The influential artist John Lydon called “a fat buffoon”
Punk has always been a profoundly countercultural force. In its purest form, the genre is all about calling out the world’s ills. Despite what people might think of it through today’s lens, the first wave of punk was a refreshing force, with John Lydon and his peers there to overthrow the established order.
It’s a point that often gets lost amid the stories of in-fighting, drug abuse, and Sid Vicious. Yet, when they broke out and galvanised the youths, Lydon’s band, the Sex Pistols, were directly hitting out against the musical and political status quo. Repackaging the basic rock ‘n’ roll formula into an anthemic and crunching palette à la the New York Dolls and The Stooges, they became the voices of a generation, with the sneering Lydon at the helm.
Just like the hippies before them, the punks were angry, and this time, they weren’t afraid to show it. Eschewing peace and love for amphetamine-fuelled fury, from the music decrying the fascistic monarchy to the moment the Sex Pistols divided the nation by swearing live on the Today show, this new counterculture quickly impressed itself upon life.
As part of this conflagration, Sex Pistols and the rest of their punk peers had the world’s most prominent musicians in their crosshairs. Not many were safe from their wrath, and first on their list of targets were the pompous prog rock groups, who were about to be blown sky-high. From a young Lydon hired by the group after being spotted on the King’s Road wearing an “I hate Pink Floyd” T-shirt to the members genuinely thinking that Emerson, Lake and Palmer signified the end of rock music before they broke through, they made it clear that the cape-clad, fantastical genre was their antithesis.
It wasn’t their only enemy, though. Washed-up artists who had long rested at the top of the industry were also despised by punks, including The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and John Lennon. Ardent believers until the end, in the years since punk’s emergence and its ensuing implosion, its driving forces have continued to spread the gospel, even as later acolytes that they opened the gates for, such as Henry Rollins, have turned their crosshairs on them.
Lydon’s career is littered with vitriolic takedowns of other artists, which, ironically, has influenced later punk tastemakers such as Rollins to turn on him. In the face of such a change in reputation, though, he has remained undeterred. He continues to hit out at the world, including his old bandmates, showing that the incensed punk spirit hasn’t died in the face of the passing of time and has only been bolstered. His 1994 autobiography Rotten is strewn with such accounts, including of Elton John, whom he strangely described as “a fat buffoon” when praising him for authenticity.
In a backhanded compliment for the ages, after criticising The Rolling Stones and frontman Mick Jagger for being fakes, Lydon wrote of the ‘Rocket Man’ artist: “For some weird reason, Elton seems to be all right. He’s more like Coco the Clown, so utterly harmless I’d put him in the Barry Manilow category. Elton is not pretending to be something he’s not. He’s a fat buffoon who plays piano—adequately”.
