Anger is an Energy: My Life Uncensored (49 page)

‘Think Tank’ was about the rewriting of history that was going on with all them idiot punk books, put out by people writing themselves in a bigger part in the story than they really
had, and thereby altering the truth. Yes, I’m talking about Jon Savage’s
England’s Dreaming
. It was a terrible thing for someone who loves to study history – me
– to see their own altered right under their nose.

Frankly, I look through that period at the turn of the ’90s and think, ‘How the fuck did I survive that?’ It was rigorous, everything came painfully. The punches were not
pulled, and the backstabbing was non-stop. I was being painted as the all-time bad boy – but not in a good way. Written off as talentless, pointless and actually not a big participant or
player in my own universe, which is a fabulous lie. It does get to you; it makes you feel, ‘What is it they’re really trying to say? Have they a point? Should I analyze myself?’
And of course, being me, I do. Well, I’m glad to report that I came out of my own self-analysis rather favourably.

When
That What Is Not
came out in early ’92, the media response, if there was any, was mostly negative. The vague idea seemed to be that I’d timed my run to coincide with
grunge. Really, I’m not one for keeping my finger on the pulse of what’s currently trendy. In fact, that just never bothers me at all. I’m
absolutely
oblivious to music working in things like trends. There’s always a couple of bods out there with an original idea, and then there’s 200,000 bands that want to copy that and then declare
that those are indeed the new rules of music and everyone should sound like that. That’s why trends do not interest me.

Unfortunately I’ve made myself into a bit of a trendsetter over the years and it’s the one thing I hate the most about what I do – having to listen to the influence I’ve
had. It’s not at all rewarding. Imitation is
no
t
the greatest form of flattery. Somehow it indicates to me that the people doing it haven’t clearly understood. If
I’m trying to be preachy in any way at all, I’m telling you: find your own sound, find your own soul, find your own words, and your own way of seeing the world, and then share that with
us. That’s how we all live and learn.

In fairness, a lot of the bands in America absorbed the energy of punk, and loved its ethos. Of course, there were the Boo Monsters, the people forever stuck in the heavy-metal universe, but
soon the punk influence began to shape-shift heavy metal into a much more broadminded thing, and so I’ve got a great deal of respect for a lot of the bands that did that. They stopped the
heavy-metal crowd from hating punk and opened their minds to it. The English lot, like Def Leppard, definitely opened some doors there, and introduced the concept of unity. They’re good
fellas – they have come to our gigs.

A year or so later a guy called Tim Sommers – who I had been talking with at Atlantic Records about doing a solo album – actually tried to set me up for a meeting with Kurt Cobain. I
was meant to meet him and Courtney and the baby at the La Brea Tar Pits. Well, I’d done the tourist shit, I’d lived in LA long enough, and I wasn’t going to look at dinosaur bones
one more time. In many ways, I’d have loved to have had a chat with Kurt – but about what exactly? It struck me as, ‘Are they gleaning me for ideology, and then they’re
gonna dump me?’ And my answer was, ‘Yeah, that’s exactly what was gonna happen.’ So, bollocks – I cancelled.
Actually I think they cancelled,
which made me very happy. Mentally inside, I didn’t want it. I don’t like that kind of thing.

Going on TV and radio was even harder than getting a decent review. I did a beautiful black-and-white video for ‘Cruel’, and
Th
e Chart Show
, which was a programme on
British terrestrial TV with massive ratings, refused to air it, because it was shot in black and white. They said their policy was colour only. You could go into the history and say, ‘Well,
two weeks ago you played a black-and-white video, so it didn’t seem to bother you then . . .’ It certainly didn’t stop U2 circa Rattle And Hum. It was a fabulous lie. You can go
on like this, but you end up back to bad dentistry and pull all your teeth out with anxiety over it. The point was that it was a damn near relentless resilience against whatever I was doing.

I think it was just fear of what the content really means or is, without basically listening. Here I am now after all these years and there’s still this suspicion, is this some kind of
elaborate joke on my part? Am I having a wheeze on the wonderful world of music? Yes, I am. And what is wrong with that? Because in the meantime, I’m telling it like it really is. Like it
really
is, and I’m being honest and truthful with everything I do. Is that a problem? Is that so wrong?

And all the way through, from
Album
onwards – hello, we’re PiL, we look damn fine, but because there was a social issue in our songs, we were ignored. So did the world erode
the importance of Johnny Rotten, or did Johnny Rotten just carry on doing what he knows he does best, and therefore become too ‘out there’? I think it’s six of one, and half a
dozen of the other. I’ve got to be honest about that.

Everybody backed Sting and didn’t back Johnny Rotten. But that’s okay, you get what you deserve in the end.

There were some really good gigs, but I don’t remember a lot of fun touring that album. Mike Joyce from Morrissey’s band was in drumming with us for a short bit, and he and McGeoch
were
terrible with their Catholic-Protestant arguments. McGeoch would be, ‘I’m blue through and through’, and Joyce would be going on about the wearing of
the green! Jesus Christ, what is it you’re going on about? I’d be going, ‘My favourite piece of clothing in the skinhead days was a green and blue mohair suit – remember
them suits? Fine, excellent suits, tonics, which were double-shaded, so it reflected green sometimes, blue at others. My tonic was both blue and green! Think about it . . .’

In interviews, I carried on plenty about Virgin’s lack of support. I never held back. I suppose I always had great support there on a personal level, but by that point there was definitely
something missing at the top, which made it very difficult to be on the label.

The next thing I knew, Virgin was being sold to EMI. Of all people! Oh, for fuck-off sake! You wake up one morning and find you’re back in the enemy’s encampment, and Ken
Berry’s running EMI at the time – I mean, what?! At PiL’s remaining gigs on the ’92 tour we’d finish the show with ‘EMI’. It was an absolute reminder of,
‘I was in this situation once before!’

We’d completed the eight-album deal PiL had signed up for in ’78, and signed a new deal in 1987, but it soon became apparent EMI wanted rid of us. So I was in a kind of limbo.
It’s painful when you’re in that position. It’s like, what’s this been all about?

So thank you, record label, and all my alleged friends there. I’d liked it at Virgin, but how many heads of department had changed on me through those years? After I moved to LA, every two
years there was a different chairman and different underlings, and I never knew a name or title for any of them. I began to treat them all as transient.

Then, of course, Virgin went into that robot answering thing, so I couldn’t actually speak to anyone. The people I knew from the beginning like Simon Draper and Ken Berry – and they
really were friends – they couldn’t pick up the ball, because nobody wanted to accept the responsibility of working with me, because
the blacklist had taken its
toll. By the end, they were all going off to fresh pastures, and I had no real communications with the new people at the top.

I would never give up the ghost, but of course I felt defeated. But I knew: by sheer persistence, whatever it is I think I’m doing, I’m not gonna stop. Not at all.

M
y life at that point didn’t paint a pretty picture: my band PiL falling apart, the record company deals chiselling me, endless changes of
management, exhausted from trying to keep the money together. I’m not one for self-pity, but some of it must have crept into me. I didn’t see a way out for ever such a long time. The
whole thing was just constantly on us. It was so hard for Nora to have to deal with this.

At the same time, I remained kind of creative. I kept writing. I always burn stuff I’ve written if it doesn’t get recorded soon after the time of writing, but I’ve still got at
the back of my head some of the songs from that time, and they’re schizophrenic in the extreme. I’ve certainly never gone back and used them as ideas. But at some point when I feel
clean enough that I can go back in and investigate what was going on in me there –
oooooh
, ha ha, that’ll be intriguing!

All I know is, it was very pain-driven. I don’t quite know what the pain was, other than
stre-e-e-e-esssss
. Stress, stress, stress. ‘Be the man, you’ve got to be the man
in this situation, you’ve got to keep the band together, you’ve got to run the business, you’ve gotta do this, you’ve gotta do that –
aaaarrrrrgh
!’

I managed to get a studio built at the house in Venice Beach with my brother Martin. But we got ourselves too bogged down with modern technology, to the point where we
had no energy left to do anything with it. You can’t, as a songwriter, be involved with anything other than the songs; you really can’t. You’re doing yourself a disservice. If
you’re getting clogged up with business, that’s contaminating creativity.

You could spend the rest of your life trying to unravel this nonsense. Coming to America was no easy move. Having to deal with the accountants, lawyers and managers, who were supposed to
navigate me through how things work over here, was a living nightmare. Add in the record company not backing me, and the fact that I still exist at all in any stable form is astounding. The endless
stream of managers – I mean no harm to any of them, they all tried their best. I trusted them that they were actually qualified to do the job, but they simply didn’t have the tools.

There was a time back there when I was desperate for a good manager, and I actually thought about approaching Sharon Osbourne – would she look out for my career? – because I love
Ozzy. I thought, ‘She’s doing all right for him.’ And this is way before their TV programme. People were saying good things about her, a tough, no-nonsense bird, but it never came
to anything. A few years ago, I said something about Ozzy in an interview: I called him something like a ‘senile delinquent’, which really upset his family. I didn’t mean anything
by it, I said the wrong thing. I have the most incredible love and respect for Ozzy.

For me, emotionally, the ’80s and early ’90s felt like an incredibly unrewarding period. I was going through managers like Smarties. It was very confusing. I needed help – just
someone in the industry – but there was no one really prepared to step up to the plate.

I wasn’t getting any benefits, I wasn’t getting pats on the back, I was isolated. No matter what I would do, there would always be band members to go, ‘Oh, he’s a
bastard, he is.’ I came to thinking:
a captain of a ship really can’t afford to have friends on board. If there’s not a difference there, then it
won’t work at that particular point in life. I’ve found out since that this ideology is unnecessary, because I now work with people I truly love and trust, and hopefully vice versa, but
it’s quite amazing how I had to go through all that, to get to
this
– where I am with today’s PiL. To get to the real essence of what is me, how do you get people to pay
attention? Are they really seriously only interested in the scandal-mongering of a nineteeen-year-old? Or do they want to go on a journey of self-discovery? Well, no, they want the scandal.
That’s fine.

In the ’80s the publicity machines took over. The frivolous hairdos which we all suffered from in that period led to many, many things, and now it really is all about sensationalist
headlines and no content. It’s a curiosity to me, because I was accused of just having frivolous headlines and no content from the day I started, but I think the Pistols were
all
content
. Every single song, and indeed every single word; that was a good springboard for me and I’m still that same fella. Obviously I’ve grown up, I’ve grown sideways and
frontwards, and I have a bigger vocabulary, and I can express myself far deeper and more meaningfully, but I’m still loyal to those basic truths in life.

By the early ‘90s, I was getting fed up with all the rubbish that was being put out there about the Pistols story, where my life and everything I stood for were being misinterpreted by an
odd bunch of fellas that really should have known better – in particular, Jon Savage. I helped him with his book
England’s Dreaming
, and when it was published amid loads of media
fanfare in 1991, he’d cut out large amounts of my conversation, and just backed up his own philosophy. Well, who the fuck are you, Jon Savage? You were not a Sex Pistol.

His book was over-wordy: to understand it, you’d have to have a Latin-to-English dictionary. He used words that weren’t pertinent to the scenario, and presented himself somewhat as
an expert on what was going on. How could he? He was a complete
outsider, not part of any inner circle, and in fact not much to do with it at all.

When he was putting the book together, I made him promise that it wouldn’t be that kind of book, and I was horrified when it turned out to be everything that he promised me it
wouldn’t be. It was narrow-minded, insular, anti-women, misogynist, and hence had no real understanding of the driving force of punk, that it gave women the opportunity for the first time
ever in the history of pop culture to stand on the stage, the equal of men. Up until then, women were just matching hairdos, a trilogy of singers, with nothing to do with the songwriting –
they were just voiceovers. Bands like X-Ray Spex and the Slits absolutely went into it, like, ‘We’re blokes, too!’ It was an amazing achievement, one that took for ever and ever,
and should be admired and respected – all those great, glorious punk women! Fantastic, amazing things they had to offer the world!