John Lydon
It seems like a lifetime ago now but I once saw Public Image Ltd. play a show at the old Exhibition Stadium in Toronto. It was in the summer of 1989 and they were the middle band between The Sugarcubes and New Order, who were headlining. That was normally not something I would have been interested in except I liked PiL somewhat and, as I put it at the time, I wanted to see Johnny Rotten before he died.
Who could have predicted that less than a decade later he would have resurrected the Sex Pistols and started a whole new career with the Pistols and John Lydon/Johnny Rotten as celebrity. It’s an interesting way to make a living and one that’s perfect for an unconventional personality such as his.
When PiL started playing, Lydon barked into his microphone “We’ve got a half-hour, everyone get off your asses” and then the band launched into “This is Not A Love Song.”
I don’t remember the whole set but I remember that he played “Flowers of Romance“, “Disappointed” (which was the single from the record he was touring to support at the time) and an awesome extended version of “Rise.”
There was also a point where he instructed one part of the audience to boo another part. Oh Johnny, you so silly.
That show was a real eye-opening growth experience for me in that seeing a punk rock icon being supported by what was obviously professional side-men and back-up singers made me realize that the space between what was considered underground and mainstream was maybe greyer that I originally thought. Even more so than hearing “The Order of Death” in the soundtrack for an episode of Miami Vice, which I thought was weird but exceptionally cool.
My last encounter with Lydon was when I saw him speak at the NXNE conference some years ago. He didn’t have much planned and mostly took questions, and repeatedly mentioned that he was looking for a record label. And he refused to answer a question from one person because he was “too fat.” Oh Johnny, you so silly.
I realize that Lydon and the old-school punk rockers I idolized in my teens owe me nothing, but watching his career unfold the way it did was and continues to be an education in how musicians, well all people actually, make their living, and how it’s never wise to expect things to unfold you think they should based on their persona and your expectations of them.
I am pretty excited to be seeing PiL in a few weeks when they play at L’Olympia here in Montreal. Maybe more so than I was when I saw them 21 years ago.