Anger is an Energy: My Life Uncensored (47 page)

His art to me is People Art, always about making creative and friendly environments that people live in. His paintings are always happy city scenarios where everything is brightly coloured.
Absolutely inspiring.

When we went out to tour the album, we used the multi-coloured-building idea onstage, with adventure playgrounds and runways, all in very bright, vivid, bold colours – greens, yellows,
reds, oranges – and there we were, running around in it like happy children.

Through March 1988, we ended up on a US arena tour, supporting INXS. Oddly enough, I loved their first album – honestly!
I liked the emptiness in the production. I
didn’t realize they had a bass player till they played live. But there’s something always exciting about Australian music; it’s a really interesting place in the world.
They’re on the other side of everything and so their approach is different.

That tour got competitive. We were playing in 20,000-seater arenas, but only 5,000 were there when we were playing. It was very strange. Maybe that was the MTV apathy kicking in. In my early
days, the audience would be in the auditorium right from the start and wanted to hear every single band and get their money’s worth, but the MTV video world created a different environment,
and the auditorium would be empty until the main band came on.

It all went horribly wrong in New Orleans when Michael Hutchence invited me after a gig to his ‘apartments’ in the same hotel. What great rooms he had! Wow, I loved that. It had an
upstairs, a downstairs, and a sound system. It turned out he just wanted to play me this version of ‘rave beat’ that he’d been making. I just had no time for it. Because, hello, I
like me rave, but I don’t like it analyzed and interpreted and copied, and that’s what it sounded like to me. And I had to say so. ‘Oh, I can do that,’ was the vibe, and we
fell out. We never really spoke after that. And then he went and asphyxiated himself . . . Sometime later, I might add, nothing to do with me!

When people invite you over and want you to listen to their latest record, it’s never going to turn out well. It creates an ugly, uncomfortable environment, and I’m not ever going to
be the kind of fella that’s going to give you false accolades. My attitude is, ‘You’ve made me feel uncomfortable. I might’ve liked this in a different time-space continuum,
but that’s a wrong move!’ At the same time I understand that they’re trying to share their sense of achievement. There’s that going on, but at that moment that’s not
what you’re feeling. You’ve just come offstage, you’ve done your gig, and you don’t need to be impressed.

One good thing about Mr Hutchence: he knew my voice was a bit raspy because I was overworked – and they toured with their
own doctor! I got some really bloody good
advice, and some medical hoo-hahs, which every now and again you need. Namely, a Vitamin B12 shot. There are many doctors that will say that’s as useless as a placebo, but I don’t find
it to be so. I find it gives me the energy that I require up there onstage. It makes you very tired; you take it in the morning, up ‘le chuff’. So, you’ve got a sore bottom, then
you fall asleep for four or five hours and you feel very tired and you don’t feel like you’ve got the energy, but the second you hit the mic –
bing!
It kicks in! Thanks for
that one, Mr Hutchence.

That summer, we played at a massive free festival in Tallinn in Estonia. I understood at the time there were 175,000 people in the crowd, but I’ve been told since it was more like 125,000.
I trust two things here: other people’s statistics, hee-haw, and I trust my emotions. I know what my emotions told me when I walked out on that stage. I lost my voice with the huge vastness
and expanse. The sea of faces was endless, endless, just going on for ever into the cloudy distance. And there were tanks each side of the stage, thank you very much, with the turrets pointed not
at the riotous assemblers, who weren’t rioting, but at
us
.

You got to bear in mind that this was just before the iron curtain lifted, when they were still a part of the Soviet Union, so it was a very tense period in Estonian history – and, I
suppose, world history. And it was such a great audience. It was a free gig, so everybody had a reason to be there, and they’d travelled from miles around to be there. Yet we all knew the
brutality of the Soviet regime could inflict horrors upon all of us at any moment. Fortunately, it didn’t come to that; it became instead something incredibly special – and eventually
it came to Estonia’s independence.

It was amazing, terrific, but very odd. When we wanted to walk around the town, we couldn’t do so without official escorts, and we’d see people being ushered away in the corners of
the square. We weren’t allowed to go up and talk to anyone. The secret police were not very secret.

We did actually get to meet some people, just before we got the
ferry away from there. This is where Lu is such a great ambassador; he can break through any police
cordon, just because they presume he’s one of the vagrant locals, I suppose. These people had travelled not just tens of miles, but hundreds, from all the neighbouring countries. When we
left, I must’ve had 200 bloody vinyl records given to me. I love and treasure every one of them – not so much for the music, but for the actual thought and energy that went into giving
me something that was shady and illegal, according to the authorities at the time. That’s heart-warming stuff – fuel for my fires.

The reason I’d had tinnitus in New York at the time ‘Seattle’ was written was because John McGeoch would love his amps to be so full-on, onstage. He was very
into his heavy-metal amp stacks. It created real problems for all of us, it was just too overpowering. I wouldn’t blame John for it, I’d blame us. We should’ve just yelled at him.
We’ve since learned: Bruce and Lu are consistently onstage saying, ‘Turn it down.’ It gives you so much more freedom in the song, but we all come from that period – and
heavy metal is always gonna be there, in our early-day psyches, that preconception that louder and louder is better and better. It’s not. Lu Edmonds got it very, very bad. I recovered, but Lu
didn’t.

Lu was involved in the writing stage of our next album,
9
, but he literally had to pack in amplified music altogether for a while. He went all acoustic and travelled in the nether regions
of Muslim and former Soviet territories – places like Kurdistan. He was gone from us for years, and it was a bitter loss.

With hindsight, we were beginning to fall into the treadmill of album-tour-album-tour. We initially started recording
9
in New York, with Bill Laswell. It wasn’t at the record
company’s instigation, although they’d doubtless have loved an
Album Part Two
at that point. This was very much Bill volunteering his services. After a couple of days in the
studio he said the band couldn’t play and he hated all our songs. He said he’d written songs and I should sack everyone and use his people, and come out with a U2-type product.
I told him to fuck off and we packed our bags and left. I was fully committed to the band.

The more I think about this, the more my memory grows about poor old Bill and what he had to endure with me. In his head, I was the lead singer he always knew I could be, but I wouldn’t do
it because I’ve got my own way. I’ve got my own learning curve. There is a point where I can take influence but I can’t take teaching. It goes back to school really. Don’t
tell me what to do, tell me how to do it. That’s how it works with me.

There were always personality quagmires with Bill, but my only serious problem with him was that, whenever I’d go over to his apartment, he’d be trying to show me his guns. I just
find that to be all too ugly. These were early days for me in the American culture, and so I wasn’t aware that when people are showing you guns, they’re not threatening you, it’s
like they’re showing you their art collection. For me, at that point, what he was presenting to me was very challenging.

Now I understand America very well, I think, and I do appreciate the fact that, yes, you should have the right to own a gun. Yes! To my mind, this lot could be a far more serious pack of
killers, in proportion to the firearm potential they’re wielding. In many ways I think Americans show an enormous amount of restraint, and of course, there definitely isn’t anyone
invading this country; they’re too well armed for that. And what fun it is to go out into the hills, as I found out years later, to shoot things. It’s not about wanting to kill people
or animals, it’s just the element of control. It gives you a great sense of achievement to be able to hit a melon at 50 yards, that you’ve got the power and the control to take aim
correctly. It’s skilful, and I like it.

People might be a little scared to hear about Mr Rotten tooled up, but John ain’t no killer. As I keep telling the world, I’m a pacifist until you stretch over the line and try to
hurt or damage any of those I love. Then you’ve got a prob. Me you can slag off all day long.
Not a prob.

So, it wasn’t going to work out with Bill, and we ended up recording with Stephen Hague, who had been working with New Order.

There was also a guy involved at the production level called Eric ‘ET’ Thorngren. Let’s just say, at the time, that didn’t seem like the better half of it. It always
comes down to personality. Eric, nothing wrong with the fella, but I liked Steve Hague and his quiet, wispy personality, and his technical precision. It was a completely different approach, which
is what producers can create. They’re people you have to know how to pay attention to, and you have to know their weaknesses. Steve was a gentle kind of fella and his soft touch on top of our
huge uproar made for an excellent result.

We were perhaps getting a bit too deeply involved with the new MIDI computer technology. The trouble with that is it takes away from the analogue, the sense of live. But again, I think the songs
were very strong and emotional.

‘Happy’, the song, is really an answer to the question that was posed on the previous album title,
Happy?
I felt like some deep well of integrity was being tapped by us around
this whole period. ‘Happy’ is reflective, it’s a look back, it’s a self-analysis – the upshot being, yes, I’m happy – God, it is possible!

One of my favourite songs I’ve written is ‘Disappointed’. It’s a spectacular, dramatic and very forgiving song. If I could ever call a song a friend,
‘Disappointed’ is one of them. As the lyrics say, it’s truly ‘what friends are for’. It’s me talking to me on the lesson of em-pa-thy. It’s one those songs
that somehow creeps into a PiL audience’s psyche, and wow, do they ‘get it’. It’s overwhelming, sometimes, the tears and smiles and hugging out there. There’s many
reasons to cry – joy, usually, I hope, but there’s sadness in the verses, the betrayals that lead to the forgiveness. You can see in people’s faces, they truly know what
you’re saying because they’ve been through similar. You take on all the bad, you analyze it, and then you reach the better conclusion.

‘Warrior’, meanwhile, is a song of standing up, when you
have
to take a stand. I love Native American art. I truly loved exploring around the Arizona
desert and seeing the Native American Indian paintings – they really seriously struck a chord inside me. It’s very hard to explain but I finally found a way of expressing that feeling
in ‘Warrior’. If you talk about your Native American, you’re talking of conflict, you’re talking of treachery – you know, like, ‘Here’s a turkey, now take
my land and kill me.’ That’s what the pilgrims did – genocide, extermination – and there comes a time when you have to take a stand. Me, I’m a pacifist, but I can see
that in the face of genocide and extermination, for all the values I believe in, I would have to stop that fate.

Native American art captures all that. It’s a symbol of identity, of individuality. I understand fully Chief Sitting Bull’s amazing line, ‘It is a good day to die’
– that’s powerful. No man is another man’s farmyard animal. And so, in this respect, ‘I man a warrior.’ So our song is an appraisal of resistance. It’s
applicable to all similar situations.

It has lines like, ‘I’ll take no quarter, this is my land, I’ll never surrender.’ It’s about defending yourself and what you truly believe in, rather than just
leftie flag-waving. I back no political party, with very good reason. Never am I going to put all my eggs in the one basket of a politician, because the fucker will crush them. It’s tough out
there, baby, but that’s the way the world runs. Some of the ‘Warrior’ remixes we had done were very big dance hits in the clubs. When we tour anywhere, Timbuktu or Japan,
you’ll often hear it playing in the background in shops and record stores.

‘USLS1’ is a PiL fer-de-lance, a deadly snake. It tells a story about the presidential plane, Air Force One, and a terrorist bomb on board, and the uselessness of that murder over a
beautiful desert landscape, under a full moon. The pointlessness of it all and the sadness. Hear it, and you feel your mind exploring rather than just listening. Close your eyes and explore inside
the textures. I thought it might be too up its own bottom to play live but in fact
it really does motivate people. I watch their faces as we’re performing it, they get
well inside it and understand it, comprehend it. It’s ‘Why are we murdering each other, for what?’ For what? If you’re going to murder anyone, then murder yourself first and
let the rest of us off.

Every song had to have a point, a purpose, a direction, a meaning and a humanity. We were utterly indifferent to the shenanigans of others, and it certainly wasn’t hard to ignore what the
rest of the bands were doing in that era. We might’ve done better commercially if we had – but, no thanks!

Everything I was writing at that time was very wordy, but there was so much running in my head that it absolutely needed to be. Very over-complicated, even for me. Everything you do in music, if
you really love it, is a clearance factory. You’re trying to get these emotions across, and out, and by doing so you’re stopping it building up inside. And at that point, the pressure
was unreal to try and maintain an integrity here and keep things afloat.