Anger is an Energy: My Life Uncensored
Read Anger is an Energy: My Life Uncensored Online
Authors: John Lydon
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This autobiography is by John Lydon
in his own words
. Sometimes, the organisation of those words does not conform to the traditional rules of grammar. In some cases,
the reader will happen upon words not listed in the dictionary, or used in ways one might describe as ‘unorthodox’. The publisher is aware of this – they are not typos and
misspellings we have missed; they are part of Mr Lydon’s unique ‘lingo’ and, as such, have been given (mostly) free rein. As John might say, ‘Don’t let tiffles cause
fraction’.
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2014
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © John Lydon, 2014
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.
The right of John Lydon to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988.
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
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Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright holders of material reproduced in this book, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked then publishers will be
glad to hear from them.
Endpapers © Kari Kuukka, Rock Summer Festival, Tallinn,
Estonia, 26 August 1988
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (Hardback): 978-1-47113-719-8
ISBN: (Trade Paperback): 978-1-47113-720-4
ISBN (Ebook): 978-1-47113-722-8
Typeset in Garamond by M Rules
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
The Lydons. I can’t thank my family for giving me a career, because I did that to myself, but I can thank them for standing by me. Thank you.
Nora. The love of my life. My best friend. The rows are beautiful but the making up is more so. You give me nothing but love and support. Which I hope I’m repaying. Thank
you.
I dedicate this book to integrity.
INTRO: MAY THE ROAD RISE WITH YOU
8
JUST BECAUSE YOU’RE PARANOID, IT
DOESN’T MEAN THEY’RE NOT OUT TO GET YA
9
THERE’S NOWT AS GOOD AS CHANGE
12
YOU CAN LOOK TO THE FUTURE WHEN
14
HISTORY AND GRIEF ... AS A GIFT
MAY THE ROAD RISE WITH YOU
A
nger is an energy. It really bloody is. It’s possibly the most powerful one-liner I’ve ever come up with. When I was writing the
Public Image Ltd song ‘Rise’, I didn’t quite realize the emotional impact that it would have on me, or anyone who’s ever heard it since.
I wrote it in an almost throwaway fashion, off the top of my head, pretty much when I was about to sing the whole song for the first time, at my then new home in Los Angeles. It’s a tough,
spontaneous idea.
‘Rise’ was looking at the context of South Africa under apartheid. I’d be watching these horrendous news reports on CNN, and so lines like ‘They put a hotwire to my head,
because of the things I did and said’, are a reference to the torture techniques that the apartheid government was using out there. Insufferable.
You’d see these reports on TV and in the papers, and feel that this was a reality that simply couldn’t be changed. So, in the context of ‘Rise’, ‘Anger is an
energy’ was an open statement, saying, ‘Don’t view anger negatively, don’t deny it – use it to be creative.’ I combined that with another refrain, ‘May the
road rise with you’.
When I was growing up, that was a phrase my mum and dad – and half the surrounding neighbourhood, who happened to be Irish also – used
to say. ‘May the road rise, and your enemies always be behind you!’
So it’s saying, ‘There’s always hope’, and that you don’t always have to resort to violence to resolve an issue. Anger doesn’t necessarily equate directly to
violence. Violence very rarely resolves anything. In South Africa, they eventually found a relatively peaceful way out. Using that supposedly negative energy called anger, it can take just one
positive move to change things for the better.
When I came to record the song properly, the producer and I were arguing all the time, as we always tend to do, but sometimes the arguing actually helps; it feeds in. When it was released in
early 1986, ‘Rise’ then became a total anthem, in a period when the press were saying that I was finished, and there was nowhere left for me to go. Well, there was, and I went there.
Anger
is
an energy. Unstoppable.
When I sing it onstage nowadays, it’s very emotional for me, because there’s such a connection with the audience. I’ll get these melodramatic responses, that people are bang in
empathy with the actual statement, and the point and purpose of the song. They fully understand it and they share it back with me. Now, that takes your breath away. Often, I can forget my place in
the song. I’m so impressed listening to the audience singing it, that they take over. For me, that’s complete success: something really generous has been understood by everybody in the
building.
Anger is the root core of why I write songs. Sometimes I barely think I’m in control of myself when I’m writing. If there’s such things as guardian angels out there –
well, mine’s a real bleedin’ piece of work. There’s a great deal of forethought and experience that goes into these things, you see, in the preamble, in my life in general. Once
I’m
on
, then the words just flow. And when I’m on, I’m
ON
.
Whatever that thing in me is, it keeps me going and being like this, and being relentless, and understanding things in my way – it’s not so far-fetched, after
all, from the rest of humanity. It really isn’t. We all go through this, but I’m just the one who gets up and says it.
I come from the dustbin. I was born and raised in a piss-poor neighbourhood in North London, which was pretty much what you’d imagine Russia to be today. It was very,
very controlled. Everything. And the presumption of control, too. And people were being born into this ‘shitstem’, as the Jamaicans call it, of just believing that others had the right
to dictate to them in that way. Like I said to the Royal Family, ‘You can ask for my allegiance, but you certainly can’t demand it. I’m not anybody’s cannon
fodder.’
I don’t think that way of thinking had really come into the British psyche for many years. It had done in previous centuries but it had been nullified, shall we say, through the Victoriana
approach. The British have a really delicious history of civil disorder, but by the time the Second World War was over it had all been mollycoddled under the carpet, and was not mentioned in
history lessons – but for some of us out there who love to read, well, look what we found.
I could read and write at the age of four or five. My mum taught me, but after I got meningitis aged seven, I lost everything – all my memory, including who my mum and dad were. It took a
long time to come back. I’d go to the library after school and just sit there and read until the place closed. Mum and Dad were very good, they trusted me that I’d find my way home,
even though many a time I couldn’t – I’d literally forgotten where I lived.
I loved getting back into reading, though – history, geology, or anything about wildlife, and then later I progressed into Dostoyevsky. By eleven, I was finding
Crime and Punishment
very insightful – very miserable but sometimes when you wallow in other people’s misery and dourness, it’s fulfilling and rewarding.
Like, ‘Well, sod
his luck, I’m a lot higher up the ladder of tragedy than him!’ So books were incredibly important – my life preservers.
There have been conversations here in the United States about why every ex-President opens a library when politicians do not read the books. Hello, America! Kind of explains your politics. For
me, reading saved me, it brought me back. And I found myself in there, so when the memories and bits came back, they kind of made sense to me and I realized I was the same person that I was before
I lost everything – it’s just I was ever so much better at it and able to look at myself and go outside of myself and ask, ‘Look, what do you think you’re doing? Try getting
it right instead of just bumping into situations without any forethought.’
Maybe I was being hard on myself there – what am I expecting from myself, up to the age of seven? But I’m very, very demanding of me, and that’s always gonna be the case.
Nobody can write anything really that bad about me that I haven’t already thought of, and half the time when they’re really being hateful, I go, ‘Phew, they let me off
lightly.’ As you will see in the pages ahead, I am my own hardest taskmaster, and this book is all part and parcel of me researching myself – a lifelong and ongoing process.
