john lydon: I´m not always perfect
Normally interviews are carried out face-to-face or, increasingly, by phone or e-mail. But this interview we had with John Lydon was different. Our collaborator and translator Aritz Branton interviewed him over the phone and says it was a very agreeable chat. So much so that they ended up singing “Feelings” together. Public Image Limited got ready for their tour at Higain Studio in Usurbil. And who received the media and acted as the moderator-interpreter? Yes, the same person who had interviewed the singer: our Mr Branton. So he was able to add a face-to-face interview to the phone interview he’d already had with Mr Lydon. An interview, some beers and some cigarettes. After the press conference nished and when the “big” media had left, our undercover agent Branton, John Lydon and Haritz Harreguy (the technician at Higain) went into the studio and the group played “Shoom”. And our Press Corps photographers (Ibai Arrieta and Ion Markel) went up to the terrace and took some ne photos of the King of Punk. Since John Lydon founded Public Image Limited with Keith Levine and Jah Wobble in 1979, the group has gone through 19 members, released 10 albums and played hundreds of concerts. The latest line-up visits Donostia in May.
AB: Public Image is recording and playing shows again in a big way.
JL: We’ve been together now about ve and a half years, toured fairly relentlessly, and this is a new tour because we’ve just nished what we think is an amazing album and we want to play it live, along with some older songs. And sometimes that changes according to the energy of the crowd.
AB: Does your set-list change as the concert goes
on?
JL: Oh yeah, radically. Sometimes you just don’t feel in the mood to do a certain song. But that energy is always dictated to us from the audience, which is always an extra group member. They’re the energy and the battery that fuels us. It’s church-like in its connection. Without the religion. Human beings being human, which is very rare for a rock event.
AB: Do you think most rock events are cold and pre-programmed?
JL: Yeah. It’s about pop stars showing off and there’s a very serious distance between stage and audience. For me, in particular, I like eye-contact. I like to know
that what I’m doing it getting through to people, and that’s sharing. That breaks all language barriers and we connect as human beings on an emotional level.
AB: So playing to a crowd which may not understand English isn’t a problem.
JL: The way we shape the songs, the words and the music are blended to encapsulate the emotions we’re trying to deal with. Every PIL song is trying to deal with emotions. Some songs are sad, some are happy, several are outright angry, some are savage, but none are dealing with hate. There are songs in there about the death of my mother, and they’re done to a glorious cacophony of disco beats.
AB: ‘Death Disco’, for instance.
JL: Yeah, with I combined with ‘Swan Lake’, and I felt to a very powerful effect. That song still makes me cry on stage, it really gets into me. And I see that in the audience, they know what I’m doing here and they have similar feelings of their own. And to share that is the achievement for me in music. Music can do that.
AB: Nowadays, 90% of most people’s lyrics are about Heartbreak Hotel or Heartmake Hotel, which, obviously, have an important part in our lives, but 90% of what we talk about gets left out of most songs. Could you tell me two or three subjects which are particularly worthy of being dealt with in songs.
JL: Well, there’s always one song I love to hear if there’s a hotel pianist. I always ask them to play ‘Feelings’. And usually they murder it. But I find that the most entertaining and heart-warming. It’s when the song is collapsing in on itself because it’s so badly played that most emotion seems to come out of it for me.
AB: So this is taking us a very long way from virtuoso performances...
JL: Yeah, virtuoso doesn’t really get you there sometimes. I mean the Japanese, they can absolutely perfectly imitate jazz, but they don’t add anything to it. So it’s note-perfect, but that’s not the ultimate achievement. And sometimes it’s best to be slightly off-key on those kind of things. I love a violin slightly out of tune. I find that hits my heart. Maybe it’s just the Irish way of tuning!
AB: How would you describe your music to somebody who’s arrived from, say, Mongolia and who’s never had any contact with your music.
JL: Oh, they probably have, with PIL. We tend to play the furthest places. We tend to be very welcome wherever there’s a kind of mad gypsy life going on. We seem to blend in. But I get your point: how would I explain what we do? Emotions. And beyond categories. I’ve never made music to hide behind four enclosed walls.
AB: A New York singer once said that he hoped that even on bad days he’d be good for a laugh.
JL: A man after my own heart! The Irish tradition in my family is that we cry at weddings and we laugh at funerals. You just turn the thing upside down and look at it properly and then life becomes bearable.
AB: So that’s the way to look at life: turn things upside-down.
JL: Yeah, and to not take ourselves too seriously. And I think self-mockery is an admirable character trait.
AB: It’s also some of the best humour.
JL: Yeah, I’ve learned more in life from comedians and humour than from any staid, boring intellectual. In fact, the people I tend not to trust are people who don’t have humour. Because those kind of people tend to lack empathy.
AB: People who don’t have a sense of humour aren’t serious people.
JL: We’re on the same page, fella!
AB: I don’t know if this is an obvious question or a hard one, but what
would you say most excites you or stimulates you when you listen to music?
JL: It takes me to places that I like to be, and lets my mind wander completely free. It’s a form of therapy, really. And anything can happen in my mind when I’m doing that. It’s risky, and I love it. I don’t know what I’m going to come up with. I let the music paint visuals in my brain for me. It puts me into a trance, and that’s why I fell in love with the whole trance movement. It takes us back to when we were naked and running around camp- res, somewhere in our prehistoric past.
AB: What’s a good concert for you and how do you gauge it?
JL: Som etimes I completely miss the mark and think it was a bad gig and think we weren’t getting through properly and come off stage and find that the reaction is quite different. I’m not always perfect. Generally there’s that sense of empathy and I can catch it: that’s when I know it’s good. Sometimes we can play bloody awful, anything is possible, and it still works, you communicate correct messages. And it’s knowing that fine balance between note-perfection and skilful delivery to just letting your emotions run wild. It’s something in between the two that works best. If it’s all or nothing, it doesn’t work.
AB: So it would be horrendous if you were to go out and just play what’s on a recorded artefact.
JL: Yeah. That would be like the kiss of death and I think I would quickly put myself into retirement. And be thoroughly ashamed of myself. But I’m the Duracell Bunny, I just keep going and going.
AB: Public Image is recording and playing shows again in a big way.
JL: We’ve been together now about ve and a half years, toured fairly relentlessly, and this is a new tour because we’ve just nished what we think is an amazing album and we want to play it live, along with some older songs. And sometimes that changes according to the energy of the crowd.
AB: Does your set-list change as the concert goes
on?
JL: Oh yeah, radically. Sometimes you just don’t feel in the mood to do a certain song. But that energy is always dictated to us from the audience, which is always an extra group member. They’re the energy and the battery that fuels us. It’s church-like in its connection. Without the religion. Human beings being human, which is very rare for a rock event.
AB: Do you think most rock events are cold and pre-programmed?
JL: Yeah. It’s about pop stars showing off and there’s a very serious distance between stage and audience. For me, in particular, I like eye-contact. I like to know
that what I’m doing it getting through to people, and that’s sharing. That breaks all language barriers and we connect as human beings on an emotional level.
AB: So playing to a crowd which may not understand English isn’t a problem.
JL: The way we shape the songs, the words and the music are blended to encapsulate the emotions we’re trying to deal with. Every PIL song is trying to deal with emotions. Some songs are sad, some are happy, several are outright angry, some are savage, but none are dealing with hate. There are songs in there about the death of my mother, and they’re done to a glorious cacophony of disco beats.
AB: ‘Death Disco’, for instance.
JL: Yeah, with I combined with ‘Swan Lake’, and I felt to a very powerful effect. That song still makes me cry on stage, it really gets into me. And I see that in the audience, they know what I’m doing here and they have similar feelings of their own. And to share that is the achievement for me in music. Music can do that.
AB: Nowadays, 90% of most people’s lyrics are about Heartbreak Hotel or Heartmake Hotel, which, obviously, have an important part in our lives, but 90% of what we talk about gets left out of most songs. Could you tell me two or three subjects which are particularly worthy of being dealt with in songs.
JL: Well, there’s always one song I love to hear if there’s a hotel pianist. I always ask them to play ‘Feelings’. And usually they murder it. But I find that the most entertaining and heart-warming. It’s when the song is collapsing in on itself because it’s so badly played that most emotion seems to come out of it for me.
AB: So this is taking us a very long way from virtuoso performances...
JL: Yeah, virtuoso doesn’t really get you there sometimes. I mean the Japanese, they can absolutely perfectly imitate jazz, but they don’t add anything to it. So it’s note-perfect, but that’s not the ultimate achievement. And sometimes it’s best to be slightly off-key on those kind of things. I love a violin slightly out of tune. I find that hits my heart. Maybe it’s just the Irish way of tuning!
AB: How would you describe your music to somebody who’s arrived from, say, Mongolia and who’s never had any contact with your music.
JL: Oh, they probably have, with PIL. We tend to play the furthest places. We tend to be very welcome wherever there’s a kind of mad gypsy life going on. We seem to blend in. But I get your point: how would I explain what we do? Emotions. And beyond categories. I’ve never made music to hide behind four enclosed walls.
AB: A New York singer once said that he hoped that even on bad days he’d be good for a laugh.
JL: A man after my own heart! The Irish tradition in my family is that we cry at weddings and we laugh at funerals. You just turn the thing upside down and look at it properly and then life becomes bearable.
AB: So that’s the way to look at life: turn things upside-down.
JL: Yeah, and to not take ourselves too seriously. And I think self-mockery is an admirable character trait.
AB: It’s also some of the best humour.
JL: Yeah, I’ve learned more in life from comedians and humour than from any staid, boring intellectual. In fact, the people I tend not to trust are people who don’t have humour. Because those kind of people tend to lack empathy.
AB: People who don’t have a sense of humour aren’t serious people.
JL: We’re on the same page, fella!
AB: I don’t know if this is an obvious question or a hard one, but what
would you say most excites you or stimulates you when you listen to music?
JL: It takes me to places that I like to be, and lets my mind wander completely free. It’s a form of therapy, really. And anything can happen in my mind when I’m doing that. It’s risky, and I love it. I don’t know what I’m going to come up with. I let the music paint visuals in my brain for me. It puts me into a trance, and that’s why I fell in love with the whole trance movement. It takes us back to when we were naked and running around camp- res, somewhere in our prehistoric past.
AB: What’s a good concert for you and how do you gauge it?
JL: Som etimes I completely miss the mark and think it was a bad gig and think we weren’t getting through properly and come off stage and find that the reaction is quite different. I’m not always perfect. Generally there’s that sense of empathy and I can catch it: that’s when I know it’s good. Sometimes we can play bloody awful, anything is possible, and it still works, you communicate correct messages. And it’s knowing that fine balance between note-perfection and skilful delivery to just letting your emotions run wild. It’s something in between the two that works best. If it’s all or nothing, it doesn’t work.
AB: So it would be horrendous if you were to go out and just play what’s on a recorded artefact.
JL: Yeah. That would be like the kiss of death and I think I would quickly put myself into retirement. And be thoroughly ashamed of myself. But I’m the Duracell Bunny, I just keep going and going.
