Anger Is An Energy

"Allo! Hang up Nora, it's for me! Get off the phone!” Nora Forster (Lydon's better half) giggles and hangs up. Lydon: “What you want from me?” A fantastic 40-minute interview, if that's at all possible. Lydon laughs, “Okay, get your condoms.” Ummm… so how're you doing? ”Outside of what we call the 'shitsdom',” Lydon offers, “doing all right.”

Having caught PiL in Gothenburg, Sweden back in 2011, this scribe was fortunate enough to meet an assortment of überfans from different corners of the globe. “When you say 'überfans', what do you mean by that term?” Lydon interjects. Fans who endeavour to attend every single PiL gig irrespective of the travel time/cost involved. “Oh, we would call that the Lollipop Mob,” he corrects before pointing out one of the standout tracks from PiL's 2012 This Is PiL album, Lollipop Opera, is “an homage to the fans”. 

Lydon is ridiculously sharp, a pavement philosopher who often requires validation (“do you understand?”) throughout what turns into a one-hour phoner. He's conversationally poetic and open to discuss anything, even Sex Pistols. “To understand me, you really need to understand what it is I come from: multicultural, multiracial.” He's certainly proud of his Irish heritage. “Mmmm-hmmm, very much so,” he confirms. “Love and adore all of it, but a slave to none of it. I'm John, right? Before the Pistols I was John, then I was John Rotten, then I opened up and became John Lydon. And here today I am John, all right? I am what I am. I explore, interrogate every kind of possibility known musically that is out there and come up with something that I hope smacks of honesty, and I hope the listener understands that for me it's all about – every single song I've ever written in my whole life has always been about getting it right: Getting it right, finding the question.” 

When told he is definitely one of the few artists out there who writes songs about themes and subjects that truly matter, Lydon cautions, “I hope you mean that.” Affirmative. “Good. Good onya… It took a long time for me to crawl my way back into making records, because of the horrendous debt that the record labels placed on me, and I had to find money and, you know, I had to outsource, basically, in order to get this back together and make it very clear that institutions are not what you should love, institutionalised people you should sort of love, but [it's] those that understand how not to be institutionalised you should be paying attention to.” 

At “ten and a half to 11” years of age, Lydon worked as a minicab dispatcher – a position it's hard to imagine a young lad holding down these days. “Yeah, but you've gotta imagine what I went through to put myself in that position,” Lydon stresses. “I was in hospital from seven to eight; I'd lost my memory with meningitis. I had a lot to achieve and recreate and [I had to] find my own personality. And my mum and dad recommended me to a minicab office as a dispatcher. That's how much faith they put in me and I will never forget that, because I had something to prove not only to myself but probably to the world: that although you can go through illnesses that affect you mentally, it doesn't make you mental. In fact, if you're allowed to be given a position of creativity you can become MONUmental. And mum and dad pushed me – and god bless the cab company that let me run it, but I was very good at organising from thereon in. I can't count past ten, but I know how to book minicabs. Right? And that's, you know, from losing my mind and my memory!” 

For his memory to properly return, Lydon says “took about four years”. “And of course what happens then, when all of that comes back, is the feeling of guilt, 'Oh my god, how could I forget you as my mum and dad?' Those are the kind of situations that the young Johnny Rotten had to deal with. Didn't he do well?” Lydon cracks up. “Oh, but listen: that young fella, I love him 'cause it's me! [Laughs] Because he learned not to lie, do you understand?” Absolutely. “And my mum and dad always supported that through all of that early Pistols thing. They'd always say, when the press would wanna, 'Naaaaah, what about your son? He spits and gobs.' [Pauses] 'He's not lying!' You know?... And here I am today! I'm exactly the same person. This is why I've got a 30-year union with my wife, this is why my family and my friends know a hellavu lot about me – they know everything about me and I want them to. But you're a journalist, so I'm not gonna tell you too much.”

Much laughter and an invitation to please go ahead. “But do you understand what I'm trying to tell you?” Lydon asks seriously. “I care, right? None of this is glib or flippant or third-rate or 'done for the money. This fella here – and you love to call me god knows what, right? Call me 'cunt', if you like, but this is an honest cunt, 'cause I don't know how to be any other kinda cunt.” 

The press has targeted Lydon over the years, so his distrust of the media is warranted: “There was some awful shit written about me a couple of years ago. That was SO bad and SO hurtful and it was insane to accuse me of this: racism. How do you explain that to my Jamaican-born grandkids who were living with us at the time, because their mother Ari [Foster] of The Slits who died of cancer recently, and god bless her soul, had to listen to this and all of Jamaica going, 'What are they talk about, John?' You know?” Lydon also suffered a great deal when it was reported, just after he was dropped into the Australian jungle for Series Three of I'm A Celebrity Get Me Outta Here in 2004, that his wife was seen “with her black lover”. “Her 'black lover' was my grandson,” he laughs. “And there's no kickback or making up for such a lie… You work for the press: why can't I stop such an obvious lie? You know the answer, don't you? Because nobody wants to print the truth, because that's not what anybody's interested in, right? And the hurt and damage… We laughed about it later – years later – but not at the time.” 

On whether he has any nuggets to share with young bands, Lydon enthuses, “Oh, yes, absolutely. Take a look at me! [Cackles] I've taken 'em all on. Right? I have taken it ALL on and I am still here, loud and proud. And the records are good enough for any generation.” He's never comprised and it's true: PiL's music is timeless. “I won't make a pop-tart record for the sake of money. It's never gonna happen with me... And it's not really hilarious to say that I view meeself as a folk musician if you think about it: I mean what I say, I live by my words; I know the value of my family, my friends, my wife, my culture, my traditions. I know what is wrong in all of those situations and I know what could be right. And, 'I could be wrong, I could be right/I could be black, I could be white.” 

PIL will be playing the following dates:

Tuesday 9 April - Eatons Hill Hotel, Brisbane QLD
Wednesday 10 April - Enmore Theatre, Sydney NSW
Thursday 11 April - Palace Theatre, Melbourne VIC