John Lydon: Difference between revisions
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In the mid-'90s, Lydon hosted "It's a Rotten Day", a minute-long, syndicated US radio feature, in which he would offer cynical commentary on the day's headlines. |
In the mid-'90s, Lydon hosted "It's a Rotten Day", a minute-long, syndicated US radio feature, in which he would offer cynical commentary on the day's headlines. |
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Lydon appeared on [[Judge Judy]] fighting suit against his former tour drummer [[Robert Williams]]. Lydon won the case. |
Lydon appeared on [[Judge Judy]] fighting suit against his former tour drummer [[Robert Williams (69)]]. Lydon won the case. |
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In 2000, Lydon hosted ''Rotten TV'', a short-lived show on [[VH1]]. The show offered his acerbic commentary on American politics and pop culture. In one segment he took [[Neil Young]] to task for not appearing on the show, making fun of Young's singing style and pointing out that Young had once proclaimed Johnny Rotten "the king" in the song [[Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)]]. It was good natured however, as Rotten has been quoted to proclaim his love of Young's albums "On The Beach" and "Tonight's The Night". |
In 2000, Lydon hosted ''Rotten TV'', a short-lived show on [[VH1]]. The show offered his acerbic commentary on American politics and pop culture. In one segment he took [[Neil Young]] to task for not appearing on the show, making fun of Young's singing style and pointing out that Young had once proclaimed Johnny Rotten "the king" in the song [[Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)]]. It was good natured however, as Rotten has been quoted to proclaim his love of Young's albums "On The Beach" and "Tonight's The Night". |
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Revision as of 05:56, 12 August 2006
John Joseph Lydon (born January 31, 1956), also known as Johnny Rotten was the iconoclastic lead singer of the Sex Pistols and Public Image Ltd (PiL). With his leering, swaggering and sarcastic public persona, he laid down a new template for rebellious youth and band frontmen that continues to be imitated today. His musical innovations, largely with PiL, have also been extremely influential.
Brief biography
John Lydon was reportedly born in Holloway in London—although, according to his autobiography, this cannot be confirmed, as his birth certificate has been lost. It is also alleged that he was born in County Galway, Ireland, and spent a very brief portion of his life there in his father's home town of Tuam.
His parents were both Irish Catholic immigrants. He grew up in the working class environment of Holloway with three younger brothers and was apparently bathed in Dettol. At the age of seven, he contracted spinal meningitis, putting him in and out of comas for half a year and erasing most of his memory. The disease left him with a permanent curve in his spine and his iconic stare.
He is married to Nora Forster, they have no children together, but Lydon is "grandfather" to Forster's daughter Ari Up's children.
Sex Pistols
Lydon was hanging around Malcolm McLaren's clothes shop, SEX (co-owned with designer Vivienne Westwood), in 1975, after McLaren had returned from a brief stint of travelling with American proto-punk band The New York Dolls, and was working on promoting a new band formed by Steve Jones, Glen Matlock and Paul Cook. Lydon was wearing a Pink Floyd T-Shirt with the words 'I Hate' scrawled in felt-tip pen above their name when offered the job as the new band's singer. He auditioned in the shop tunelessly singing Alice Cooper's "Eighteen" to the accompaniment of the jukebox. During his time as the band's lead singer he continuously clashed with his fellow band members and McLaren.
In 1977 the band released God Save the Queen during the week of Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee. The song was a hit, but was so controversial that at one point Lydon was attacked in the streets by an angry mob, getting his face slashed with a razor.
His interest in dub music and his post-Sex Pistols work with PiL and artists such as Afrika Bambaataa and Leftfield showed him to be far more musically sophisticated than his Pistols persona suggested. Indeed, McLaren was said to have been quite upset when Lydon revealed during a radio interview that his influences included Can, Captain Beefheart and Van Der Graaf Generator. Such acts were not in keeping with the 'punk' image McLaren wished to see projected.
Lydon recommended his school friend John Simon Ritchie-Beverly to McLaren as a replacement for bassist Glen Matlock. Even though Ritchie was a below average bass player, Lydon and McLaren decided he had "the look": lanky, spike-haired, with ripped clothes and a perpetual sneer. Because that image was the exact opposite of the quiet, shy Ritchie's personality, Lydon dubbed him Sid Vicious as a joke. (Some accounts say that Lydon took the name "Sid" from his own pet hamster, a finger-biting creature called Sid the Vicious.)
Ritchie would arguably prove the Sex Pistols' undoing, however; his chaotic relationship with disturbed girlfriend Nancy Spungen and worsening heroin addiction angered Lydon in particular, and was the source of much friction. (This situation served as the inspiration for the Alex Cox biopic Sid and Nancy, a film Lydon despised, claiming that it profoundly misrepresented himself, Ritchie and the band.) Lydon closed what was to be the final Sid Vicious-era Sex Pistols concert in San Francisco's Winterland in January 1978 with the now-legendary quip to the audience: "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" Shortly thereafter, McLaren, Jones and Cook went to Brazil to meet train robber Ronnie Biggs, much to Lydon's disgust, who felt that they were making a hero out of a violent thug and that the group ought to honour its gig commitments in Scandinavia. Lydon was abandoned in San Francisco with no money.
The Sex Pistols' disintegration is documented in the documentaries D.O.A. and The Filth and the Fury, and to a lesser degree Julien Temple's comedy/biopic The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, in which the Pistols played themselves. D.O.A. was filmed without permission from either the band or the managment, while Lydon refused to have anything to do with The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, feeling that McLaren had far too much control over the project. Although Lydon was highly critical of Temple's The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, many years later he agreed to let Temple direct The Filth and the Fury: the film featured new interviews with the band hidden in shadow, as if they were in a witness protection program, and featured an uncharacteristically vulnerable Lydon crying as he discussed Ritchie's decline and death. During the Pistols' heyday the band almost starred in a film directed by Russ Meyer and written by Roger Ebert, although the project eventually fell apart.
Although Lydon spent years furiously denying that the Sex Pistols would ever perform together again, the band did indeed re-unite (with Glen Matlock replacing Ritchie) in the '90s and would continue to tour occasionally for years after.
In 2004, he publicly refused to allow the Rhino record label to include any Sex Pistols songs on its box set No Thanks! The 70's Punk Rebellion, a compilation of songs by influential punk rock bands.
In 2006 the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted the Sex Pistols. The band refused to attend the ceremony or acknowledge the induction, complaining that they had been asked for large sums of money to attend.
Public Image Limited (PiL)
In 1978, he formed the experimental outfit Public Image Limited (PiL) and denounced the Sex Pistols. PiL lasted for fourteen years with John Lydon as the only consistent member, releasing many critically acclaimed albums and influencing many bands of the later "noise rock" movement. The band was lauded for its daring innovation and rejection of traditional musical forms. Musicians citing an influence have ranged from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Massive Attack to Sonic Youth.
The band's surreal performance on the dance/concert TV show American Bandstand has become the stuff of legend, with Lydon giving up on lip synching not long into the performance and dancing with audience members instead. The group did quite well in the UK charts, but were regularly outsold by Sex Pistols reissues. But, to this day, to those unfamiliar with his work as a musician, he is known first and foremost as "Johnny Rotten."
Psycho's Path Solo Album
In 1997 he released a solo album on Virgin Records called Psycho's Path. He wrote all the songs (as was normal) and played all the instruments (which was not normal). In one song ("Sun") he sang the vocals through a toilet roll.[1] It did not sell particularly well and received mixed reviews from critics. The U.S. version included a Chemical Brothers remix of the song "Open Up" by Leftfield with vocals by Lydon. The song was a club hit in the U.S. and a big hit in England. It was somewhat controversial because the lyrics (about Hollywood hypocrisy) included the refrain "Burn, Hollywood, Burn" while coincidentally the Hollywood Hills had just experienced one of their worst fire seasons in decades.
TV and other non-musical projects
In 1983, Lydon co-starred with Harvey Keitel in the movie thriller Copkiller. While the film was generally panned, Lydon won some praise for his role as a psychotic rich boy. Lydon would act again very occasionally after that, such as a very small role in the 2000 film The Independent.
In the mid-'90s, Lydon hosted "It's a Rotten Day", a minute-long, syndicated US radio feature, in which he would offer cynical commentary on the day's headlines.
Lydon appeared on Judge Judy fighting suit against his former tour drummer Robert Williams (69). Lydon won the case.
In 2000, Lydon hosted Rotten TV, a short-lived show on VH1. The show offered his acerbic commentary on American politics and pop culture. In one segment he took Neil Young to task for not appearing on the show, making fun of Young's singing style and pointing out that Young had once proclaimed Johnny Rotten "the king" in the song Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black). It was good natured however, as Rotten has been quoted to proclaim his love of Young's albums "On The Beach" and "Tonight's The Night".
In January 2004, Lydon appeared on the British reality television programme, I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!, which took place in Australia. He proved he still had the capability to shock by calling the show's viewers "fucking cunts" during a live broadcast. The television regulator and ITV, the channel broadcasting the show, between them received 91 complaints about Lydon's use of bad language, all of them from self-important arseholes.
In an interview previous to the show's first episode, he had described it as "moronic," and throughout the show's run he had displayed an indifferent attitude to staying and threatened to walk out on numerous occasions. 30 hours following ex-football star Neil Ruddock's departure, Lydon left the show for unclear reasons.
British newspapers claimed that Lydon had won a £100 bet with Ruddock over who would stay in the longest. Lydon, however, stated on air that he felt he would win outright and that it would be unfair to the other celebrities for him to win.
In a February 2004 interview with the Scottish Sunday Mirror, Lydon said that he and his wife "should be dead", since on 21 December, 1988, thanks to delays caused by his wife's packing, they missed the doomed Pan Am Flight 103. During this interview, Lydon said that the real reason for him leaving the Get Me Out of Here! show was the "appalling" refusal of the programme makers to let him know whether his wife had arrived safely in Australia.
After I'm a Celebrity..., he presented a documentary about spiders called John Lydon's Megabugs that was shown on the Discovery Channel. Radio Times described him as "more an enthusiast than an expert". He went to present two further programmes: John Lydon Goes Ape in which he searched for gorillas in Central Africa, and John Lydon's Shark Attack in which he swam with sharks off South Africa.
In 2005, he appeared in Reynebeau & Rotten, a five episode documentary on Canvas, the cultural channel of VRT, which is the Flemish public broadcast. John Lydon guided Belgian journalist Marc Reynebeau through Great Britain to show him and the Belgian viewers what makes Britain so great. When asked why he was chosen as a guide, he answered that he was the cheapest one available.
After the show had been broadcasted on Flemish television, Lydon claimed, in an interview with the popular Belgian magazine Humo, that he was very unhappy with the way they handled post-production and was very angry with the way they depicted him in this particular show. He claimed that the creators mainly showed his humorous, sometimes clownesque antics, instead of focussing on his personal opinions and sometimes philosophical conversations he had with Marc Reynebeau. Lydon was also infuriated that the production company used songs from the Sex Pistols' catalogue, without consulting all the remaining members of the band, including him.
Lydon's autobiography
John Lydon wrote the following statement in his introduction to his autobiography, Rotten - No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs.
"Much has been written about the Sex Pistols. Much of it has either been sensationalism or journalistic psychobabble. The rest has been mere spite. This book is as close to the truth as one can get ... This means contradictions and insults have not been edited, and neither have the compliments, if any. I have no time for lies or fantasy, and neither should you. Enjoy or die...."