Anarchist with ‘no future’ still rocking life as he turns 60

Despite youthful protestations that there was no future, the most unlikely rock star to turn teen rebellion into dirty filthy lucre is turning 60.

UNDATED : Undated photo of John Lydon aka Johnny Rotten from band Sex Pistols. Pistols/band

Despite youthful protestations that there was no future, the most unlikely rock star to turn teen rebellion into dirty filthy lucre is turning 60.

John Lydon, dubbed Johnny Rotten by fellow Sex Pistol Steve Jones because of the fuzz on his uncrushed teeth, was born in north London on January 31, 1956.

And the angry “anarchist” who in 1977 described love as “two minutes and 50 seconds of squelching noises” has spent almost 40 years wedded to German newspaper heiress Nora Forster, now 74.

Born in Holloway to young Irish immigrants John and Eileen, possibly before they married, he lived in a two-room Victorian flat in Benwell Road in crime-infested Holloway. Summer holidays were spent in his mother’s native County Cork, where Lydon complained he was bullied for his English accent.

Lydon cared for his ill mother and three younger brothers while his crane-driver father worked on North Sea oil rigs. At seven, he contracted spinal meningitis. Six months in hospital, slipping in and out of a coma, left him with impaired memory, curvature of the spine and poor eyesight. His mother devoted months to his rehabilitation. At 11 his family moved to Finsbury Park, where he attended a Catholic school at Islington. Complaining again of bullying, Lydon rebelled against the school uniform code. Disciplined for not wearing a tie to school, the next day he wore a tie, but no shirt.

Defended by his liberal-minded mother, Lydon moved to Hackney College and befriended John Ritchie. They moved to liberal Kingsway College, where students remember them as “misfit malcontents”.

A fan of Alice Cooper, Roxy Music and David Bowie, Lydon had a green, Bowie-inspired hairstyle. But as he completed three A-levels, only flunking art, Lydon henna’ed his shoulder length locks. Told by his father to get a haircut, he hacked and bleached his hair, dyed it blue and “looked like a cabbage” when his father kicked him out.

Lydon squatted in up-market Hampstead and worked on building sites, partying with Ritchie — who he named Sid Vicious after his parent’s pet hamster — at reggae and gay clubs. Impresario Malcolm McLaren spotted him on King’s Road, Chelsea, wearing a torn T-shirt with “I HATE” handwritten above a Pink Floyd logo. McLaren, who ran bondage fashion shop Sex with Vivienne Westwood, was promoting a band formed by Steve Jones, Paul Cook and bass player Glen Matlock, was then toying with names for the group such as Creme de la Creme or Kid Gladlove.

Matlock says they had decided on Sex Pistols when McLaren signed Lydon after a “noteless but passionate” rendition of Copper’s I’m Eighteen in mid-1975. Lydon wrote lyrics for Matlock’s melodies, although Matlock wrote most of Pretty Vacant. Matlock also arranged their first gig, at his school, on November 6, 1975.

Lydon noted “early ’70s Britain was very depressing ... run-down with trash on the streets, and total unemployment. Just about everybody was on strike. “ A scene reflected in the famous 1976 single, Anarchy In The UK.

When the BBC refused to play it, the Sex Pistols appeared on live television. Asked to “say something outrageous”, Jones twice used the F word. Newspapers screamed in fury, pushing Anarchy up the charts.

Matlock, complaining McLaren’s manipulations were turning the group into the Monkees and amid escalating tensions with Lydon, quit in 1977. McLaren, boasting he “launched the idea of a band of kids who could be perceived as being bad”, recruited musically incompetent Ritchie for his sneer, looks and ripped clothes.

Six days after signing to release God Save the Queen in March 1977, A & M records ditched them when Vicious broke a toilet bowl and trailed blood across their offices, while Lydon was accused of making death threats. Branson’s fledgling Virgin records released the single, again banned by the BBC. Branson and McLaren organised a live performance of the song on the Thames on June 7, 1977, the Queen’s Jubilee holiday, from a boat named Queen Elizabeth. McLaren was among 11 people arrested, helping the song reach No 2.

Lydon quit in January 1978 to form Public Image Limited (PiL), which had five UK Top 20 Albums. His biography, Anger is an Energy, takes its title from a famous Lydon lyric for the song Rise. Lydon’s mother died from cancer in 1979 and. he fled to New York after police raided his home three times in three months. In 1984 he joined court action against “evil” McLaren for royalties. Later he joined Sex Pistol reunions and moved to Los Angeles, where he helped raise Forster’s grandchildren.

“The way I came to join the Sex Pistols was pure fate,” he said in 1983. “Any old bod could have been miming to a record in a Kings Road boutique and asked to be the singer. But it happened to be me. I’m obviously a very lucky person.”

Originally published as Anarchist with ‘no future’ still rocking life as he turns 60