Everything about Johnny Rotten totally explained
John Joseph Lydon (born
31 January 1956), also known as
Johnny Rotten, is a
British rock musician born to Irish parents. He is the lead vocalist for the
punk rock group
Sex Pistols and
Public Image Ltd. With his sarcastic and provocative public personality, he participated in laying down a new template for rebellious youth and
band frontmen. His musical innovations have also been influential.
He is married to Nora Forster. They have no children together, but Lydon is
stepfather of Forster's daughter,
Ari Up, who herself had been the lead singer in the influential
postpunk,
dub reggae band,
The Slits. He currently lives in
Los Angeles.
Early life
Born in
London, his parents were both Irish Catholic
immigrants, his father from
Tuam,
County Galway, and his mother from
County Cork. He grew up on a
council estate in
Finsbury Park,
North London with three younger brothers. At the age of seven, he contracted
spinal meningitis, putting him in and out of
comas for half a year and erasing most of his memory. The disease left him with a permanent curve in his spine. It also damaged his eyesight, resulting in his characteristic stare. John attended St. William of York School in Islington North London
where his friends included David Crowe, Tony Purcell and John Gray. David Crowe went on to become involved with Public Image. John Gray became a school teacher and Tony Purcell
some year later became a pioneer of the Internet industry in Scotland.
Sex Pistols
In 1975, Lydon was among a group of youths who regularly hung around
Malcolm McLaren and
Vivienne Westwood's fetish clothing shop
SEX. McLaren had returned from a brief stint travelling with American
proto-punk band the
New York Dolls, and he was working on promoting a new band formed by
Steve Jones,
Glen Matlock and
Paul Cook called
Sex Pistols. McLaren was impressed with Lydon's ragged look and unique sense of style, particularly his orange hair and modified
Pink Floyd T-shirt (with the words
I Hate scrawled in felt-tip pen above the band's logo). After tunelessly singing
Alice Cooper's "Eighteen" to the accompaniment of the shop's
jukebox, Lydon was chosen as the band's frontman.
The origin of the stage name
Johnny Rotten has had varying explanations. One, given in a
Daily Telegraph feature interview with Lydon in 2007, was that "he was given the name in the mid '70s, when his neglect of
oral hygiene saw his teeth turning green".
Tensions between Lydon and bassist
Glen Matlock arose because Lydon believed Matlock to be too white-collar and
middle-class and because Lydon said Matlock was "always going on about nice things like the Beatles". As a replacement, Lydon recommended his school friend John Simon Ritchie. Although Ritchie wasn't a competent musician, McLaren agreed that he'd the look the band wanted: pale, emaciated, spike-haired, with ripped clothes and a perpetual sneer. Rotten dubbed him
Sid Vicious as a joke, taking the name from his pet hamster, a finger-biting creature named Sid the Vicious.
Vicious's chaotic relationship with girlfriend
Nancy Spungen, and his worsening
heroin addiction, caused a great deal of friction amongst the band members, particularly with Lydon, whose sarcastic remarks often exacerbated the situation. Lydon closed the final Sid Vicious-era Sex Pistols concert in
San Francisco's
Winterland in January 1978 with a rhetorical question to the audience: "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" Shortly thereafter, McLaren, Jones, and Cook went to
Brazil to meet and record with train robber
Ronnie Biggs. Lydon declined to go, feeling that they were attempting to make a hero out of a violent thug who brutally attacked a train driver and stole "working-class money". Lydon was abandoned in San Francisco virtually penniless.
The Sex Pistols' disintegration was documented in
Julian Temple's
satirical pseudo-
biopic,
The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, in which Jones, Cook and Vicious each played a character. Matlock only appeared in live footage and as an animation. Lydon refused to have anything to do with
The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, feeling that McLaren had far too much control over the project. Although Lydon was highly critical of the film, many years later he agreed to let Temple direct the Sex Pistols documentary
The Filth and the Fury. That film included new interviews with band members hidden in shadow, as if they were in a
witness protection program. It featured an uncharacteristically vulnerable Lydon choking up and becoming tearful as he discussed Vicious' decline and death. Lydon denounced previous journalistic works regarding the Sex Pistols in the introduction to his
autobiography,
Rotten - No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, which he described as "as close to the truth as one can get".
Although Lydon spent years furiously denying that the Sex Pistols would ever perform together again, the band re-united (with Glen Matlock returning on bass) in the 1990s, and continues to perform occasionally. In 2004, Lydon publicly refused to allow the
Rhino record label to include any Sex Pistols songs on its box set . In 2006, the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted the Sex Pistols, but the band refused to attend the ceremony or acknowledge the induction, complaining that they'd been asked for large sums of money to attend.
In June 2007, Lydon, Jones and Cook re-recorded 'Pretty Vacant' in a
Los Angeles studio for the video game
Skate and, in a radio interview in the same month, Lydon announced that the Sex Pistols may perform again over the
Christmas period. They also re-recorded "Anarchy in the UK" for the video game . In September 2007, Lydon announced that the Sex Pistols would play a concert for the 30th anniversary of
Never Mind the Bollocks at the
Brixton Academy on
8 November 2007. Due to popular demand, four additional concerts were added, as well as further shows in Manchester and Glasgow.
The Sex Pistols will be appearing at the Isle Of Wight Festival 2008 as the headlining act on the Saturday night. They are also due to appear at the Peace and Love Festival in Sweden, Electric Picnic in Ireland, the Live at Loch Lomond Festival in Scotland, Heineken
Open'er Festival in Gdynia (Poland) and Paredes de Coura Festival in Portugal the same summer.
Public Image Limited (PiL)
In 1978, he formed the
post-punk outfit Public Image Limited (PiL) and denounced the Sex Pistols. PiL lasted for fourteen years with John Lydon as the only consistent member. The group enjoyed some early critical acclaim for its landmark 1979 album,
Metal Box (a.k.a.
Second Edition), and influenced many bands of the later
industrial movement. The band was lauded for its daring innovation and rejection of traditional musical forms. Musicians citing their influence have ranged from the
Red Hot Chili Peppers to
Massive Attack.
The band's surreal performance on the dance/concert TV show
American Bandstand has become the stuff of legend, with Lydon giving up on lip synching not long into the performance and dancing with audience members instead. The group did quite well in the UK charts, but were regularly outsold by Sex Pistols reissues. Despite his tenure with PiL, he's still most well-known as
Johnny Rotten.
The first lineup of the band included former
Clash guitarist
Keith Levene and bassist
Jah Wobble. They released the albums
Public Image and
Metal Box. Wobble then left and Lydon and Levene concocted the
The Flowers of Romance. Then came
This Is What You Want...This Is What You Get featuring
Martin Atkins on drums (he had also appeared on
Metal Box and
The Flowers of Romance) as well as session artists. Lydon said of this album in 1992 that "
This is What You Want is just me giving orders and them receiving them. There was no feedback. If I'd a crap idea, the crap idea would go onto vinyl almost immediately". However, despite the dip in quality as compared to their first three albums, it featured their biggest hit, the sarcastic "This Is Not A Love Song", which hit #5 in 1983.
Then in 1986 Public Image Limited released
Album (also known as
Compact Disc and
Cassette). Most of the tracks on this album were written by Lydon and
Bill Laswell. The musicians were session musicians including bassist
Jonas Hellborg, guitarist
Steve Vai and Cream drummer
Ginger Baker. It continued the band's foray into accessible dance-pop as opposed to their earlier incarnation as a challenging art-rock ensemble. Like the previous album, this also featured a massive hit, the anti-apartheid anthem "Rise".
In 1987 a new lineup was formed consisting of Lydon, former
Magazine,
Siouxsie & The Banshees and
The Armoury Show guitarist
John McGeoch,
Alan Dias on bass guitar in addition to drummer
Bruce Smith and
Lu Edmunds. This lineup released
Happy? and all except Lu Edmunds released the album
9 in 1989. In 1992 Lydon, Dias and McGeoch were joined by Curt Bisquera on drums and Gregg Arreguin on rhythm guitar for the album
That What Is Not. This album also features the
Tower Of Power on two songs and Jimmie Wood on
harmonica. Lydon, McGeoch and Dias also wrote the song "Criminal" for the movie
Point Break. After this album, in 1993, Lydon put PiL on indefinite hiatus, in which state they remain today.
In December, 2005, Lydon told
Q that he's working on a second autobiography to cover the PiL years.
Collaboration with Time Zone
In 1984, Lydon worked with
Time Zone on their best-known single, "World Destruction". A collaboration between Lydon, Afrika Bambaataa and producer/bassist Bill Laswell, the single was an early example of "
rapcore" predating
Run-DMC and
Aerosmith's "Walk This Way". The song appears on Afrika Bambaataa's 1997 compilation album,
Zulu Groove. It was arranged by Laswell after Lydon and Bambaataa had acknowledged respect for each others' work, as described in an interview from 1984:
» Afrika Bambaataa: "I was talking to Bill Laswell saying I need somebody who's really crazy, man, and he thought of John Lydon. I knew he was perfect because I'd seen this movie that he'd made (
Corrupt, a.k.a.
Copkiller and
The Order of Death), I knew about all the Sex Pistols and Public Image stuff, so we got together and we did a smashing crazy version, and a version where he cussed the Queen something terrible, which was never released."
John Lydon: "We went in, put a drum beat down on the machine and did the whole thing in about four-and-a-half hours. It was very, very quick."
The single also featured
Bernie Worrell,
Nicky Skopelitis and
Aiyb Dieng, all of whom would later play on PiL's
Album; Laswell also played bass and produced.
Solo album: Psycho's Path
In 1997 Lydon released a solo album on
Virgin Records called
Psycho's Path. He wrote all the songs and played all the instruments. In one song, "Sun", he sang the vocals through a toilet roll. It didn't sell particularly well and received mixed reviews from critics. The U.S. version included a
Chemical Brothers remix of the song "Open Up" by
Leftfield with vocals by Lydon. This song is heard during the title menu of the computer game
All Star Baseball 2000 (
Acclaim Entertainment). The song was also a club hit in the U.S. and a big hit in England.
Movie, TV and other non-music projects
In 1983, Lydon co-starred with
Harvey Keitel in the movie thriller
Corrupt, a.k.a. Copkiller and The Order of Death. While the film was generally panned, Lydon won some praise for his role as a psychotic rich boy. Lydon would act again very occasionally after that, such as a very small role in the 2000 film,
The Independent.
In the mid-1990s, Lydon hosted
Rotten Day, a daily syndicated US radio feature written by
George Gimarc. The format of the show was a look back at events in popular music and culture occurring on the particular broadcast calendar date about which Lydon would offer cynical commentary. The show was originally developed as a radio vehicle for Gimarc's book,
Punk Diary 1970-79, but after bringing Lydon onboard it was expanded to cover notable events from most of the 2nd half of the 20th century.
In November 1997, Lydon appeared on
Judge Judy fighting a suit filed by his former tour drummer Robert Williams for breach of contract, and assault and battery. Lydon won the case, and the judge called Williams a
"nudnik", although she did advise Lydon to keep quiet several times. During an appearance on
Politically Incorrect, in response to a statement about "hand lotion" in men's restrooms, Lydon remarked "Well,
I'm English -
we still have our foreskins".
In 2000, Lydon hosted
Rotten TV, a short-lived show on
VH1. The show offered his acerbic commentary on American politics and pop culture. In one segment he took
Neil Young to task for not appearing on the show, making fun of Young's singing style and pointing out that Young had once proclaimed Johnny Rotten "the king" in the song "
Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)". It was good natured however, as Rotten has been quoted to proclaim his love of Young's albums,
On the Beach and
Tonight's the Night.
He also was the host of the skateboard film,
Sorry, by The Flip Skate Team
In 2003 Lydon appeared as a panelist on an episode of
Richard Belzer's ambitious (and ill-fated) conspiracy-themed panel show,
The Belzer Connection. The episode in question posed the query, "Was there a conspiracy involved in the death of Princess Diana?" For his part, Lydon proved as witty and scurrilous as ever, responding to suggestions of Royal Family involvement by proclaiming "If the Royal Family was going to assassinate someone, they'd have gotten rid of me a long time ago." The series ran for only two episodes.
In January 2004, Lydon appeared on the British
reality television programme,
I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!, which took place in
Australia. He proved he still had the capability to shock by calling the show's viewers "fucking cunts" during a live broadcast. The television regulator and
ITV, the channel broadcasting the show, between them received 91 complaints about Lydon's use of bad language. However, in a February 2004 interview with the Scottish
Sunday Mirror, Lydon said that he and his wife "should be dead", since on
21 December,
1988, thanks to delays caused by his wife's packing, they missed the doomed
Pan Am Flight 103.
(External Link
), and during this interview, Lydon said that the real reason for him leaving the
Get Me Out of Here! show was his fear over the Pan Am incident and the "appalling" refusal of the programme makers to let him know whether his wife had arrived safely in Australia.
In an interview previous to the show's first episode, he'd described it as "moronic", and throughout the show's run he'd displayed an indifferent attitude to staying and threatened to walk out on numerous occasions. 30 hours following ex-
football star
Neil Ruddock's departure, Lydon left the show for unclear reasons, although he'd been very visibly angry both to and about fellow star
Jordan.
British newspapers claimed that Lydon had won a £100 bet with Ruddock over who would stay in the longest. Lydon, however, stated on air that he felt he'd win outright and that it would be unfair to the other celebrities for him to win.
After
I'm a Celebrity..., he presented a documentary about
insects and
spiders called
John Lydon's Megabugs that was shown on the
Discovery Channel.
Radio Times described him as "more an enthusiast than an expert". He went to present two further programmes:
John Lydon Goes Ape in which he searched for gorillas in Central Africa, and
John Lydon's Shark Attack in which he swam with sharks off South Africa.
In 2005, he appeared in
Reynebeau & Rotten, a five episode documentary on
Canvas, the cultural channel of
VRT, which is the
Flemish public broadcaster. John Lydon guided Belgian journalist Marc Reynebeau through Great Britain to show him and the Belgian viewers what makes Britain so great. When asked why he was chosen as a guide, he answered that he was the cheapest one available.
After the show had been broadcast on Flemish television, Lydon claimed in an interview with the popular Belgian magazine
HUMO that he was very unhappy with the way they handled post-production and was very angry with the way they depicted him in this particular show. He claimed that the creators mainly showed his humorous, sometimes clownesque antics, instead of focusing on his personal opinions and sometimes philosophical conversations he'd with Marc Reynebeau. Lydon was also infuriated that the production company used songs from the Sex Pistols' catalogue, without consulting all the remaining members of the band, including him.
Lydon broadcast a short pod on
Current TV in which he critiqued
Doors' keyboardist
Ray Manzarek's previously broadcast pod. Ray's advice to young people had been to "fuck your brains out." He emphasized this especially for twenty five year old girls, saying that "it won't last." Lydon had several choice words for Manzarek and told young people that the best thing they could do was get an education because knowledge is free and all around us. Lydon also suggested that at one point Manzarek had asked him to work on a project together and that he didn't do it because it would negatively affect his career.
Lydon is currently one of the judges in the
Bodog Music Battle of The Bands competition.
Discography
All chart positions are UK.
Sex Pistols
Studio albums
Compilations and live albums
The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (Virgin, 1979)
Some Product: Carri On Sex Pistols (Virgin, 1979)
Kiss This (Virgin, 1992)
Never Mind the Bollocks / Spunk (aka This is Crap) (Virgin, 1996)
Filthy Lucre Live (Virgin, 1996)
The Filth and the Fury (Virgin, 2000)
Jubilee (Virgin, 2002)
Sex Pistols Box Set (Virgin, 2002)
Singles
"Anarchy in the UK" - 1976 #38
"God Save the Queen" - 1977 #2
"Pretty Vacant" - 1977 #6
"Holidays in the Sun" - 1977 #8
"(I'm Not Your) Stepping Stone" - 1980 #21
"Anarchy in the UK" (re-issue) - 1992 #33
"Pretty Vacant" (live) - 1996 # 18
"God Save the Queen" (re-issue) - 2002 # 15
Public Image Ltd.
Studio albums
First Issue (Virgin, 1978)
Metal Box (Virgin, 1979)
Flowers of Romance (Virgin, 1981)
Commercial Zone (PiL Records, 1983) * This Is What You Want... This Is What You Get (Virgin, 1984)
Album (Virgin, 1986)
Happy? (Virgin, 1987)
9 (Virgin, 1989)
That What Is Not (Virgin, 1992)
Compilations and live albums
Second Edition EP (Virgin, 1980)
Live in Paris au Printemps (Virgin, 1980)
Live in Tokyo (Virgin, 1983)
The Greatest Hits So Far (Virgin, 2003)
Singles
"Public Image" - 1978 #9
"Death Disco" - 1979 #20
"Memories" - 1979 #60
"Flowers of Romance" - 1981 #24
"This Is Not a Love Song" - 1983 #5
"Bad Life" - 1984 #71
"Rise" - 1986 #11
"Home" - 1986 #75
"Seattle" - 1987 #47
"The Body" - 1987 #100
"Disappointed" - 1989 #38
"Don't Ask Me" - 1990 #22
"Cruel" - 1992 #49
Time Zone
Single
"World Destruction" - 1984
Solo
Studio albums
Psycho's Path (Virgin, 1997)
Compilations
The Best of British £1 Notes (Lydon, PiL & Sex Pistols) (Virgin/EMI, 2005)
Singles
"Open Up" (with Leftfield) – 1993 – #11 UK
"Sun" – 1997 – #42 UK
Footnotes
Further Information
Get more info on 'Johnny Rotten'.
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