JOHNNY ROTTEN
-------------

    He began life as John Lydon on January 31, 1956, was born to Irish
Catholic parents in North London, and grew up in Finsbury Park. He
left school while in his early teens and did as little of anything as
possible. He had no money, and his parents had none to give him. He
had no plans for himself and refused any advice offered by others.
    In 1975, young John was lolling around the jukebox in Sex, a
barbarous boutique on the King's Road, being his usual uncouth,
scurrilous, philistine self, when the shop's owner, hustler Malcolm
McLaren, asked him if he wanted to sing in a rock group. John, blond,
scrawny, deathly pale, and smelly, said he'd never sung a note in his
bleeding life, so piss off, you wanker, all rock stars are faggots who
eat dead babies.
    MacLaren smiled. He was accustomed to the niceties of screening
talents like young Johnny.

    In 1971, MacLaren and wife Vivienne Westwood had opened "Let It
Rock", a dodgy little haberdashery serving London's duck-tailed
teddyboy revivalists. Next came a place called "Too Fast to Live, Too
Young to Die". In 1974, MacLaren was visited by five rouged, hangdog
longhairs in scuffed platform shoes, halter tops, and body stockings.
They looked like transvestite screamers who'd been hauled through a
knothole. They were the New York Dolls, a rock group on the skids.
Malcolm wouldn't let them leave the shop without him; he tailed them
to Paris and then the States; he begged to be their major domo,
proposing a new image build around something he called "the politics
of boredom". They took the bait - and threw it back. When the Dolls
disbanded in the middle of a performance in Florida, McLaren returned
home to his wife's new shop, Sex. (Actually it was still the same dump
they'd been running since 1971; only the names and, occasionally, the
clientele had changed.)

    John smiled back, something he seldom did. McLaren got an
unprecedented peep at the youth's cheesy crud-caked incisors and
renamed him Johnny Rotten. This was it: the ideal lead singer for a
group designed to insult. The rest of the band - which McLaren had
dubbed the Sex Pistols - consisted of bassist Glen Matlock, drummer
Paul Cook, and guitarist Steve Jones. They borrowed their antimusical
sound from the head-splitting blare of the Ramones, a New York band
noted for their three-chord dronathons, and sought an alliance with
the thousands of unemployed and disaffected English youth whose
parents were on the dole. Their audience: the punks. Their creed: Oh,
bollocks, let it all fall down; we've no bleeding future, rock and
roll included; Mick Jagger is a rich twit; Rod Stewart is old and in
the way; everything is irrelevant, especially us.
    EMI Records signed them and released their first single, "Anarchy
in the UK", in 1976. It sounded like four alley cats in a blender with
the setting on "shred". Somewhere in the, ah, lyrics, Rotten claimed
to be the Antichrist.
    The Sex Pistols were invited onto "Today", London's popular live
television talk show, and host Bill Grundy asked Rotten to utter
something outrageous. Johnny bared his moldy teeth and obliged with
"dirty fucker" and "fucking rotter". By the next morning, the Pistols
had been denounced in Parliament, damned on the front pages, and
reviled in the streets. "Anarchy" was an overnight hit. Twenty-one
concert dates were booked across the U.K. The Pistols were prevented
from playing all but three, getting the plug pulled on them at their
debut after ten minutes.
    In January 1977, Steve Jones was accused of vomiting on an old
woman in a lounge at Heathrow Airport, and EMI responded by dropping
them. There was a stampede by other companies to sign the Pistols, and
a thoroughly disgusted Matlock left, to be replaced by a thoroughly
disgusting Sid Vicious, aka John Ritchie. A&M took them on, and seven
days later called the deal off; the Pistols got ś75,000 to go away.
Virgin Records was next up, and issued "God Save the Queen" - in which
Rotten commented, "She ain't no human being!" - just in time for the
Queen's Silver Jubilee. Warner Bros. signed them for the States, and
an LP, "Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols" reached the
stores late in 1977, slapped with a sticker that read: THIS ALBUM MAY CONTAIN
MATERIAL UNSUITABLE FOR AIRPLAY.
    The Pistols couldn't get any gigs in their homeland, so they raced through
Europe, one half-step ahead of vice squads and other civil authorities, then
jumped a plane to America, showing up for a handful of "fortissimo"
free-for-alls before chucking it in San Francisco on January 14, 1978.

    Johnny changed his name back to Lydon and formed a new band, the
Carnivorous Buttocks Flies, who then became Public Image Limited (PiL, for
short) and landed a deal with Virgin Records. It was a seven-man outfit. They
drew up a list of principles to be distributed to the press: 1. PiL is not a
group, but a wide-ranging corporation, which deals with other corporations; PiL
produces music, images, and graphics. 2. PiL refuses to deal with
middlemen,notably managers. 3. PiL is composed of individuals who make music
separately,and the music of PiL is a collage of their individual work. 4. PiL
does not tour. There is no question of becoming a production line. 5. PiL
doesn't put out records, but objects.
    PiL's first album, "First Issue", sounded like seven alley cats in a
blender with the setting on "grind". PiL released three more albums, "Second
Edition" (issued as Metal Box in England and packaged in a film canister),
"Paris au Printemps", and "Flowers of Romance". In 1981, Public Image, Ltd.,
did a show at the Ritz in New York City while standing behind a scrim, and
irate fans responded with a bottle-throwing melee.
    PiL was gone by 1983, and Lydon, broke and in debt, accepted $10,000 to
appear in a low-budget film, "Order of Death". He played Leo Smith, a wealthy
schizophrenic cop killer who induces Officer Fred O'Connor (actor Harvey
Keitel) to slit his own throat. Lydon/Smith was able to effect this without
singing a single note. The movie, released in the United States as "Corrupt",
was universally panned, but the New York Times found Johnny convincing,
especially in the scenes in which he eats from a dog bowl: "Mr. Lydon, who has
just the right insinuating, runty quality for Leo, makes a strong expression".

------------------

    Detta {r taget ur en bok som heter "Rock Stars" och {r skriven av Timothy
White. Eftersom n}gra sidor efter det sista jag just har skrivit om Lydon {r
utrivna, kanske n}gon viss f|ljande historia om honom ocks} {r utriven.

------------------


SEX PISTOLS                      (en bit ur "Bonniers Rocklexikon" (1987) )
-----------

    Sex Pistols, som med McLarens hj{lp var en vidareutveckling av gruppen
"Swankers", debuterade live 6 november 1975 p} St. Martin's College of Art i
London och gjorde sig snabbt k{nd som den mest omdiskuterade av de nya engelska
punkgrupperna, bl. a.  p. g. a. sitt aggressiva och respektl|sa scenupptr{dande
och McLarens mediamanipulerande marknadsf|ring.
Den 6 januari 1977 br|t EMI (ett hopp h{r; NP-anm.) kontraktet, p. g. a. de
m}nga skandaler som f|ljde av Sex Pistols anarkistiska och h{mningsl|sa
upptr{dande i konsertsalar och }tf|ljande uppm{rksamhet i massmedierna.
    Musiken var enkel rock baserad p} 50-talets r&r i slagkraftiga arrangemang
och med en viss inspiration fr}n heavyrock, framf|rt med ett vilt effekts|kande
scenframtr{dande som inte v{jde f|r att chockera i upproret mot den etablerade
engelska musiken. Debut-LPn blev en symbol f|r den engelska punkexplosionen i
slutet av 70-talet. Den korta och skandalomsusade karri{ren slutade d} gruppen
uppl|stes efter en turne' i USA 1978. Kort d{rp}, den 2 februari 1979, dog
Vicious i New York av en |verdos heroin. Vicious var vid den tidpunkten
misst{nkt f|r mord p} sin d} 20-}riga v{ninna Nancy Spungen, som avled p}
Chelsea Hotel i New York 12 oktober 1978. ]ret d{rp} utgavs hans solo-LP ("Sid
Sings").

    Lydon bildade Public Image Limited och avsade sig varje f|rbindelse med Sex
Pistols-myten, medan Jones och Cook bildade The Professionals i juli 1980.
Matlock bildade redan i mars 77 gruppen Rich Kids, och spelade senare bl. a. i
London Cowboys.
    Trots Sex Pistols korta livstid fortsatte MacLaren sin egen Sex
Pistols-industri (han ans}g sig {ga r{tten till namnet, tills en domstol i
London i februari 1986 avgjorde att r{tten tillh|rde Lydon, Jones, Cook och
Vicious mor) med en rad skivutgivningar, bl. a. LPn "The Great Rock'n'Roll
Swindle" och filmen med samma namn - n}got som {r betecknande f|r McLarens s{tt
att utnyttja fenomenet Sex Pistols. I mitten av 80-talet tycktes gruppen st}
inf|r en ren{ssans - s}ledes utgavs 1985 inte mindre {n 10 LP med olika
inspelningar. Flera av plattorna {r utgivna via ganska obskyra v{gar. D{rut|ver
{r de flesta av gruppens konserter tillg{ngliga p} piratplattor, liksom det
ocks} finns piratplattor med t. ex. Sid Vicious.
    1983 utgav Nancy Spungens mor, Deborah Spungen, boken "And I don't want to
live this life" om Nancys liv. Boken kom 1985 p} svenska under titeln "Inte som
andra d|ttrar". 1986 hade Alan Cox spelfilm "Sid & Nancy" premi{r. Filmens
titelmelodi skrevs av Joe Strummer fr}n The Clash. Dessutom inneh}ller filmen
musik av bl. a. John Cale och The Pogues. Filmens huvudroller spelas av Gary
Oldman och Chloe Webb.
    Sex Pistols spelade i Skandinavien i juli 1977.

----------------------------

Detta {r lite redigerat - men bara det som stod den f|rsta texten i denna fil
har tagits bort.

----------------------------


PUBLIC IMAGE Ltd.
-----------------

Engelsk grupp (= t{nk noga p} vad som stod om PiL i den engelska texten;
NP-anm.) fr}n London bildad i b|rjan av 1979 av John Lydon (alias Johnny
Rotten) (vo); Keith Levine (el-g, el-b, synth); Jah Wobble (John Wordle) (el-b)
och Jim Walker (trum), som snabbt l{mnade gruppen vilken pr|vade flera
trummisar innan Martin Atkins (trum) tilltr{dde i b|rjan av 1980. ]ret innan
hade Wobble l{mnat gruppen som d{refter fortsatte med skiftande bes{ttningar,
bl. a. med gruppens manager Jeanette Lee som ocks} spelade percussion. PiL {r
mycket rytm-orienterad, samtidigt som man arbetat med buller- och klang-ytor
som inspirerats av tyska grupper som Can. Centrerad kring Lydon har gruppen
fortsatt att vara f|rbunden med punk och har ofta varit provokativ och
okontrollerad vid konserter.
    V}ren 1984 l{mnade Levine gruppen under stor uppst}ndelse d} han h{vdade
att han ensam skrivit och spelat in all gruppens musik! S}ledes {r LPn
"Commercial Zone" hans utg}va av "This is what you want - this is what you
get". Levine var under en period i New York gift med s}ngerskan Lori Montana
(fd ART, fd Pulsallama). Senare har Lydon bl. a. arbetat tillsammans med Afrika
Bambaataa och The Golden Palominos och Atkins har givit ut plattor under
pseudonymen Brian Brian.
    I b|rjan av 1986 gjorde PiL LPn "The Album" med g{stmedverkan av bl. a.
Ginger Baker (trum); Bill Laswekk (el-b) och Ryuichi Sakamoto (keyb). Wobble
har sedan han l{mnade gruppen arbetat med en rad musiker i olika sammanhang och
har ocks} givit ut en rad plattor - dels i eget namn men ocks} med The Human
Condition och Invaders of the Heart. Vidare har han haft ett n{ra samarbete med
poeten Joolz. Han f|retr{der en sammansm{ltning av olika stilarter och har
arbetat med musiker fr}n vitt skilda milj|er.

-------------------

Jag har h{r bara {ndrat lite i texten f|r att |ka f|rst}elsen - men den h}ller
sig. Finns det n}gon som dock kan ber{tta vidare om PiLs {ventyr i
musikbranschen (f|r jag _vet_ att de har sl{ppt en platta under 90-talet),
eller om John Lydon i allm{nhet (kanske n}got om den sj{lvbiografiska bok han
nyligen har skrivit?) kan ni skicka bidragen till:

Niklas_Pivic@hts.ct.se

eller till

2:201/610


Nedskrivet den 11/4 1994. Till{gnat Kurdt Kobain.