‘Ere
we go!” smirks the thick cockney accent. “Johnny’s version of ‘istory: It never sounded
so good!” After a few seconds of what the radio biz terms a “musical bed”
(background music), the sneery working class British voice welcomes you to
“another Rotten Day.”
Yup, Johnny Rotten — the man who, as vox of the Sex Pistols, caused a massive
music-business coronary 25 years ago by loudly proclaiming himself the
Antichrist, rhymed it with “anarchist,” then followed that with the abrasive
post-dub of Public Image Ltd. — has just added another marketable job skill to
his resum�: Radio personality.
“I’m not sure I like that moniker a’tall!” snaps Rotten. John Lydon, as he’s
known to his Mum and Dad, is “getting over the flu — but then, everybody and
‘is pet dog ‘as got it, so why should I be any diff’rent?” Nevertheless, he’s
braving that promotional atrocity known as “the phone interview” to chat up
“Rotten Day,” the two-minute,
this-day-in-rock-&-roll-history-with-your-host-Johnny-Rotten program
syndicated by The Album Network and broadcast locally at 8:20am each morning on
101X-FM.
“I did this show because I thought it would be a bit of a laugh, messing about
with the bare-faced realities of some of these so-called `alternative rock
gods,'” explains Lydon. “It’s turning into a bit of a bind, quite frankly. The
lesser journalists out there tend to go, `Is he like Howard Stern?’ Because
they can’t see past the end of their own noses. Whatever Howard does has
nothing to do with what I do. I don’t like those pale comparisons.”
Of course, I reply. Because you’re quite clever and witty, and Howard just
appeals to the most base elements.
“Well, I wouldn’t disagree with that,” Lydon counters in a voice that could
only be accompanied by arched eyebrows. “But I will have you write in print
that I didn’t actually say that! Ha ha!
“Our show is, literally, a diary of events. The most effort that goes
into it is the actual scripting, because we have to be accurate. Otherwise,
people jump all over us. It can’t be just a bunch of hearsay and innuendo. Now,
a lot of radio stations are using the excuse for not airing this show that it’s
not cutting-edge enough. Well, hullo! You can’t play with truth! It is
what it is, and I really think it’s cowardice on their part, because I
definitely get the impression they’re lying to us when they use that as an
excuse. Because a lot of these realities that we bring up tend to be —
ouch! — best left buried.”
Or floating. The always caustic Lydon, when he turns his jaundiced eye upon
rock history, is liable to chronicle the day of Brian Jones’ death by remarking
that the ex-Rolling Stone was found “playing the role of an overturned air
mattress in his own swimming pool.” Noting Jim Morrison’s drowning in a
Parisian bathtub the same day two years later, Lydon intones, “Cleanliness is
next to godliness! Splish splash!” Remarking on Morrison’s Miami cock-flashing,
Lydon suggests “reports ‘ave it that there wasn’t too much to see,” then
chuckles about “the breeze between my knees.” Of the day Paul Weller left the
Jam, Lydon remarks, “His reasons for quitting were partially that he thought he
was `too old to play that sort of music’ — e.g.: fun and listenable!” The day
Morrissey releases Bona Drag is commemorated with Lydon snarling, “Talk
about giving the game away! A complete bone drag of a record!”
Not that anyone’s complaining about Lydon’s arch commentary. “[`Rotten Day’]
is a great feature,” says 101X programming director Sarah Trexler. “It works
for us real well. It’s got everything: it’s got attitude, it’s got information,
and he’s really witty. It’s wonderful. Who hasn’t been a fan of that guy for a
long time? He’s so talented. The response has also been really good. If we’re a
little late on it, people call and complain. If something else preempts it,
they call and complain. They wanna hear it again, they wanna hear it five
minutes after they heard it.”
The basis for the show? The book Punk Diary, written by Dallas native,
pioneering punk radio personality, and the mastermind behind the Tales from
the Edge CD compilation series, George Gimarc. Gimarc, who scripts “Rotten
Day,” had originally turned a proposal in to Album Network for a show called
“Punk Diary” that they basically sat on for a while before Gimarc was asked,
“Hey, would you be interested in doing the show if you’re not the host?”
“I was thinking they were going to get somebody from one of the West Coast
radio stations to host it or something,” recalls Gimarc. “So I said, `I dunno.
Who were you thinking about?’ `Well, we were thinking about getting John Lydon
to host it.’ So, to hell with my ego! Yeah, let’s do it!
“It probably took until the second round of scripts before I totally got into
his character and his vocabulary and phrasing, to where when I write the
scripts I have his voice in my head. By now, we’re into the fourth or fifth
round of scripts, and it’s pretty tight. By the time he gets the scripts, we
don’t have to do much wiggling on them. We do a bit: He adds punchlines, and
he’ll change a phrase or two, and he’ll add his own observations to them, which
I could never anticipate. It’s not a painful process, it’s really fun. In fact,
when we go to do the scripting sessions and then go into [recording], it’s a
really fun three or four days.” Gimarc also says there have been moments where
he’s impersonated Lydon’s voice to show him how certain lines could be phrased,
“which he’s kind enough to let me get away with.”
Still, not everyone is pleased. “Some of these radio stations,” says Lydon,
“have had major arguments and disputes with people like, for want of a better
example, that woman from Hole. Her and [Los Angeles altrock station] KROQ have
a situation going on between them. Now KROQ won’t play the show.”
And it’s because of Courtney?
“No, but I’m sure that must have come up at some point. When we played them
the original demos of this radio show, they were kind of squawking at the
comments about Nirvana, and that led up to Courtney. Now, I’m sure that
Courtney Love, being what she is, would find the whole thing hilarious. But
wankers like KROQ come in a poor second when it comes to wit and imagination
and fun and spontaneity. What pisses me off, ultimately, is that these radio
stations claim themselves to be the cutting edge. When, really, the only thing
they’re cutting is the reality and fun, which is the very thing people would be
tuning in for. They’re really the censorship edge of rock & roll.”
Well, John, Courtney can be quite vindictive….
“Yes, but at the same time, she’s absolutely amusing. Whether you laugh at her
or with her — mostly at her — it’s nonetheless an endless source of
titillation!”
Madonna recently remarked in Spin that Courtney was interesting in the
manner that an old, Tourette’s-addled woman you see in the park is
interesting.
“Oh, that’s very funny!” Lydon laughs. “But I don’t think it’s that at all. I
think it’s just the spoiled brat syndrome. `I want! I want! I want!’ With
precious little content.”
Don’t you find it odd that people like Courtney and Al Jourgensen claim to
come from punk rock, and they behave so much like the old Seventies rock
stars?
“Yes, which is the very thing we actually tried to get rid of. And it’s a
shame that they’re role-modeling themselves around the Sid & Nancy vibe,
which was the asshole end of it. It’s because it’s the easy way out, isn’t it?
That kind of mentality requires no thought, no content, no effort, no point, no
purpose. Junk food is easy to package. It’s cheap, and you can mass-produce
it.”
Speaking of junk food, you must find the 20-years-too-late American commercial
punk ascendance amusing.
“Well, you can’t be too precious, and you always know that as soon as you do
anything, there’ll be 10 copies of it available at half-price two weeks later.
That’s just the way it is. It’s sample-and-hold, isn’t it? It’s gonna take them
a lot longer to understand anything Public Image ever did. So, I’m kinda safe
for now!” Lydon laughs. “Because that’s a most seriously different kettle of
piranha.
“I’ve seen Rancid on the TV, and I thought they were charming. It was [a]
little like…what are those dolls? Ken and Barbie! They dressed up, and had
all the right moves, everything looked like it was bought brand-new, and all
the movements were well-rehearsed. The whole thing looked kind of like a
one-act play.”
A bad one-act play based upon events he’s already lived out, Lydon could have
added. He didn’t. As can be seen, the John Lydon who turned 40 on January 31
is no less caustic than the 21-year-old Johnny Rotten of the laserbeam stare
and eternally foul disposition. If anything, his good humor is more apparent
than before, and age and seasoning have (forgive me, John) “mellowed” him into
the classic English eccentric, which is neither a new observation nor a welcome
one: “Oh, no!” he snapped at an English journalist in ’86. “`English
eccentric!’ That’s terrible! I’m not Viv Stanshall!”
But John Joseph Lydon’s got better things to occupy his thoughts than radio
shows, or worrying about either shitty prefab “punk rock” or whether he’s now
fit to join the Bonzo Dog Band or not. He’s wrapping up his first solo album,
“a deeply strange piece of work” that’s been a year in the making. Due in
March, the record was made entirely in Lydon’s new home studio, done only with
the assistance of an engineer, younger Lydon brother Martin, and a few machines
(“although you damn well wouldn’t know it”). He promises that “to anyone who
likes a Whitney Houston record — y’know, everything orchestrated and [in] the
right place — it’s probably horrific. It’s not what people want, but it’s what
they fucking well should have!”
This is what you want, this is what you get. Isn’t that a service the once and
future Johnny Rotten has been providing since he first announced, “I am The
Antichrist!!”? ‘Course, what some want is a Sex Pistols reunion, something
even I (a major-league Pistols devotee) dread. If the newspapers are to be
believed, a Sex Pistols reunion is exactly what we will get this year. I didn’t
bother asking. I didn’t want to know, and I’ve learned that Marvin was right:
believe half of what you see, and none of what you hear. All I know is, the Sex
Pistols taught me at a young age that anything is possible.
“It certainly is,” agrees John Lydon. And maybe that sly bastard was affirming
what I didn’t ask when he added, “People ask me what do I mean when I say no
[there won’t be a reunion]. I mean, `No means: perhaps and possibly!’ Save that
for something else you’ll hear about shortly and you’ll go, `Aha! Now I know
what he means!’ So, ‘bye-‘bye!” n
Tim Stegall’s role models when he was growing up were Johnny Rotten and Bugs
Bunny.
This article appears in February 2 • 1996 and February 2 • 1996 (Cover).