Playboy.Com
August, 2003

Playboy.com: So you're going on the road again.

John Lydon: Yes, well, we got this little tour coming up. But it's quite amazing the bleedin' obstacles put before us. We've gone through tour managers at a relentless pace. They seem to come in, look at us, and run. Record companies, no interest at all from them. As far as sponsorship goes, nobody wants to have a tax cut on our name. Even Tampax turned us down. Sanitary napkins? We'd be more than happy! I know I'm one of the disenfranchised and always will be. And so what? I don't care. That's our audience also. And there are many like us. We're the majority.

PB: Hasn't it always been that way?

JL: Yeah. I don't expect no help from this industry, I don't care for it. You've got your Rock and Roll Hall of Shame, and if that's what people are going to judge reality by, that's a world I don't need to live in.

PB: It's surprising you haven't scored a sponsor.

JL: It's the way we are. We tend not to give a shit. And I suppose we went fishing a bit too late. The second they heard I was ferreting into playing in Baghdad, wooo. We're talking some unreturned phone calls.

PB: Was there a political backdraft there?

JL: I don't know. What do any of us know? I'm not going over there to play for the troops. I can play to the troops in their own countries. I'd be going there for the people. I don't see a problem in it.

PB: How tricky is that to set up?

JL: You wouldn't believe it. You would not believe it. I don't mean to be paranoid. Hello, we're probably being monitored right now. And so what? Tits! Tits! Tits! Let's just talk tits and cunts!

PB: Can't you ring up your friend Tony Blair to sort it out?

JL: Ah, ha, ha. I do not see eye-to-eye with that man. I don't like socialism. We're not all equal. We're not supposed to be.

PB: So, then, do you prefer the British class system to the more Darwinian American way of life?

JL: I cannot stand the class system. I don't like that kind of oppression.

PB: You've been living in Los Angeles for a long time. Do you enjoy life in the States?

JL: I like Americans very much. No problem. [Belches] I like England, but I don't like the government. And the government here is as wack as anywhere else. Ain't no different. I don't know where that lot [the Bush Administration] go to breed. It's ridiculous. I suppose in England they vote in idiots that can talk clever or sound clever and have a bigger vocabulary, but they're still idiots. At least your idiots can't spell potato.

PB: So you're still untangling the red tape to get to Baghdad?

JL: Gawwww. [Laughs] Last week, I was asked that. I said, yeah I got bigger scissors. It's now a fucking chainsaw. There are internal and external negatives coming at me. But that is not a silly novelty trick. I don't do things for those reasons. I would like to see the Sex Pistols become the Iraqi Water Pistols.

PB: Are you sure it's not going to be like Sting waltzing into the rain forest, glad-handing the pygmies?

JL: No waaaay. I'm not doing this for publicity! I don't mind telling you though. And I don't mind it being filmed. No, this isn't one of those sanctimonious fund-raising expeditions. This is a charity gig, mate. And we can hardly fuckin' afford it. That's the difference between us and the rest of the pack. You might see the Sex Pistols as negative, nihilistic and a bit of a con and a swindle, but you'd be wrong! The whole point, when we told you those things, was that you were supposed to understand irony.

PB: We think a lot of people got it.

JL: I think so, too. But a lot of journalists don't.

PB: After The Filth and the Fury Sex Pistols documentary that came out a couple of years ago, it would all seem pretty clear, right?

JL: There's an entire cottage industry out there that's turned into a city of rip-off merchants. The entire punk movement. The term's been applied to a genre of music and it's been transformed into a uniform and a list of rules, regulations and rigid attitudes. It's humorless, bland outright copying. It's fake, and I don't like it. It's the enemy.

PB: When was the first time you realised that was the case?

JL: Probably two days before I started the band.

PB: Do you still enjoy getting on stage?

JL: Not the process beforehand. I'm nervous all day, and panicked. Always will be. Can't eat. Shakes. Stage fright, I suppose you call it. But after one song. Love it. Love it! And why not? Someone like me given a chance to say what he thinks, it's incredible.

PB: What went through your head the first time you performed?

JL: Well, I never thought that Kelly Osbourne would be describing herself as a punk all these days later. That one's difficult to come to terms with.

PB: See what you wrought!

JL: I know. It's kind of silly. What do they think it means? What's the joy of grabbing at a category like that, and calling yourself something that someone else has done?

PB: Given all the mediocrity out there----

JL: Good word! That's a very good word because it's led by "media."

PB: Is there anyone you respect musically?

JL: Probably. Not off the top of my head. Every now and again there's a little gem. Even if there's highly corrupt, formulated boy bands or girl bands, every now and then they make a really great record. What's the harm in that? You can't yin without a bit of yang.

PB: The Reverend Horton Heat's on your tour -- he must be okay.

JL: Yes! Raging nutcase. Love him. Kate Bush I respect. Always will. Tori Amos, I'm confused about. I don't get it. To me, she's like an American Kate Bush but without the content, without the genuine heart. Things that move me, people screaming about wanting to die, things that sound like they mean it. You can tell emotion, and emotion doesn't come note perfect. Never does. Listen to someone crying.

PB: Of your lyrics, which lines would you like to be remembered for?

JL: "Could be wrong. Could be right." It's up to you. It's not for me to judge myself. I just do the best I can with it. I don't do no wrong, but if you wrong me, you got a fucking enemy for life. And that's how it should be. There's a line, a wall of respect, and if somebody trips over that -- kill 'em.

PB: In that case, how would you resolve the Iraq situation?

JL: I don't know if I would have started it, quite frankly. Resolve it? There's only one way and that's with shitloads of money. If you don't get the UN in to share that burden, you're really silly. Look at Afghanistan. They've been knocked back five centuries. And that's not helpful. You're not gonna answer men on the back of donkeys and camels with airport technology and surveillance equipment. Get wise. If somebody's angry, find out why they're angry and solve that.
I don't think 100 tanks blowing down the street does fuck-all. But sometimes it might. I'm up for getting rid of bad bastards. You ask me which side of the fence I'm on: USA. Because it's common sense. There are more good things here than there are there. I don't want the whole world to be like Iraq. So there's your reason for being there, and that's all that needs to be said and all that should have been said in the first place. All this "weapons of mass destruction" -- it sounds like a stupid album title for Boyz II Men.

PB: Or Guns N' Roses.

JL: Oh yes. That new lot. Who's in that supergroup they've formed?

PB: Buckethead, the guitarist who plays with a KFC bucket on his head. A guy from Nine Inch Nails. Tommy Stinson, from the Replacements.

JL: They played here the other week. Their opening song was "Bodies" [one of the more virulent songs from the Pistols's Never Mind the Bollocks]. It's like, oh yeah, right, go supergroup! You need to do somebody else's song. That's good.

PB: How was their version?

JL: Their version? Dead slow. [Laughs] That's a long train coming, that one.

PB: You need to get back on TV.

JL: Fuckin' right, I miss it. I miss it. I miss it. September 11 screwed a lot of things for everyone, but particularly anyone that had something going -- or raised a point of view that might not be the official line. At the same time, I see opposite points of view as not being a threat at all but highly bloody useful.

PB: You should get on The O'Reilly Factor.

JL: O'Reilly couldn't make it in politics, he couldn't make it with the Kennedys. So he went Republican. [People like that] need to be liked, so they do whatever is required. If you can't question your own philosophies, and you have to -- daily -- then they're not philosophies you should be following. Rules are for fools.

PB: Many people who purport to be political firebrands seem to playing a part, so can you trust their integrity?

JL: You shouldn't. When I met Newt Gingrich, I really liked him. He's one of the very few politicians who outright said, look, I'm a politician. But watch him, he's way clever that one. He's always making moves. Margaret Thatcher, her politics were everything that I ever despised, but I really liked her because she stood by what she said.

PB: She was honest, right, even if she was a bitch?

JL: She would give you a word back. Fantastic.

PB: How did you meet Newt?

JL: It was the last Rotten show on VH1. I went to the Democratic and Republican conventions. I think because I went to the Republican, VH1 was angry. It's all very much Clinton World at the network. They were fearful I would come out of it a Republican. And I said if I did it would be because they're right. Why are you worried? It's a silly world we live in.