Anger is an Energy: My Life Uncensored (15 page)

After that, for the next few months, we’d play every college and university we could, in and around London. I became very used to the fact that the student body was not the volatile hotbed
of rebellion we were led to believe. They were a very conservative bunch, but they had loads of money at the time, and they’d throw it at anyone and everyone.

We were just doing it to earn enough cash to be able to buy something that would improve what we were doing. I suppose the concept was very much like – you know the free apps you can now
get on cellphones, the video games and things? You get drawn into it but then you need to buy things in order to progress to an extra level. That’s what touring does: you need to earn more,
so you need to work more, in order to get the equipment you need in order to play better. And at the same time, hopefully be able to take at least
twenty quid out of it for
yourself by the end of the month, and have to be able to survive on that.

We loved the college gigs because there was always free sandwiches, and union prices on the beer. It made perfect sense. We’re playing to people who don’t like us, will never like
us, don’t understand anything we do, don’t clap, don’t even have the bravado of booing, but they
do
feed us well.

In High Wycombe, we supported Screaming Lord Sutch – what a thrill for me that was. I’d loved Screaming Lord Sutch for ever such a long time. That man had it – he understood
reggae at a time when that was a no-no. And there he was up there, absolutely bang on the money. It was so great playing with him, and to say hello to him. But zero response. He just turns round
and goes, ‘I don’t get what you lot are doing.’

For me in those early days, the bum notes from Steve were great, because he wouldn’t stop. He wouldn’t panic – like, ‘Duuuuh, where am I in the song?’ He just went,
‘Fuck it!’, and carried on. If you get back in time with the rhythm, it doesn’t really matter about the notes. It’s actually more thrilling and exciting, because you can
shapeshift with that. It helps you develop your craft way more than going to singing lessons with Tona de Brett.

After those beginnings, I got into taking gigs really seriously, and doing quite a large amount of them, and then very quickly came the bannings, and having to go abroad to play.

But we never wanted it to be just hocus-pocus and press trivia. Malcolm couldn’t stand the good reviews: ‘That’s not what we want! We need these old farts to hate us!’
‘I don’t need them to do anything, Malcolm. I’m not doing this for old farts!’ On that, there was a unity between the four of us. We liked our songs and we wanted them to
work right. If only . . .

As an armchair critic, I would put it this way, but I am even too lazy for that: as far as anything physical goes I am inexperienced. As many of my friends have pointed out, I
don’t even know how to walk, and running is a no no no.

My tactical understanding of football is practically zero. I have no concept at all when people talk about all the different formations and tactical masterstrokes. Over-analysis of football is a
modern-day problem. I’m sorry, but the middle class have introduced that, and it’s a load of nonsense. The players should be able to play anywhere on the pitch, all over the pitch,
otherwise what are they doing in football? A player who can’t pass, tackle or shoot – and my team, Arsenal, have had a few of them over the years – is completely bloody
useless.

Football – or ‘sacker’, according to my American friends – is a game, after all. It should be chaos out there, and it really is, actually, no matter how much they try to
plan it. No matter who’s kicking the ball it’s fifty-fifty where it will land. I don’t care how overpaid or underpaid they are, it all
comes down to the
same thing. You can over-strategize, or you can purchase all the best players, but still that might not work. It’s something about the personality blend, and the confidence the manager can
instill in a team, that makes a team successful and thus exciting to watch. The art of football is that you can lose and enjoy it, because you know your team did good. But not really . . .
I’d rather have a dodgy goal!

I’ve been supporting Arsenal, which was my local team around Finsbury Park, since I was a very young boy. I used to hang around with a particular bunch of lads at the back of the North
Bank, the home terrace at the old ground, Highbury. It was our territory, our manor, but Arsenal above all else has always been anti-racist. There was always a mixture of colours and creeds.
It’s really sad to see the way football’s now gone, what with the middle-class kids and everything else, how it’s all got misinterpreted. Everything that was good about going to
football has disappeared. From the chants and the atmosphere onwards, the whole thing has become sterile.

On the pitch, all this rubbish about zonal marking etc., is confusing the format they’re playing. I mean, come on! If you leave huge wide areas unmarked, thanks to your ridiculous
obsession with positioning, you’ll get caught out. If you have weak, slow defenders, you’ll get humiliated.

Football’s the kind of game where, if your team’s doing really badly, it gets you into the mode of having a laugh at losing. You can actually enjoy looking forward to the next tragic
defeat. And there’s nothing else that gives me that ability. It serves an absolutely brilliant, beautiful purpose. It’s the theatre of emotions, not dreams.

The biggest joy of being a football fan is that there is ultimately no joy in it at all. It can always get worse. Years
and years ago, when West Ham got kicked down to
the second division, I remember their fans singing this glorious chant: ‘Que sera sera, whatever will be will be, we’re going to Bu-uuurnley, que sera sera.’ The humour was
fantastic.

That’s the joy of football – it’s total fucking pain, and when you do actually win anything, it doesn’t last long enough. The pubs close too early, and it’s all
over. Everybody goes home, and you’re left standing there – whaaaaa-uuurgh! It’s like trying to get through them apps on your iPad. They’re so unsatisfying, they should just
be called ‘soccer’. Guaranteed to disappoint, and they all require you to put money in to get anywhere.

Playing properly is when you see the team enjoy themselves, go for it, 100 per cent commitment. In that respect: win, lose or draw, it doesn’t really matter. It’s just like a gig
– you win some, you lose some. But when you see heads going down, and slowness, and inability to make a tackle or create an interesting new idea – that’s unimpressive.
That’s the passion killer.

Living far away from Finsbury Park now, I can’t keep track of when the next game is. Every Saturday morning at the crack of dawn I’m ringing Rambo, who also lives in America, twenty
minutes before a game, panicking, trying to find out if it’s on satellite TV. If I denied myself the torture of watching Arsenal being run ragged, I’d still be very, very angry.

When I’m back in London, I’m definitely not one for dealing with the celebrity boxes there. I’ve never been invited and I don’t want it. I’m much happier watching
it down the pub with real people, proper football fans, listening to the banter. Football’s fantastic for that. Listening to the one-liners from people, the humour, it’s sensationally,
genius-ly British.

But £75 a ticket, these days, to go to Arsenal? For that money, you should get to have sex with all the footballers’ wives! I’d rather go to a smaller
place like Torquay United. How much is it there? Twenty quid? That’s the price of a massage – and, on a good day, maybe a ‘culmination’.

T
he Sex Pistols is a subject that’s been very well hammered home, although inaccurately by most. Everyone’s had their say on what we
were, or what we weren’t, and it’s reached a point now where all four of us remaining have no interest in counteracting that. If people are going to be foolish enough to believe other
people’s versions of our history, then good riddance. There’s no point in us weighing in. The work itself counts for everything.

We came on, and we came on very strong and very quick. We became, I think, the world’s most powerful band. That’s a very hard thing to recover from, and regroup, because it was so
dynamic, and it crossed every border imaginable. It opened up people’s minds, all doors were open. And unfortunately for most,
open and revolving
– aaah, a PiL song
reference.

The Pistols was an amazing coming together of a group of individuals who instantly didn’t like each other, who were very suspicious of each other, but somehow managed to make that work for
the best. It became a runaway train of thought.

All these ideas had been rattling around in my head for years, but I’d never had a format to put them together and present them
to the world. So the opportunity in
the Pistols was just fantastic; it all made sense. The volcano did erupt, and out it all came.

Apparently, the lyrics to ‘Anarchy In The UK’ were astonishing words for a lad of twenty to be coming out with. I don’t mean that big-headedly. I mean it in terms of, I never
got a chance to stand back and observe what it was I was doing at the time, because it was all so hectic and quick. Everything was happening all the time, my brain was imploding with all manner of
pressures. If I listen to that song, or any of them, I’m astounded that I came up with those lines. They’re from somewhere deep down inside me, and heartfelt.

Living in Britain at that time, it was like being stuck in the 1940s, with all the energy shortages, power cuts and garbage sacks out on the streets uncollected. The country was still in massive
debt from the war. Unlike Germany, which was built up afterwards, Britain, for winning, got fuck all. A lesson to be learned. War brings economic disaster, but it does bring wealth for the arms
manufacturers and the corporations. The oil industry profits greatly from wars, and that’s really who benefits. It’s us who are expected to be loyal cannon fodder.

When my aunt visited from Canada, she’d be reading press reports about the shortages and offering to send food parcels to us. I’ve never forgotten that. My mum and dad were furious.
‘Never! Never! We won’t accept charity!’

It definitely inspired revolutionary thoughts. I was noting how bad it had got, and that was the fuel for what we were doing – the sense of energy waste. All that capability of an entire
young generation, just absolutely ignored. Depressing as that was, and hard as it was to endure, at the same time everybody I knew was in the same boat. We had nothing to do. That was the fuel that
fired the engine of what became punk.

With those opening lines, ‘I am an antichrist/I am an anarchist’, I wasn’t trying to set myself up as some kind of bogeyman. I never thought of that at all. No, no, no,
somewhere deep inside me, I was thinking I’d be seen as the victim of all of this, and great sympathy
and outpourings of love and joy would be bestowed upon me!
Honest! I had no concept of being the naughty bugger. It wasn’t about that, and to my mind it certainly wasn’t just about
me
. It was about
us
. We’re being given an
opportunity here – let’s tell it like it really is, shall we?

Of course, everyone around the band at the time was saying, ‘Why don’t you just write a love song? Why don’t you just write a hit single? It’ll be great then,
everyone’ll love you!’ ‘What, don’t they already? Oh.’ To this day that’s all I keep hearing from the business end, and it’s utter nonsense they’re
talking.

That line, ‘I wanna destroy the passer-by’ – I’m full of pleasantries, I know – I was talking about all those kinds of people, the complacent ones that don’t
contribute, that just sit by and moan and don’t actually do anything to better themselves or the situation for others. The non-participating moral majority. I just thought
‘passer-by’ was a better phrase, gets to the point quicker. Rather than use twenty-two words, just one nailed it rather well.

‘Your future dream is a shopping scheme’? That’s turned out pretty accurate, didn’t it? Seems to be the way of the world now. I seen it coming.

The ‘IRA-UDA’ bit wasn’t so much about the terrorism and political shenanigans going on in Ireland, it was more, ‘Hang on, I thought this was the UK.’ The alleged
United Kingdom, not so united after all, huh? With all these political intrigues, divided we fall. I always viewed the United Kingdom as good people getting on with each other, not the Empire. I
think, clearly by my stance, I wasn’t promoting British colonialism – the opposite.

But no, I wasn’t an anarchist. I found that the written word could achieve far greater disturbance than planting a bomb in a supermarket. The written word’s a powerful thing and I
don’t think that was too well considered, at least not in pop music, until I started to write that way. There’s no personal spite or viciousness in what I’m writing. It’s
absolutely about demanding a clarity from politicians. As long as I know what’s what, and what it is you’re
expecting of me, and what it is I’m expecting
of you, everything’s fine. I will not be anyone’s cannon fodder. If it’s not a worthy cause, I’m with the opposition.

As we progressed and songs like that started to come out of me, I was really into it, one hundred per cent committed, regardless of Steve being in a huff. He’d be in a
huff quite a lot, downing his guitar and walking off. Then you’d get Paul going: ‘Don’t worry he’s always like that, he’s a moody bastard.’

I’d catch Steve from the corner of my eye, going, ‘Oh my gawd, he can’t sing, he’s no good’ – without realizing it’s like, ‘Well, Steve,
you
can’t play
! We’re all doing the best we can, mate . . .’ We were together, what, less than six months, and we’d already decided that we were all crap.

In truth, I was inspired by what the others were doing, by the three of them. I was really, really impressed. As for musicality, who gives a damn? It was the bravery of what they were attempting
to do, in a sea of only spoilt kids in bands.

I’ve always loved Steve Jones’s approach to guitar. It’s borderline falling apart, which I find thoroughly fascinating. How he just manages to pull it back. The closest I can
connect to that with any other musician would be Neil Young on
Zuma
, where the song is just teetering on the edge of total collapse and that’s a most dynamic point. For me to be able
to fit into that, it was great. I could instantly think in stanzas. It gave me that opportunity, and I don’t know if he ever realized it to this day. I don’t think he quite got what a
good deal he handed me, and I’m very, very grateful, regardless of his contempt – in fact, that’s just icing on the cake.