No one likes to watch a punk get old.
Sure, aging can be rough for everyone involved in a music industry obsessed with the next, hip thing, but there’s something about this particular breed of rock star that makes the whole process especially dicey. There are few things as disheartening as a sell-out—and if you buy a nice house in the suburbs and let a few of your piercings close up, you run the risk of becoming what you once rebelled against. But, if you cling too tightly to a bygone era, it can come off as, well, a little sad. We admire the middle-aged dudes in the clubs desperately hanging onto their youth, but we silently wish someone’d have the nerve to tell them they grew out of their tattered jeans years ago.
Luckily, this is not a dilemma John Lydon is faced with. For one, he hasn’t been a punk—musically speaking, anyway—for years. After the Sex Pistols disbanded in 1978, he moved on, pioneering the post-rock genre with his group Public Image Ltd. And furthermore, despite being 56 years old, he’s still a teenager.
“In many ways, I feel like I’m 17 again and starting from scratch,” he says on the phone from Los Angeles. He’s talking about the release of This is PiL, Public Image Ltd’s first new album in 20 years. “That’s not a bad feeling, particularly if you see what I’ve got from scratch.”
On the record’s lead track, “One Drop,” he sings, “We are the ageless, we are teenagers,” and while it’s obviously not a literal statement, it’s an earnest one.
“Oh, the revolution never ends,” Lydon explains. “I’ve never been one for that aging stuff. I mean, when I go on about old farts, I’m speaking particularly about politicians, and I think we all agree on that. But outside of politics and the agendas that go on that, we’re all just people. It’s all in the head. You’re as young as you feel. And do not ever listen to anyone telling you to act your age. Never. Never, ever give in. I love life to the absolute fullest.”
Lydon—along with the current PiL lineup, which includes multi-instrumentalist Lu Edmonds, drummer Bruce Smith and bassist Scott Firth—will be touring the States behind the entirely self-funded This is PiL in September. In the meantime, we caught up with him to discuss the new material, the new perspectives he’s gained over the years and why “Johnny don’t answer the Rotten phone at the moment.”
Paste: What inspired you to put out a new PiL record after 20 years?
Lydon: The record contracts with the major label that I was attached to, they finally expired, and so I was released from the financial burdens of entrapment. And so with that sense of freedom, we went out and we played live for something nearly like two years and managed to raise enough money to record a new record and pay for the formulation of a new label, our own label called PiL Official. It’s a do-it-yourself, really. I’ve had to endure a lot of problems under corporate record company approaches, and while this is a rather difficult project to take on right now, it’s necessary. We’re all overworked, but we like the end results of that effort.
Paste: Are the songs ideas that have collected over the years?
Lydon: No, we wrote them all as we were going into the recording studio—which wasn’t a recording studio, it was a barn in the British countryside. It was a very user-friendly barn. Nothing but sheep surrounding it for inspiration. We did well with our four-legged friends.
Paste: You’ve said before that this PiL is the PiL of your dreams. What do you think makes this the best incarnation of the band?
Lydon: The blend of personalities. There’s no animosity, there’s no ego trips, there’s just four blokes who really get on well with each other and like each other. And it’s not just the band, it’s the road crew, the management side, the press people—it’s quite a nifty little operation now. It’s a lot of people who are out to take care of each other, which is something I’ve always envisioned in PiL.
Paste: With the new label, is it primarily for PiL projects or do you have plans to sign other artists to the label as well?
Lydon: Ah. No, I’ve not considered going that far yet. We’re up to our eyeballs in hard work. I think it’s just good enough to get our own stuff out. (laughs) I mean, under the heavy, ridiculous restrictions I’ve been facing for the last two decades, this is just a breath of fresh air. I’m really not considering at the moment releasing other people’s music. But you know what, sometime down the line, we’ll probably end up doing that. Because everyone I’ve talked to who’s been affiliated or attached to large record labels has ended up being really upset and disappointed and had a feeling of entrapment.
Paste: Why do you think that is?
Lydon: The cold, calculated way. I mean, Virgin Records for instance, when I first signed on it, had a great sense of fun. And the contract, for me, it was with the Pistols, which I took on to PiL. But because the people at the top kept changing at such an alarming rate, it became harder and harder and harder to have anything like a friendly relationship, and then our problems would be passed over into the accounting department, and that is the kiss of death to an artist because from there on out it becomes all about, “We can’t advance you on the making of a new record because you owe this much on the previous” and it just goes on and on and on like that. You can’t get any of them to press the records in the amount you need to be able to maintain the lifestyle or a career, so it’s a catch-22 really, record company-style. I don’t suppose there’s any great evil plan in it on their behalf. It’s just what happens when companies become corporations. They become headless chickens and they’re indifferent to struggles of the people attached to their label. And I mean, I don’t expect an open-ended charity all the time. That isn’t the dilemma at all. But in order to make money you have to invest money. It’s just a simple fact in economics. There’s so many people I know in bands who have gone under because of that. And that’s a shame. And so, even to get ourselves in a condition of being able to rehearse after all those years, it took some fundraising and luckily, I was promoting British butter for the British, and that paid well for the first rehearsal sessions. And from there on in, we now earn our money by live performance. It means we have to work a lot, but that’s fine, we like working. The trouble there is the venues and the promoters trying to view bands like PiL with somewhat of a negative vibe. Not all, but some. It’s very hard for us to get into the proper venues. Even after 30 years, I’m still treated with something like suspicion by the authorities. And I’m ever such a nice person, really. [laughs]
Paste: You mentioned the proper venues—
Lydon: Well I’d like to do some festivals. It’s becoming a real problem, really. I mean we are an excellent live band, whether it be a nice, small intimate nightclub or a very large festival. PiL is adaptable. And you need to do these things. You need to enlarge your audience, you need to let a large amount of people see your capabilities and hear your capabilities. I mean, we could do press all day for the next 10 years, and it won’t amount to anything like the same as playing live and getting this record heard.
Paste: It’s been nearly 40 years since you first sang “There is no future in England’s dreaming,” and it seems some similar issues crop up on this new record. How would you say things have changed since then?
Lydon: Well if you’re comparing all of this to “God Save the Queen,” you’re barking up the wrong tree, Pappy! I’m not dealing with institutions or the impression of institutions. I’m now dealing in a much more intimate way with personal politics. It’s more generous in spirit. The rage is controlled, but not contrived. When I first started, I was a very angry man indeed at the oppression in society. Well, now I’ve learned to live around the world. Now I have great empathy for the disenfranchised. I seem to have been a permanent member of them. Or I would do, wouldn’t I? My point-of-view is that I don’t see the institution in itself as the enemy because I’ve realized that these are headless chickens as I stated earlier. What I’ve tried to do is to get people to think outside of the box and start respecting each other as individuals and start learning to love each other for our differences because those are the very things what make us special. I don’t want to see uniformity in anything because it doesn’t work. And neither does hate. And love, I’m working on. It used to be two minutes and forty seconds with me, and well, it’s gone up. It can be half an hour occasionally. And on this album, a solid hour.
Paste: What to you makes a record a success?
Lydon: When I think that the emotion I’m trying to express is reached accurately and honestly. There’s piles and piles of stuff that I listen to and go, “Oh, no no no.” It’s very, very important that the human voice be celebrated in all work, whether me or anybody else. Because that’s what music is, accompaniment to the human voice. Instrumentation is an imitation of nature. The human voice is nature personified. I don’t like, and I’ve heard an awful lot of it, this vocoding and computerized technique on the human voice, I don’t like that at all. I think it takes away the humanity. I’d much rather listen to a voice slightly crack or strain than be washed out by electronic gadgetry. I mean, I’m not a robot. I’m a human being. If I want to share my genuine, heartfelt pain, I’m not going to be able to do that with a machine that goes “blick, blick blick.”
Paste: For this new record, was there a lot of material that wound up on the cutting room floor?
Lydon: There always is, isn’t there? I mean, we drew the line at 12 songs. That’s hard enough to come up with 12 ideas, but I mean, we had something like 14-16. They weren’t worked on, the excess material, so we pushed that by the side. And 12 was a very nice even and round number. We don’t want to overwhelm an audience with what we’re capable of. And at the same time, we couldn’t really afford to be in the studio longer than five to six weeks. It’s too time-consuming, and you tend to overwork stuff, and that’s not a wise move.
Paste: And how long were you rehearsing before you went into the studio?
Lydon: We didn’t. No, we didn’t have the time or the money. All the best rehearsals for creative songwriting or creative moments are done in each other’s heads anyway. We have very long in-depth conversations, and we know where we’re going to be heading generally speaking. We know what sounds, tones and structures we’re looking for. It’s all about a sense of empathy with the emotion of each individual song. It’s important to get these things right. Otherwise you’re not only trivializing your own efforts, but you’re expecting a listener to waste their time, and that would be unacceptable for PiL.
Paste: You’re touring America in September. What can American fans expect from the shows?
Lydon: Well, look. I hope America remembers as a country that you adopted PiL many many years ago and through no fault of our own or yours, we had to cease to function there for quite some time. It’s just an unfortunate set of events. We have to reignite our passionate love affair with each other. We’re an extreme band that’s extremely influential and extremely interesting. There’s sounds you’ll hear from PiL that you’ve never heard before. But they’re sounds that, unfortunately, two years down the road, will be quite commonplace. Because we are often copied and imitated but never surpassed. It’s not that we go out of our way to be interesting and different. It’s that that’s how we work best. The inspiration of humanity requires that we indulge in every sound, tone, drone and syncopation that’s ever been invented or will be and expand beyond that. The wonderful world of sound. There’s no limitations. One of the most shocking things I’ve seen in the last 15, 20 years is how the magazine culture, particularly here in America, has been trying to kill off new ideas in music. It’s this attitude of “why bother, it’s all been done before.” That’s surely wrong, and it’s cheated you all out of a lifestyle.
Paste: Specifically what styles of music do you think have been victimized by that?
Lydon: Well, I loved—two years back, we did Coachella, alright? And we’re just an unknown band according to many people, but we drew 15,000 while Jay-Z was playing in the field opposite. That’s an eye-opener as to the level of attention we can warrant. Not many can pull a crowd away from him. More power to us.
Paste: What do you think is the difference between American audiences and European audiences? Or is there a difference at all?
Lydon: Ah. No, yes yes. People are the same all over. That’s what I’ve found. I lived in California for 20 years. I view myself as Californian because I lived there. That’s as long, if not longer, than I’ve actually lived in England. And that’s not bad for an Irishman, I’m definitely spreading myself around the world. And for me, that’s a good thing. What I like most about Americans though is you tend not to stay in the town you were born. You move about a lot, and your schooling systems, your universities, you get to go see and do things in new places. Because you’re such a new country, it’s not bolted down in old-fashioned ways dating back five, six hundred years. And so your class system is not so clearly defined. And so the only real prejudices here, although many will not understand this at first, but the only real division is money. It’s those that have and those that don’t.
Paste: That’s what it tends to boil down to.
Lydon: Yeah. And America for me, really, it’s a place of enormous interest. And you have, historically speaking, the most wonderful enlightenment of the presidency I’ve ever seen. Absolute hope and an eye-opener, Obama. And there’s a quite a lot of people out there who’d like not to notice just how important and relevant that is to the rest of the world. Seriously. People love America, which they never, ever did before, just because of Obama. And that’s an amazing achievement. Because America was the most hated country in the universe. Your foreign policies did a lot of damage. So there you go. And I’m speaking as a Californian and a foreigner. And it’s good to be this way. I reckon many people can put themselves in two positions at once. It really clears up your head, and you realize half the problems you’ve been running through your skull of who the enemy is is not your enemy at all. Self-analysis is a wonderful thing, and travel can bring that on. Not only physical travel, but mental travel. And when you open yourself to music that takes you places you’ve never conceived of, that’s an eye-opener.
Paste: Would you say that that duality has affected your creative journey at all?
Lydon: Yes, absolutely. I’m not as insulated as when I first started. When I first started with the Pistols, I was an inner-city youth with no hopes or prospects beyond that town of London. And so now on this new album, I’m reiterating my past, but I’m telling it as a future. There is a way out. I was born in London, it will always be in me, and there are many great things in that town and in that culture, and now I tend to take those things to other places and leave none of the bad things in my head.
Paste: Well, London will sort of have an international eye on it this summer with the Olympics coming up.
Lydon: Yeah, so I’ve heard. [laughs]
Paste: I read that the Pistols were approached to be involved with the Olympics at some point. Is that true?
Lydon: I don’t know much about it. As you can well imagine, I’m up to my eyeballs in extreme hard work with Public Image, and so anything that’s trying to involve my other band is of no interest at the moment, you know? It’s PiL all the way, and if your Olympics had any sense, they’d be talking to PiL. Johnny don’t answer the Rotten phone at the moment. And it’s interesting though, all the gossip and lies that are being spread. And let’s face it, America’s gonna win most of it anyway. [laughs] It’s a foregone conclusion. And by the way, if as an American your idea of travel is to go and nick a lot of medals at the Olympics in London, that’s not travel. [laughs] In fact, all you’d be letting yourself in for is a very ugly traffic jam. London is on par with Paris for pile-ups.
Paste: You mentioned it’s full speed ahead with PiL. Do you have plans—
Lydon: Yeah, you can’t dissipate your energies. When you put this much time and effort in, you have to follow through. So all those other issues are not relevant. It may seem ridiculous, but honestly, the Olympics to me is a little issue. I don’t need to be popping my face in it.
Paste: So do you have plans beyond this record for PiL? Will there be another PiL record after this one?
Lydon: Yep. Yep, yep, yep. We have to get ourselves in some form of cohesion on a long-term basis.
Paste: So are you working on new material right now?
Lydon: That will be coming about, yes. Mostly we want to perform this album live, as much of it as we possibly can, including lots of other numbers that are in our repertoire. It is a true live force. We’ve played usually in the past two years for two and a half hours at a time. We’re not shy of being up there. We’re not trying to promote any particular image, just the imagery of music and how it can change your mind and help you be a better person, see things more accurately.