John Lydon: On PiL, the Pistols, the Pope and much more...

Interviewing John Lydon is a bit like the journalistic equivalent of herding cats.

The ex-Pistol is brilliant at answering questions, but not necessarily the one you’ve just asked him.

“John, do you like turnips?” “Yeah, Stuart, cucumbers are amazing.” We don’t actually get around to talking about his predisposition towards various vegetables today, but you get my drift.

In the interests of cohesiveness, I’ve reluctantly had to leave out John’s random thoughts on Liam Brady, Birmingham City fans, Dave Allen, Carry On films, and Stacia from Hawkwind who’s a Hot Press reader, so, “Hello, Stacia!”

When not going off on wildly entertaining tangents, the 62-year-old Californian exile can be surprisingly sentimental, as evidenced by his reaction to me telling him Big Tom has died.

“Aw, no, Stuart,” he says sounding like a dead ringer for Baldrick from Black Adder. “My Mum and Dad loved Big Tom & The Mainliners so I grew up with those tunes – ‘Gentle Mother’ and ‘Old Love Letters’ – always there. They had a very varied taste, which influenced me in later years. They’d quite happily put Big Tom in with The Kinks and The Beatles and anything else they could hop around in the front room to.”

Like a lot of us, Lydon has spent most of his adult life trying to come to terms with his childhood.

“Well, my teenage years were taken away from me, weren’t they, with various illnesses,” he notes. “This is the childhood I never had. And children, if they’re uncontaminated by bad parents, don’t lie: they tell it like it is. That’s where I want to be in the world. I’m not by any means a saint but I mean what I say.”

Big Tom isn’t the only house wife’s favourite that John has a soft spot for.

“I’ve become good friends with Engelbert Humperdinck,” he reveals. “These guys have endured an awful lot and are just relieved to share it with someone who’s had similar experiences. It’s thrilling because he’s the older guy teaching me the tricks: how to cope with the pressures that can become overwhelming. He’s taught me self-respect and self-awareness. Engelbert’s totally open-hearted and open-minded, which are the things I understand and respect.”

The current arguing about whether or not Ireland should compete next year in Tel Aviv – Lydon has told Hot Press before that he’s not in favour of cultural boycotts – might have been avoided if we’d sent him to this year’s Eurovision instead of Ryan O’Shaughnessy.

“It was put across in the media as a bit of a joke but I was dead serious and really up for it,” he insists. “I’d have improved the entire situation no end. We were going to put in a very interesting piece of music, which most people would see as an eye-opener. It has cowbells. No dance routine yet, but we’ve a year to sort one out. We’ll come back with it again in 2019. I can’t guarantee every fucker will give it douze points but your toe will tap! We’re a very, very, very talented bunch of folk.”

I urge you all to join me in sending a “No Johnny at the Eurovision = No licence fee, mate” missive to the Director General, RTÉ, Donnybrook, Dublin 4.

Christmas comes early for PiL fans on July 20 with the release of The Public Image Is Rotten: Songs From The Heart, a monster 40th birthday box-set that’ll be followed in August by Dublin and Bangor, County Down shows. Given that the Pistols managed to self-destruct in under three years, did John expect his next band to reach such a ripe old age?

“None of us in our industry really see any longevity in it at all,” he reflects. “We’re all institutionalised to think it’s temporary and just ‘go for the money, honey.’ But me, I didn’t, I went the other way. I ignored the money side of things and developed a career based on accuracy and songs that mean something from the heart: songs about the death of my father, songs about the people I’ve met along the way, songs of happiness, songs of joy and songs of great tragedy. There it is: that’s me. I’m a human being, not a pop star. The songs relate to the audience: I can see it in their eyes, which is why I like intimate gigs. We’re sharing emotions in such an amazingly excellent way. The audience is the battery that feeds the engine. These are people willing me on to tell it like it is. I could have opted for stadium rock and the money way back when, but this is much more important. It feels like church without religion to me. It’s remarkable that I’ve achieved so much yet, personally, feel that I’ve achieved so little.”

Such self-deprecation ill befits a man who won a Hot Press Kiss Me Quick Award in 1978.

“Which fucking fell apart… you cheapskates!” he cackles. “Forty years is not really long enough for someone like me to tell a life’s existence. To the day I die I’ll be writing about that. From the Pistols onwards, I’ve seen it as an opportunity to tell the truth and, by doing that, to show the respect I think my mother and father deserved. Because they had to endure an awful lot from me when I was young, being so seriously ill and just difficult to deal with, I suppose.”

Asked whether it was a relief to depart the notoriously combustive Sex Pistols and be in a band with three people he actually liked, John laughs and says, “Yeah, and gosh, what a temporary situation that proved to be! It was a difficult time because the court case (with Malcolm McLaren over the Pistols) was still pending and Virgin Records’ accountants wanted a Pistols-type record that I wasn’t even remotely interested in making. I’d had it up to fucking there with genres.

“For many a decade I had to accept that working in the music industry was going to be adversarial. I’ve since found that not to be true. The modern PiL is quite a different beast. We’re good friends and very honest and open with each other. I never thought a work environment would be easy for me but it is, amazingly so. It’s wonderful now how the ideas flow: I don’t have to expect an argument on everything.”

Lydon copped a lot of flak recently for saying he was backing Brexit. He hasn’t gone completely alt-right on us and hitched himself to the Trump train, has he?

“You’ve politicians – and, naming no names, non-politicians – not knowing what they’re doing, and so both sides take extremist points of view. It’s all very sad, but on the plus side, people are really open now to having a bloody good row about it! It’s an Us vs. Them mentality. When that calms down, healthy debate will rule the day and proper solutions will be found. A lot like marriage – or my marriage - really.”

Trump probably wouldn’t be residing in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue if it weren’t for the support of the NRA. Does John applaud the Stoneman Douglas High School kids for standing up to them?

“They’re getting murdered. What would you expect them to do? There’s nothing like imminent death to snap people out of their apathy. Can you blame the actual objects used to create these situations? Possibly. Because it’d be very hard to kill 17 people with a box-cutter.

“Politics and religion are more or less the same thing: it’s a way of manipulating and controlling a society. Not for the betterment of mankind but for domination reasons. Sefishness! When I object – and everybody should object – is when it becomes dictatorial.”

‘Dictatorial’ is the word that John used to describe Eamon Martin and his mates in Hot Press’ Repeal The 8th special.

“The Catholic Church has poisoned Ireland for centuries,” he noted before adding: “We’re in Dublin the same day as the Pope and thusly available to come along and do ‘Religion’ in the Phoenix Park. He can join in if he wants.”

I think we’d particularly like Francis to belt out the “Stained glass windows keep the cold outside/ While the hypocrites hide inside/ With the lies of statues in their minds/ Where the Christian religion made them blind” bit.

Completing PiL’s birthday celebrations will be the DVD release of the documentary, also titled The Public Image Is Rotten, which includes Flea, Ad-Rock and Thurston Moore among its celebrity admirers.

“It’s a joyous romp through a troubled past, which I said to them, ‘Do not under any circumstances airbrush,’” he concludes. “Even a genius like myself has flaws. Peace!”

The Public Image Is Rotten: Songs From The Heart is released on July 20 with gigs to follow in Bangor Marina (August 25) and Vicar St., Dublin (26)