{"id":15620,"date":"2018-12-12T05:30:22","date_gmt":"2018-12-12T10:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=15620"},"modified":"2018-11-12T14:55:04","modified_gmt":"2018-11-12T19:55:04","slug":"john-lydon-is-happy-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2018\/12\/12\/john-lydon-is-happy-part-two\/","title":{"rendered":"John Lydon is … Happy? (Part Two)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One<\/a>…<\/i><\/p>\n

A defining characteristic of most all of PiL\u2019s releases is that \u2013 like Black Sabbath, oddly enough \u2013 each was critically panned upon release, only to undergo reassessment within a few years, by which time the music would be hailed as relevant, innovative and important. One might expect Lydon to find that amusing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t<\/i> find it amusing,\u201d he snarls. \u201cI find it life-threatening, really. Because I needed to survive. So many walls and barriers were put up against me, and the record labels really weren’t supporting us at all.\u201d He believes that explains the negative reviews. \u201cSomebody pays their bills: it\u2019s called record companies or advertisements. There was no control put in our favor, and so a free-for-all really is what went on, and it just got worse and worse and worse.\u201d<\/p>\n

But even as group members left or were dismissed, with new ones taking their place, Lydon didn\u2019t give up. \u201cTo quote Shakespeare, I learned very, very quickly to smile in the face of adversity from the Pistols onward,\u201d he says. \u201cThe more thrown at me, the more I thought, \u2018Oh, delicious! New tools!\u2019 You’ve got to, when they’re out there doing that.\u201d He says that the record company wanted to \u201cbland\u201d PiL out, or worse, remake them as \u201cthe Sex Pistols Part 2 \u2026 which is a shocking, bad idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Bad reviews or not, as the saying goes, many of the people who bought those early albums went on to their own careers in music, absorbing influences \u2013 musical, attitudinal \u2013 from PiL. The new documentary film The Public Image is Rotten<\/i> features Moby and Sonic Youth\u2019s Thurston Moore (among others, but notably not Bono or Dave Grohl) rhapsodizing about Public Image Limited. And that makes John Lydon, in a word, happy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very<\/i> happy, because at the time I didn’t think anybody appreciated us,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was madcap laughs, the whole thing.\u201d He admits that the band blew almost its entire budget for its second album on the packaging. \u201cAn actual metal box, and we thought why not?\u201d So when it came time for the sessions, the group made do with odd bits of unused studio time booked by other bands. \u201cWe took whatever opportunity we could,\u201d Lydon recalls, \u201cwhich was always after midnight, a couple of hours here or there. <\/b>Our album was never done in one full piece. It really was like a gang of burglars at work!\u201d<\/p>\n

With hindsight, Lydon thinks that method yielded creative rewards. \u201cAnd I kind of stuck with that as a very good idea,\u201d he says. \u201cSometimes your best work can come that way. You rush yourself in, and then you better have the inspiration at that moment. We did<\/i>, and we worked bloody hard!\u201d<\/p>\n

Subsequent albums each had their own character. Flowers of Romance<\/i> (1981) was built upon drum tracks laid down by Martin Atkins; it\u2019s more or less a collaboration between Lydon and producer Nick Launay. 1983\u2019s Live in Tokyo<\/i> was essentially made with a pickup band. And 1985\u2019s \u201cgeneric titled\u201d release (Album<\/i> on vinyl, Compact Disc<\/i> on CD, and Cassette<\/i> on \u2026 you get the idea) featured an uncredited, all-star lineup of musicians that included drummers Tony Williams and Ginger Baker, and guitarist Steve Vai. <\/p>\n

I mention to Lydon that \u201cEase,\u201d one of the standout tracks on Album<\/i>, sounds to my ears like a post-punk answer to Led Zeppelin\u2019s \u201cKashmir.\u201d I immediately wonder how he\u2019ll react. \u201cOh, how complementary can you get?\u201d he gushes. \u201cThat’s a wonderful<\/i> thought!\u201d<\/p>\n

Though it\u2019s near impossible to imagine 1977-era Johnny Rotten making such an admission, he continues. \u201cI’ve always said that I think Physical Graffiti<\/i> is one of my all time favorite records. There’s one side of that that absolutely tears my head off. It’s so involving and threatening and forceful and just beautiful.\u201d He pauses and refines his comment to include a gentle disclaimer. \u201cI would never be shy of other people’s seriously interesting commitments to music, but I never want to sound exactly like them,\u201d he says. \u201cBut the raw energy to attack the subject matter, that’s what I do best.\u201d<\/p>\n

He sees his responsibility to fans in simple terms: to be as honest as possible. \u201cI remember the very first interview my mother was challenged with,\u201d he says. \u201cThey asked her to defend me as [a member of] the Sex Pistols. And she said, \u2018Well, Johnny doesn’t tell lies.\u2019 She meant that, too; she meant it deeply. And that’s now indelibly stamped on the inside of my brain.\u201d <\/p>\n

In the end, John Lydon is a pop artist. Asked where he thinks Public Image Limited falls on the continuum between entertainer and artist, he quickly shoots back a pithy response. \u201cWe\u2019re artistic entertainers,\u201d he says. He admits a love for pop music, but emphasizes that with PiL he has never consciously aimed for hit singles. \u201cNo, I wasn’t thinking, \u2018Let’s have a hit,\u2019 because all the way through this hits were happening, indirectly or whatever,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to break some of the record contract rule books at the time,\u201d Lydon explains. \u201cThe label would say, \u2018We can’t release this; it won’t sell,\u2019 but things like \u2018This is Not a Love Song,\u2019 \u2018Rise\u2019 and even \u2018The Flowers of Romance\u2019 single all managed to chart.\u201d But eventually, he says, the record label purse strings tightened, and he found himself wanting \u2013 needing, really \u2013 to get out of the business. \u201cI had to go outside of music for quite some time,\u201d he recalls. \u201cFor nearly two decades there, there was no support from this industry, nothing. That was very, very painful.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then everything I did, I’d be accused of one thing or another,\u201d he says. \u201cAccusations have permanently followed me.\u201d He may be referring to a UK television commercial he made in 2008, extolling the virtues of \u2013 wait for it \u2013 Country Life brand butter. But Lydon used the money from that pitch man gig to fund the revived Public Image Limited. Since reforming, the band has maintained a stable lineup \u2013 something the 20th<\/sup> century PiL never came close to doing \u2013 and today, the husband, father and Public Image Limited front man seems more at peace \u2013 possibly even happy \u2013 with his past, present and future. <\/p>\n

Check back tomorrow for even more from my conversation with Public Image Limited\u2019s John Lydon.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One… A defining characteristic of most all of PiL\u2019s releases is that \u2013 like Black Sabbath, oddly enough \u2013 each was critically panned upon release, only to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15626,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,53,54,59],"tags":[1184,1202,1753,1932],"class_list":["post-15620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-post-punk","category-post-rock","category-punk","tag-john-lydon","tag-johnny-rotten","tag-public-image-limited","tag-sex-pistols","cat-41-id","cat-53-id","cat-54-id","cat-59-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15620"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15627,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15620\/revisions\/15627"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}