Anger is an Energy: My Life Uncensored (65 page)

Anyway, later on, I got slammed in the face by a missile, and got
a great big cut from it. Rambo liked it – he said it was very visual. The rules are, nobody on
stage except the band or our crew, so suddenly a 25-foot pole with a wet sponge on the end looms into my field of vision. I don’t know where that sponge has been, it looks like it’s got
grease on it. Somebody shouted, ‘No, it’s Dettol!’ So I threw my arms out at the sides, like I was being crucified, and allowed myself to be dabbed, Christ-like. It was making a
mockery of the whole thing, in an audience participation way. The crowd got it, but the band didn’t, sad to say. Some of the band were muttering, ‘We should fuck off, it might kick off
here . . .’ I was like, ‘I ain’t going
anywhere
!’

The problem with this tour was it went on too long, to the point where we got fed up and sick of the sight of each other. The really serious good that came out of it was the conclusion in my
mind: ‘Never again!’ I’m actually always one to say ‘never say never’, but I really genuinely feel like I just don’t belong in that band any more. I might do a
one-off, but I’m certainly not going off touring with them, and I ain’t writing new songs, which would be the only point of continuing any further. Any opportunity I get to write a new
song, I just don’t think Pistols. The Pistols are an historical accuracy, and you can’t take that away. It was a truly magnificent achievement. I want it to be remembered as that. I
don’t want to make
Never Mind The Bollocks Part 2
because it would ruin that.

Towards the end of the tour, there was one final terrific London gig at the Hammersmith Apollo. There was a homey vibe going on that night, because the venue is just down the road from my place
in Fulham. Also, it was Steve Jones’s birthday the following day, and he didn’t know I knew, and I got the crowd to sing ‘Happy Birthday Fatty’ to him. That was a good
moment between us. He has goodness and fun in him, but he also has that other ‘festering boil’ side. Which I suppose we all do, because we’re human. That night, he played great,
he totally became the Steve Jones who leaves hairs at the back of your head standing, who hits it dead bang-on right. He can be an exceptionally good guitarist.

After that, there were a few vague promises from promoters going off into the future, but it all just fizzled out. Finally, I had a conversation with Paul Cook on the
phone, and he said, ‘We reckon it’s time to knock it on the head, John, what do you think?’ And I said, ‘Yes, I agree.’ It just didn’t feel right any more. I was
looking at the band and thinking, ‘It’s still in its own time zone. As Pistols, we’re not getting up to the twenty-first century’, and so it became a very dull prospect for
me. And that was a view shared by Paul, and presumably the others, that we didn’t want to go back and do rip-offs of old stuff.

It’d be nice to think that we can be friendly outside of that band but, when we’re together, we become, for some weird reason, mortal enemies. It’s hard to explain, but the
pressures become too much, you become too tightly knit up in each other’s situations, and things get childish. What I always say about the music industry – it keeps you young – is
particularly true of the Sex Pistols. It’s a world of wonderful kiddiness!

I was in London over Christmas 2013, to see my brother Jimmy and the family, and I rang up Paul. He wasn’t in, so I talked to his missus and his daughter, and asked for Paul to ring, but
he never rang back, so that’s where that is now. Everything tells you something.

I know I’m pretty damn hard work. It must’ve been a bit of a nightmare for Steve and Paul and Glen to cope with something a little bit different, something not ‘off the
shelf’, like I am. The problems they have with me might be absolutely firmly rooted in the fact that they had a band before me, and they think I came in and spoilt everything. I can only
garner that from interviews all three of them have done over the years, implying that the Sex Pistols could’ve been a really great rock ‘n’ roll band, but for me. Well, there you
go.

One way or another, I think I would’ve been a creative person, with or without them originally paying some attention to me. There might possibly have been better options out there, from
other people that might’ve had similar aspirations in my direction. Who
knows? That was the first option, and I dived in. There was something special between us
– I can’t describe what that is. You can’t describe charisma. But it most definitely was there, and still is, in my mind. There’s that little spark that I know is burbling
around in all their little heads. Perhaps one problem is Paul and Glen still living in England – England will age you like nothing on earth.

I want us to be friends, I really do. I want us to respect each other, but I can’t get them to break that barrier, that wall that’s always put in between me and any one of them,
individually or together. They just won’t open up with me, and that’s, I think, unfair. I have to learn to accept that, I suppose. For years I’ve endured it, and it was a good
endurance, it definitely teaches you stamina and staying power. But it always comes down to the same conclusion when I rattle this in my head: I’ve done the best I could with these fellas,
and I’ll always love and respect them. And that’s it. The End.

That year, 2008, really wasn’t a good year for me. In the early months, I lost my dad. He died suddenly. Apparently, he’d had an argument with the woman he was
living with, Mary Irwin, and her son. Dad slipped, cracked his head, had a bit of a heart attack, and – dead. The only silver lining was that, at the autopsy, the pathologist said, ‘I
know it’s terrible, but it’s kind of good he did die quickly like this, because he was riddled with cancers, and otherwise he would’ve died a very slow, painful death.’
Like, ‘Pffff, that’s good news, is it?’ Yep, apparently so. It was blindingly painful.

Mary Irwin, his girlfriend, was related somehow to his cousins – keep it in the family, I suppose, the Lydon way. It was nearly thirty years since my mother’s death, and I never had
any resentment for his girlfriends. I expected him to be a human, but I never liked this particular woman because I thought she had a very bad nature. She was very pushy, and mean-spirited. The
problems began when she said, ‘I’m your mammy now!’ You know?! ‘I’m a grown man, I’ve done a lot. What do you take me for, a fucking idiot?’ I think she
was hoping
she
was the true love of his life, and not just some old
biddy you bunk up with when you’re old. That’s what Irish people do, and I’m
sure it’s the same everywhere else – when you’re old, don’t die alone!

My dad never said much to me, but he guided me well, and subversively. As I said before, later in life, we got very close. Two years before he died, I declared in an interview that he was one of
my best friends, so it was all the more shocking the way he died and why he died and how much I missed him. It tore my heart apart. I didn’t think it would do that, but it really did.

When he died, I flew to London immediately and went directly to my brother Jimmy’s. I was so overtired I fell asleep on the couch there. I felt terrible about that, because I knew Cathy,
Jimmy’s wife, loved her couch, and I hadn’t washed in a couple of days. So then I went home to our house in Fulham, and I put a chair in the middle of the room, and I just tried to talk
to my dad. ‘Hello Dad, blah blah blah.’ Whatever it is you do.

I never feel they come back, the people you love. They don’t come back to you – they’re gone. That’s such a hard thing to deal with. It’s the same with your
enemies: when they’ve gone, you miss them. You can’t honestly be a human being and say you don’t.

I was telling you, ‘I see things.’ It’s never about specific people, it’s about energies, feelings that you pick up. But with my dad, I knew he was gone, his energy was
no longer around, and that was the loneliest,
loneliest
thing I’d felt, ever since the death of my mum. Just sitting there on a chair in the front room. I deliberately placed it right
in the middle of the room – almost dramatic, I suppose. I was going to put on records and play music, I’d set the system, but I couldn’t get around to it. So I sat there in
silence for ages – I found out later it was something like eighteen hours. My brother Jimmy came and picked me up. He went, ‘I know what you’re doing, let us in!’ And he was
dead right.

At Dad’s funeral, I was borderline passing out with tears, which I never did with my mum. I was expected to give something of a speech. I couldn’t, I just couldn’t. Words fail
you. I walked up when
I felt like it – I got really bored of the priest yabbering away – and I leant into the coffin, and I kissed my dad’s dead body on
the cheek. I looked down and went, ‘That’s me dad!’ and broke apart. I missed him so bad.

The saving grace was that the press didn’t attend. Maybe there was some kind of respect there, as a lot of the journalists who would normally be well up for sticking a knife in me were
really good and left me be. Maybe there is a kindness in there, and they know there’s a line not to be crossed, because I’ve seen them rubbish other people’s funerals. The
prospect of a journalist running up with a camera going, ‘So, what do you feel like now your dad’s dead?’ didn’t bear thinking about. It has become
that
grotesque.

Afterwards, we held a wake, to celebrate Dad’s death, in a North London pub not far from where I used to live in Benwell Road. It was a great turn-out for him. It was a community thing
– that’s why so many people came to pay their respects. We’re all interrelated; it’s an astounding affirmation of community in the most painful way possible. So many people
cared. It was a real gathering of the clans, working-class style, taking place in this pub that’s a well-known gangster hang-out!

I was standing next to some top lads who turned up for my dad – proper Arsenal. They loved him because of the manor, and what we are, and the community spirit therein. And where does the
trouble begin? From the Galway second-arse cousins. They were disgraceful and disgusting. Here I am trying to celebrate the death of my dad, and one of the daughters of a cousin stands in front of
me, raises her dress and does a clippety-cloppety dance, and asks me, ‘Look, Oi can daance! Can ye get me oan
X Factor
?’ The answer was ‘No!’ and her response was,
‘Yer a cunt!’

That’s how they behaved with us. How ugly is that? There’s some serious sickness in people. It’s like,
we
are meant to be the Irish abroad, and we’re getting Irish
from Ireland behaving not very Irish at all. I felt like I had to run auditions at my own father’s funeral. She wasn’t the only one. There was a couple of them that
stood in front of me and had the audacity to sing ‘Danny Boy’, a song I don’t particularly fucking like.

Jimmy, at the time, was recovering from cancer – we didn’t know if he was going to fully recover. Ouch. Double ouch. The loss of my mum was a hard one, barely into my early twenties,
but the loss of my dad left me feeling for quite a bit that I had no point or purpose. I don’t know how I would’ve got through it, but for Nora reminding me that she’d gone
through this too.

I feel really sad talking about this, and I know I’m boring you. People can fuck off if they don’t want to read it, because – this – is – life. All these fucks can
run around with their punk agendas, but they don’t understand what humanity is. My idea of punk
is
humanity, it’s not vacuous nonsense like, ‘Are you wearing the latest
outfit? Cool, dude!’ Everything I do is always about my community, my friends, my family – and my family’s gone, but for my brothers. I want you to understand what life can be
like. Thank you for listening.

The truth, I’ve found, is far more interesting than the tittle-tattle they fill history books with. Nothing is as easily explained away as the powers-that-be would like
it. The American Civil War was not really at all about freeing the slaves. That’s nonsense. No war is ever fought over moral issues. It’s always about economics. You only have to look
at history.

It’s fascinating finding things like the Irish used to be called ‘black’. They were viewed as black Americans, too, in them times. Black was an all-encompassing term for lesser
mortals.

My association with Bodog extended beyond just their
Battle of the Bands
. Around that time I was working on a series for them called
Johnny Rotten Loves America
, which never came
to fruition. The idea was to explore bits of American history that are little-known, or swept under the carpet. They wanted us to track down ‘buffalo soldiers’ – black US
cavalrymen, who are often written out of history – but Rambo suggested black Confederate soldiers instead, because no one believes that they even existed.

We tracked down a retired schoolteacher called Nelson Winbush, whose African-American granddad fought in the Civil War against the North. I found him to be one of the
most absorbing fellas I’ve ever had a chat with. He still remembers his grandfather, and was in attendance at the funeral, where there was a Confederate flag draped over his coffin. Nelson
got his flag out, and pictures of his grandfather. He showed us the pension book his grandfather got from his Southern State. They didn’t usually give pensions out, because the place was
ravaged in the War, and there was no money, but he still got a pension for his services to the Confederacy.

I was fairly gobsmacked not knowing any of this. American history isn’t so easily explained then, is it? There’s a great sense of intrigue. I’m naturally nosy and want to find
out what’s really going on here. We began toying with the concept of putting together a separate programme on the true history of the Civil War, absolutely from a black perspective, but then
the Bodog thing dismantled itself very oddly and sadly the show never got made. I’d love to go back one day and revisit it.

I was receiving other offers for TV work, but they were impossible to take on, because they’d demand that I sign long-term contracts, and not work anywhere else, and not choose my own
issues in the programmes, and basically be led by the nose with a financial contract as the carrot, and that was very uninteresting. They’d have rights to me, and basically I do what
I’m told. And that’s
impossible
for me! I can do one-offs on subjects I really like, or maybe just one series, but I’m not going to be anybody’s puppet for years on
any TV network, and basically do any old crap. No, no, no, I’m not quite ridden to the knackers’ yard that way.