John Lydon - Anger is an Energy: My Life Uncensored

PUBLISHERS NOTE

This autobiography is by John Lydon in his own words . Sometimes, the organisation of those words does not conform to the traditional rules of grammar. In some cases, the reader will happen upon words not listed in the dictionary, or used in ways one might describe as unorthodox. The publisher is aware of this they are not typos and misspellings we have missed; they are part of Mr Lydons unique lingo and, as such, have been given (mostly) free rein. As John might say, Dont let tiffles cause fraction.

First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2014

A CBS COMPANY

Copyright John Lydon, 2014

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.

The right of John Lydon to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

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Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright holders of material reproduced in this book, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked then publishers will be glad to hear from them.

Endpapers Kari Kuukka, Rock Summer Festival, Tallinn,
Estonia, 26 August 1988

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN (Hardback): 978-1-47113-719-8

ISBN: (Trade Paperback): 978-1-47113-720-4

ISBN (Ebook): 978-1-47113-722-8

Typeset in Garamond by M Rules

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

The Lydons. I cant thank my family for giving me a career, because I did that to myself, but I can thank them for standing by me. Thank you.

Nora. The love of my life. My best friend. The rows are beautiful but the making up is more so. You give me nothing but love and support. Which I hope Im repaying. Thank you.

I dedicate this book to integrity.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

MAY THE ROAD RISE WITH YOU

A nger is an energy. It really bloody is. Its possibly the most powerful one-liner Ive ever come up with. When I was writing the Public Image Ltd song Rise, I didnt quite realize the emotional impact that it would have on me, or anyone whos ever heard it since.

I wrote it in an almost throwaway fashion, off the top of my head, pretty much when I was about to sing the whole song for the first time, at my then new home in Los Angeles. Its a tough, spontaneous idea.

Rise was looking at the context of South Africa under apartheid. Id be watching these horrendous news reports on CNN, and so lines like They put a hotwire to my head, because of the things I did and said, are a reference to the torture techniques that the apartheid government was using out there. Insufferable.

Youd see these reports on TV and in the papers, and feel that this was a reality that simply couldnt be changed. So, in the context of Rise, Anger is an energy was an open statement, saying, Dont view anger negatively, dont deny it use it to be creative. I combined that with another refrain, May the road rise with you. When I was growing up, that was a phrase my mum and dad and half the surrounding neighbourhood, who happened to be Irish also used to say. May the road rise, and your enemies always be behind you!

So its saying, Theres always hope, and that you dont always have to resort to violence to resolve an issue. Anger doesnt necessarily equate directly to violence. Violence very rarely resolves anything. In South Africa, they eventually found a relatively peaceful way out. Using that supposedly negative energy called anger, it can take just one positive move to change things for the better.

When I came to record the song properly, the producer and I were arguing all the time, as we always tend to do, but sometimes the arguing actually helps; it feeds in. When it was released in early 1986, Rise then became a total anthem, in a period when the press were saying that I was finished, and there was nowhere left for me to go. Well, there was, and I went there. Anger is an energy. Unstoppable.

When I sing it onstage nowadays, its very emotional for me, because theres such a connection with the audience. Ill get these melodramatic responses, that people are bang in empathy with the actual statement, and the point and purpose of the song. They fully understand it and they share it back with me. Now, that takes your breath away. Often, I can forget my place in the song. Im so impressed listening to the audience singing it, that they take over. For me, thats complete success: something really generous has been understood by everybody in the building.

Anger is the root core of why I write songs. Sometimes I barely think Im in control of myself when Im writing. If theres such things as guardian angels out there well, mines a real bleedin piece of work. Theres a great deal of forethought and experience that goes into these things, you see, in the preamble, in my life in general. Once Im on , then the words just flow. And when Im on, Im ON .

Whatever that thing in me is, it keeps me going and being like this, and being relentless, and understanding things in my way its not so far-fetched, after all, from the rest of humanity. It really isnt. We all go through this, but Im just the one who gets up and says it.

I come from the dustbin. I was born and raised in a piss-poor neighbourhood in North London, which was pretty much what youd imagine Russia to be today. It was very, very controlled. Everything. And the presumption of control, too. And people were being born into this shitstem, as the Jamaicans call it, of just believing that others had the right to dictate to them in that way. Like I said to the Royal Family, You can ask for my allegiance, but you certainly cant demand it. Im not anybodys cannon fodder.

I dont think that way of thinking had really come into the British psyche for many years. It had done in previous centuries but it had been nullified, shall we say, through the Victoriana approach. The British have a really delicious history of civil disorder, but by the time the Second World War was over it had all been mollycoddled under the carpet, and was not mentioned in history lessons but for some of us out there who love to read, well, look what we found.

I could read and write at the age of four or five. My mum taught me, but after I got meningitis aged seven, I lost everything all my memory, including who my mum and dad were. It took a long time to come back. Id go to the library after school and just sit there and read until the place closed. Mum and Dad were very good, they trusted me that Id find my way home, even though many a time I couldnt Id literally forgotten where I lived.

I loved getting back into reading, though history, geology, or anything about wildlife, and then later I progressed into Dostoyevsky. By eleven, I was finding Crime and Punishment very insightful very miserable but sometimes when you wallow in other peoples misery and dourness, its fulfilling and rewarding. Like, Well, sod his luck, Im a lot higher up the ladder of tragedy than him! So books were incredibly important my life preservers.

There have been conversations here in the United States about why every ex-President opens a library when politicians do not read the books. Hello, America! Kind of explains your politics. For me, reading saved me, it brought me back. And I found myself in there, so when the memories and bits came back, they kind of made sense to me and I realized I was the same person that I was before I lost everything its just I was ever so much better at it and able to look at myself and go outside of myself and ask, Look, what do you think youre doing? Try getting it right instead of just bumping into situations without any forethought.