I have to admit at first I was surprised about putting about the Pistols and PiL together, but it’s amazing how well it works. I can’t believe how good it all sounds together!

I was surprised myself, because I’ve never played the two together, even myself. I have sessions of listening to my own stuff, but I don’t listen to them all together. But when I did, they worked really well. They all flow. There’s a consistency in there, and I think it is quality if I dare say so myself (laughs). I sat down and I thought this out a long time. The first two songs ‘Anarchy in the UK’ & ‘Public Image’, by god, are they different styles! But are they? There’s a unity in there and they make great sense together, and it’s really good for me to hear it like that.

The thing I picked up on later on was that it crossed divides. You’ve got PiL fans who don’t really like the Pistols or vice versa, or whatever. Doing this compilation it’s crossing divides, and that’s a very important part of the records.

Yeah, stop squabbling, you don’t have to like everything I do, but here it is. Pick and choose at your leisure, but don’t tear down half of my house to spite the other.

How did you actually narrow it down for the second CD? I wouldn't have been able to do it!

When you put together a combination like that, it’s what you leave out that always, always worries you, but how many PiL albums are there? And where the hell do I end? Do you want to be paying £100 for a record, because we’d be talking 10 or 11 CD’s here! I’ve never made a record I didn’t like, I’ve never released it, there’s piles in the dustbin I just wouldn’t touch. There’s no casual slop here.

It started out as a one CD album and expanded into two, and two was it. That was pushing the boundary. Amazingly I got a double CD out of them, but that took some effort. Even in the end we couldn’t get ‘4 Enclosed Walls’ on because there was no space left. We’ve absolutely rammed it. I think it’s something like 32 tracks all in all (laughs)! But the point is, now you can make up your own compilation at home! I don’t need to do yours for you!

This is only a good idea of a body of work from a larger, larger, set and a bigger world. 32 songs is only a very small part of it. There’s very vast amounts of material this leads to if you are so interested. But this is the more “single-y” orientated side. If you can call it single orientated because ‘God Save The Queen’ or ‘Anarchy’, these are not what you would have called singles in those days, and ‘Public Image’ definitely wasn’t looked at as the kind of record that should be a single. And it went on, and on, and on, like that with every single track I’ve ever done.

I think there’s a definite thread through the compilation, but it’s up to people to find it for themselves, because what it means to me is different to what it means to you, and so on.

That’s how the world should be, and if it’s shit to you Mr journalist, then don’t bother! It’s quite surprising that the reviews I’ve bothered to look at don’t really mention that there’s a record out there, people just want to talk about what they feel about me. Whether it be negative or positive, everybody’s got something to say about me. I think too many people tell me what I think and not enough ask me.

Half the time the reviews just seem to be personal assaults against you, it doesn’t matter what they’re reviewing, Sex Pistols, PiL, TV, whatever. It’s all the same crap.

Well, assault me for what I’ve done wrong, I don’t mind that, I’m fully prepared to take that on the chin. But you can’t just invent stuff, you just can’t make it up, if you don’t like someone it must be for a reason. Say what that reason is, don’t invent some. All that “I’m in it for the money” nonsense. If I’m just a sell-out, and, you know, I’m just scamming the world, what a masterplan that must have been, I mean why would I even bother? All I am basically is a free spirit, and what’s wrong with that? I’m not trying to sell nothing to no one if they don’t want it.

If you’re gonna talk about how much I earn, talk about how much I spend on things! If some journalist resents me being paid for my work, well I resent him being paid for his work based on me, I really do. That’s the parasite complaining about the host animal, what a fucking cheek!

I’ve been standing alone against this for a long time, and it can get depressing and it can wear you down, but the thing is, they’ve never done that! They’ve never managed to do that to me, and they never fucking will. Never.

The reviews I’ve saw of the album so far, they are either all out attacks or they completely miss the point, like the NME, did you know ‘Warrior’ sounds like Billy Idol?

What! (laughs) (quite a lot!) (quite an awful lot!) I think somebody should go check what they’re fucking thinking! That just sounds like they really haven’t paid any attention, and they really don’t know anything about music, at all. I can’t in all honesty figure out what on earth they could possibly be meaning? You know, it’s not easy to be so wrong, it really isn’t, because you have to fight logic. To come up with conclusions like that, you have to go absurdly out the way of what you’re actually listening to. There’s deliberate motives in nonsense like that, and I don’t think anyone needs to explain me in those terms, it’s slightly missing the fucking point. Twist that the other way round and you might be more accurate.

The irony is that on the whole that was actually a positive review! There’s been some really nasty stuff this time around. I’ve read more than one review that tells people to buy your records elsewhere other than this compilation. I mean what’s that about!

Well, I’ve been saying it for years, if they’re gonna call themselves journalists, at least research what it is they're opinionating on. Why do they bother to print “don’t buy this it’s a waste of money”, that’s really going out your way to tell people. That’s a nasty, nasty attitude in life. They don’t need to be so bitter, it requires an awful lot of intensive work to be so hateful. I must be doing something right to justify that kind of effort.

I think given the care and attention that’s been put into this compilation. For it just to get trashed like that without giving it a proper listen, it’s nothing short of a disgrace.

Look, I don’t bother. You should never be shy of negativity, ever. So what? Bloody hell, what have I got to worry about? I’ve grown to expect it and to look forward to it. To see just how silly and spiteful people can be. It’s the problem with the world. There’s too much of it and it’s all based on an idiotic jealousy, “why him”, “why not me!” Well, because you didn’t do anything you silly cunt! (laughs).

But if you’re gonna be bloody well reviewing an album like that, don’t have a personal attack at me, just listen to the fucking stuff. It’s very ignorant. There’s some major league people that have been in PiL over the years, and the Sex Pistols are hardly talentless and unmentionable. What I’m saying is; these are people from many different walks of life that have went on to be fucking important in their own way. So it can’t be all rubbish can it?

There really doesn’t seem to be a lot of reviews around at all. You seem be getting ignored. Even more than usual!

That’s the way it is these days I’m afraid the industry has become extremely frivolous and very, very much Top 20, much more so even when the Pistols started. But you have to understand I’m not like Madonna, I don’t have a big publicist company keeping me in the press, and paying through the nose for trivia, but I’m still there.

Yeah, Madonna falls off a horse and she gets the front page!

And the fun of that is; that the same day I was learning to ride a horse on Hadrian's Wall for Belgian TV (laughs). So to open a newspaper and read that was just hysterical (laughs), it’s just daft how life is!

I think the compilation is ideal for ‘casual’ fans. The hardcore PiL fans either bought it on day one, or they’ll get it in 3 months time, but I think it’s important for everyone else to know it’s out there. It deserves to do well.

Yeah, but PiL doesn’t sell in one lump, never has, or anything I’ve ever done, even the Pistols, we were never like that. We’re not in Britney Spears world. The people who buy the stuff I make will buy it when they’re good and ready. But the whole industry is now really completely closed down, record companies don’t function the same way at all. They’re more like warehouse's and distribution units. There’s no real communication with the staff, except for people that have worked there from years and years ago. They don’t have that proper co-ordination, there’s no real PR people any more, at least not for me (laughs).

All I get to talk to these days is accountants, and a few of the slave staff. It’s an odd way of running a business and I can see now how they are running themselves out of business. They’re not interested in the art of creating new talent anymore because the corporate accountancy side of it is far more dominant. It sees any kind of investment in the future as a waste of money, so the orientation is towards a huge catalogue, a warehouse and sell it on the net, and no more bother to it than that.

Then at the same time, you’ve got all kinds of moves going on in the wonderful world of business to try take people’s copyright off them, and that’s very, very dangerous. You know, my copyright’s on my songs can be challenged by someone with more money? I don’t make records for other people to sit on top of.

It’s becoming that your song is no longer your own anymore. It’s there for anyone to just take. This whole MP3 file culture has absolutely lulled people into that ‘well who are you to ask for anything’ it’s just a mob of people taking for nothing, and so nothing new is gonna happen in an environment like that. No one is gonna want to learn to do anything, or want to do anything, because it won’t be yours the second you’ve done it. Someone will come along take it, copy it, mess it up, rip it off, whatever, and you’ve got no rights.

It’s devaluing the whole thing, not just your records.

No, no not just me, everyone. It costs people money to make this stuff and you don’t want to pay them? You’re reducing creative people to slaves, and you’re pushing them out of the culture. So what will happen is that creativity will be not tolerated, because it will get in the way of good business, it will be seen as an idiocy. And you do find that people who make different music are just seen as being eccentric, or arrogant, or awkward, and are not playing along with the game. Well, the game is what’s wrong, everything should not be the same over and over again.

If people go and get the MP3’s legally that’s fine. I put a bit on the site to say that you can get legal PiL and Pistols on iTunes, so go get it there. Don’t steal it.

Yeah that’s ok, but the whole ipod library thing can be a scam to artists who have had long term contracts, because all that technology was not included in original contracts. All of it is such bollocks, it’s a world of rubbish and every day is a way of some cunt trying to squeeze another quid out of you.

Did you know PiL and Pistols were up there?

Yeah, it’s all under observation, but it’s bloody difficult to get that stuff corrected. I deliberately disconnect myself from it. I disconnect myself with the official Virgin web site too, that’s their thing, and I find it tacky, I’m not that kind of pop star.

I checked their site the other day and there’s nothing about you, nothing. Not a word.

Yeah, why should I have anything to do with it, they don’t even mention a release. It’s just bloody idiotic. What you just forget to mention your own product? Or do you not know it even exists, or do you just not care, what? Just state what it is, but it’s a nonsense.

I can’t speak for the whole of the country, but not every shop I tried had the album and/or the DVD, and the ones that did didn’t have it displayed very well. It certainty wasn’t in any of the new release sections. I’ve been hearing similar things from other people too.

God knows what that’s about. John Gray has told me in London it’s quite well displayed. So it's a shame if the record company have gone and done that. I asked for it to be around Britain, but they tend to just go London and ignore the rest, and that’s a shame. It’s a foolishness, but you can’t change them because there’s no one that’s able to make any kind of decision, because it’s all done by committee. If anyone stands up and suggests something and it doesn’t work they loose their job, you know what I mean? So the risk factor is introduced, that’s what corporations do and that’s why anything new or original is killed off by that very mentality. And it’s something of a miracle that I managed to get this released at all, as it happens. It’s a struggle, a real, real struggle. And seriously bloody hard work with them.

I’ve been getting a lot of people asking if the CD is getting released outside of the UK and Europe?

Well, guess what, I’m without a record company in Australia and the Far East, they don’t seem too interested in opening up new negotiations. There’s two labels here in America that are showing interest in releasing it. Virgin weren’t interested in releasing it here, so the only place it’s really available is in Europe. And that’s my condition in the music industry at the moment, bizarrely enough. But you know what, so what. I can’t make people want to sign me, it’s a shame though. I will try to get it released elsewhere very quickly because we’ve done all the hard work on it, so it’s a quick parcel, but it’s just bizarre to me.

I have to say I enjoyed watching the DVD, I think I remembered a lot of those PiL videos as being worse than they actually were! But there’s some really good stuff.

But all out of sync! Lip-syncing is not really my forte!

‘Bad life’ springs to mind!

That’s before digital camera’s, and things, and done very, very cheaply. There was no video budget for us. But they are alright for what they are, and they deserve to be shown. I look at the ‘Cruel’ video and I really like it.

It was never really shown at time.

No, ‘Top of the Pops’ wouldn’t touch it, or the other chart count down shows, because they said they didn’t use black and white videos. Even with ‘Rise’ we had the same deal, ‘oh the record dropped the week we were going to show it’, it’s like bollocks! There’s a thing about just not airing that kind of stuff. But at the same time there’s this journalistic streak out there accusing me of being ‘mainstream.’ Well, I can’t be both can I? I can’t be shunted off the mainstream, while being mainstream! It doesn’t make sense. If people want to vitriolic about me, get it right!

It’s the song that matters, not the video anyway. It’s a shame about the lack of money, but my mentally is that I wouldn’t waste a large budget on making a promo video. I’m more interested in the record, and if there was an excessive budget for a video, it would just go into the production of the song. Because all the video is to me is a clue into what the thing is, it’s a doorway. So you paint your front door red, and that’s it. That’s just the front door, it’s inside that counts.

Well, as you know, with half these new bands the video is more important than the song.

That’s the shame. That’s because there’s nothing inside, if it’s all on the outside, forget it.

People always ask me about getting Finsbury Park or Crystal Palace out on DVD, do you think further down the line it might happen?

Well, it will if we can get any interest in it, oddly enough. Yes, there is people out there who would want this stuff but it’s trying to convince distributors and manufactures of that. Because the trouble is they’ll go to the last bad review they’ve read and presume that’s the way of the world. So all that negativity out there can have a direct negative influence on your work, we just can’t seem to get manufactures or companies to want to sell this stuff.

Its always surprised me, there is market for that kind of stuff, there always has been.

The Phoenix Festival, we’ve got the whole gig, and it’s a stunner from start to finish, but there’s no pick ups on it, maybe with a bit of luck the DVD will introduce at least a capable audience to it.

It’s all little steps, and the shame is, I don’t think that after such a long career I should still have to keep on making little steps. But I keep running into brick walls, all the time, and I have to fight for just the slightest little bit. It’s like common sense is absolutely rejected, and if you don’t go along with the current modus operandi, you must be a freak, well, hello, freak out!

I wanted to ask you about the artwork for ‘The Best of British…’ Did you do it in Photoshop?

Yeah, Adobe Photoshop, a very old one, I think it’s just 3.0. It’s very slow, and it crashes every 30 minutes! But we know what the flaws in it are, and we know when it’s gonna crash! I learned to adapt with the flaws and kinks, but it works. It took me and my brother Martin a long time to understand how to work it, and the newer things, they’re a little bit too perfect and they don’t quite give you the quality edge, it’s too easy, and therefore a bit boring. It’s about breaking the rules, and when structure comes into a product like that it limits your movements. You’re being orchestrated, and you’re being driven and led into set pattern.

I love painting, I love making colours, and I like doing that kind of thing, that’s the same process to me as making a record. I’ll keep at it till I think what it is is perfect, and then leave it. But I’m very, very pleased with it.

Firstly I painted the black and white image, then filled the colours in, and put the clobber in. That picture is meant to represent the story of my life musically. There’s a picture of me in very early Pistols, staying all the way through PiL. I took pictures of bits of my clothing then I spun them into the computer. I started painting them with the colour brushes, and mixed it up to that. I love colours off the computer, I love them, the glow is so great. I swim in those colours.

Actually, the whole thing originated from a picture board I had done with pictures of some of my clothes on it, because I was trying to open up a clothes line, through the merchandise deals, but that never happened, and I just expanded it into this. I’d actually threw it aside, but Rambo reminded me of it.

It was very different from the paintings I had seen you do in the past like ‘Cruel’ or ‘Paris Au Printemps’, it really stuck out. Absolutely outstanding. I actually put a little bit up on the site about your artwork, just to let people know you do things like that, not trying to brag about it.

No not bragging. My pictures are just fun things, I’m not selling them! The idea of selling some of my paintings kind of appalls me at the moment. They’re so personal to me and I’m just kind of shy about it (laughs). I’ve always been good at drawing, I can go any way I like, I keep that practice up, it’s like writing, it’s a great fun feeling. You’d be well surprised at some of the artwork I do, and some of the paintings, well, they’re different!

I loved ‘The Rabbit Song’, short and sharp, nice and lean!

I think it’s tight as a button. The part that has been released is actually part of a much bigger thing. Part of a whole bunch of stuff, and they all intertwine with each other. I want them to play one into the other, so it’s just like one big bloody dance night! And in this current world of American rappers, people seemed to have forgot some of the old music hall ways. People in London talk that way (laughs), and I talk like that! That’s the emotion of the thing. And there it is, I don’t think it’s worthy of anything negative.

I’ve got ten new songs and they’re what I want to do. And what I want hear. I’m not thinking about any marketing or audience availability. Or direction, or musical genre to hop in and out of. It isn’t like that.

It’s certainly whet my appetite to hear more. Are you still working with Nick Launay?

No, he wanted to bring in all these ludicrously huge daft computers. I make my music the way I make it, and if my studio at the moment isn’t good enough for him well, tough. I’m not prepared to go into the larger studios because I just don’t see the point, they offer me nothing but expense. And at the moment I don’t have a record label, you know, so I’m a free spirit. But a free spirit is a broke spirit (laughs).

Half the fun of creating is the limitations. It makes you work harder, if you’re stuck in a vast studio with 200 hundred things that go, bang, bong and twing and weird stringed instruments from Bali, you’re gonna end up with a mess, because that wasn’t what you were meant to be doing in the first place, it becomes a distraction.

So are you working with your brother Martin again?

Yes, I work really well with Martin. He’s a damn fine engineer. With ‘Psycho’s Path’ I had problems with Virgin because they didn’t trust me and Martin together. So they introduced Mark Saunders. Well, I thought, alright, that pleases them, but it isn’t gonna change the content, and it didn’t.

And the point is, I mean after all these years, if I’m not really trusted on my own records by my own record label, you can understand why there is this journalistic fear of me. Because that kind of nonsense starts at the top doesn’t it? A fear of the unknown, like I’m gonna make something so awful and horrible. I’m not ‘Metal Machine Music’ not me (laughs)!

How close are you to finishing the new album?

Well, there’s about 10 songs, five of them are pretty much done. Realistically, we’re talking next year, because I’d like to tour ‘The Best of British £1 Notes.’ I’d love to do that, and new songs too…

Really? I like the sound of that!

Listening to the songs has really fucking inspired me. I feel a lot cleaner in my mind about what PiL is, and was. And it’s not just spiteful Keith Levene remarks. He’s a very small fish in the pond of PiL. I’m really proud of what’s on this album, it’s given me a real energy. And if I’m going to go out live, in a PiL way, because I think it warrants it, I think there’s been enough people who have been in and out of PiL to do that.

It’s just ridiculous to me that people have trendily just focused on ‘Metal Box’. That was just one tiny part, who told you the rest is rubbish? Listen and make your own minds up. It’s just to accommodate a fashion moment, that kind of thinking, and they’re using ‘Metal Box’ to structure something fake, you can’t remove it from a full body of work like that.

Don’t get me wrong I love ‘Metal Box’, but even the likes of the first album never gets mentioned, let alone the later stuff.

The first ‘Public Image’ album is an all time fave, it’s a ‘Funhouse’ album! Hard as nails, and a seriously, seriously industrial way of mixing, everything sounds like sledgehammers! But I tell you, I’m a bit disappointed with a lot of these PiL-esque type bands – naming no names – but I think they deliberately play awkwardly and get things deliberately wrong in such a structured way. It misses the point that those are emotional responses, not music perfect note playing. The bing, bang and bobs were deliberate emotions. Don’t try to imitate that. Do your own thing, and guess what, you might be nearer to it. You can’t put out powerhouse songs like that if your imitating something, you’ve got to genuinely feel what you’re saying and doing. But that’s not what I’m hearing in a lot of these new PiL-esque type outfits.

Part of me thinks it’s good they’re actually name-checking PiL for a change, instead of just ignoring them…

That’s just me. I don’t mind being an influence. I think it’s fucking great and I’m chuffed to hell, but you’ve got to look at the thing honestly. And when you see it redone in such a clumsy way, and not natural. Look, I’m sorry it’s not a blueprint. If that’s not your natural instinct to play that way, then don’t try it, but you just can’t fake it.

Like the Pistols, like PiL, like anything I’ve done, it’s very different people put together. And it’s those differences that make that sound, right, it’s not trying to imitate something. We never had that, I’ve never had that in any band. I like ALL music, all of it. But I don’t copy none of it. I don’t need to.

I always say, you can like something without being influenced by it.

Yeah, it’s like this whole Vander Graf Generator thing. They’re putting a book out and they’re trying to imply I copied them. Look, I’m only telling you about one record or whatever. I have very many records – I’ve got about 20,000 records, probably more – I’m an avid collector, but it ain’t worth telling anybody anything. Because they just want to screw you on it. Now, Vander Graf Generator – who are a band who earned their own place in the world of respect – they do not need to use my name to sell their kack, and it must be kack to use my name in that way, it has to be…

And I’m very furious with this ‘Punk and Attitude’ nonsense. What friends are for? Thank you Don. Thank you. It’s one thing to want to use my music all over it, it’s another about paying proper. And paying proper respect. First we should have been asked, but we were not asked, and even when we were eventually asked we rejected it, and they still went ahead and used it. To me that stinks of thievery, and if that’s “Punk and Attitude”, that’s not my punk and not my attitude. I’ve never stolen from anyone.

And it seems that the whole thing is like slagging us off that we’re imitating Americans, it’s the same old nonsense. If the Pistols are imitating The Ramones and Patti Smith I’m fucking unaware of it!

I couldn’t believe the bit that said the Americans used safety pins to hold their clothes together, and the British only used it as a fashion statement! Where were they taking that from I wonder. I couldn’t believe Don would let them away with that, it’s not that the guy said it, you’d expect something like that, it’s just you’d expect Don to pick up on it and correct it.

Yeah, and all we were doing was “moaning about being on the Dole”. Well hello, we weren’t as wealthy as you lot (laughs). The Dole is a reality, we were talking about hardcore truths in our lives, not silly fucking poetry!

Some of the documentary is great fun, but there’s a poison lurking in it, and it’s to gain what? There’s a sycophantic groveling towards America that is appalling. I’m ashamed that the American punk bands could be that way about it, and deliberately play like there’s a divide. That’s a ridiculous thing. Why are you bringing that kind of patriotism into it? It’s wrongly placed. Punk was free of all of that, absolutely free of it, and anybody that spouts and talks like that can not have anything to do with punk, they’ve missed it.

Talking about people missing the point, did you hear about the Labour Party using Sham 69 ‘If The Kids Are United’ at the Party conference? They apparently used it as a show of solidarity between Gordon Brown and Tony Blair!

Oh, you’re joking, oh how terrible. That is very bad. How real can the Labour Party be when they use Sham punk. Sham Labour. Sham punk. Sham old Labour.

I’m appalled at the Labour Party, I’m disgusted at removing that 82 year old bloke, shocking. Since when were you not allowed to raise an opinion at a Labour Party conference? That’s the point of that party, it’s supposed to be diverse opinions. Now its become toe the line or else. I think for too long Blair has been controlling the media, he spends more on press campaigns and promoting the party than he does on saving the country. And to use that song, it’s very seedy. It gives it a very seedy, stale beer vibe. Is that the only punk song they could get without paying royalties on!

Maybe it was on a free CD with the Sun that morning!

(laughs) oh, those free CD’s you get in the newspapers in Britain are hilarious! I collected them while I was over. Fucking hilarious, but it rubbish's whatever they’re giving away free, it just makes it all pointless.

I’m waiting for them to do a punk one. I think they will do it eventually. It will be Toyah next to The Clash or something!

Oh, yes the dodgy end.

Thanks John, as always good to talk again.

Right, can I just finish by saying that to my mind ‘The Best of British £1 Notes’ is more like the history of music in Britain. I’m sorry but it’s true, and its not arrogant to say it. I have created major fucking influences and different forms of music that have been taken on, and adopted into the music industry as format. And that is not understood.

There is a bitterness, if there’s a need to make me go away, then why? If I was rubbish then I shouldn’t be bothering you. It tells me I can’t be rubbish, it’s just something these sods must be jealous about. Fine. I’m not in your universe anyway, leave well alone. Don’t come knocking on my door with your second rate thoughts because you’re wrong. I’ve done all that and you ain’t. Plain and simple. Until they can put up a body of work that matches it, shut the fuck up!

"John Rotten would like to thank Paul Bromby & Sarah Watson of Virgin / EMI for their kind help and consideration in helping to put this project together".

 

Interview: © John Lydon.Com 2005 / Published 13th October 2005

Pix: Courtesy Virgin Records / © Richard Skidmore 2005