting rid of bad bastards. You ask me which side of the fence I’m on: USA. Because it’s common sense. There’s more better things here than there is there. I don’t want the whole world to be like Iraq. So there’s your reason for being there, and that’s all that needs to be said and all that should have been said in the first place. All this “weapons of mass destruction” – it sounds like a stupid album title for Boyz II Men.

Or Guns N’ Roses.

Oh yes. That new lot.

That album will never come out.

Who’s in that supergroup they’ve formed?

Buckethead, the guitarist who plays with a KFC bucket on his head. A guy from Nine Inch Nails. Tommy Stinson, from the Replacements.

They played here the other week. Their opening song was “Bodies” [one of the more virulent songs from “Never Mind the Bollocks”]. It’s like, oh yeah, right, go supergroup! You need to do somebody else’s song. That’s good.

How was their version?

Their version? Dead slow. [Laughs]. That’s a long train coming, that one.

You should get back on TV.

Fuckin’ right, I miss it. I miss it. I miss it. September 11 screwed a lot of things for everyone, but particularly anyone that had something going – or raised a point of view that might not be the official line. At the same time, I see opposite points of view as not being a threat at all but highly bloody useful.

You should get on The O’Reilly Factor.

I’d like to have a word with him. He still hasn’t shaved his hair. He promised didn’t he? How everybody quickly forgets. But I don’t. I’d like to bring the shaver. [Laughs]. What’s the opposite of a Mohawk?

A tonsure? A landing strip?

O’Reilly couldn’t make it in politics, he couldn’t make it with the Kennedys. So he went Republican.

It’s always there. You can always convert.

And I see [“Politically Incorrect” host] Bill Maher heading that way, too. It’s very odd.

Maybe he’s just chasing Ann Coulter.

They need to be liked, so they do whatever is required. If you can’t question your own philosophies, and you have to – daily – then they’re not philosophies you should be following. Rules are for fools.

I think a lot of people who purport to be some sort of political firebrands are playing a part, but I don’t trust their integrity.

You shouldn’t. When I met Newt Gingrich, I really liked him. He’s one of the very few politicians who outright said, look, I’m a politician. I’m a liar by trade. Great. Thank you. Watch him, he’s way clever that one. He’s always making moves. Margaret Thatcher, her politics were everything that I ever despised, but I really liked her because she stood by what she said.

She was honest, right, even if she was a bitch?

She would give you a word back. Fantastic.

How did you meet Newt?

It was the last Rotten show. I went to the Democratic and Republican conventions. I think because I went to the Republican, VH-1 were angry. It’s all very much Clinton World there. They were fearful I would come out of it a Republican. And I said if I did it would be because they’re right. Why are you worried?

Hoo boy.

It’s a silly world we live in. So do I get a free subscription to the porno?

I’ll inquire on your behalf.

I’d like to keep abreast of the situation.

I can’t imagine why not.

Oh, stop.