That What Is Not: John Lydon On Public Image Ltd

When he finally shows up to the Zoom meeting – wires had been crossed because the clocks had gone back/forward here and he’s talking to me from his home in California – John Lydon, sporting a shock of orange hair and a natty waistcoat, is looking fit and well.

He’s still on the gaspers but has slimmed down, perhaps in anticipation of Public Image Ltd’s first tour in a few years, which includes stops in Belfast and Dublin. He’s excited about it.

“Oh, Cor! Yeah!” he beams, while I’m still getting used to the crazy idea that I’m talking to John Fuckin’ Lydon, and the former Mr Rotten has just complimented my kitchen. Two things I didn’t expect in this lifetime.

“Live performance," he pronounces, "is the only thing I'm possibly good at in my whole poxy existence and Public Image is one of the finest bands there is, and I'm blessed to be part of it. There were many incidences in my life over the past few years where songs like 'Death Disco' are gonna take on such an enormous weight, not that they weren't weighty beforehand – so to get out and tangle with these songs again? More than a few tears on stage, I’d expect, but joyful ones.”

The last PiL gig – before this tour, which started with a couple of shows at Cruel World Festival in Pasadena in May – was in Mexico City in 2018 so “they’re all gagging at the bit”. I asked if we could expect a greatest hits show or something deeper. A stupid question, of course.

“Well, they're all Greatest Hits really, aren't they?” says Lydon with that admirable and constant self-belief. “But there are some songs that are just gagging to be done, and I need to get to grips with that. We always experiment on stage anyway. A song like 'Flowers Of Romance' has a life of its own. That's a completely new tune practically every night. Once we got that down, then we'll have a look at expanding the setlist. By the time we get to Ireland, I think we should be fully rockkkkiiiiing (pronounced in that accent that changed everything back in 1976). Who knows what we could do for ‘me family’?"

This last is delivered in a truly woeful Oirish accent. But then he is John Lydon. He's entitled to ham it up.

Having involved an extensive revolving cast of characters over the years, PiL have maintained the same line-up since 2009: Bruce Smith on Drums, Scott Firth on bass and guitarist Lu Edmonds. “They’re just terrific human beings, which is more important actually, than musicianship,” says Lydon.

There’s the possibility of new music too.

“I've been songwriting a lot. We're probably going to be recording in the days off in between gigs, and just do as much work as we possibly can. PiL is as safe as houses,” he says, with deserved pride. “We are a class act, and we're well known and respected by many, many folk out there for that.”

This Is PiL

Indeed and they are. And you can pronounce that in an Irish accent as well, if you like. You know, my one.

Lydon didn’t do much hanging around after the Sex Pistols imploded, following their final performance at San Francisco’s Winterland on January 14th, 1978. Did you know Rory Gallagher was in the audience? Apparently so. Anyway, Lydon had brought PiL together with Keith Levine (guitar), Jah Wobble (bass), and Jim Walker (drums), and had their debut single, ‘Public Image’, and their first album Public Image – First Issue out by the end of the year.

The following year, the aforementioned ‘Death Disco’, written by Lydon for his mother as she approached the end of her life, came out, followed by Metal Box, which forced fans off the sofa – and their arses – repeatedly, formatted as it was across three separate records playing at 45rpm.

Lydon had a bit of trouble in these parts in 1980 when a Dublin visit to see his brother Jimmy's band, The 4 Be 2s, resulted in his collar being felt.

“I was accused of assaulting two policeman's fists with my face,” is how he remembers it. “We got to the hotel, all the 4 Be 2s, myself, Jock [McDonald] and a load others, and we decided to go to the pub next door. It had a nice view of the Liffey and so, rocking, you know, hello. Felt like being back home and then two gentlemen, who were not wearing uniforms, decided to create an aggravated situation, which amounted to nothing but them hobnailing it out of there. And the next thing uniformed police turn up at a hotel some hours later and arrested me for assault.”

No Fun, My Babe, No Fun.

“That's a dangerous thing, right there. All the panic buttons in the world hit. It meant I would miss the gig so I couldn't laugh at my brother, and 'assaulting police officers'? I was looking at some serious jail time in Mountjoy. Luckily, I only got a week of lockup there, but it weren't no fun palace for me."

There are differing reports on how long he actually spent inside, but no matter. A story's a story.

"The Garda did their upmost to screw about with me, being hosed down in a yard."

He adopts that woeful Irish accent again.

"'Youse dirty, filthy, things, yis!' People looking out the windows of their cells seeing me being hosed – that was the extra special treatment. And it went on like that. The Friday night I was in, they're allowed one film a week, and so they chose Dead On Arrival, which is a punk documentary [D.O.A.: A Right Of Passage. 1980]. Fuck's sake, I'm sitting there, and up on the screen is Jordan with a swastika armband and her tits hanging out, and me! This didn't make life easy. Fuck me! But humour got me through, as always.”

Lydon was a marked man at the time.

“There was an awful lot of aggression in the public, because they were buying into the newspaper headlines of the filthy, foul-mouthed yob, and that's a very difficult one to answer back to. Once those slanderous accusations are allowed out in the media, it's an uphill climb from there on in. There were great aspects to the publicity side of it, but the negative side far outweighed it. It was life-threatening on many occasions. I was assaulted many, many times with knives, weapons, machetes. Once, somebody tried to stick a bottle into my head. No scars to show. Luckily, I'm thick skulled.”

Les Fleurs Du Roman

According to Tabbert Fiiller’s great 2017 documentary, The Public Image Is Rotten, Lydon was released from Mountjoy and, while awaiting his court case, went back to London to record PiL’s third album, 1981’s challenging The Flowers Of Romance. Real life had to bleed into it.

“Totally,” he agrees. “I booked the studio immediately, it's almost like off the plane straight into the studio. There's a song on that album called 'Francis Massacre' - "go down for life" etc. [It also includes the line "Mountjoy is fun"]. That's what some of the prisoners, the long-termers, were telling me, their stories. They'd never get out. The only way to deal with that was a confused bunch of screaming, agonising sounds because that's what being a jail is, all day long, non-stop uncontrollable noise. It jars your nerves, that's the best way I could represent it, and hopefully get their side of the story out too, somewhere in there. There's a mention of several different people."

I'm not asking for names.

"The most difficult aspect of it all was having to deal with both IRA and UDA prisoners, because there'd be one lot thinking I'd be with them because of the Britishness and another lot expecting me to be with them because of me Irishness. I'm sorry, I don't fit on either side of killers. It's just not my way. If you have to murder someone, then you don't have a cause. That was tough, but it's all in there.

"I loved making The Flowers Of Romance album. I beat the hilarious accusation, I got off. I just zoomed into that record, I played most of the instruments, which is something I'd never even considered trying beforehand, and found myself, I think, quite capable. I'm very proud of that album.”

He’s credited with violin, saxophone, and percussion, which leaves guitar, bass and drums, but that's okay too. Most is not exactly a scientific term. The case was eventually dismissed with Lydon being asked to donate to the poor box. This was surely a huge relief.

“The trouble is that goes as a black mark when you're applying for a visa to America. Luckily, I've been such a good person for so long that the Yanks just said, 'Oh, please, Johnny, become one of us. We love you!'"

Once Keith Levine left, after some alleged light-fingered business with the master tapes of an aborted fourth album, in 1983, Lydon was the sole remaining original member and had to do some swift recruiting to meet commitments for a Japanese tour.

"I had to find a band very quickly," he recounts. "I just so happened to be going to Atlantic City, New Jersey that week, on a laugh and a visit. I think it was a surfing competition that was going on I went to see. In the hotel bar was this band playing and I thought they played really all right. They were a bunch of long hairs and nothing you would think I'd be liking at all, but I did. I liked them.

"We had a good laugh that night. We had a proper drink up. And 'how's about Japan for you, lads?' It wasn't the whole band either, there were certain other young kids that I was working with at the time. Great laugh and just a serious challenge to take that on and hope an audience wouldn't think I was being ridiculous. Far from it. I've made the commitment to tour. If I cancel the tour, that would be far worse. I'm a stickler for commitment. Once I've committed to a thing, I don't back down."

The story goes that producer Bill Laswell, whose worked with everyone from Fela Kuti to Motörhead, didn't approve of this band when it came time to record Album - and its attendant hit single 'Rise' - in 1985, and persuaded Lydon to allow some heavy hitters to sit in.

"When I went to the studio to do Album, they were too inexperienced, and too young and could not cope with the pressure. When you prepare for an album with the likes of him, you have to go into a period of solid, steady rehearsal, over and over again to fine-tune things and they just couldn't do that. They were just too nervous and so that side of it fell apart. Phone calls had to be made and find very quick replacements.

"I didn't mean to hurt them, and it hurt me ever since, but we're still friends. They understood that they weren't up for it at that time. I sadly pushed them into a position that they were too young for. I expect everyone to be as fearless as me, and just make the best of it and grab a problem by the neck and wring it until it works. That's not how everybody is."

It still seems strange that Steve Vai and Ginger Baker are on that record. Lydon must have been pleased to garner respect from such figures?

"I was shocked. I was really surprised that they did respect me, really. That was the overwhelming side, because I bought into this monologue that was just continual from the media that I was a no-hoper. And there it was, these chaps just absolutely gagging at the bit to work with me. How fantastic is that? But at the same time overwhelming. And I gotta say, kudos to Mr Laswell because he knew I was struggling out there. The record company weren't helping me at all. So, financially, I was in a Catch 22, I couldn't afford proper things, at least on the recording side. I'd have to book cheap studios, and do things very quickly and got lots of negative reviews for that. Nobody understanding the struggles of that particular period. I was living on a shoestring."

People assume you have a load of money, John.

"I think after recent events, that assumption's gone. Easy come, easy go. I'm not the kind of bloke that's gonna find himself living in a cardboard box down by the river, and if I was, well, I'd have some potted plants and I'd improve the situation. I'm not a lazy burger and I don't blame others for my dilemmas, I just get on with it. But I expect respect. Is that so wrong?"

PiL went on hiatus around '92. Was that because of money issues, family commitments?

"That's the Catch 22 I found myself in," he insists. "The record company wouldn't advance us money in order to rehearse and record until they recouped what they saw as an outstanding debt. Well, I couldn't make up their outstanding debt without touring, and I couldn't tour because of the outstanding debt, so it was a rock and a hard place, and that just went on for nearly 18 years. And oddly enough, and luckily enough and thank you, there were human beings out there that stuck with me.

"I never lost my audience, and it somehow gained a great deal of respect and it made us closer, not further apart. A PiL audience now is a dynamic thing. The response and the communication between us; that's the fifth member and there's an awful lot of members there. They share, emotionally with me, every single bit of it."

He's on a roll now.

"They inspire me to ad lib and go off the plot. I can see that contact in their eyes. I know that they've suffered similar things, and it's an incredible gift, my god, worth every second just to know that you're sharing the exact same experiences and more beyond with people. That's truly a reward and we've said in the past, it's very much like a combination of religion, churchy style, and opera."

"You have to understand," he qualifies, "when I say opera, I mean opera in Italy with the audiences singing along. It's very different to opera at the Scala. It's not posh world, it's folky. The talks I have after gigs with the audience – because I go out after and we communicate, we hang out and we chat – and you learn things, so I'm never gonna run out of material for songs, not with decent human beings like that."

What The World Needs Now...

Here's one of the great 'What Ifs?' of Irish light entertainment. The scarcely believable story about Lydon being somewhere near the running to pen the Irish entry in the Eurovision made the front page of The Irish Sun back in 2018.

“We were actually in the process of writing a song for that,” he reveals. “The powers that be in Ireland turned it down. That was a great shame because we might actually have won it. You can't take the Irish out of me. Imagine what RTÉ and the rest of them get up to?”

Was there any compromise in trying to write a song to order?

“Seriously not, quite the opposite. It is a nice piece of serious heaviness. Rock your boats! We've got Lu Edmonds in the band and anything with strings on, he can play. It was gonna be well-folky, but absolutely electrifying. Pumping bass track in it, thunderous drums and some superb caterwauling!”

No title though?

“No. Actually, we're going to do that this time around in the studio and just call it, I suppose, 'Irish Entry'.”

Cue Sid James-style cackles from both parties. It would surely have gone over well with his Irish parents had they survived to see it. As far back as that first Public Image album he was, on 'Religion I' and 'Religion II', calling out the church's 'sanctimonious smile'; "Stained glass windows keep the cold outside, while the hypocrites hide inside". Did the Ma and Da ever ask, 'Johnny, what are you doing?'

"'Johnny, why can't you write a good pop tune?'" He laughs, employing the accent again. "Secretly, underneath all of that, I knew that they were very proud of me. They loved the way I just stood up for myself. They had great faith in that."

You were ahead of the curve there, given all that's come to light since.

"I didn't mean to be, it's just how I feel. It's lovely old expression from Northern England: tell it like it is. It's just basic, common sense, and yet somehow, education takes that out of people. Tell it like it is, man. Why fucking bother with it. Don't bother lying. It's a waste of time. You're never going to remember what you lied about the next morning!"

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PiL play Dublin's National Stadium on June 9th and The Limelight in Belfast on June 10th. For more from John Lydon, be sure to look out for our special 45th Anniversary Issue of Hot Press, coming in July.