“I’ve done that”: The band John Lydon said he would be in for the rest of his life
Most artists never want to feel confined to a certain type of music for the rest of their lives. It’s in everyone’s nature to want to spread out a little bit more, and when things don’t end up working out with one band, it’s not out of the question for someone to either go solo or get back up on their feet with a completely different band behind them. And while John Lydon has managed to make rock and roll history on numerous occasions throughout the years, he was more than happy to pick the handful of groups that he would take to his grave.
That’s before getting into the artists he also had disdain for. He was brought up to wipe out the tired and pretentious side of progressive rock, so it wasn’t like he was itching to join a band like Emerson, Lake and Palmer for the rest of his days or anything. His music was about disorder in many regards, and the Sex Pistols were the litmus test for how punk rockers should behave.
There were a lot of anarchic tendencies in how they conducted themselves, but there was also no point in continuing after a while. They were meant to piss people off, and the whole point of them calling it quits seemed to be by design, so as not to stick around long enough to get on anyone’s good side for too long. But Lydon wasn’t looking to roll over when entering the age of post-punk.
People had already begun taking the crux of what punk was about and turning it on its head, and when Public Image Ltd came out, it was like Lydon was completely reborn in many respects. It wasn’t commercial by any stretch of the imagination, but hearing the band get more involved in something more electronic, taking cues from the music coming out of other punk-adjacent acts like Television.
A change of scenery was in order, but Lydon was more than content to play up his rock and roll villain behaviour now and again. He would even release some of his solo material in the 1990s, but the lion’s share of his interviews seemed to be centred around taking the piss out of everything in sight, whether it was propping up people that weren’t popular at the moment or treating some of the hallowed saints of rock music as the worst things that the genre could have asked for.
Despite his cartoonish nature in front of the camera, Lydon always took his music seriously, and for as much of an impact as Sex Pistols made, he would much rather be making his own music with Public Image Ltd than entertain the idea of making up with his old bandmates, saying, “Public Image is for the rest of my life. I can’t afford to go stepping in the past. I’ve done that. Any idea I have goes straight into PiL.”
That might sting for some people wanting to hear him do an authentic version of ‘Anarchy in the UK’ or ‘Pretty Vacant’, but it makes more sense for him, given what he tends to gravitate towards. Lydon was known to be a contrarian in many regards, and since Sex Pistols have had a golden halo put around some of their best material, it would make sense why he would rather innovate on his terms than turn into the great nostalgia act that everyone expected out of them later.
Lydon may unleash the kind of verbal venom that no one else needs to hear, but in terms of sticking with Public Image instead of Sex Pistols, it makes much more sense for him. Punk rock can be fun, but that rudimentary approach can also be confining, and if he’s picking a band that will last for a lifetime, Public Image opens up many more possibilities.
