John Lydon

John Lydon biography

John Joseph Lydon (born 31 January 1956), also known by the former stage name Johnny Rotten, is a singer-songwriter and television presenter, best known as the lead singer of punk rock band the Sex Pistols from 1975 until 1978, and again for various revivals during the 1990s and 2000s. He is the lead singer of the post-punk band Public Image Ltd, which he founded and fronted from 1978 until 1993, and again from 2009. Throughout his career, Lydon has made controversial or dismissive comments about the royal family and other subjects. There has been a recent revival of a 1980s movement to have Lydon knighted for his achievements with the Sex Pistols. Q Magazine remarked that "somehow he's assumed the status of national treasure."

Lydon's personally crafted image and fashion style led to him being asked to become the singer of the Sex Pistols by their manager, Malcolm McLaren. With the Pistols, he penned singles including "Anarchy in the U.K.", "God Save the Queen" and "Holidays in the Sun", the content of which precipitated the "last and greatest outbreak of pop-based moral pandemonium" in Britain. The band caused nationwide uproar in much of the media, who objected to the content of Lydon's lyrics, and their antics, which included swearing on live television, in which Steve Jones called Bill Grundy a "fucking rotter". Due to the band's appearance in the media, Lydon was largely seen as the figurehead of the punk movement in the public image although this idea was not widely supported amongst the punk movement itself. Despite the negative reaction that they provoked, they are now regarded as one of the most influential acts in the history of popular music.

Lydon left the Pistols in 1978 to found his own band, Public Image Ltd, that was far more experimental in nature, and which has been described as "arguably the first post-rock group". Although never as commercially successful as the Pistols, the band produced eight albums and a string of singles, including "Public Image", "Death Disco", and "Rise", before they went on hiatus in 1993, reforming in 2009. In subsequent years, Lydon hosted a number of television shows in the UK, US and Belgium, as well as writing an autobiography, Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs (1993), and producing some solo musical work, such as the album Psycho's Path (1997).

Biography

Early life: 1956-1974

Lydon was born in London on 31 January 1956. His parents, John Christopher and Eileen (née Barry) Lydon, were working class immigrants from Ireland, and moved into a two-room Victorian flat with an outdoor toilet in Benwell Road, Finsbury Park, an area in the north of the city. At the time, the area was largely impoverished, with a high crime rate and a population comprised predominantly of working class Irish and Jamaican migrants. Lydon spent Summer holidays in his mother's native County Cork, where he also allegedly suffered abuse and name-calling for having an English accent, a prejudice he claims he still receives today even though he travels under an Irish passport. John was the eldest of four brothers, and as the eldest, he had to look after his siblings due to his mother's regular illnesses. As a child, he lived on the edge of an industrial estate, and would often play with friends in the factories when they were closed. He belonged to a local gang of neighbourhood kids, and would often end up in fights with other groups, something he would later look back on with fond memories: "Hilarious fiascoes, not at all like the knives and guns of today. The meanness wasn't there. It was more like yelling, shouting, throwing stones, and running away giggling. Maybe the reality was coloured by my youth." Describing himself as a "very shy" and "very retiring" kid who was "nervous as hell", he hated going to school, where he would get caned as punishment and where he "had several embarrassing incidents"¦ I would shit my pants and be too scared to ask the teacher to leave the class. I'd sit there in a pants load of poo all day long." When he was seven years old he contracted spinal meningitis and was hospitalised for a whole year in St. Anne's Hospital in Highgate. Throughout the entire experience he suffered from hallucinations, nausea and headaches, whilst the treatments administered by the nurses involved drawing fluid out of his spine with a surgical needle, something that left him with a permanent spinal curvature. The meningitis was also responsible for giving him what he would later describe as the "Lydon stare", and for him, this experience was "the first step that put me on the road to Rotten".

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