John Lydon

• 1. Introduction

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  John Lydon, the singer once known as Johnny Rotten, ended the last Sex Pistols concert of the Sid Vicious era with a question. It was January 1978, the stage was San Francisco's Winterland, and he asked the crowd: "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" The band was finished within weeks, yet Lydon was only starting. Over the following decades he fronted a second band, hosted programmes about insects and sharks, and appeared in advertisements for butter. He also wrote two autobiographies, and he cared for his wife through a long illness. Q magazine eventually remarked that "somehow he's assumed the status of national treasure." This documentary asks how a working-class Londoner became the face of a movement that frightened Britain. It asks why a man who wrote "Anarchy in the U.K." insists he was never an anarchist. And it asks what the person behind the sneer was really like.

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• 2. A Holloway Childhood

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  In a two-room Victorian flat on Benwell Road in Holloway, north London, John Joseph Lydon was born on the 31st of January 1956. His parents, Eileen and John Christopher, were working-class immigrants from Ireland. The flat stood beside the ground of Arsenal, the football club he has supported since he was four. The area was poor, with high crime and a population of mostly working-class Irish and Jamaican families. Summer holidays took him to his mother's County Cork, where children mocked his English accent. He says the same prejudice follows him today, even though he travels on an Irish passport.

  At the age of seven, Lydon contracted spinal meningitis and spent a year in St Ann's Hospital in Haringey. He suffered hallucinations, nausea, headaches and periods of coma. A severe memory loss lasted four years. Nurses drew fluid from his spine with a surgical needle, and the treatment left him with a permanent spinal curvature. He later credited the illness with giving him what he called the "Lydon stare", and described it as "the first step that put me on the road to Rotten."

  At ten, Lydon took a job as a minicab dispatcher and kept it for a year, because his family was short of money and his father was often away on building sites or oil rigs. He was the eldest of four brothers and often minded the younger ones, since his mother was regularly ill. Between chores he played in the local factories when they were shut, and he ran with a gang of neighbourhood children.

  At St. William of York Roman Catholic School in Islington, he was bullied at first. Around fourteen or fifteen he began to fight back against teachers whom he saw as pushing every child into the same mould. After his O-Levels, his father objected to his long hair. Lydon agreed to a haircut, then dyed what remained bright green. His teenage playlist ran from Hawkwind, Captain Beefheart, Alice Cooper and the Stooges to David Bowie, T. Rex, Slade and Gary Glitter.

  At fifteen, Lydon was expelled after a run-in with a teacher. He moved on to Hackney College, where he befriended Simon John Ritchie. Lydon nicknamed him Sid Vicious, after a pet hamster belonging to Lydon's parents. The two squatted in Hampstead with a group of ageing hippies and gradually stopped attending classes. A job teaching woodwork at a children's play centre in Finsbury Park ended when parents complained about a "weird" instructor with green hair. With friends including John Gray, Jah Wobble, Dave Crowe and Tony Purcell, he drifted through London clubs such as the Lacy Lady in Seven Kings. He liked the reggae and gay clubs best, because there "you could be yourself, nobody bothered you."

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• 3. Becoming Rotten

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  In 1975, Lydon was one of the youths who hung around Sex, the fetish clothing shop run by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood. McLaren had recently toured briefly with the New York Dolls. He was now promoting a new band made up of Steve Jones, Glen Matlock and Paul Cook, called the Sex Pistols. What caught his eye was Lydon's ragged look, with orange hair and a Pink Floyd T-shirt that Lydon had altered. The band members' eyes were scratched out, and the words "I Hate" were scrawled above the logo. Lydon then sang Alice Cooper's "I'm Eighteen" over the shop jukebox, completely out of tune, and won the job of lead vocalist.

  The name Johnny Rotten came from his teeth. Lydon told the Daily Telegraph in 2007 that poor oral hygiene in the mid-1970s had turned them green. One version credits Steve Jones, who looked at them and exclaimed, "You're rotten, you are!" In 2008, Lydon had extensive dental work done in Los Angeles at a reported cost of US$22,000. He insisted it was not vanity: "It was necessity... all those rotten teeth were seriously beginning to corrupt my system."

  Friction with bassist Glen Matlock followed. Lydon claimed in his autobiography that Matlock was too middle-class and too fond of the Beatles. Matlock countered in his own memoir that McLaren had stirred up most of the tension. McLaren was also reportedly upset when Lydon told a radio interviewer that his tastes included Magma, Can, Captain Beefheart and Van der Graaf Generator. Lydon was also interested in dub music. Matlock quit, and Lydon proposed his old friend Simon Ritchie as a replacement. Vicious could hardly play bass. McLaren accepted him anyway, because he looked right: pale, emaciated, spike-haired, in ripped clothes and a permanent sneer.

  In August 1977, the band released "God Save the Queen" during the week of Queen Elizabeth II's silver jubilee. Lydon remarked, "Turn the other cheek too often and you get a razor through it." The warning proved apt. During the uproar over the single, Lydon and the producers Bill Price and Chris Thomas were attacked with a razor outside a pub in Highbury. One commentator described the national mood as the "last and greatest outbreak of pop-based moral pandemonium" in Britain. The same year brought the band's only studio album, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols, and singles including "Pretty Vacant" and "Holidays in the Sun".

  Vicious's relationship with his girlfriend Nancy Spungen, and his worsening heroin addiction, strained the whole band. Lydon's sarcastic remarks often made things worse. The band's remaining members, though, were about to take a trip that Lydon would refuse to join.

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• 4. The Pistols After the Pistols

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  After the American tour, McLaren, Jones and Cook travelled to Brazil to record with the former train robber Ronnie Biggs. Lydon stayed home. He mocked the whole idea and resented turning into a hero a man who had attacked a train driver and taken "working-class money".

  In 1980, Julien Temple's satirical, pseudo-biographical film The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle told the band's disintegration its own way. Jones, Cook and Vicious each played a character. Matlock appeared only in old live footage and as an animation. Lydon wanted nothing to do with it, because he felt McLaren controlled far too much of the project. Yet in 2000 he let the same director make The Filth and the Fury. Its new interviews showed the band members as silhouettes, with faces hidden. Lydon, usually so guarded, choked up as he talked about Vicious's decline and death. His 1993 autobiography had already dismissed earlier journalism about the band. He called his own account "as close to the truth as one can get".

  For years, Lydon swore the Sex Pistols would never play together again. Then, in 1996, they reunited with Matlock back on bass and toured successfully. In 2002, the year of Queen Elizabeth's Golden Jubilee, they played the Crystal Palace National Sports Centre in London. In 2003, their "Piss Off Tour" took them around North America for three weeks. More performances followed in Europe from 2007 to 2008.

  In 2006, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted the band, and the members refused to attend or acknowledge the honour. They complained that they had been asked for large sums of money to show up. In 2022, the story reached television, as the FX miniseries Pistol, by Craig Pearce and Danny Boyle, cast Anson Boon as Lydon.

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• 5. Public Image Ltd

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  In 1978, Lydon formed Public Image Ltd, usually shortened to PiL. The first line-up included the bassist Jah Wobble, the drummer Jim Walker and the former Clash guitarist Keith Levene. Their debut single, "Public Image", reached No. 9 in the UK in 1978, and the album Public Image: First Issue followed the same year. Metal Box arrived in 1979 and the live album Paris au Printemps in 1980. After Wobble left, Lydon and Levene made The Flowers of Romance in 1981.

  The band's biggest hit came in 1983, when "This Is Not a Love Song" reached No. 5 in the UK. Lydon's side projects were just as restless. In 1984, he worked with Afrika Bambaataa and the producer and bassist Bill Laswell on "World Destruction", credited to Time Zone. It is regarded as an early example of rap rock, alongside Run-DMC. Bambaataa said he wanted "somebody who's really crazy", and Laswell thought of Lydon. They recorded the track in about four-and-a-half hours. Bambaataa recalled a second version in which Lydon insulted the Queen, which was never released.

  In 1986, PiL released Album, written mostly by Lydon and Laswell. It used session players including the bassist Jonas Hellborg, the guitarist Steve Vai and Cream's drummer Ginger Baker. A new line-up formed in 1987 around former Siouxsie and the Banshees guitarist John McGeoch, with Allan Dias on bass, Bruce Smith on drums and Lu Edmunds. It produced Happy? in 1987 and 9 in 1989. In 1992, That What Is Not added the Tower of Power horns and Jimmie Wood on harmonica. Lydon, McGeoch and Dias also wrote "Criminal" for the film Point Break (1991). In 1993, Lydon put the band on indefinite hiatus.

  In September 2009, PiL announced a return, with Bruce Smith and Lu Edmonds back for a run of Christmas concerts in the UK. Lydon paid for the reunion himself, with money earned from a television advertisement. In August 2010, the band played Tel Aviv despite protests. They have since released This Is PiL in 2012, What the World Needs Now... in 2015 and End of World in 2023.

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• 6. Reinvention in Public

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  In 1993, Lydon published his first autobiography, Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, written with Keith and Kent Zimmerman. It covered his life up to the collapse of the Sex Pistols, with contributions from Paul Cook, Chrissie Hynde, Billy Idol and Don Letts. He kept the book's contradictions and insults unedited. His closing instruction to readers was "Enjoy or die." In December 2005, he told Q that a second book, covering the PiL years, was underway.

  In the mid-1990s, Lydon hosted Rotten Day, a daily US radio feature written by George Gimarc. Each episode looked back at what happened on that date in popular music and culture, with cynical commentary from Lydon. In 1997 he released Psycho's Path, a solo album on Virgin Records. He wrote every song and played every instrument. On one track, "Sun", he sang through a toilet roll. That November, he appeared on Judge Judy and won a case brought by a former tour drummer, Robert Williams, who had claimed breach of contract, assault and battery.

  He had tried the screen before. In 1983, Lydon co-starred with Harvey Keitel in the Italian crime thriller Copkiller. In January 2004, he took part in the British reality programme I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! in Australia, and swore at the viewers during a live broadcast. Between the television regulator and ITV, only 91 complaints were received. He then made nature documentaries, including John Lydon's Megabugs for the Discovery Channel. Radio Times called him "more an enthusiast than an expert". Two more followed, John Lydon Goes Ape, in which he searched for gorillas in Central Africa, and John Lydon's Shark Attack, in which he swam with sharks off South Africa.

  In late 2008, he appeared in advertisements for Country Life butter. Sales of the brand rose 85% in the following quarter, and many in the media credited his presence. In 2014, a tour of Jesus Christ Superstar, with Lydon cast as King Herod, was cancelled because of poor advance ticket sales. In 2021, he entered season six of the American Masked Singer as the wild card "Jester". In 2026, he appeared on the British version as "Yak", the third contestant unmasked.

  In 2023, PiL entered a song in the contest to represent Ireland at Eurovision. It was called "Hawaii", a love song to his wife, and it placed 4th out of 6 entrants in the qualifying rounds.

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• 7. Nora and the Inner Circle

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  Lydon met Nora Forster, a German publishing heiress, in 1975. They married in 1979 and stayed together for about 44 years, until her death in April 2023. She was 14 years older than he was. Her daughter Ariane, known as Ari Up, was lead vocalist of the Slits. In 2000, Lydon and Forster became legal guardians of Up's teenage twin sons. Lydon explained that Up could no longer cope and that he "wasn't having them abandoned". When Up died of breast cancer in 2010, at the age of 48, they took in her third child as well. The couple lived mainly in Venice, Los Angeles, from the early 1980s, and kept a home in London.

  On the 21st of December 1988, delays caused by Forster's packing made them miss Pan Am Flight 103. It was blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland. In a February 2004 interview, Lydon said that he and his wife "should be dead".

  In 2018, Lydon revealed that Forster was in the mid-stages of Alzheimer's disease. By June 2020, he was her full-time carer. He said he had no plan to put her in a care home. "For me, the real person is still there," he said, and he told of experts being struck by how she remembered his words: "A bit of love goes a long way." She died from complications of the illness.

  His closest male friend was his manager and minder, John "Rambo" Stevens, whom he had known since childhood, when both lived in Finsbury Park. The friendship lasted more than 50 years. One description called Stevens "Lydon's minder, his hairdresser, his signet-ring designer, his fellow traveller, his mate."

  Lydon is also a visual artist, and his drawings and paintings have appeared on PiL and solo releases. In 2017 he published Mr. Rotten's Songbook, a limited edition with the words to every song he wrote, alongside his own sketches and cartoons.

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• 8. A Contrary Mind

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  In 2012, Lydon told an interviewer that he had never been an anarchist, although he wrote and sang "Anarchy in the U.K." He called anarchy "mind games for the middle class". In a 2022 op-ed he went further: "Anarchy is a terrible idea." He describes himself as a "pacifist by nature" and admires Mahatma Gandhi. Raised Catholic by his parents, he now criticises the Church over its sexual abuse cases and in 2010 called for legal action against the Pope. In the liner notes to the PiL single "Cruel", he wrote, "God is probably Barry Manilow."

  His party politics have shifted repeatedly. In 2013, Lydon became an American citizen, alongside his British and Irish citizenships, because he "believed in Barack Obama" and in health care reform. Before the 2016 election, he said Donald Trump had no chance. By March 2017, he called Trump a "complicated fellow" who "terrifies politicians". In October 2020, he told the BBC he was voting for Trump. In June 2016, he backed remaining in the European Union. By March 2017, he said he supported Brexit, and he later praised Nigel Farage. In 2022, he said he would like to see Jacob Rees-Mogg as prime minister. He also said that he no longer recognised the Labour Party he voted for as a young man.

  On class, he turns on everyone. He says private schools teach pupils a sense of superiority that is "the kiss of death". He also says the working class "never accept responsibility for our own lives". He backs the National Health Service and free education. By June 2022, during the Platinum Jubilee, he said he had softened his view of the royal family and signed an opinion column "God save the Queen". After her death, he objected to anyone using Sex Pistols tracks for commercial gain.

  Other positions drew heavier fire. He opposes the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. In 2010, when Elvis Costello and Roger Waters cancelled Israeli shows, he kept PiL's Tel Aviv date. In 2005 on the BBC, he said same-sex marriage lacked "something", while in 2012 he told The New Yorker that he never wanted to take away another person's choices. In a 2017 Rolling Stone interview, he said the Sex Pistols song "Bodies" is about abortion and that the decision belongs to the woman. "Always," he said. In 2025, he told Good Morning Britain that members of the Irish hip-hop trio Kneecap were his enemies after a video appeared of them reportedly urging fans to kill a Tory MP.

  In a 1978 BBC Radio 1 interview, Lydon called Jimmy Savile a hypocrite and said he knew rumours about him, decades before the public scandal. When the interviewer raised libel, he answered, "Nothing I've said is libel." The BBC cut the remark before broadcast, and Lydon says the corporation then blacklisted him. In October 2014, he clarified that by "killed" he had meant locking Savile up. The full interview finally appeared as a bonus track on a 2013 reissue of Public Image: First Issue.

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