The “terrible band” that literally caused John Lydon to inflict pain on his own ears
For many, the Stooges were the very first punk band, though John Lydon would obviously refute that fiercely and perhaps threaten to headbutt you for good measure.
But putting his angular opinion aside for the minute, it’s always worth pondering the Stooges when pontificating about the ways of punk. In their early days, we find a fitting vignette for the revolution that would follow: at one of their first gigs, Iggy Pop was brutally attacked by a motorcycle gang who didn’t like the cut of his jib.
After such a crushing ordeal, most bands might’ve cancelled their concert the following evening, but the tough old Mr Pop went on local radio and invited the bastards back for round two. Whether word of that tale reached Britain in time or not, when the punk movement got moving on this side of the pond, it was certainly full of fighting talk.
Yes, while the widely pacifistic politics of punk might’ve been wildly misunderstood in the years that have followed its bloody boom, such an ethos certainly didn’t preclude the bludgeon of pain and poisonous words.
“I’ve been stabbed. I’ve had a bottle put in my face. I’ve had my leg ripped from the kneecap up to the hip with a machete,” Lydon vouched in testimony to the troubles he faced in an interview with Sirius Radio. He’d also been debated as a terrorist in the House of Lords and spied upon by Homeland Security.
The howls of ‘Anarchy in the UK’ might sound hostile, but it is nothing compared to what the band faced in return. “We started the Sex Pistols in a world of horrible confusion,” Lydon explains. “We were slung into the deep end there and utterly hated and ridiculed and viciously assaulted, too. I mean, I’m serious when I say the scars are still on me.”
Still, none of the stitches or stresses compared to one harrowing moment that arose from his issue with his cohorts in The Stranglers. Naturally, even his axis of agony comes with the chance for the snivelling singer to take a swipe at a rival. “I know what pain is, you know,” Lydon says. “And the worst thing of the lot was when Chrissie Hynde pierced my ear.”
Though he holds neither himself nor Hynde responsible for the aural affliction, instead blaming Hugh Cornwell and his ‘No More Heroes’ cronies. You see, his ears were seemingly suffering a fate far worse moments prior to Hynde plunging a stud through them.
“It was funny,” Lydon regales. “I wanted to have my ear pierced but you know this was England then and it was all ‘men don’t do things like that’. So that’s why I decided to do it. So we did it in the women’s toilet at a pub called the Red Cow, while The Stranglers were playing.”
Why then and there, you might ask? Well, beyond the Ddutch courage on offer, Lydon is quick to offer up his own withering reasoning. “Terrible band live, awful. Good record, fun records but live didn’t carry,” he said of The Stranglers. “So we had nothing better to do but go in the toilet with a safety pin and a bar of soap. And I bled for a week but she had great fun,” he says. “Not bad for old vegetarian Chrissie.”
It’s hard to say when this occurred, but it could’ve potentially been the same night that The Stranglers inflicted yet more pain on Lydon shortly after their performance. As the famous story goes, the late Stranglers keyboardist Dave Greenfield pinned Lydon against an ice cream van, threatening to pepper him with hundreds and thousands of the non-confectionery kind.
“They were all wimps,” Jean-Jacques Burnel said of the Stranglers’ rival punk bands. “It polarised opinion against us and became about everybody versus the Stranglers,” he explained of the ice cream incident to NME. And it also made them a target.
“There were fights every night in those days. It was like Gunfighter Syndrome. People would come and test how tough you were and climb onstage to beat you up. We were one of the few bands playing regularly outside our comfort zones,” Brunel claims.
Adding: “In 1976, we played over 200 gigs whereas The Clash and the Pistols were only playing posh attic parties in London for the press, so we were on the frontline, and they didn’t stand a chance against us in a fight.”
But despite these warring words, having interviewed both Lydon and Cornwell, I can attest that they’re actually very personable fellows who were simply trained in the Stooges vein. As Cornwell confessed, “That’s what you did in those days, you know, slag people off, because that’s how you got in a headline.” Although quite what headline Lydon was trying to garner by inflicting pain upon his own ears is lost to the drunken sands of time.
