The only musician John Lydon was “scared to death” of
There will never be another Sex Pistols. It isn’t really possible for any musician to come across as genuinely threatening to the fabric of society the way they did in their 1977 heyday. Sure, others have come close. In fact, the likes of NWA, The Prodigy and Eminem have made John Lydon and his sneering dogsbodies look positively quaint, especially now that we know that they were formed to flog Vivienne Westwood clothes.
However, that still doesn’t mean that the Sex Pistols weren’t a genuinely disturbing presence in the British pop scene when they cracked the mainstream. Of course, there had been youth movements that the establishment thought were damaging. Hippie culture, mods and rockers, way back to the early days of rock ‘n’ roll in the 1950s. However, those subcultures all had the defence of “we’re just kids being kids, we don’t want to hurt anyone”.
On the other hand, John Lydon arrived on the scene bellowing that he was an anarchist, an antichrist and that dear old Queen Bess was no human being. Suddenly, the establishment was confronted with a youth subculture actually doing all the things that they’d accused previous youth subcultures of doing, and they did not know how to deal with it. Just look at the spluttering toffs in Parliament at the time wishing for their “sudden death”. You don’t get that with Kneecap, at least, at the time of writing.
All this to say, the Sex Pistols were a certifiably demonic presence in the music industry of their time. Mad, bad and dangerous to know barely covers it. One would be very surprised to find out that anyone threatened them the way that they threatened the very fabric of English civilisation. Especially because if there was a problem, they could just get Sid Vicious to twat it with a bike chain the way they did with Nick Kent. However, there was someone who made the blood of John Lydon run cold.
Which rock legend scared John Lydon?
It’s not even a fellow punker either. In fact, it’s an icon from the heady days of classic rock that Lydon and the band were meant to be striking back against. This was a man who, long before the Sex Pistols were anything other than a twinkle in Malcolm McLaren’s eye, was strutting down King’s Road with a home-made ‘I Hate Pink Floyd’ T-shirt on. So, how did someone with a similar level of prestige send a chill down the spine of a man literally called Johnny Rotten?
Put simply, by writing about him. In an interview with French magazine Guitare & Claviers, the interviewer asked Lydon how he felt about being namechecked by Neil Young in his deathless classic ‘My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)‘. Perhaps this is because the interview took place in 1992, far past the point where Lydon had anything to prove by slagging off legends like Neil Young, but he seemed legitimately overawed by his presence in the song.
He put it a little more simply, though, saying, “I was scared to death. I didn’t have the slightest idea I was that important! It’s like left and right—it’s all open to interpretation. When I went to see him live, he played that song and had the whole audience chanting ‘This is the story of Johnny Rotten!’ How embarrassing! But also what a compliment! He noticed me.”
There’s something legitimately charming about how honoured Lydon seems by his presence in the song. Especially when the interviewer asks if he’s a fan of Young, and he responds that he’s “always loved his music”. Unfortunately, this seems to be the very last moment that John Lydon would act in a way that even resembled charming, before ageing into a depressing parody of the firebrand he used to be. “It’s better to burn out than fade away”, indeed.
