Today’s generation is media savvy. With broadcast
and cable TV offering them a wealth of channel options, to the Internet where
information, both true and false, is so easily decimated, finding information
about anyone or anything is really at their fingertips. Based on this, today’s
generation could never understand the arrival of the punk band, the Sex Pistols
on North American shores during the late Seventies.
I remember back to that time; I would have been
around twelve, and the headline in one of the daily newspapers mentioning the
Sex Pistols and their arrival in America, or maybe in Canada, I don’t quite
remember. Looking at that headline, it almost seemed like we were being invaded
by an unruly horde. The band had as its title that three letter word, ‘sex’
which those of us old enough knew was significant, but also young enough to not
quite understand. News of the band hitting North American shores was both
titillating, for some unknown reason, and terrifying, for some unknown reason.
Back in the day, all we had was that newspaper coverage, there were no
computers to go look up the band and find out more about them. This lack of information
gave the band its edge and its mystique and made their journey from Britain to
America (or Canada) not only newsworthy, but strangely thrilling.
I remembered this feeling, and my generation’s
naivety, due to a lack of news resources, recently, as I embraced the Internet
and watched some interviews with John Lydon, formerly Johnny Rotten, lead
singer and songwriter for the Sex Pistols, and afterwards the band Public Image
Limited. John Lydon has released another autobiography, Anger Is an Energy: My Life Uncensored and has done some interviews
to promote it. I’d read his other autobiography, Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs which I really enjoyed, and
found quite surprising during my read, having discovered that there was more to
Lydon that I’d ever imagined.
In interviews, both new and old, John Lydon,
formerly Johnny Rotten, leader of a band that was designed to scare us due to
their youthful anger and message, is a very intelligent and practical man. He
is outspoken, and explained that his book is title Anger Is an Energy as when he was about seven he contracted meningitis,
and was in a coma for a year, and lost his complete memory, having eventually
recovered it through the disposition of anger – which seemed to help it come
back faster than say a melancholy mood.
I watched quite a few clips and interviews, and
found Lydon secretly (he doesn’t want to broadcast it) helps children’s
charities, he is not caught up in the mythology surrounding his former band the
Sex Pistols, nor the legends that have derived from it, especially the iconic
status his good friend Sid Vicious attained after dying so young. A 1986 movie by
writer-director Alex Cox, Sid and Nancy
documents the love affair between Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, whom Vicious
was accused of killing, and whose murder trial he was awaiting when he
overdosed. In an older interview with Conan O’Brien, Lydon commented he didn’t
like the romanticism of the movie, as the truth was, they were both heroin
junkies and there is nothing romantic to be made about that.
In watching Lydon talk and express himself, I have
to admit I found him to be a music celebrity who seems to have his feet on the
ground, and who hasn’t bought into all the crap surrounding that career. It was
a complete departure from the mysterious Johnny Rotten, who all those years
ago, in the late Seventies, seemed dangerous, a little frightening, but still
intriguing and compelling. The world has changed, more information lies at our
fingertips, and that breaks down the mystique that once could have been there,
but that’s okay, because today, I have a new appreciation and more respect for
John Lydon, and thank the good Lord he is still as angry as ever. Now all I
have to do is head out to the local bookstore and purchase Anger Is an Energy: My Life Uncensored...and maybe mourn a little
those days when life held a little more mystery and information wasn’t so
readily available.
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