Anger is an Energy: My Life Uncensored (44 page)

It was a proper eff-off to a lot of listeners who’d made presumptions about me. I’ve got to say, I do enjoy those moments. I’m not deliberately out to antagonize an audience or
spite them or anything like that, but if they adopt the attitude of ‘This isn’t what we expected’, then yippee, I’m gonna wallow in that, because you shouldn’t sit
back and expect anything at all. You can make the choice to like it or not like it, but if you’re going to hate it because it doesn’t sound like the previous album, you’re not a
John Lydon follower at all. You don’t understand me. I don’t follow myself so please – don’t – follow – me.

Album
went straight into the
Billboard
charts in America, and I thought Elektra would be over the moon about that. The guy I dealt with there was called Bob
Krasnow, a quiet retiring individual full of business conceits. At his label offices, I’d think, ‘What on earth’s all this ugliness in the corridor?’ He’d growl back,
‘My wife’s an art collector.’ So, modern art filled their offices, and unbeknownst to him the whole staff were going, ‘I know, it’s so ugly, but it’s his wife .
. .’ I suppose really it was investments, a tax write-off.

Bob Krasnow’s house in New York looked like a brownstone from the outside, straight off the cover of Led Zeppelin’s
Physical Graffiti
. Inside, it was mental, and
uncomfortable. He’d totally stripped it out, taken out several floors, and put in an elevator going up two decades to wherever their bedrooms were. Everything was vast and expansive, and you
felt a bit like you were in the Guggenheim, the art museum in New York, which I love because of its circular walkway. But no, his house didn’t have the circular walkway, it just had
freezing-cold modern art everywhere.
Whatever the message in that stuff is, it’s a secretive select language that they only share with each other. That’s my
problem with modern art: it cuts off communication to the rest of us.

Being that we hadn’t furnished Elektra with a list of credits for the album, knowing that they’d print them on the sleeve against our wishes if we did, they were completely unaware
of who was on it, or just how important a record this was. At the time, they were more concerned with backing their new signing, Metallica, to the hilt. When
Album
charted, they viewed it
not as a welcome success, as you’d imagine, but as a threat to Metallica, their long-term prospects, and so they dropped me. They were horrified to find out later who they’d just
jettisoned – not only Johnny Rotten, but Steve Vai, Ginger Baker etc. etc. Duh, you’ve just sacked the heroes of music, you idiots!

If Elektra had kept us on, we might’ve actually toured with the band that put the record together. But the red carpet was pulled from under us, and that was now a financial impossibility.
So, off I went to scratch around and find another PiL line-up. Start all over again . . . again.

BBC Radio had a go at me for a while about Bob Geldof’s Live Aid. I’d asked some questions: ‘Which army is he feeding? Is anyone aware that there’s a
Civil War going on in Ethiopia? What’s this really all about?’ That didn’t go down well at all. Years afterwards, the questions were finally asked: ‘Why were the food trucks
held up at the border? Where did the food ever go to? Was there any education system in line to teach these people how to farm properly? Rather than letting their goats eat everything and then
wondering why there was nothing left.’

I’m putting it in a very basic way, and obviously the problem is bigger and deeper and wider than that, but I thought these were valid questions. If I’m going to be asked about it,
then that’s what I will say. I wouldn’t be hoodwinked into joining the whole Band Aid thing, because I wanted to know how accurate this line was. And Geldof’s a mate of mine!
Basically, if you didn’t toe the line with Band Aid, then you were somehow a curmudgeon. That would not be the whole truth of it. Charity for charity’s sake
is
not charity at all; it’s pop stars showing off and feeling good about themselves. But if they bothered to dip into their own pockets, then they could raise more money than all the audiences
in the world put together.

Band Aid was all smuggery and naked ambition and self-righteous patting-on-backs. It was unbearable. Not to solve any problems at all, but really self-aggrandizement. Ever since, charity has
been sorely affected by pop people. They’re dangerous to any real cause.

To be honest, I could’ve done with a Band Aid for myself. I came out with a statement saying, ‘I’m my own favourite charity and I’m the only cause I can think of worth
donating to.’ I bloody well meant it. It’s a hard enough struggle, but I’m not going to get onto the coat-tails of somebody else, just because that’s what everyone wants to
feel good about. It has to actually be genuine with me, and really
mean
something, really
do
something.

A lot of stuff I do is for orphanages. Those kids I feel really sorry for, and that’s something I can do something for, and I try to do that undercover. I’ll donate things and
they’ll raise money on eBay, but my name won’t be directly related, therefore ego doesn’t come into it. There’s always people telling me, ‘If you allow us to use your
name, it’ll earn so much more.’ That’s never gonna wash with me. I think it becomes damaging and egotistical, and that’s a danger I don’t want to happen. No one person
should be bigger than the cause itself. If you’re not prepared to help orphaned kids or starving kids or sick kids without a pop star’s name on it, then you’re an awful
person.

Celebrity branding is cobblers, and it’s dangerous cobblers too. Whenever anyone does something wrong, a week later there’s a press blurb with the charities they’re associated
with getting a mention, and that’s used as a cover. It’s very profitable for pop stars to use all manner of charities for their own benefit, and I resent them doing that, because we
should not be doing that.

I say ‘we’, because I feel as guilty as the actual purveyors of the crime, because I should be saying more to tell them not to be doing that. But the more I say, the more I get
stuffed and resented. There you go . . . that’s the story of my epic journey, that’s a great part of it, getting my head cut off because I’m the first one to stick it out. I ask
for it, and by fuck I get it.

These days, in the modern world of Google, the letters that come in tend to be begging letters from fake charities. People telling me that their mother’s dying of cancer. It’s all
just too much to take on. I can’t champion every individual’s case or
cause célèbre
. It’s too much. I pick my own causes in that respect. I can’t have
my heartstrings tugged too much. There were a couple of them in recent years that turned out to be fake, and that just put a huge smear on the whole thing for me. It’s of course so touching
that somebody out there has no other option, but the responsibility that places on me is overwhelming. And are they for real?

At the same time, during all of this, there’s a lot of death wrapped around me – my own band members dying, my own friends dying, my own family members dying. Some of them because of
disease, some of them accidents or whatever, some self-inflicted. I’m not a saint, and I don’t want to see myself cornering off some role as a procurer of good taste. Because I’m
not, I can’t do that, I don’t have the energy for that. Hopefully I’ll have a good effect on people’s minds, but I’m not here to bolster their wallets or fill their
coffers, because you read a lot of these fan letters, and the intent’s selfish somehow, and they don’t realize that it’s not a rewarding thing to be doing to another human being,
to
demand that you sign their husband’s birthday card just because he’s a big punk and it would be great. On the one side, you look at that and it’s a
small thing, but where does that end? Then you become selective. Are you going to keep doing that? In which case that’s a full-time occupation that don’t pay well, or you just say,
‘No, it’s got to stop, it’s too energy-draining.’

It’s the same as signing things for people at shows. I genuinely love saying hello to fans. It can be great fun – we do meet some weird and wacky characters. We affectionately call
them the ‘Lollipop Mob’ after the PiL song ‘Lollipop Opera’. I’ve literally spent hours after shows speaking to people, even bringing them backstage for a drink and a
chat. But it was getting out of hand there for a while. People
expect
it of you every single night and when I don’t I’m slated by them. They don’t understand it’s
nothing personal – far from it: some nights I just need to get on the bus before I catch my death of cold and end up sabotaging the rest of the tour. Where do you draw the line with
people?

There are also a lot of professional
dogs
out there who you know fine well will put it straight on eBay. They follow us around and ruin it for everyone else; it’s an ongoing battle.
And it’s not just the professionals: we’ve actually seen people leave gigs early just to stand at the stage door. What, is my signature more important to you than the gig? I thought you
were meant to be fans? Ludicrous. It takes the fun out of it all – it becomes a drain on you.

The energy goes into the songs – that’s my commitment. That’s my work, my effect on Planet Earth. I don’t want to start charity-hopping. It’s a repercussion of
fame, or infamy. One line I actually did contribute to
The Great Rock ‘N’ Roll Swindle
was, ‘Infamy, they’ve all got it in for me!’ That was Kenneth Williams!
I’ve got such a great love of the
Carry On
thing. As a kid, those movies were hilarious. To a young mind at the time, they made a glorious fiasco of the rules
and regulations of society. So, very early on when Malcolm was starting up the movie, long before it turned into
The Great Rock ‘N’ Roll Swindle
, these are the things I’d
be chucking in.

There’s an awful lot you can learn from humour. Am I gonna learn from
War and Peace
or Norman Wisdom? Give me Norman, any old day. He’s closer to my life’s experience,
and therefore relevant. And the in-depth angst of Russian intellectualism is very far removed from anything I’ve experienced. Although, I may yet get there. If you’re dying of a
terminal disease in a hospital ward, that’s where Dostoyevsky can come in. It’s so miserable, it can only cheer you up.

I did read
Crime and Punishment
when I was very young. I remember the TV drama, too, starring the English actor John Hurt. He looks a little bit like a rodent – what a great actor
he is. He also played the famous homosexual Quentin Crisp in
The Naked Civil Servan
t. I met him years later – I really liked him. He reminded me of Keith Levene, in the look, and the
greasy-skin persona. But he didn’t have the dead eyes. I found him to be an intelligent man and capable of really good conversation. I liked him. Smart bunny. His wife or girlfriend had died
the year before, and so he was going through real sadness. It was very difficult for him to be in a public place. I felt his pain, and one way or another, it’s the pain that goes into my
songs.

Grieving in public is very difficult, and the worst aspect of it is when complete strangers come up and tell you they ‘feel for your grief’. It just reminds you of the very thing
that you’re trying to lay to one side for a few brief moments. Eventually you realize that life can be shit, and it can only
get worse, so you better be making it
better. You have to deal with it. I do the best I can. Internally, inside the skull, when people re-enact those moments, they mean well when they approach you, but they’re reminding you of
something that leaves you feeling very exposed and breakable emotionally, and isolated in a collection of strangers. That’s a terrifying thing to endure. Happens a lot.

But let’s face it, I’ve got a better lifestyle than any one of the alternatives that were open to me. There wasn’t much option. The Antichrist is what I accidentally ended up
as, but that’s absolutely not what I set out for. I’ve always loved that song: ‘Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.’ My intentions
are
good. The Animals cover,
wasn’t it? Eric Burdon.

I loved Nina Simone’s version, too, and I loved her musically. I met her once at a Peter Tosh gig in LA and she was such a bitch to me. ‘Who’s that white boy?’
‘
White boy?
I’m in my forties – who do you think you’re talking to?’ She was absolutely giving me the blank: ‘You don’t belong here with black
people.’ I suppose everybody has a bad day, but you’ve got to be so wary that your bad day can impose the same kind of reaction in others.

Oddly enough, here I am, a man who speaks openly from the heart, but I realize that you have to be guarded in them public situations. She’s fantastic and I won’t have a word said
against her music; it was just, ‘Don’t honkify me! We all want a world where we’re equal, and you’re throwing that kind of garbage around. Wrong!’

Fair play, Peter Tosh, him being one of the original Wailers with Bob Marley and all that, wasn’t having any of it. He tried to correct the situation and gave her a bit of a mouthful. Me
and Peter were having a disagreement, anyway – it might’ve been to do with the Rolling Stones actually! Listen, we’re all capable of getting up on our high
horses, and sometimes those horses are a little
too
high. Peter was working with them and I was having my say on that.

I’ve always known, though, that Keith Richards loves his reggae. He’s always been well rooted in it. Musically, that’s not an uneducated fella. I’ve never met him. We
probably wouldn’t get on. But it’s the same with, yes, Elton John – there’s another man who knows his chops around other people’s work and doesn’t skip a beat on
everybody’s efforts. That always impresses me. It’s a good mark, an indication – nothing to do with praising myself here! – of valuing stars, when I find out they’re
like librarians in their approach, that they want to know everything about anyone who works in the same field. That’s how it should be.