JOHNNY LYDON

Rip It Up, Issue 46, 1 May 1981, Page 10

JOHNNY LYDON

Duncan Campbell

'Rip It Up' writer Duncan Campbell has just returned from an overseas excursion, which included a visit to London. While there he interviewed several persons

in the music industry. More interviews . will appear in forthcoming, issues. What follows is his .first encounter, with music's bete noir, John Lydon.

Monday, April 13. A lovely spring day in London. Sun shining, but the wind blows straight off the Russian steppes. Siting amid the organised chaos that is the office of Virgin Records, off Portobello Rd. International manager Lisa Anderson and pressperson Julie Bayliss are trying to sort out for me who is available and who isn't. "Well, they're in Los Angeles now, just starting a tour. They live in Sheffield and never come to London. They hate the place. He's just rehearsing for a play he's appearing in. They're busy recording." Things aren't looking too promising on the interview front. Tentatively, I ask about John Lydon. "He's been hassled for so many interviews lately, he's fed up. We'll ask him, but we can't promise anything." But luck, as it turns out, is with us. Half an hour later, in walks John Lydon, purely by chance. He agrees to talk, and we thank our stars.

Lydon looks pale and thin, ie: normal. He's tastefully attired in a,blue boiler suit and is in good humour, exchanging banter with the office staff, who affectionately refer to him as 'Lotten', after an encounter with the Japanese media.

"1 can hardly be open-minded. I think it's the best thing we've done so far, without a doubt. "

John Lydon is an easy person to like, often brutally frank and a bit of a joker. He detests sham and pretension, and while his replies to questions may sometimes leave you dangling, he's certainly not an evasive or aggressive interviewee. PiL's latest offering, The Flowers Of Romance, had just been released at the time of this interview. Tell us about the new album, 1 suggest for openers. "No," he replies. All right then, don't, I respond, playing it his way. "Well, what the hell can I say?" comes the retort, all in good fun we hasten to add. "It's just bloody great. It should be listened to, though, first. I can only say good things about it, can't I? I can hardly be open-minded. I think it's the best thing we've done so far, without a doubt. "We've learned our studio technique now. We approached it ... not professionally, but we know what we want and we know how to get it," he grins in conscious self-parody. "We understand the workings much easier, and it was a very enjoyable album to make." Flowers was made by Lydon, Keith Levene and Jeanette Lee, with Martin Atkins drumming on three tracks. With the departure of Jah Wobble, there's very little bass on the album. Levene plays it on one track, and Lydon bows it on

another. Jeanette is a long-standing PiL Corporation member, but Lydon is reluctant to talk about her contributions. "She does the same as any of of us. I hate working out the ins and outs of what each of us do technically, I think that's a bit silly. Because in PiL we all pride ourselves on being a bit multi-adaptable. I mean, if a situation needs something to be done immediately, any one of us can do it. As far as playing goes, we all just pick things up and bash them, there's no great technical musical ability involved, just whatever moves us, whatever is right, not what's technically proficient." Percussion plays a major part in the making of Flowers. With the bass so seldom used, drums and percussion are required more to provide a rhythm. It's as unorthodox as anything we've come to expect from PiL, but it's surprisingly danceable.

“Nothing is worked out before we go into the studio,"

The discussion turns to PiL's approach to recording. "Nothing is worked out before we go into the studio, it's made up on the spot," Lydon explains. "This makes it real good fun. If we don't particularly like something, we drop it immediately, we,don't carry on with it. We have very little material that we don't use. We use just about everything." Does that make for a slow recording process? "No, it makes it very quick. This album took about three weeks. This time around, we started off with the drums. We took about two days to get a decent drum sound, using about 16 of the 24 tracks just for the drums. And once the drum sound was sorted out we just started from there, and did it song by song. We use very few instruments, we just use what we do use to the maximum potential. We just let them flow themselves, use the power of them." ; One instrument PiL has been experimenting with is a synthesiser, largely built by Levene from various bits and pieces. The sound produced is not what you'd expect from such equipment. "We don't want a mechanical, synthesised sound. We go more for sort of natural sound, and we use the synth very sparsely to imitate a natural sound that we couldn't get otherwise." Guitar is also only a minor feature of Flowers, being used only on two tracks, one of them played backwards. Lyrics evolve in much the same way. "There's no set format. Some of the lyrics I'd already written before and just kept them, others I made up on the spot. Sometimes the lyrics were made to fit what we'd already recorded, and in other cases the words came first. "There couldn't possibly be a format. If we approached things with a set way of doing it, it would take all the fun out of it. It would seem tedious, and I really wouldn't want to do it."

" They're either too over the top about us or too against."

So what were you after, musically, after the Pistols split? "The way groups were approaching music was very limiting. There were traditions and formats that they were allowing themselves to be drawn into. We approached it totally opposite to that. There would be no limitations, there would be no set way of doing anything. No doors closed. And it's been very difficult." He draws the words out for emphasis. "The prejudice you stir up in people, lazy people, can be very, very bitter." What sort of people are you talking about? "Journalists, first and foremost. They like the rock n' roll format. Bands must have managers, they have to record at certain dates, they have to do tours, have to do this, have to do that, have to have a producer ... we just don't want to know all that, and we don't want to call ourselves a band either. We don't want to limit ourselves to just making music. "To get journalists to understand that can be fakin' difficult, because they need to categorise. Well, they do in England. That's the only way that they can approach anything. They have a standard way of dealing with music, and if you break away from that standardisation, you come up against some very, very nasty opposition." And yet there are some sections of the British music press that have championed PiL extensively.

"I know, but that's a game they play. You can't really rely on any of their opinions. They're either too over the top about us or too against. There's no real common sense, it s really down to 'Well, do you like the record or not?', and I think that's all that matters. If you like it, buy it, if you don't, don't. There's no real pressure."

"I'd rather us do it than Barry Manilow or someone like that. "

Was it hard finding the right people for PiL? Well, we've made mistakes with certain ex-members, but we're alright now. PiL now is just a trilogy; me, Keith and Jeanette, and I don't think we re ever going to have new members. There'll sometimes be auxiliary units like Martin, because he's got his own band. We'll never enlarge our company. We like it small, it works better."

So why did Jah Wobble quit? This has never really been explained. "Just personal differences, that's all. No huge bickering. I mean, he just went about things differently from the rest of us, and his idea of where we should be going musically was very different from ours. He wanted to go into jazz-funk and stuff like that. To me, that's an old, tired cliche. I don't need thejitnitations of one form of music." Wobble has not been seen in some time. He was last heard of driving a taxi. PiL also wants to get more involved in films, but is running into union problems. You need a union ticket to get anything shown on British TV, which is important if you want to be known. And, as Lydon says, PiL doesn't want to be anonymous. The company had agreed to write the soundtrack for a horror movie being planned in Hollywood. But that's currently in abeyance because filming has stopped. Does Lydon have any misgivings about being associated with such a Megabuck industry? "No, if we can make a good soundtrack, then we should. I dearly like being given a chance to do that, and it has the makings of a very good film, and I think we could improve it. I mean, I'd rather us do it than Barry Manilow or someone like that. All we want is to be given the chance." We return briefly to The Flowers Of Romance, the title of which has associations with a band whose former members included the late Sid Vicious.

"The name is mine, and Keith was a member of it," says Lydon. "It's got nothing really to do with that band. It's just a similar situation of people turning themselves into

parasites for social reasons. It's just about social climbers."

"Live gigs are really a thing of the past. "

PiL has only gigged sporadically since it formed. The quality of the performances has varied, the best moments being captured on the Paris In The Spring album. But it's unlikely there'll be any more concerts. "Live gigs are really a thing of the past. They were well

and fine in the Who's era, in the 60's, it was a good thing, but it isn't no more. They've become too institutionalised. It's a real pain now to go and see a band live. You're forced into your seat, the bouncers can be brutal, and it's all at a very high cost. It's just like bad theatre, you have to sit there. You can't really enjoy yourself. There's not enough activity. You end up a pantomime horse." Despite all that, Lydon is happy with the live album, saying it's better than the bootlegs, which is why it was released.

Keith Levene walks in, complaining about a power failure which has stopped the underground, stranding a friend across town. A cab is despatched, and the conversation continues.

"He made Malcy look like a big tosspot. Well done, Adam. "

I hesitantly raise the subject of the Sex Pistols. Lydon's face is resigned, his answers mechanical. It's old history, and a part of his life he obviously wants to forget. Law suits are continuing, and Lydon has seen plenty of tax bills, but no money. Malcolm McLaren is also a touchy subject. Lydon hasn't spoken to him since the split, nor does he care to.

"It's a waste of time talking to him, he's just an egotist. He's stuck on his cloud. He'll remain convinced he's an artist. I think it's really good, what happened with Adam Ant. Malcolm kicked him in the teeth and he came back shining. He made Malcy look like a big tosspot. Well done, Adam."

At the same time, Lydon is not entirely convinced about the Antboy's sound. "I don't really know what they mean when they say 'tribal'. They don't sound very tribal to me. But good luck to 'em. We need those different attitudes in music anyway, or it becomes sterile."

He agrees that the approach recalls the days of Gary Glitter, the Sweet and Slade. "That's the trouble with 'the music biz' at the moment. It's all going backwards, nobody really wants to go forwards. But I never think about the future. We just do as we want, and that's that."

One thing Lydon never does is to presume he's influencing others. "I would hate bands to start imitating us. I think that would be awful. But I hope people pick up on the right side, of us, that we're doing what we want. I think that's what all! bands should be doing. What they want, not what they're told to do, not what some crummy record producer says to them. I mean, if you make a record, who better to know what it should sound like than the person making it? You don't need someone to tell you how your own song9-should sound. "It's not that difficult to work out how to use a studio. It just takes a bit of effort."

"He got the name Vicious from

that Lou Reed song. But he was a weed."

Is John Lydon happy with his lot these days? "I'm always happy, just as long as I can do what I want, without infringing on others. I just do it. I'm not the miseryguts the world would want to believe. That's just convenient bracketing for the press, innit?"

Yet the punk days seemed to have a very negative outlook.

"It was looked upon as negative, but I didn't think it was negative at all. I thought it was all jolly good fun. 'Look, we're destroying your horrible industry. Titter.' It stopped being fun when Malcolm started to take himself too seriously. That was in America. "People love a demise. I mean, the Pistols were never successful until they broke up. The same thing happened with guys like Jim Croce. It would have been very convenient to a lot of record collectors if I'd hit the bucket."

Instead, it happened to Sid. "Sid fell into the trap. You know, 'Oh, you've got to be a martyr to be a real rock n' roll superstar.' Fool. 1 don't think he'd enjoy what's happened since his death. It's a farce. They've turned him into a puppet." What was he like, as a person? "He got the name Vicious from that Lou Reed song. But he was a weed. He was OK up until he met Nancy, then he started fooling around with drugs because he thought that was the big thing to do. And he just ended up a vegetable. He became very gullible." Lydon dismisses Steve Jones and Paul Cook with ease. He considers they're living a hasbeen life, making hasbeen music.

Like to be unknown again 1

End of interview. Pub time. Lydon carefully combs his shocking orange hair into a mess, and covers it with one of a number of baseball caps he carries in a Boston Red Sox bag. It also contains a pocket cassette recorder, for random thoughts and snatches of songs, none of which will ever see the light of day. We retire to a pub down the road, where Levene gets engrossed in a Space Invaders game. We are joined by Vivien Goldman, who writes for NME and is an old friend of Lydon's. Over a few jars, John speaks of his desire to one day record a nostalgia album, a la Schmilsson In The Night. Goldman says he's been threatening to do this for ages. We finish up doing a little harmonising on one of his favourites, Skeeter Davis's 'The End Of The World'. This is all becoming a little bit unreal. Lydon's parting shot comes when I ask whether he'd like to be unknown again. "God, no! That would be awful! What's the point of being unknown, like some sort of cult hero?" The famous face registers the well-known look of disgust, mingled with amusement. And John Lydon says goodbye.