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Johnny Rotten)
John Joseph Lydon (born January 31 1956), also known as Johnny Rotten (a nickname coming from the state of his teeth; Rat in Danish) is the iconoclastic lead singer of the Sex Pistols and Public Image Ltd (PiL), an Irish individualist anarchist. With his leering, swaggering and sarcastic manner he laid down a new template for rebellious youth and band frontmen that continues to be imitated today.
Brief biography
John Lydon was reportedly born on January 31 1956 in Finsbury Park in London—although according to his autobiography this cannot be confirmed as his birth certificate has been lost.
Sex Pistols
Lydon was chosen to front the Sex Pistols on the basis of his image. Lydon was hanging around Malcolm McLaren's clothes shop, Sex (co-owned with designer Vivienne Westwood), in 1975, after McLaren had returned from a brief stint of travelling with the American proto-punk band, The New York Dolls, and was working on promoting a new band formed by Steve Jones and Paul Cook. Lydon was apparently wearing a Pink Floyd T-Shirt with the words 'I Hate' scrawled in felt-tip pen above their name when offered the job. He was always an unlikely candidate to be involved in someone else's media scam though, being at all times un-cooperative, touchy, and supremely self-possessed in a way that reveals extreme vulnerability.
His interest in dub music and his post-Sex Pistols work with PiL and artists such as Afrika Bambaataa and Leftfield showed him to be far more musically sophisticated than his Pistols persona suggested. Indeed, Malcolm McLaren was said to have been quite upset when Lydon revealed during a radio interview that his influences included Can, Captain Beefheart and Van Der Graaf Generator. Such acts were not in keeping with the 'punk' image McLaren wished to see projected.
Counter-culture journalist
Today Lydon is a freelance counter-culture journalist in Los Angeles and has reported from events such as the 1999 protest in Seattle. In another broadcast venture Lydon teamed up with Dallas radio personality George Gimarc to produce Rotten Day, a syndicated radio program heard in 50 markets.
TV reality show
In January 2004, Lydon appeared on the British reality television programme, I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!, which took place in Australia. He proved he still had the capability to shock by calling the show's viewers "fucking cunts" during a live broadcast. The television regulator and ITV, the channel broadcasting the show, between them received 91 complaints about Lydon's use of bad language.
In an interview previous to the show's first episode, he had described it as "moronic", and throughout the show's run he had displayed an indifferent attitude to staying and threatened to walk out on numerous occasions. 30 hours following ex football star Neil Ruddock 's departure, Lydon left the show for unclear reasons.
British newspapers claimed that Lydon had won a £100 bet with Ruddock over who would stay in the longest. Lydon, however, stated on air that he felt he would win outright and that it would be unfair to the other celebrities for him to win. He also loudly proclaimed dislike for a fellow competitor, British glamour model Jordan, though it is unclear whether this was any more than pure theatre or contributed to his leaving the show.
In a February 2004 interview with the Scottish Sunday Mirror, Lydon said that he and his wife "should be dead", since on December 21, 1988, thanks to delays caused by his wife's packing, they missed the doomed Pan Am Flight 103. During this interview, Lydon said that the real reason for him leaving the Get Me Out of Here! show was the "appalling" refusal of the programme makers to let him know whether his wife had arrived safely in Australia.
Further reading
- Lydon's autobiography - Rotten - No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs
External links
Last updated: 05-15-2005 22:00:42
