DV: They always seem to match up you and Sue Catwoman, and I
felt like she was the female version of you, because she was
nothing like anyone else was.
JR: Sue Catwoman was a very frightening young girl. A lot of people were
very terrified of her. She had the most startling image at that time, and I
liked her a lot. I probably still would if I ran into her today. Bang-on hard
core!! She wouldn't take shit from no one. And at that time she wasn't
really liked because girls were supposed to be proper. That wasn't her
way at all. It's sad because, you know that hairdo she had-the catwoman
thing Isn't it disgusting, that arsehole form Prodigy went and copied that.
What a bum-hole that makes him don't you think?
DV: Yeah, especially when he used to look like that guy from
Simply Red.
JR: Ooh, now we're getting catty, (ha ha ha). That's a hard one to
recover from.
DV: In Sid and Nancy, was the portrayal of Linda Ashby accurate?
JR: Yeah, that's exactly what Linda was. Linda was a very good friend of
mine and she ran a call-girl kind of situation, shall we say, around by the
back of Buckingham Palace. Which, oddly enough, was across the street
from Scotland Yard, (ha ha ha) The police station! She used to titilate
MPs; extra curricular activities late at night with many members of
parliament. Very hilarious. In fact, that's how I managed to drink when I
was younger, in the very early Pistol's days. I used to drink in this pub in
the house of parliament where it was ten pence for a beer. We'd booze all night with these swaggering old drunks who ran
the country.
DV: So what is Linda doing now, do you know?
JR: I hear she got married and moved out to the country. Apparently she lives on some farm. So she's milking cows-she
always did (ha ha ha). So no change there!
DV: Now, I recall reading in your book or somewhere about the song 'Belson', did you guys ever record that
in a studio?
JR. Ah, yeah, but I think it was a B-side, I don't quite remember. The song was done as a complete spoof. As you can
imagine, the ignorance of record companies in the world at large took it as a factual anti-Jewish statement. Totally absurd.
That's not my way. I'll give you an example, a British Nazi magazine called Spearhead wanted to interview me. So I told
them my name was Lydonberg-that did not go down well with them that Johnny Rotten was a Jew! (ha ha ha) You know, I'll
stand up against anyone who is prejudiced. I won't tolerate it; the world is too small. We don't have enough of a lifetime to
be wasting it hating someone else. There's all these prejudice groups; where do they get that from? Someone's mislead
them and they don't have the brains to suss out that they've been manipulated.
DV: So, Sid played a couple of tracks for 'Bollocks' and, as you said, you would rather have had his stuff be
released on the album instead of how it was released. Why were the recordings with him never released?
Apparently, they've been released on the 'Spunk' bootleg.
JR: Well. I don't know much about 'Spunk', but the fact is Sid was playing on the 'Bollocks' album, but we took him off
when he couldn't play zero. He never really progressed from that stage, but that's alright. It didn't seem to matter. We
were heading for death, doom, and destruction anyway. Sid just hurried up the process; he saved us a lot of time! (ha ha
ha)
DV: What do you remember about the early sessions in the studio? Where they chaotic or did they run
smoothly?
JR: No. We were never chaotic at recording, we were very tight because we were all so into it. It might be chaotic to an
outside listener, but it didn't matter. It could have been garbage cans falling down a staircase to most people. We were
always tight; we liked what we were doing. We rehearsed very little, but when we did, the songs just came out. Always
creative, and I miss that.
DV: We all hope that one day you'll get back to your basic four piece band. '
JR: I've been thinking that for a while. I'd really like to get back to that. Just for the shear fun of it.
DV: I was always curious about 'The Flowers of Romance', which was the band Sid was in-and you named. I
read that it never went past the rehearsal stage; did you ever hear any rehearsals of the band?
JR: Listen, hideous. Seriously, they were fucking hedious.
DV: Is that a good thing or a bad thing, though?
JR: Sid on drums was worse than Sid on bass, (ha ha ha) Shocking! Very gutsy though, what I liked about them was
Marco, the guitarist, who ended up in Adam and the Ants. I always loved the way that man played guitar. He's a very good
chap. He's never allowed himself to become conceited. There's so few of that.
DV: When you did the S.P.O.T.S. (Sex Pistols on tour secretly) tour
- l haven't read too much about it - how was this tour organized,
and how many gigs did you do?
JR: With the S.P.O.T.S. tour, I can't remember really doing more than
two. Even that fell through. We didn't have exactly the best manager in
the world at the time. He was far too busy claiming accolades for himself
instead of concerning himself with what the band should and shouldn't be
doing. That kind of stuff just buggered him all up.
DV: I know of one S.P.O.T.S. gigs you did that was in
Wolverhampton, what was that like?
JR: Wolverhampton was a great, great gig!! I'll tell you what I remember
most about it. It was a small club, I can't remember the name of it right
now, but I remember when I jumped up, I hit the roof with my head. It
was a very low ceiling. The rest of the show I felt like I was going to faint, but I wouldn't dare because my pride wouldn't
have it. You know, Johnny Rotten a fainting lily. Uhhh! And I also remember that at the time there was a lot of Northern vs.
Southern, which is happily gone now. Now we just take the piss out of each other in a fun way and there's no real
bitterness or nastiness. Way back then, as a bunch of lads from London, we would get all serious yobs turning out to
have a go at you. This was pre-security, and all that malarky. You're on your own boy! But it didn't go that way; as soon
as we started note one, and lack of note two, we didn't win them over but they went "yeah, he's right!" We weren't
fraudulent. I am the genuine, working-class article.
DV: So moving along, I read that you wrote the song 'Religion' during the US tour in 78'. Did you write any
other songs during that time that would end up on the first PIL LP?
JR: No, just 'Religion'.
DV: Towards the end of the tour, you and Sid knew that the Pistols were nearly through and were planning on
starting a new band together heading in a different direction than the Pistols.
JR: Yeah, and then the drugs thing. 'Religion' was actually a fine, fine song but I couldn't play, and neither could Sid! So I
put it on hold until I formed PIL.
DV: Did you have any idea of what you wanted PIL to sound like before the band formed? Did you have a
musical direction in mind?
JR: Musically as far away from the fiasco of the Pistols, and as far away from the Malcom's shenanigans, because I
thought it was getting too stupid and nasty and does you no favors. There isn't any real point to that, it's a waste of time.
DV: The Pistols did some cover songs that ended up on The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle. Was there any
particular reasoning behind the songs that you chose to do?
JR: What songs are you talking about!?
DV: 'Stepping Stone', 'Don't Gimme Me No Lip Child', 'Road Runner".
JR: Oh, those songs. Those were all rehearsal songs when we first started. You know, you can't have a whole roster of
your own songs when you first start. To learn your way you just have to use other people's songs. They're just not the
same as the originals though.
DV: Did you ever do any other covers that were never recorded?
JR: I think that if there's anything we've done ... that's about all of it.
DV: In your book 'No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs' you're
talking about Vicious almost out-rottening Rotten, What did
you mean by that? Are you talking about the 'My Way' video?
JR: No, no. I was talking about live on stage. When he dropped
parts in songs he would start jabbing me and standing in front of
me on stage and acting all star-like. That was really irritating cuz
all I could see was his back. And if I moved to one side, he'd come
and stand in front of me, trying to make out that he was the lad. It
was all coming from a lack of self-esteem. And there's not much
you can do to stop people who go that far. You know what, this is
a laugh. When we were playing, his bass would get unplugged
and he wouldn't notice. He'd just carry on miming away.
DV: In the live footage I've seen of the last Pistols show in
San Francisco, you can actually hear him playing bass, but
not Steve's guitar. He was doing alright with the four notes
he was playing.
JR: Yeah, well I think that was mostly booing reverberating
around the hall. Most of the booing was for the bass playing. The rest of the band had to double up to cover the gaps.
DV: There was also a rumour that McLaren was playing bass behind the curtain during the tour.
JR: Ha ha ha!! When did Malcolm invent that one? What, with those delicate little fingers? You know, my god-anyone
who's ever seen the strings on a bass knows they're not for the limp wristed!
DV: Years ago you did that movie 'Cop Killer', are you ever going to do any more acting?
JR: Ah, I don't like the way films are done. You have to wait like twelve hours to do two minutes of work a day. The stress
of that was a living nightmare. I like the end result of seeing my big fat arse on the screen, but I don't like to listen to my
own voice. Even though I've been in the entertainment industry for twenty odd years now, still you don't get used to it.
Films seem so conceited to me. They should be about fun. I tell you, all the other people I've met, actors and actresses,
have been totally stuck up, unhelpful, generally spiteful, and tried to sabotage everything you do to make themselves look
better it's really just all about competition in the most vicious, spiteful way. So I'm not really looking forward to doing
anything like that.
DV: So nobody's offered you anything, or you haven't come across any opportunities?
JR: That too Ha ha ha, I'm bitter! There have been offers over the years like 'Gremlins' and odds ands sods. I've done
small bits in indie films but generally I found them to be even more fucked up. More ridiculous and more egos than in
Hollywood productions.
DV: I was reading about a movie being based on you book. Is any of that reality?
JR: Uh, yeah. You mean 'No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs'. I signed up with Rhino Films and they want to put it out as a little
film. You know, a small kind of film, but basically using the premise of the book to tell a story about life in London.
DV: Who's going to play you? Do you have any idea?
JR: Yeah, James Earl Jones Ha ha ha. I don't know yet; I don't care. We're still scripting it. We'll get to that horrible bridge
when we come to it. But it won't be any big hollywood name, I hope. Like all things in life, you can start out with all good
intents and purposes and eventually someone will try to water it down.
DV: Another thing I wanted to ask is about the videos that were in The Swindle' - like the 'Anarchy' video.
Now, was that video spliced with another shot of the crowd, because that's what I heard somewhere - that it
wasn't the audience that was in attendance for that gig.
JR: No, that's the real crowd.
DV: I wasn't too sure, because one shot was black and white and the other was colour.
JR: Well, you have to bear in mind that it was twenty odd years ago and the wonderful world of the video camera was not
quite brilliant, and if you aimed at a stage that had bright lights it made the picture go black and white. The colour would
dissipate. It actually worked very well; back then.
DV: When you decided to do the reunion in 96', considering that it was twenty years later, how did you go
about deciding what songs to do? Because you had certain set lists and cover songs like 'Roadrunner', 'No
Fun' and 'Stepping Stone'. You didn't always do the same set list.
JR. Those were the songs we did originally; sometimes we would, sometimes we wouldn't. I just depends, as always.
Everything I work with-there's no strict regime. We're not limited to a set list night after night. It becomes boring theater
when you do that. Sometimes you react to the way crowds are; they give you an energy to go on other tangents.
DV: How much rehearsal did you guys actually do before the reunion tour?
JR: Hardly any, if you want to be honest. I don't think we managed to get a whole week in, in over a month and a half.
Seven days I would think. Even then, not too seriously because rehearsals can negate the thrill of it. Live on stage, no
matter how well you've rehearsed, it's a completely different environment. And everybody makes mistakes live If you've
rehearsed too much, you get stuck in the routine of the song, and you can't recover somebody else's mistake.
DV: What was the general feeling when you guys got back together?
JR: On stage-excellent Offstage, back to the same old war.
DV: What were rehearsals like for those seven days?
JR: Terrible. Who I got on with the most, oddly enough, was Glen l mean, we do get on but we fight constantly. We just
get on with it.'
DV. Now, whore did you do the rehearsals? Back in England?
JR: No, here in LA, in various sheds. Believe me, you can't do anything in England anymore, everything costs just way too
much.
DV: Actually, what I wanted to phone you about, I was talking to Mike from Beer City Records, in Milwaukee,
and he said "ask Johnny why they never had any punk bands opening up for them on the tour" because you
pointed out that there were bands playing downstairs.
JR: Oh in Milwaukee?
DV: Yeah.
JR: Right, well what was going on downstairs was some Skinhead festival.
DV: I know one of the bands was Urban Decay. I can't remember the other bands he mentioned but they're not
skinhead bands.
JR: Oh fine, I didn't know Urban Decay was there, but from what I could see from upstairs - there was a glass window
behind the stage - and all I could see was a rowdy crowd of skinheads and some nazi type band ranting and raving and
sieg heiling. There were quite a few bands on downstairs that day. (None of the bands there were actually Nazi bands, I
don't know where Rotten got this idea - ed)
DV: I know that all of the bands playing downstairs wanted to meet you guys. Mike seemed to think that you
didn't see any of the bands, and he thought you didn't care about anything that was going on downstairs.
JR: Well now, you see that's wrong cuz we didn't know there was a whole thing going on downstairs. That was never told
to us when we booked in that venue. And you see how things can get twisted. So, you know the assumption was that we
were a bunch of pretentious stuck ups, and that ain't my nature at all mate, you know. We all should have been in the
same fucking venue. I couldn't understand why there were two different gigs going on at the same time? It made no
fucking sense to me.
DV: Mike was saying to me that somebody had made a poster for their gig and the people from his show were
freaked out saying "you can't do that, we're gonna get in trouble for putting posters up!" I tried to explain to
him why you didn't talk to them. I said, well John doesn't come across to me as patronizing, so I don't know
really how much they knew about what was going on. Now you tell me you didn't know so there you go.
JR: Yeah, how could I, you know. It's not like I hang around Milwaukee all my life is it?
DV: He asked, "why didn't they have punks bands playing with you? Maybe it was because they didn't want to
get blown off the stage by another band. Ha ha ha!
JR: Ohhh yeah Hello, isn't that getting into fantasy island there? And besides I've never done any gig for competition
values, so that alone annoys me that people would think on those lines. No, to my mind it was two different gigs and I
couldn't understand it. I was also suprised that there were that many punks to go round in Milwaukee, that you could run
two gigs in the same night and pack both of em out! Ha ha ha!
DV: Well, Mike's label, Beer City, is shipping tons of stuff out of Milwaukee. So it goes to show that punk is
alive and well in Milwaukee as well as elsewhere.
JR: When you talk to him get him to like, you know swing something my way and I'll pay attention to it!
DV: Sure, that's no problem, (not bloody likely, Rotten - ed)
JR: I mean, I never find out about these things unless I ask. I have no fear in claiming my ignorance on many subjects,
because the only way you can change that is by saying so. Let me tell you that one of the biggest surprises was that
there was such a huge audience in Milwaukee. Whenever I've played there before with PIL it was like they were still stuck
into that heavy metal thing. That's all I ever knew about that town. So I always thought aw fucking hell, you know, more
long hairs booing in the front row!
DV: Ha ha ha.
JR: You know, it was a bit of a surprise. Oh and also I remember some of the security guys were like Hells Angels types.
Yeah, they were not amused by us. With their dull, long hair looking completely out of date.
DV: Not only then, but now.
JR: Yeah, and there are fucking good bikers, you know. I know many of them in different towns and different states;
they're completely different!
DV: Was there a favorite reunion show?
JR: Finsbury Park, because it was my father's birthday,
(you've never looked so fucking good fpl) The
Shepherd's Bush gig, a few nights later, because it was
just a great atmosphere in a small, little club. Glasgow
was stunning, and Berlin was excellent. Somewhere in
Croatia, but I can't remember the name of it now. We got
some amazing responses. What I thought was funny, all
the places we got banned from tended to be very Catholic
and Christian countries like Greece. Italy - gave us serious
problems. Malta, Spain threw us out and Ireland outright
rejected us. Curious.
DV: It's funny that twenty years later there are still
anxious feelings about you guys.
JR: Which struck me as really odd. The attitude I expected
was "shut up, silly old men!" But no! It was even pretentious
than way back then. It's bizarre, that you can still annoy
people: you know you're doing something right.
DV: That's true, with the press and everything else.
Which moves me to the next question. I remember
hearing or reading that Ann Beverly (Sid's mother -
ed) wanted to put a stop to the tour. Did you hear
about this, and how far did it actually go?
JR: I pay no attention to that kind of stuff. What does it matter? Who the hell was she in the first place? A nobody! A
fucking junkie that ruined her own son's life because of that. These are people who act from a position of spite and
resentment. Much like Nancy Spudgen's mother.
DV: In the Swindle movie they've got the footage from a 'Pretty Vacant' performance which is from Top of the
Pops. Did you ever do any other appearances for Top of the Pops besides that one?
JR: No, I think that was the only one. Then I did two appearances with PIL, I think.
DV: You did a couple of songs for Top of the Pops in 96' and they made you censor yourself when you did
'New York'. You couldn't say shit or something like that.
JR: Oh, yes, I remember that. They wouldn't let us go on unless I changed 'shit' to 'it' so I deliberately pronounced the
word 'it' in the most shiftiest way possible, absolutely making it clear that this was 'shit'. They couldn't ban it. and they
couldn't not air it, but they knew I had got the number on them. Whenever they try to ban me I find a way around it to
make it absolutely clear what the thing is, because sometimes you don't actually need to say it but the implication alone
can be so much more damaging and destructive to these powers that be. Don't let the bastards grind you down, because
you need to be seen on these things. You need to be drawn into the public's eye, otherwise you've lost an obscurity and
that's not healthy
DV: Now, with the 'God Save the Queen' video, where was this done, and was it a promo for the song to be
released on TV or whatever?
JR: That was actually done at the 100 club, in London. No, the Marquee, sorry. It was done for a laugh, we didn't know
where it was going to go or what to do with it. Obviously that was a song that would never be allowed on the airwaves.
DV: Why didn't you actually do any other videos for songs?
JR: Lack of money. We were very, very broke all through that. At least that's what we were led to believe.
DV: What did you think of Ten Pole Tudor being named as the replacement for you in the Sex Pistols?
JR: Well, I've got nothing against Eddie Ten Pole Tudor. The fact that Malcolm asked him to be my replacement in the
Sex Pistols is neither here nor there. It doesn't make me hate Eddie, it makes me laugh at him if he thinks he can do it. He
obviously couldn't. That whole period for me - l don't want to sing my praises too highly, but hello, they've lost the
songwriter. Quite frankly, none of them can string two words together, so duh, go figure
DV: Alright, thanks a lot for you time.
THE END
(Thanks to Peter Don't Care for help on the interview )
You can contact Dick Vain on facebook
felt like she was the female version of you, because she was
nothing like anyone else was.
JR: Sue Catwoman was a very frightening young girl. A lot of people were
very terrified of her. She had the most startling image at that time, and I
liked her a lot. I probably still would if I ran into her today. Bang-on hard
core!! She wouldn't take shit from no one. And at that time she wasn't
really liked because girls were supposed to be proper. That wasn't her
way at all. It's sad because, you know that hairdo she had-the catwoman
thing Isn't it disgusting, that arsehole form Prodigy went and copied that.
What a bum-hole that makes him don't you think?
DV: Yeah, especially when he used to look like that guy from
Simply Red.
JR: Ooh, now we're getting catty, (ha ha ha). That's a hard one to
recover from.
DV: In Sid and Nancy, was the portrayal of Linda Ashby accurate?
JR: Yeah, that's exactly what Linda was. Linda was a very good friend of
mine and she ran a call-girl kind of situation, shall we say, around by the
back of Buckingham Palace. Which, oddly enough, was across the street
from Scotland Yard, (ha ha ha) The police station! She used to titilate
MPs; extra curricular activities late at night with many members of
parliament. Very hilarious. In fact, that's how I managed to drink when I
was younger, in the very early Pistol's days. I used to drink in this pub in
the house of parliament where it was ten pence for a beer. We'd booze all night with these swaggering old drunks who ran
the country.
DV: So what is Linda doing now, do you know?
JR: I hear she got married and moved out to the country. Apparently she lives on some farm. So she's milking cows-she
always did (ha ha ha). So no change there!
DV: Now, I recall reading in your book or somewhere about the song 'Belson', did you guys ever record that
in a studio?
JR. Ah, yeah, but I think it was a B-side, I don't quite remember. The song was done as a complete spoof. As you can
imagine, the ignorance of record companies in the world at large took it as a factual anti-Jewish statement. Totally absurd.
That's not my way. I'll give you an example, a British Nazi magazine called Spearhead wanted to interview me. So I told
them my name was Lydonberg-that did not go down well with them that Johnny Rotten was a Jew! (ha ha ha) You know, I'll
stand up against anyone who is prejudiced. I won't tolerate it; the world is too small. We don't have enough of a lifetime to
be wasting it hating someone else. There's all these prejudice groups; where do they get that from? Someone's mislead
them and they don't have the brains to suss out that they've been manipulated.
DV: So, Sid played a couple of tracks for 'Bollocks' and, as you said, you would rather have had his stuff be
released on the album instead of how it was released. Why were the recordings with him never released?
Apparently, they've been released on the 'Spunk' bootleg.
JR: Well. I don't know much about 'Spunk', but the fact is Sid was playing on the 'Bollocks' album, but we took him off
when he couldn't play zero. He never really progressed from that stage, but that's alright. It didn't seem to matter. We
were heading for death, doom, and destruction anyway. Sid just hurried up the process; he saved us a lot of time! (ha ha
ha)
DV: What do you remember about the early sessions in the studio? Where they chaotic or did they run
smoothly?
JR: No. We were never chaotic at recording, we were very tight because we were all so into it. It might be chaotic to an
outside listener, but it didn't matter. It could have been garbage cans falling down a staircase to most people. We were
always tight; we liked what we were doing. We rehearsed very little, but when we did, the songs just came out. Always
creative, and I miss that.
DV: We all hope that one day you'll get back to your basic four piece band. '
JR: I've been thinking that for a while. I'd really like to get back to that. Just for the shear fun of it.
DV: I was always curious about 'The Flowers of Romance', which was the band Sid was in-and you named. I
read that it never went past the rehearsal stage; did you ever hear any rehearsals of the band?
JR: Listen, hideous. Seriously, they were fucking hedious.
DV: Is that a good thing or a bad thing, though?
JR: Sid on drums was worse than Sid on bass, (ha ha ha) Shocking! Very gutsy though, what I liked about them was
Marco, the guitarist, who ended up in Adam and the Ants. I always loved the way that man played guitar. He's a very good
chap. He's never allowed himself to become conceited. There's so few of that.
DV: When you did the S.P.O.T.S. (Sex Pistols on tour secretly) tour
- l haven't read too much about it - how was this tour organized,
and how many gigs did you do?
JR: With the S.P.O.T.S. tour, I can't remember really doing more than
two. Even that fell through. We didn't have exactly the best manager in
the world at the time. He was far too busy claiming accolades for himself
instead of concerning himself with what the band should and shouldn't be
doing. That kind of stuff just buggered him all up.
DV: I know of one S.P.O.T.S. gigs you did that was in
Wolverhampton, what was that like?
JR: Wolverhampton was a great, great gig!! I'll tell you what I remember
most about it. It was a small club, I can't remember the name of it right
now, but I remember when I jumped up, I hit the roof with my head. It
was a very low ceiling. The rest of the show I felt like I was going to faint, but I wouldn't dare because my pride wouldn't
have it. You know, Johnny Rotten a fainting lily. Uhhh! And I also remember that at the time there was a lot of Northern vs.
Southern, which is happily gone now. Now we just take the piss out of each other in a fun way and there's no real
bitterness or nastiness. Way back then, as a bunch of lads from London, we would get all serious yobs turning out to
have a go at you. This was pre-security, and all that malarky. You're on your own boy! But it didn't go that way; as soon
as we started note one, and lack of note two, we didn't win them over but they went "yeah, he's right!" We weren't
fraudulent. I am the genuine, working-class article.
DV: So moving along, I read that you wrote the song 'Religion' during the US tour in 78'. Did you write any
other songs during that time that would end up on the first PIL LP?
JR: No, just 'Religion'.
DV: Towards the end of the tour, you and Sid knew that the Pistols were nearly through and were planning on
starting a new band together heading in a different direction than the Pistols.
JR: Yeah, and then the drugs thing. 'Religion' was actually a fine, fine song but I couldn't play, and neither could Sid! So I
put it on hold until I formed PIL.
DV: Did you have any idea of what you wanted PIL to sound like before the band formed? Did you have a
musical direction in mind?
JR: Musically as far away from the fiasco of the Pistols, and as far away from the Malcom's shenanigans, because I
thought it was getting too stupid and nasty and does you no favors. There isn't any real point to that, it's a waste of time.
DV: The Pistols did some cover songs that ended up on The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle. Was there any
particular reasoning behind the songs that you chose to do?
JR: What songs are you talking about!?
DV: 'Stepping Stone', 'Don't Gimme Me No Lip Child', 'Road Runner".
JR: Oh, those songs. Those were all rehearsal songs when we first started. You know, you can't have a whole roster of
your own songs when you first start. To learn your way you just have to use other people's songs. They're just not the
same as the originals though.
DV: Did you ever do any other covers that were never recorded?
JR: I think that if there's anything we've done ... that's about all of it.
DV: In your book 'No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs' you're
talking about Vicious almost out-rottening Rotten, What did
you mean by that? Are you talking about the 'My Way' video?
JR: No, no. I was talking about live on stage. When he dropped
parts in songs he would start jabbing me and standing in front of
me on stage and acting all star-like. That was really irritating cuz
all I could see was his back. And if I moved to one side, he'd come
and stand in front of me, trying to make out that he was the lad. It
was all coming from a lack of self-esteem. And there's not much
you can do to stop people who go that far. You know what, this is
a laugh. When we were playing, his bass would get unplugged
and he wouldn't notice. He'd just carry on miming away.
DV: In the live footage I've seen of the last Pistols show in
San Francisco, you can actually hear him playing bass, but
not Steve's guitar. He was doing alright with the four notes
he was playing.
JR: Yeah, well I think that was mostly booing reverberating
around the hall. Most of the booing was for the bass playing. The rest of the band had to double up to cover the gaps.
DV: There was also a rumour that McLaren was playing bass behind the curtain during the tour.
JR: Ha ha ha!! When did Malcolm invent that one? What, with those delicate little fingers? You know, my god-anyone
who's ever seen the strings on a bass knows they're not for the limp wristed!
DV: Years ago you did that movie 'Cop Killer', are you ever going to do any more acting?
JR: Ah, I don't like the way films are done. You have to wait like twelve hours to do two minutes of work a day. The stress
of that was a living nightmare. I like the end result of seeing my big fat arse on the screen, but I don't like to listen to my
own voice. Even though I've been in the entertainment industry for twenty odd years now, still you don't get used to it.
Films seem so conceited to me. They should be about fun. I tell you, all the other people I've met, actors and actresses,
have been totally stuck up, unhelpful, generally spiteful, and tried to sabotage everything you do to make themselves look
better it's really just all about competition in the most vicious, spiteful way. So I'm not really looking forward to doing
anything like that.
DV: So nobody's offered you anything, or you haven't come across any opportunities?
JR: That too Ha ha ha, I'm bitter! There have been offers over the years like 'Gremlins' and odds ands sods. I've done
small bits in indie films but generally I found them to be even more fucked up. More ridiculous and more egos than in
Hollywood productions.
DV: I was reading about a movie being based on you book. Is any of that reality?
JR: Uh, yeah. You mean 'No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs'. I signed up with Rhino Films and they want to put it out as a little
film. You know, a small kind of film, but basically using the premise of the book to tell a story about life in London.
DV: Who's going to play you? Do you have any idea?
JR: Yeah, James Earl Jones Ha ha ha. I don't know yet; I don't care. We're still scripting it. We'll get to that horrible bridge
when we come to it. But it won't be any big hollywood name, I hope. Like all things in life, you can start out with all good
intents and purposes and eventually someone will try to water it down.
DV: Another thing I wanted to ask is about the videos that were in The Swindle' - like the 'Anarchy' video.
Now, was that video spliced with another shot of the crowd, because that's what I heard somewhere - that it
wasn't the audience that was in attendance for that gig.
JR: No, that's the real crowd.
DV: I wasn't too sure, because one shot was black and white and the other was colour.
JR: Well, you have to bear in mind that it was twenty odd years ago and the wonderful world of the video camera was not
quite brilliant, and if you aimed at a stage that had bright lights it made the picture go black and white. The colour would
dissipate. It actually worked very well; back then.
DV: When you decided to do the reunion in 96', considering that it was twenty years later, how did you go
about deciding what songs to do? Because you had certain set lists and cover songs like 'Roadrunner', 'No
Fun' and 'Stepping Stone'. You didn't always do the same set list.
JR. Those were the songs we did originally; sometimes we would, sometimes we wouldn't. I just depends, as always.
Everything I work with-there's no strict regime. We're not limited to a set list night after night. It becomes boring theater
when you do that. Sometimes you react to the way crowds are; they give you an energy to go on other tangents.
DV: How much rehearsal did you guys actually do before the reunion tour?
JR: Hardly any, if you want to be honest. I don't think we managed to get a whole week in, in over a month and a half.
Seven days I would think. Even then, not too seriously because rehearsals can negate the thrill of it. Live on stage, no
matter how well you've rehearsed, it's a completely different environment. And everybody makes mistakes live If you've
rehearsed too much, you get stuck in the routine of the song, and you can't recover somebody else's mistake.
DV: What was the general feeling when you guys got back together?
JR: On stage-excellent Offstage, back to the same old war.
DV: What were rehearsals like for those seven days?
JR: Terrible. Who I got on with the most, oddly enough, was Glen l mean, we do get on but we fight constantly. We just
get on with it.'
DV. Now, whore did you do the rehearsals? Back in England?
JR: No, here in LA, in various sheds. Believe me, you can't do anything in England anymore, everything costs just way too
much.
DV: Actually, what I wanted to phone you about, I was talking to Mike from Beer City Records, in Milwaukee,
and he said "ask Johnny why they never had any punk bands opening up for them on the tour" because you
pointed out that there were bands playing downstairs.
JR: Oh in Milwaukee?
DV: Yeah.
JR: Right, well what was going on downstairs was some Skinhead festival.
DV: I know one of the bands was Urban Decay. I can't remember the other bands he mentioned but they're not
skinhead bands.
JR: Oh fine, I didn't know Urban Decay was there, but from what I could see from upstairs - there was a glass window
behind the stage - and all I could see was a rowdy crowd of skinheads and some nazi type band ranting and raving and
sieg heiling. There were quite a few bands on downstairs that day. (None of the bands there were actually Nazi bands, I
don't know where Rotten got this idea - ed)
DV: I know that all of the bands playing downstairs wanted to meet you guys. Mike seemed to think that you
didn't see any of the bands, and he thought you didn't care about anything that was going on downstairs.
JR: Well now, you see that's wrong cuz we didn't know there was a whole thing going on downstairs. That was never told
to us when we booked in that venue. And you see how things can get twisted. So, you know the assumption was that we
were a bunch of pretentious stuck ups, and that ain't my nature at all mate, you know. We all should have been in the
same fucking venue. I couldn't understand why there were two different gigs going on at the same time? It made no
fucking sense to me.
DV: Mike was saying to me that somebody had made a poster for their gig and the people from his show were
freaked out saying "you can't do that, we're gonna get in trouble for putting posters up!" I tried to explain to
him why you didn't talk to them. I said, well John doesn't come across to me as patronizing, so I don't know
really how much they knew about what was going on. Now you tell me you didn't know so there you go.
JR: Yeah, how could I, you know. It's not like I hang around Milwaukee all my life is it?
DV: He asked, "why didn't they have punks bands playing with you? Maybe it was because they didn't want to
get blown off the stage by another band. Ha ha ha!
JR: Ohhh yeah Hello, isn't that getting into fantasy island there? And besides I've never done any gig for competition
values, so that alone annoys me that people would think on those lines. No, to my mind it was two different gigs and I
couldn't understand it. I was also suprised that there were that many punks to go round in Milwaukee, that you could run
two gigs in the same night and pack both of em out! Ha ha ha!
DV: Well, Mike's label, Beer City, is shipping tons of stuff out of Milwaukee. So it goes to show that punk is
alive and well in Milwaukee as well as elsewhere.
JR: When you talk to him get him to like, you know swing something my way and I'll pay attention to it!
DV: Sure, that's no problem, (not bloody likely, Rotten - ed)
JR: I mean, I never find out about these things unless I ask. I have no fear in claiming my ignorance on many subjects,
because the only way you can change that is by saying so. Let me tell you that one of the biggest surprises was that
there was such a huge audience in Milwaukee. Whenever I've played there before with PIL it was like they were still stuck
into that heavy metal thing. That's all I ever knew about that town. So I always thought aw fucking hell, you know, more
long hairs booing in the front row!
DV: Ha ha ha.
JR: You know, it was a bit of a surprise. Oh and also I remember some of the security guys were like Hells Angels types.
Yeah, they were not amused by us. With their dull, long hair looking completely out of date.
DV: Not only then, but now.
JR: Yeah, and there are fucking good bikers, you know. I know many of them in different towns and different states;
they're completely different!
DV: Was there a favorite reunion show?
JR: Finsbury Park, because it was my father's birthday,
(you've never looked so fucking good fpl) The
Shepherd's Bush gig, a few nights later, because it was
just a great atmosphere in a small, little club. Glasgow
was stunning, and Berlin was excellent. Somewhere in
Croatia, but I can't remember the name of it now. We got
some amazing responses. What I thought was funny, all
the places we got banned from tended to be very Catholic
and Christian countries like Greece. Italy - gave us serious
problems. Malta, Spain threw us out and Ireland outright
rejected us. Curious.
DV: It's funny that twenty years later there are still
anxious feelings about you guys.
JR: Which struck me as really odd. The attitude I expected
was "shut up, silly old men!" But no! It was even pretentious
than way back then. It's bizarre, that you can still annoy
people: you know you're doing something right.
DV: That's true, with the press and everything else.
Which moves me to the next question. I remember
hearing or reading that Ann Beverly (Sid's mother -
ed) wanted to put a stop to the tour. Did you hear
about this, and how far did it actually go?
JR: I pay no attention to that kind of stuff. What does it matter? Who the hell was she in the first place? A nobody! A
fucking junkie that ruined her own son's life because of that. These are people who act from a position of spite and
resentment. Much like Nancy Spudgen's mother.
DV: In the Swindle movie they've got the footage from a 'Pretty Vacant' performance which is from Top of the
Pops. Did you ever do any other appearances for Top of the Pops besides that one?
JR: No, I think that was the only one. Then I did two appearances with PIL, I think.
DV: You did a couple of songs for Top of the Pops in 96' and they made you censor yourself when you did
'New York'. You couldn't say shit or something like that.
JR: Oh, yes, I remember that. They wouldn't let us go on unless I changed 'shit' to 'it' so I deliberately pronounced the
word 'it' in the most shiftiest way possible, absolutely making it clear that this was 'shit'. They couldn't ban it. and they
couldn't not air it, but they knew I had got the number on them. Whenever they try to ban me I find a way around it to
make it absolutely clear what the thing is, because sometimes you don't actually need to say it but the implication alone
can be so much more damaging and destructive to these powers that be. Don't let the bastards grind you down, because
you need to be seen on these things. You need to be drawn into the public's eye, otherwise you've lost an obscurity and
that's not healthy
DV: Now, with the 'God Save the Queen' video, where was this done, and was it a promo for the song to be
released on TV or whatever?
JR: That was actually done at the 100 club, in London. No, the Marquee, sorry. It was done for a laugh, we didn't know
where it was going to go or what to do with it. Obviously that was a song that would never be allowed on the airwaves.
DV: Why didn't you actually do any other videos for songs?
JR: Lack of money. We were very, very broke all through that. At least that's what we were led to believe.
DV: What did you think of Ten Pole Tudor being named as the replacement for you in the Sex Pistols?
JR: Well, I've got nothing against Eddie Ten Pole Tudor. The fact that Malcolm asked him to be my replacement in the
Sex Pistols is neither here nor there. It doesn't make me hate Eddie, it makes me laugh at him if he thinks he can do it. He
obviously couldn't. That whole period for me - l don't want to sing my praises too highly, but hello, they've lost the
songwriter. Quite frankly, none of them can string two words together, so duh, go figure
DV: Alright, thanks a lot for you time.
THE END
(Thanks to Peter Don't Care for help on the interview )
You can contact Dick Vain on facebook
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