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[interviewer] Do you like, would you like to have

longevity? I mean, you know, live to you're old.

-You can be. -[John laughs]

[John] You are digging deep.

This sod is gonna be around for centuries.

Watch me now.

I'm one of the very few people in pop history

that just will not go away. [giggles]

[music starts]

[crowd cheering]

♪ Hello, hello, hello Hello, hello, hello ♪

♪ You never listened to A word that I said ♪

♪ You only seen me from The clothes that I wear ♪

♪ Or did the interest Go so much deeper ♪

♪ It must have been To the color of my hair ♪

♪ The public image ♪

♪ Public image you got What you wanted ♪

♪ The public image Belongs to me ♪

♪ It's my entrance My own creation ♪

♪ My grand finale My goodbye ♪

♪ Public image ♪

♪ Goodbye ♪

[interviewer] You're quite famous, aren't you?

[John] Yeah, I suppose so.

How did all that happen?

I don't know.

Through being honest.

["Anarchy In The UK" playing]

♪ Right now ♪

♪ Ha, ha, ha, ha ♪

[interviewer] And who would you say is a good singer?

-I don't. -[interviewer laughs]

I don't have any heroes.

They're all useless.

[John] When the Sex Pistols first started,

I grabbed the opportunity to just

yipee-ya-yow all these books I've read.

All this knowledge in me head.

The concept of singing never occurred to me.

♪ I want to be ♪

♪ Anarchy ♪

[interviewer] What's this thing you've got against hippies?

They're complacent.

Punk was really what energized people

to realize that they could get off their bums

and make things happen themselves.

[interviewer] I think you're trying to shut people.

I don't give a shit what you think.

I know what I think and that's all what counts to me.

Johnny Rotten was a piece of work.

I worked on being Johnny Rotten.

♪ I use the best I use the rest ♪

♪ I use the enemy ♪

And you gotta understand. This guy, he came

from relative obscurity.

to becoming like public enemy number one in like a few months.

♪ Anarchist ♪

♪ Get pissed Destroy ♪

[interviewer] How'd you react to the reputation that

your group is the most revolting in the country?

Look, our group is creating a generation gap

for the first time in five years in this country

and a lot of people are feeling genuinely threatened by it.

If the kids wanna buy the record,

it's called "Anarchy in the UK".

It's out in the shops, they can make their own decisions.

[John] This is no fun.

There's not very much fun being in a band like that.

We're completely thrown in the deep end right

from the start.

The sheer drudgery of having to deal with

a management that really wasn't comprehending much at all.

You know, it was more into

the sensationalism aspect of the thing.

[John laughs] Ever get the feeling you've been cheated.

-Good night! -[crowd cheers]

"Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"

It's just an off the cuff remark

but it's based on so much thought.

And, and-- and angles and positions that I've had to,

like, uh, assume, tolerate

and, uh, ultimately walk away from and that's what I did.

I was expected to live up to the press' [bleeped].

-[interviewer] And did you? -No.

[interviewer] Well, take for instance, um...

That's why I was disliked.

-[interviewer] Well, take for-- -I will not be a puppet.

I will not act out somebody else's pantomime.

I was fighting this, uh, ridiculous court case

with Malcolm and the Sex Pistols.

The situation was, uh, legally

until it was proved in court,

couldn't use the name Johnny Rotten.

'Cause it was contested so... John Lydon it was.

Particularly, the management financially wanted to wreck me

and all's I had really was the, uh, the deeds of

the, uh, flat in Gunter Grove.

It was very nice of the manager in hindsight to credit himself

for the great, many things.

But he could not in any way, shape or form, say, he created

me, Steve, Paul, Glen or Sid.

If you'd spend half an hour with John Lydon, you knew

that he wasn't invented.

His personal history and his life was what he was all about.

Meningitis has been the one thing I've

always struggled with.

So my mom and dad are very quiet.

And being the eldest and being ill

all the time when I was young,

I didn't really express meself very well.

They hardly knew I was ill.

'Till, you know, he hasn't moved now for two weeks.

I think he's ill. [laughs]

I'd have fits and I suppose, like, acid trip delusions.

That's when they brought me to the hospital 'cause the brain

was completely gone on me.

And I-- and I felt a bit like

like an observer inside my own head.

Meningitis, I don't, mind you, I was seven

but what it did was it put me into a coma for three months.

Lost my memory when I came out of that.

Didn't know anybody or anything. Didn't recognize my parents.

And, of course, it made common sense

when the doctors and nurses go

"But don't you think it must have come from somewhere?"

Yeah. But where?

Well, why would we lie to you? This is where you come from.

Oh, me gosh, when that comes around to you

and you realize, um...

you didn't even remember your own parents, you feel so guilty.

I've got such clear, painful memories of that, that feeling.

Gah, that was a lot to go through.

And there were moments in the next few years

where I've had freak-outs.

They'd have to call in people.

There was one particular moment. I remember it very, very well.

I've talked to my mother after about it.

There's a bunch of complete strangers in white coats going,

um, "Are not happy here? Do you want to leave?"

"We'll take care of you."

And they seemed ever so much more frightening

than a situation I wasn't, uh, feeling very, like, safe with.

And, and that was a very good decision to not go with that.

And it went on like that for a whole, quite few years.

I took on the role of looking out for my younger brothers.

So I acted like a surrogate parent

'cause my father worked away a lot of the time,

my mother was ill almost all of the time.

I find myself back in the family.

And then the memories would flood back in.

and I'd realize I was in a family after all.

And I had a second chance.

Because when you lose your memory

and it takes you four years to get it back.

You got an awful long time as a young kid

to work things out.

I loved being the DJ as a child.

When Mom and Dad would come back from the pub

with all their friends.

I'd be the one that would put the records on.

And I'd watch them all night dancing.

I knew what would next get them.

You know, I remember he's having mad parties around here.

Dancing on a table and breaking a table and John's dad...

Next day, he's fixing a table but he's putting

industrial bolts for it, like, you know what I mean?

Everybody is to mix and match, you know?

If, if mom and dad were having a party at your house,

well then, you go next door on your own.

Whoever that would be would be

anyone that lived in neighborhood.

[Reggie] Fins Park is a kind of place where...

They're for everyone together.

Black, white, yellow, pink, blue.

Greek, Irish, Jamaican. And um...

You'd gonna get on with it.

[Johnny] I'd DJ'd reggae when I headed down to here

in a reggae club. Deep reggae.

Finsbury Park.

You know, it's part of my background.

After the Sex Pistols, Mr. Richard Branson,

the owner of Virgin Records asked me

to, uh, be some kind of adviser

to what was good or bad reggae.

Imma browsing the sounds office, wrapping the paper for the week.

And the phone rang.

And John was on the phone, he was with Richard Branson,

and he was like,

"How'd you fancy coming to Jamaica with me?"

And then I ran into Don on the 52 Bus.

'Cause we lived around the corner from each other.

Next thing I knew, Don was coming too.

Right when I crossed the islands, on the jungle drums.

Rich, white man, signing up, reggae artist.

And for the next two weeks, there was like...

exodus of musicians.

to the Sheraton, trying to get a deal.

That's was where we'd make the deal. At the Sheraton.

Johnny Rotten was there with him.

He's a fan of mine.

[Vivien] They would look at John and sometimes they would say,

"Look!", I can't do the action.

"It's not him. It's him who did God save the Queen!"

And then all of a sudden, "Yestreen, we Rasta."

While John was in Jamaica,

Malcolm was trying to shoot

The Great Rock 'N Roll Swindle.

And he sent a cameraman over to film John secretly.

It was like a Keystone Cops film.

Because we had this suite, like, on the level

with the swimming pool, when then

people be lurking in the bushes.

Trying to get secret footage of me.

[laughs]

And I took it kind of as a compliment.

You don't want me around. You don't wanna work with me.

But you can't work without me.

I worked with Malcolm on a point

that we started making that film.

Basically, the band split.

And I was still wanting to make this film.

At the time, we did laugh about it.

But it, it was sort of covering up something

which was John busting out,

trying to discover who he could be as an artist in his own way.

It was very, very good going to Jamaica for me. It was.

It cleared my head in many ways.

I'm grateful about that

but the way the record company were viewing

the outcome of that would be was, was

very, very different from where my head was going.

[music plays]

[interviewer] What's stopping you forming

another band or doing something...?

[John] It's called Malcolm McLaren.

As soon as I get him off my back, I'll be able to continue.

Until then, I can't release anything without him taking

a great, big, fat share of the profit.

Would you like to start another band?

Yes, I am. I'm rehearsing like

all the time with loads of people.

[interviewer] A lot of people think that maybe

your first record would be a reggae record.

A lot of people are totally wrong.

[interviewer laughs]

But you have formed a band already?

No.

But you're rehearsing with people?

Yeah. They change every night.

[laughter]

For obvious reasons. Personality differences.

I got back to London. I wanted immediately to start a new band

and one that would approach it without that

media mockery attached.

So I used the term "Public Image Limited".

And Public Image was a book written by Muriel Spark.

Then it's about that media side of things

can lead to deaths and destructions.

It was quite poignant for me.

Um, I was able to get a deal for PiL as a tag-on for the Pistols.

So, we're off.

But the record company was unamused

by the band members that I picked.

They wanted to see big names.

I was completely uninterested in the prospect of that.

Wobble was a very good friend of mine.

And he was just about on the verge of

learning how to play. Perfect.

Just when I'm thinking, God, what I'm going to do meself,

I got a phone call from John at home.

He said, "Would you come over? Do you wanna be in a band?"

So I was, "Wow. Fantastic." You know?

[John] Jump from here.

Keith Levene. I thought

he was the best thing in The Clash.

He was very unhappy.

And I was unhappy in the Pistols.

The night that I really bonded well with Keith,

just, "I've had enough!"

And so, when the Pistols finally

fell apart, it was automatic that we work together.

Next thing I knew, John was saying, "Let's do it."

And I knew Wobble.

And I said, "We want to use Wobble."

Wow, you know, what a guitarist.

You know, that's a real, his own sound there.

You know? That's credibly rich.

And of course, it was all fine to do it but actually,

I suspect he's classically trained.

I mean he's very well-educated.

How many fucking genius can go...

[plays guitar]

You know, I mean how many times, yeah?

[John] And Jim Walker responded to an advert.

[Jim] I walked in the room

and there is another drummer sitting there.

And I just wanted to pick him up and throw him out of the room.

'Cause I was gonna get the job as far as I was concerned.

I just remember thinking,

"This bloke's really good. This is the one."

Rotten's girlfriend came, Nora,

and that's when I knew this is a big band, when I saw her.

She was this blonde statuesque, German girl.

Woman. No, she's a grown woman.

And I thought, "Well, women like that

don't hang around nobodies."

So we'd managed to scrape and get together some pennies.

Well, I had to, 'cause nobody else had any money.

Then started rehearsing and the songs just flowed.

["Public Image" playing]

♪ Hello, hello, hello Hello, hello, hello ♪

♪ You never listened To a word that I said ♪

♪ You only seen me from The clothes that I wear ♪

♪ Or did the interest Go so much deeper ♪

♪ It must have been To the color of my hair ♪

♪ The public image ♪

We recorded the backing tracks of the "Public Image"

in this studio called Wessex in North London.

That's where Roxy Music and the Sex Pistols were.

And they had a genius of an engineer named Bill Price.

He was so cool to work with.

We didn't work with him after that. [laughs]

An assistant engineer, with a bit of a tough guy

kind of vibe. And they treated me,

I felt a bit disrespectfully at a pop, so...

I bashed him up as I recall.

And we had to get out of there quick.

I mean, the place was cool.

Welcome to your first recording session.

♪ Public image ♪

We were quite a wild band.

And we'd drink and we caused trouble.

There's always a huge undercurrent of

potential danger at all times.

The way that record starts out with Jah Wobble's baseline, um,

that really in a, in a way

really changed the landscape.

It was like a, you know, a diagram of how to write a song.

For us at least. For me,

base starts and then the whole thing kicks in.

♪ The public image Belongs to me ♪

♪ It's my entrance My own creation ♪

♪ My grand finale My goodbye ♪

The PiL's first single had a kind of purity and ambition

and experimentation about it

that really seems to point to the future.

And it was a great vindication of John that

out of what happened at the end of the Sex Pistols.

To come straight out of that with this, this new sound.

It was really impressive.

♪ Goodbye ♪

So I think everybody was like

probably looking, thinking he was gonna fall down

after the Sex Pistols.

And, uh, it was really, I think they were like, "Wow"

This is really, really good.

And then they were really disappointed when they heard

the rest of the album. [laughs]

My friends, they sort of thought

the Public Image album would sound like that.

And then you get into like "Annalisa"

and some of the darker tracks.

"Annalisa". It was a bizarre story.

It's about a young 14-year old girl in Germany.

Her parents were convinced she was possessed by demons.

That's when they called in a priest and, uh,

and, uh, they suffocated her while

trying to ex-communicate these demons.

It actually killed the poor girl.

♪ Annalisa Annalisa ♪

♪ Annalisa Annalisa ♪

When I went to school, a Catholic school,

there's the quiet threat.

"Why don't you be an altar boy, a good little Catholic?"

You know not to go anywhere near the priests.

They get you on your own, anything could happen.

We will all deliberately howl out tune.

'Cause you know, you'd be unacceptable for that role.

They were scary monsters to me, the priests.

You couldn't accurately describe physical molestation.

You knew it was going on from the gossip.

And you do everyday to be perceived as ugly and useless.

Funny how I used all that years later.

[laughs]

My first gig was in Belgium with Bill.

And there were some guy who was going like...

in front of the stage.

So like, so I went up and kicked him in the face.

It turned out he was the head of security at the gaff.

I mean, what was the head of security

threatening me for anyways?

It was just war.

We were kept until four in the morning by

40 bikers that wanted to kill us.

We ended up barricaded in the, uh, dressing room.

♪ Absurd ♪

♪This is religion ♪

♪ There's a liar on the altar ♪

♪ The sermon never falter ♪

♪ This is religion ♪

We were getting along perfectly and then,

then the question came up about money.

And, um, control.

I always assumed we'd just be four people like

The Beatles were four equal people in their band.

And I knew Rotten had been in the Pistols obviously,

and obviously,

he was big and we weren't but we were all great musicians

and I know he couldn't have done it without us, I figured.

When PiL formed,

I, I thought he's me mate and I'll trust him.

You know, famous last words in the music business.

It'll comes down to the money and, uh,

there really wasn't the money there.

I couldn't afford to keep them in, in regular wages

and that led to all kinds of problems.

'Cause I, I ultimately was paying for everything.

[choir singing in the background]

We couldn't have, have shops open at Sundays

and nothing could be done on Christmas Day at all.

It actually wasn't against the law

but it was presumed it was

because of religious dogma.

I was quite freaked out at that because, you know, why would

anybody wanna go to a gig on Christmas Day

when there's no, there's no transport.

John's brother, Jimmy, asked me to do the security.

'Cause I was the face of football in them days.

We basically crewed most of the Arsenal to do security.

♪ Ego-maniac traitor ♪

Allow people to be entertained on Christmas Day, you know.

Why is that against the law?

[crowd cheers]

[Jim] It can go this way and that was it,

I walked out and everyone burned.

'Cause I knew that it wasn't gonna

get me anywhere being in that band.

[Jim] Just being used, basically.

[Johnny] I was really upset with Jim Walker leaving

because I thought he was an incredible talent.

In my view, we never bested Jim Walker

and, and you lost a sense of the band.

It was, uh, an immediate disaster, wasn't it?

That, but still had to get on with it.

Still had to like progress and continue.

So then it was just kind of me, John, and Keith.

Vicious' nude body was found today

by his mother in a Greenwich Village apartment

one day after he was released from jail.

He died of what's described

as an accidental type drug overdose.

And that's really where, where the "Sid legend" comes from.

It was a press campaign. [laughs]

Rather than a, a ground swell on the streets.

And it do, just, you know, with the death of my mate

which made me very angry.

It is when it went into '79, it was

really, really like a pool kind of depression.

The PiL camp was a little dark.

I mean, everyone was doing something

and some were doing everything.

But some were going up, some were going down.

And some were going sideways.

I remember getting on the tube, going to rehearse with PiL,

and saw Keith there.

And I went and sat opposite him and he was nodding off,

just like that,

this guy, molding, so I went, "Keith."

And he just, he was gone. And then I said to myself,

"Johnny Boy" I said, talking to myself.

"Make the most of this."

Wobble and Keith never seen eye to eye.

Trying to, um, make these things work.

That was so profoundly different in their approaches.

♪ In your eyes ♪

Keith was out, commissioned for longer periods.

And I'd be a bit softed up. Trying to get stuff happening.

We started working in a manner.

John, in a bit of a slop of depression,

wanted to watch telly a lot.

'Cause a man died who was close to him.

♪ Never say the way Told me in your eyes ♪

[John] Hell on earth, really. Hell on earth.

It was too confusing and upsetting and I tried

juxtapositional these different things in my head

and deal with them accurately.

Led to an excellent song called "Deaf Disco".

But I already had the song in my head for

my mama, I sang it to her at the hospital.

This should be fought per leave and we got back to

recording it. It was, uh...

so upsetting and my dad just,

"You can't say that. She's dying."

And she laughed.

And found it great fun and I think...

I think, honesty, when people are on their deathbed,

it's the most important thing you can deliver to them.

♪ Never really know ♪

♪ Never realize ♪

♪ Silence in your eyes ♪

♪ Silence in your eyes ♪

[John] We did actually audition many drummers.

"Here's a new drummer."

"Okay, set up."

"We'll just leave the tape running anyway

and see if we can work around it."

Well, there's all manners.

Reggae drummers turned up, disco drummers.

I spoke to Keith. And Keith said,

"We're doing something at the townhouse this weekend."

I thought, oh, this is my, you know, I should learn the songs

'cause we're gonna obviously be rehearsing.

I walked into the studio and over in the distance,

there's a glass, plexiglass room

with the orange Rogers drum kit.

And so I was like, yeah, "Here we go!"

"Here we go what?"

"Rolling!"

And we did Bad Baby. Me and Wobble did Bad Baby.

And, uh, in one take.

[John] We really didn't have the money to screw around.

We spent all our money on sillynesses

like the album cover. [laughs]

And, had no studio time,

what we do is we'd find out what time

certain bands would, uh, finish their sessions. We'd go in.

When Metal Box came out,

some people loved it, some people hated it.

To a 14, 15-year old guy, it came in a metal tin, right?

[laughs] Which...

no other records did and, and it was just such an exciting idea.

Metal Box like...

It, it changed my life. That record.

It changed the way I look at music.

For me, it's up there. Like the great, electric

bass records, just as a bass player

of all times.

Like Marvin Gaye What's Going On with James Jamerson.

All the James Brown stuff.

Family Man with Bob Marley. And Jah Wobble on Metal Box.

That sound, that style of play changed everything for me.

And when I first listened to it, it didn't make sense to me.

And then after about a month,

I completely fell in love with it.

You know, and still to this day, Second Edition,

uh, that's what's called in the state or

Metal Box is one of my favorite albums ever made.

It was a huge record.

It was like, that was like the White album

in the underground or something.

It was crazy. How the whole...

people discussed that record in a way.

[John] It's, uh, it's about a rape

of a young girl who was picked up and driven off

to the forest in a Japanese car.

And the only thing she could remember was, uh, the cassette

on the car, the cassette player played "Poptones".

And so I, I pieced the song together

around those initial facts.

I don't mean to be profiteering out of pain but sometimes

you know, if you analyze the situation,

it might in the future help stop such things happening.

♪ Side ♪

♪ Pop tones ♪

[Martin] I used to go and hang out at Gunter Grove

pretty much every weekend.

Uh, get my wages, get my speed.

I don't know that I was particularly

close with John or anybody.

I got along pretty good with Wobble.

To the point where, um,

Wobble invited me to work on the new,

uh, demos for the next PiL album.

♪ The lack in yourself ♪

♪ It is your nature ♪

The one thing I could do was book a ton of studio time

whenever I wanted it for meself.

And I could also do backing tracks for PiL.

We went down to the studio. I told John,

"Oh my God, this stuff's coming along really good."

And he was just like... [laughs]

It took like a month or two for me

to find out we weren't working on PiL stuff.

Jah Wobble did a record, Betrayal

where he'd cover Fats Domino's "Blueberry Hill".

It didn't cross my mind for a second

that anyone would think it was to do with anyone

betraying anybody in Public Image.

And I think I, I played and co-wrote

four or five of the tracks on Wobble's Betrayal album.

And then, I guess something happened.

We're in the Manor and, um,

Wobble decided to go to town for

the weekend. It was off. It was alright.

On a Saturday, I wanted to go in and, uh, the master was gone.

And I searched high and low and then it comes to pass

that he'd taken it to London to record over his own stuff.

And then, he thought he'd sneak it back in, Sunday night.

Well, we were there sitting, waiting, weren't we?

Nobody complained about me making solo records.

John and Keith were really pissed at Wobble.

For using some PiL tapes, I don't know what was going on.

And he's destroying the bigger potential for this

egotistical thing on the side.

You know, sooner or later, we would find out.

You think we're that dumb? [scoffs]

"Oh look, isn't that a PiL backing track?"

"Oh it sounds like it, did it?"

[laughs]

[music playing]

♪ Character Deep in your nature ♪

♪ Take one example Sample and hold ♪

[Thurston] When they came to New York,

it was a real bummer for me

because I was in this band called The Coachmen.

And we had a show the same night as the first

Public Image show which was at this place,

The Palladium in New York.

New York City. My first time in the States.

Here we fucking go, right? And it sold out.

This person crawls on stage like...

"What's going on?" like yeah, "John and Keith!"

"I've gone back to the hotel."

"What?"

It's filthy embarrassing, you know?

Especially as I knew a lot the audience has finally got it.

[faint cheering crowd]

You know, maybe, we're just gonna crew out

a list of songs here...

[noisy background]

[music starts playing]

[Martin] Next night, we played Great Gildersleeves.

I think I started to experience at that time,

charisma.

He could stare down at an audience and keep them at bay.

And John certainly could.

[upbeat music]

Joining me are Mr. John Lydon who used to be known as

Johnny Rotten and Mr. Keith Levene

and they are both associated now in something which is called

Public Image Limited.

What is that? Is it a band? Is it a public relations firm?

What is it doing? What is it?

We ain't no band. We're a company. Simple.

Nothing to do with Rock 'N Roll.

All they talked about, uh, you know,

umbrellas, companies, and companies

and the standard album was all just nonsense really.

What we needed to do was gone play shows.

And I think the reason it's a good idea

not to be a Rock 'N Roll band

to concentrate or direct out energies

as a company is because...

[John] Well, look to the future, right...

[overlapping dialogue]

[overlapping dialogue]

[John] ...days are here.

Excuse me. We were talking while you were interrupting

-I have to do... -[John laughs]

-...continue not for long. -[John] Humor me.

I think it was important for them

to sort of do something like that.

To not wanna be a part of

anything that becomes sort of standardized

or corporatized, you know, by the industry,

you know, being a Rock 'N Roll band, you know, how boring.

Why be something that you're not?

Or why be something that everybody else is?

The whole PiL being a corporation, I think,

stylistically, that's where their ideas were coming from.

From the whole acronym PiL,

the whole, um, presentation of

everything was done in a very kind of, uh,

they were taking tips from the corporate world

and putting a twist on it like John always does.

Well, we're still a company. We always have been.

Rather than a pop band rented by a record label

and told what to do.

[music playing]

Went to America, toured America.

And then, came back

and, uh, went to the house.

I knew there was money in cash in a shoe box.

I see it and now I'm done.

And I'm taking the box of cash with me so I took off.

Shoe box for the cash. And went

back off to America on a holiday.

Hard to fund a bird car. Or make.

He's such a used car salesman.

He's so prone to doing those what we call shifty maneuvers.

It's, uh, street-y kind of behavior.

And it's a kind of behavior that doesn't belong in a band.

When I left, I said, "John, I'm gonna leave."

"Okay-fucking-bye." [scoffs]

[laughs] "See you later."

[John] Using PiL material to record his own stuff,

that kind of, um, selfishness

is really hard to, to understand or tolerate

by me because, um,

what was contributed very, very well

but he took more than he gave.

[crowd cheers]

I don't see the need to lie.

I've been lied to and I know the pain of that.

I want you to imagine you've lost your memory completely.

Now, when you're seven or eight years old,

it's a little bit more destructive.

And so, the hurt of a lie really, really

affects you for the rest of your life.

I was in Ireland

to see my brother's band, the 4" Be 2"s.

And, uh, off-duty policeman

behaved quite aggressive in a pub.

I didn't know there were policemen.

You know, until a push comes to shove, you shove back.

It was upsetting because we spent our week in Mountjoy.

That was a serious piece of jail to have to be in.

And then, I immediately went back to London and

went straight into the studio and

started working on The Flowers of Romance.

We only had like a few weeks to do this

before he was gonna, you know, be sentenced.

[John] I had a studio book. I had me in it.

And I had no one around me

because there was no band and I had to do the best I could.

[Nick] Keith sometimes coming in in a great mood plays something.

It was brilliant. And then disappear

and then come back

and he'd listen to what he'd done earlier and hate it.

[John] We were so out of tune with each other.

And I just got out of Mountjoy jail.

You know, I was full of the gifts of life, I'm free!

And I wanted to work, work and work.

The way that most of the songs came about

on Flowers of Romance was

that Martin Atkins would come in

relatively early when I came in.

And I got these huge drum sounds

with no particular drum part in mine's.

♪ Down in the dark Tell us a story ♪

♪ From the room below ♪

[Martin] I had a Mickey Mouse watch from Disneyland.

And I, I slept with it under my pillow.

Speeding, couldn't sleep and I heard those

[imitates beats]

And I was like, just, I could hear these beats in my head.

Nick was fucking awesome. He put the watch on the floor tom-tom.

Like "What is he doing?", "So it's gonna resonate."

Put like two mics on it and then fed it to a harmonizer.

It was like one plus one equals 11.

[beeping]

Once we had that, you know, good five minutes of that on tape

then Martin went out and played that incredible beat to it.

[drums playing]

Eventually, John would turn up and it would either be,

"That's a bloody load of rubbish.", you know, erase it,

or he quite liked it and if he liked it,

he would go into a vocal.

Which was amazing because it was literally just a drum track.

And he'd write lyrics, just, straight out of nowhere.

["The Flowers of Romance" playing]

♪ Now in the summer I could be happy ♪

♪ Or in distress ♪

♪ Depending on the company ♪

♪ On the veranda ♪

♪ Talk of the future Or reminisce ♪

♪ Behind the dialogue ♪

♪ We're in a mess ♪

♪ Whatever I intended ♪

♪ I sent you flowers You wanted chocolates instead ♪

♪ The flowers of romance ♪

♪ The flowers of romance ♪

The way that song was built up was quite bizarre

because it started off with just John going in

and playing this tom beat.

Then went out there and just played the

high hat on top of it.

And then, overdubbed the cello.

And little by little, it got built up

and then he did a vocal to it.

I was thrilled. I liked having the free hand at that time.

♪ You need to defend I'll take the furniture ♪

♪ Start all over again ♪

It seems, from my memory, the whole experience

was kind of almost effortless

and that pretty much everything that was recorded was used.

Nick knows that I, I view really big structures

in a very different way than, uh,

what regular musicians would approach it like.

And then you're gonna confine yourself in

too rigidly to format.

You're gonna end up sounding like everybody else.

And if I were down about trying to be like everybody else,

what would my music be?

[music plays]

There's always people.

It was John's fucking apartment in Chelsea.

All of us and the police.

Not The Police the band. The police, the police.

[siren blaring]

Sometimes I go over there like

Bum, bum, bum. Gunter Grove. And the door's kicked in.

The police used to raid usually just once.

But then it got kind of used to it.

And then, they... it seemed every weekend.

And surely after that, John had really had it with this country.

And he left for New York.

And Public Image set up there.

♪ Just look around ♪

♪ I think you'll find that Everyone has the same problem ♪

[cars honking]

♪ This is not a real home ♪

There was a show at the Ritz which was kind of a

big downtown rock theater.

We had a sold out show with Bow Wow Wow.

Day before the events, that, uh,

we got a call from Malcolm McLaren.

And he said, "We're not coming."

I called, uh, the publicity department at Warner Bros.

And they were there and I said, "We don't know each other

but our weekend just opened up because Bow Wow Wow cancelled."

And I think they thought that was a bit humorous

because of the Malcolm connection.

[John] That the idea was to play along with the record

on the turntable.

And we'd be pantomiming

and creating images around all of this.

♪ Admiring hating This lot are ♪

The Ritz was famous for having

the largest movie screen on the planet.

[laughs] That's like their big thing.

They came up with an idea. We'll do the show.

But we never wanna come out from behind the screen.

I didn't think we did say it was kind of, uh,

performance art, if you will.

I think it was, uh, promoted as PiL, a concert event.

And I made sure that I was gonna see Public Image this time.

So we called WLIR, the radio station in Long Island

that was playing "New Wave".

And um, I said, "I'll give you a pair, a couple pair of tickets."

"Please announce on the air that Bow Wow Wow cancelled."

"And it's PiL that are coming."

-Well, in moments, tickets... -[snaps fingers]

went like hotcakes.

[Martin] And my phone just exploded.

"Hey, can't wait to see you."

"See me what?"

"New York!"

What... I don't know anything about it.

That felt strange.

And we thought, "Guess they found another drummer. Okay."

Listen when I do it.

[plays drums]

From slow to fast.

I'm talking to about six or seven drummers

about why you have to practice and this lady comes in,

waving a check and she says,

"I need a drummer tonight. Are you working?" she yells at me.

The place was jammed. Everybody showed up at this, at this gig.

And see, we had a bit of kind of rough, rough neck audience.

I walked in. Got on the stage.

And we were behind this big movie screen.

I said, "What do you guys want me to do?"

And Johnny Rotten says to me,

"Gimme a lot of tom-toms."

[imitates drumming sound]

[crowd cheering]

Flowers of Romance is being played.

The lights are beautiful.

But you could feel some kind of tension in the air.

They wanted to see the PiL live.

As soon as I started,

people started throwing things at the screen.

They don't wanna see silhouettes.

[crowd jeering]

All of a sudden, um, there's a huge image of

John Lydon on the screen and he was taunting the audience.

He was up there like huge, like Wizard of Oz.

[inaudible talking]

[continuous crowd jeering]

[inaudible talking]

And all of a sudden, there's a real live human being on stage.

It was Keith Levene.

And he was waving his arms and he's saying,

"Stop throwing things at the screen!" [laughs]

And then he had to run off

because bottles were being thrown at his head.

Chairs started flying. The screen that was

a very expensive screen,

kids started pulling it down.

It became dangerous. And all the lights in the place went up.

Police came in.

And the entire place was evacuated

and it was the end of the show.

For me, it was like, that's like one of the greatest gigs

I ever saw. [laughs] So good.

[John] I look back at it and it's probably

one of the greatest gigs I've ever done.

You sink or swim, really, in those moments.

If you can, uh, make good of what could be

the end of your career.

[laughter]

[music playing]

When I started working with the band,

they had never really had anyone

that was in an administrative role

as, as a manager per se.

And that they always dealt with the record company

and they always dealt with the business themselves.

I took on the role of a manager

but again, we weren't calling me that.

As an official title, I've never liked that anyways

since Malcolm commits him.

You know, that was management and that's exactly

what we're never going to have anywhere near us ever again.

[Bob] I met Keith and we instantly bonded.

We'd put together ideas of the game plan and then

John basically gave his seal of approval.

I knew Martin Atkins also,

the drummer who had left at the time.

But I kind of brought Martin back into the fold.

I worked out a deal with the studio

on 58th Street called Park South

where there would be some speck time

and we would pay some money.

And we started working and recording there.

["Mad Max" playing]

♪ Call me up after midnight Tell me I'm wrong ♪

♪ Tell me I'm right What do you want ♪

♪ Did you just Need the argument ♪

[Martin] We needed a bass player so I called Pete Jones.

"Hey Pete. It's kind of a fucking insane thing,

you want to come on and play bass?"

And I said, "Okay. I'll do it. Okay. I'll do it. Alright."

And then I flew straight to New York.

I literally walked in to the studio

and they said, "Okay. can you play along to this."

Probably soon after that, we moved into the lroquois Hotel.

Which is crazy, The Clash were there.

They were doing this series of dates in Times Square.

I remember being in an elevator with The Clash and was like,

We're The Clash, we're the PiL, you know.

Just stupidity.

[reporter]John Lydon's new band

is Public Image Limited.

They're playing tonight at the Roseland Ballroom.

The music and dress are different

from the Sex Pistol days.

But the news that punk is dead has not reached the fans.

They wouldn't believe it!

The press from it was great. The band was excited, you know,

everyone was excited and now, PiL was back.

[upbeat music]

[interviewer] Gonna do major venues,

extensive tours, small tours?

Kind of, um...

We don't do tours. We just do gigs occasionally.

Once every two or three days. It's better that way.

It wasn't, it wasn't a tour.

It was a series of dates so we'll do

mad things like we'd go get a plane to Seattle.

So we don't fly to Seattle. The whole band, crew hang us on.

Then we fly back again. And we can't do that sort of traveling

and that sort of distance and make money.

It's just financial suicide.

So there may have been concerns like,

"Why aren't we all rich? We're doing all these shows."

We came back to New York and we gave,

you know, half of that to the studio.

And now there's $3,000 left.

So yeah, you can have $500 each or something.

The hotel bill wasn't being paid

and they threatened to throw me out.

I said, look, "You need to pay this bill

and I need some money."

And Keith's reply to that was,

"We're all individuals in this band."

I'm like, "What the... what the fuck?"

All of a sudden, I, uh, I get this call.

Keith had gotten rid of me.

And then, uh, this whole

tension erupted within the band after me.

It was a laugh playing live and stepping on stage with PiL was,

was great. It was a great honor to play with that band.

It's just became a trip, trip, trip, trip, trip of shit.

I found Martin. Martin was living

at the same place as John at the time so Martin

took the call and I said, "Martin, I'm leaving the band."

He said, "What'd you mean you're leaving? When are you leaving?"

I said, "Tomorrow. I've got a ticket."

"I'm flying out tomorrow morning."

And he told John that while I was on the phone.

And I heard just John screaming in the background, "Bollocks!"

And that was all he said on it. He just shout out,

"Bollocks!" and that was it.

["This Is Not A Love Song" playing]

Yeah, that, that whole period of, of commercials

on "This Is Not A Love Song"

get, you know, I mean that stuff was written about

in the press in a very, very disparaging way.

You know, it was pretty well known that, that Keith

was a little unwell, shall we say.

[interviewer] You just finished your new album.

And, uh, can you tell us a little about that?

Its title and how it differs basically

from what you've done in the past.

Well, that's for the general public to...

-decide. -Well, how were your impressions

on how it, how it differs 'cause

everything has to be a progression, doesn't it?

I'm just happy to do it, right?

That's all.

Can you compare it to the last ones?

-What albums? -You can compare it to anything.

Yeah, yeah.

Would you?

Um, it's gonna be better.

In what way?

Well, it's like, um, it's one album

more than what we've done before.

So it's got everything we've done from those last ones

plus us now.

But here's the thing with Keith, he's alleged genius.

My God, many of the time, it was murder trying to deal with what,

with what he was coming up with in the studio

'cause he was so off the mark.

♪ Think you know the answer? ♪

♪ Think you got All the problems? ♪

♪ Well, why not try And solve them? ♪

♪ Instead of your Sitting on them ♪

Not it's just too much temptation, really, in New York.

Everybody was tempted by so many peripheral things.

Including meself.

And there was a lot of that cocaine floating around which

can screw up an awful lot of things.

That was a hard one to like, you know, walk away from.

I decided I couldn't bear that kind of sickness every morning.

For me, it's things that keep me awake.

That's like the things I'm interested in.

The longer I'm awake,

the less chance of waking up for a sleep-- from a sleep

and not knowing who I am.

I never, ever want to go through

that, that period

in the hospital of not knowing who I was.

I knew that substance is... way, way earlier out of my youth

and so I know not to like fall into them issues.

But some of the more hardcore drugs like heroine,

if that's flirting about, that's really soul destroying.

And I've watched that drug now reckon

destroy so many friends.

I have a real, uh, animosity about heroin, heroin users.

Yeah, heroin users but it'd ended up using you

to fuel their addiction

and their addiction becomes

the preeminent thing in their life.

The only driving force, really.

♪ Getting nowhere ♪

Piles of confusion, massive amounts of irritation, uh...

kind of, all of this, I think

ended up feeling like headless chickens throughout all of it.

[faint crowd cheers]

We were offered 15 shows in Japan.

Um, for 100 or 150 thousand dollars.

It's a lot of fucking money.

Paul McCartney goes to Japan with Wings.

With a kilo of weed.

And he's arrested.

Subsequently, every performance

contract for a touring band in Japan

has what's called the "Paul McCartney clause" inserted.

Which means if anybody's found with drugs,

not only do you not get paid for your tour,

you're liable for what the promoter thinks

you might have made.

So of course, we start looking down the barrel of the gun

of taking Keith into that situation.

We asked to have a meeting.

Keith showed up with his attorney.

What's this, the fucking Eagles?

He made the sensible decision. Ba-bye.

Don't care how important a member is,

they're not that important.

You can't be doing this for utterly selfish reasons.

We're supposed to be in this together.

Ultimately, it really doesn't matter.

Listen to some of that playing.

For God's sake, you know?

Just listen to that, nothing else.

Not anything is Wobble's.

That is talent.

And no one can ever take that away from him

except himself.

Keith has said...

Commercial Zone, it's his version of the album.

It isn't. It was our version of an earlier album.

There were songs on there that he didn't know

existed until he stole the tapes.

[music plays]

Keith eventually

organized a release of Commercial Zone.

Got it pressed up, had it released

in America outside of the Virgin control.

Yet again, one more time,

somebody being greedy and selfish with PiL stuff.

I thought that John was very pleased about that.

But by this time, they've come off

and re-recorded a lot of those songs

for This Is What You Want... This Is What You Get album.

So yeah, the Commercial Zone version of some of the songs

are after the This Is What You Want version

of the songs which are inferior of course. Some are.

♪ This is what you get This is what you want ♪

We'd find ourselves, just me and John,

with this commitment for Japan.

[music starts playing]

♪ This is what you want ♪

♪ This is what you get ♪

And to quickly find, uh, people

'cause they're already committed to the tour.

I went to give Louis Bernardi,

uh, the news that he got the job on bass

to a holiday inn in Passaic, New Jersey.

It's like a drug deal gone wrong, kind of weird thing.

And I walked in

and there's a band on stage playing "Rock The Casbah"

and there's Louis playing bass with a fucking red beret.

"Rock the Casbah..." like fuck,

what have we done?

Really good musicians didn't get what we were doing at all.

At all, at all, at all.

There was no longer that fucking attitude.

There's no longer the weight to it.

♪ Want ♪

Them like a covers band.

Let's see if they could cover PiL.

[crowd cheers]

♪ Ego-maniac traitor ♪

♪ You never did understand ♪

I don't think anybody would pass it, hold on a minute.

This isn't the gravitas of early PiL.

It was Johnny Rotten on stage.

♪ Low life ♪

♪ Ma! ♪

♪ Bourgeois Anarchist ♪

♪ I read you despise us ♪

♪ Always hurt the one you love ♪

♪ Lie to be distant ♪

[crowd cheers]

[interviewer] John, uh, you've been described

variously as an actor,

a fraud, a genius, an idiot.

Then the big hype of Rock 'N Roll.

-[John] Hmm. -Which do you think you are?

All of the above and more besides.

Which one do you like being most?

Uh, genius, I think is quite nice. Yeah. I'll go for that.

Did it apply for your last record?

I think so. It's rather wonderful.

Making a lot of bucks?

No, unfortunately, it hasn't been going at the, uh,

commercial success that it deserves

but I have patience.

Emotionally, that, that was such a trying period.

'Cause I was going through incredible

negativity from the media.

They just wanted to bury me basically.

Then I had to really, really fight for my survival here.

Now, but listen, you can't let a palm tree fool you.

Don't make it about a place, I mean, it is a dungeon.

Just like everywhere else.

[interviewer] Then why are you here in LA?

You could be anywhere.

It's convenient.

I'm gonna start somewhere. It can't be London.

It can't start in the rain.

♪ Baby, pretty, pretty baby Pretty baby, pretty, pretty ♪

There literally was an ad. It just said,

"Public Image looking for..."

"guitar player, keyboard player" and I think, "bass player."

"Call this number."

There's a bunch of bass players waiting

and Martin Atkins was up on stage playing.

and bass players went up and played

then I went up and played with him

and we, we hit it pretty good.

I remember just jamming for like 20 minutes.

Well, that's it. Everybody can go home. We're done.

The next day, they asked me if I wanted to join the band.

And, obviously, and I thought,

fuck, I gotta leave the Chili Peppers

and I was so scared, I didn't know what to do.

I remember that night, Hillel came over.

Then I stayed up with him all night.

Talking about it like, "What do I do? What do I do?"

He was like, you know,

"If you join PiL, it will never be your band."

"Like it will never be your thing."

So I called them that morning.

You fucking asshole. What are we supposed to do now?

You know. Enjoy this Rolls-Royce. Here's a Toyota.

Pretty much immediately, we did a US tour.

♪ This is not a love song This is not a love song ♪

♪ This is not a love song This is not a love song ♪

♪ This is not a love song ♪

♪ This is not a love song ♪

This is like nuts. I'm living. I was just out of high school

so I was playing in my favorite band.

♪ This is not a love song This is not a love song ♪

"This Is Not A Love Song" is a fucking

top three hit around the world.

It's one of my least favorite songs. I co-wrote it.

It's the biggest fucking hit.

♪ I'm going over To the other side ♪

♪ I'm happy to have Not to have not ♪

♪ Big business is very wise ♪

♪ I'm inside free enterprise ♪

♪ This is not a love song This is not a love song ♪

♪ This is not a love song ♪

So John and I showing the house, Nora's, the house with us.

And we're just not getting along.

Martin Atkins and me drove each other mad.

You know, because we're living in the same house and, uh,

we kind of ended up getting on each other's nerves

and that was unfortunate.

I mean it's great to work with bands but you can't,

you can't share the same living environment.

So I got a place at Pasadena. Little, shitty apartment.

Got myself a car and tried to make this thing happen.

And I got, I got quite sick.

Which didn't make sense to me.

Here's my list. Top three single, check.

Swimming pool, check. Palm trees, check.

And...

it didn't occur to me I was just unhappy.

♪ Think you know the answer? ♪

I said to John, "Look, I know there's...

Japan tour's coming up with Australia."

"I don't wanna let you down but I just wanted to let you know...

I'm gonna be leaving at the end of it."

And that was a huge fucking mistake.

Not leaving. But telling him.

Whereas our relationship was a little bit difficult

up to that point.

It fucking completely destroyed it.

[John] Martin left after the, uh,

the Japanese tour.

We decided, like, not to be like

bothered to go straight back to, uh, LA.

And so, uh, we rented a house right

on the North Shore and stayed there.

It was great for testing but no more Martin.

And he missed out on that

he should've been in on that.

That would've been the proper bonding again.

And then, he'd had enough.

["Solitaire" playing]

♪ Can't pull out my heart ♪

♪ Solitaire ♪

[interviewer] How did getting married affect

your relationship with your wife?

Well, it means we see more of each other obviously.

We're very happy. We've been together for some ten years now.

We'll never separate.

I'm not, I wasn't making commitment forever.

I'm a loyalist.

That's beautiful.

Lover.

Such an original person, say.

There's, there's a hook for me

with, um, my friends

and the things I wanna work with

and my affiliations and associations is,

um... [sighs] When I come across something

so incredibly original,

I see it. I'm in love with that.

And there's not too much of that going on in the world.

♪ Speak about destruction ♪

♪ This is the world destruction Your life ain't nothing ♪

♪ The human race is Becoming a disgrace ♪

The idea of working with Elektra was great. Loved it, right.

And so Laswell was gonna be the check

because I've worked with Laswell before doing Time Zone

with Afrika Bambaataa. I was so looking forward to this project.

Brought the young band into New York.

They panicked in the studio.

It just seemed that they were kind of naive

and just getting started.

That wasn't the case. We wanted to do something kind of big.

Understand this is the 80s.

So in the 80s, producers made records.

Bands were lucky to be on them.

♪ Bow wow ♪

♪ Myself when I say ♪

[John] God bless him, I don't hold it against him.

And I loved them fellas forever.

'Cause, you know, they were part of the songwriting

original process.

But they just couldn't,

they couldn't reach the final chapter.

[Laswell] So I proceeded to fire the band and hire musicians.

But where are we to find replacements so that was great

because I read the list, it was damn well endless

in a complete shock.

On a such a, on a serious level.

[drums beating]

Ginger Baker's a nut up. He then trotted into the studio like,

um, semi out of his complete mind.

Fantastic person, I can say. I managed to like, uh,

somehow, accidentally, hook-up and connect with.

The wild car was Steve Vai.

Who would've thought you'd bring a metal guitarist...

He was used to his way of pining and that's not what we wanted.

We wanted him to like, you know, go rhythmic with it.

You know, play less. And it would mean more.

[John] Alright, let's get on with it then.

[Vivien] On this last record, um...

How involved were in picking all the musicians

and then the production and the whole thing?

Because that wasn't done like a group, group.

Well, very involved. I mean I've written

almost all of the songs before I went into the studio.

So I knew exactly what I wanted. Uh...

so I just set about getting the musicians

that would do the job best.

The most amusing part about it was

Tony Williams did half the record

and I did half the record.

And it was released without citing who was playing on what.

And Tony and I laughed about it

because every track Tony was on, they thought it was me.

And every track I was on, they thought it was Tony.

[laughs]

[music playing]

It wasn't like I was trying to sell you an album

with a load of pony-ass, like, famous people.

'Cause everybody who became involved

I told them way in advance.

There would be no credits on this record at all.

Everyone happy.

More than happy, oddly enough,

to work with me which was a real shock.

'Cause up to that point,

I hadn't considered that people actually really respected me

inside the music world itself.

♪ Now What does this mean? ♪

♪ Home sweet home ♪

♪ Home sweet home ♪

[interviewer] When you were younger, you did say

that you were very anti-love in relationships

and you seem to have settled into one now.

Is that true? Have you settled down?

Well, that was the voice of inexperienced.

I have progressed to higher things, yes.

And this is a high thing, this relationship?

I think so, yes. I think it's very important

to be able to say I was wrong.

Would you like to have children now that you're in this kind of

-stable relationship? -[John] No, no.

Why? Why not?

I just have to dedicate my life completely to them

and I can't afford to do that.

I'm far too irresponsible.

[host] And Public Image Limited here

in the Top of the Pops Studio.

this week's number 11 with "Rise".

-[crowd cheers] -["Rise" playing]

♪ Could be wrong ♪

♪ I could be right ♪

"Rise" was what kicked everything off again for PiL.

The success of that song was what, you know,

Virgin had wanted, at that time, I remember, a hit record.

And that's moved everything out again.

♪ They put a hot wire To my head ♪

♪ 'Cause of the things I did and said ♪

♪ They made these Feelings go away ♪

♪ A model citizen in every way ♪

♪ May the road rise with you ♪

♪ May the road rise with you ♪

The track "Rise", the bass line in the beat

is based on the South African music.

Mixes very well with the Irish thing.

And John was very conscious of reference points.

He brought a lot of written notes and ideas.

"Rise" is about South African

and northern Irish interrogation techniques.

[interviewer] Such as?

Well, electric torture for starters.

-Oh, yeah? -"They put a hot wire

to my head."

"'Cause of the things I did and said."

Is it intended as a political song, is it?

Does anything game when you're writing political songs?

Is there something particular? Are you--

It's not necessarily political at all.

It's just dealing with that specific subject of torture.

All kinds of torture don't really achieve anything.

Violence doesn't achieve anything.

Uh, these governments, they've got to learn this.

Cannot keep a population down.

♪ Anger is an energy ♪

♪ Anger is an energy ♪

♪ Anger is an energy ♪

♪ Anger is an energy Anger is an energy ♪

Around that time, John was

saying that he wanted to come back to the UK.

And he wanted to put a new band together.

He needed a new manager.

And I said, "I'll put a band together for you."

"Let's get it on the road and do some touring."

Went out to pub, drank some beer.

Decided we'd be a band. Usual.

I said, "Yes, sure. I'd love to play the drums."

No, I didn't nothing.

♪ Black rubber bag It's like a rubber bag ♪

♪ Black rubber bag It's like a rubber bag ♪

♪ Black rubber bag ♪

["Bags" playing]

We played with John every night. That was a challenge.

It was an enjoyable challenge. It's what...

Just like in a jazz band, there's a soloist

and you're following him as an accompanying musician

and listening for the changes.

You know, we're playing the song that we play every night, dude.

The verse is ending, we'll come into the bridge.

One, two, three, four...

[gasps]

We don't know if John's gonna be there.

♪ Close to the edge ♪

[inaudible]

Allan is absolutely right. You gotta be...

listening to what John's doing. You know, staying aware.

[interviewer] So, um...

[clears throat]

Right here.

[laughter]

[spits]

Here's what I prepared earlier.

[laughter]

I can't help it. All, all my life,

I've got these constant problems.

It's meningitis again. Um...

Things will form in the back of my throat like lumps

and it's why I always have this spittoon.

'Cause I can feel it in here... [clears throat]

You can't get the notes out and you

gotta clear your throat somehow.

[John] What a load of fucking wankers.

And as for you.

Stop throwing money, you silly old cunts.

That PiL tour was full of disgruntled Sex Pistols fans.

You know, so we had to battle through the walls of gob.

[John] This is a little bit out of fucking order.

Now, we don't mind security.

But we don't like bully-boys being able to shit.

-That I know. -[crowd jeers]

And you could start spitting at me too.

The wall of spit

that John was subjected to for the first two songs.

He kept asking them to stop spitting.

[John] First of all, to perform by you, spitting fans...

Keep spitting. Don't do it.

Or I'm coming down. Good night!

[crowd reacts]

And he walked off the stage.

And I said, "John, you gotta go back on stage."

And I'm reluctant and he said, "Keith, look at me."

And he was covered in spit.

And the bouncers were saying,

"You gotta get back on the stage, man."

"You're gonna have a riot here in a moment."

[John] Now, listen. And listen good.

'Cause it doesn't matter like shit to me.

If you keep spitting, I will go home. I don't need this crap

from an imitator punk like you, crack show, for instance.

It can be terrible how many spiteful fucks there are

out there in the world to do this kind of thing.

There were some nights...

that got scary leading up to McGeoch since then.

[John Lydon] The thing about John, for instance, is well...

He's gonna hate this. Uh...

He understood the Public Image guitar sound.

And he took it a couple of stages further

which is why I had to work with him.

He's rather brilliant.

Well, I've been looking at those Public Image guitar

lines for years.

So I thought it was time to finally, uh...

sealed

and signed the document.

I've gone home.

So of course, I get back to my office, not knowing

the first thing that happens,

I get fan call in the morning from the tour manager.

The guys were drunk and somebody instigated an

egg gun, somebody, and a kid threw this pile and

unfortunately hit McGeoch...

[smacks forehead] here.

Had forty stitches in his face.

Big blood, big horror.

I just said, "Let go. We've got to rethink this." You know?

Band stopped playing for four, five months.

And then, when it came back, it was...

the music changed.

John McGeoch changed by that and then

it was, um, less improvised.

Everything changed in his life and

his taste in music and everything, it was...

quite interesting.

[interviewer] Why do you think that was?

I don't know. You know, I'm not a psychologist.

It was a lot of plastic surgeries.

Six dancing men.

[fan] John!

Got a whole lot there?

John sat us down and he said,

"Okay, listen. This is the deal."

"I'm liking what's happening,

I wanna share this with everybody.

"Who's in?"

John was great like that. I mean, John, he's very--

you know, even if he wrote all of the lyrics, which he did.

Publishing spirit was in between the five of them.

Then we set forth into the studio.

And then, the journey was off and running.

[interviewer] Now that you moved into

this group PiL, how did you...

[John] Well, I always work in groups.

I don't like doing things on my own.

I like working with people but

this is the best yet, I mean,

I've never felt part of the band and it includes the Sex Pistols.

It's never been as good as this.

["Seattle" playing]

♪ Don't like the look Of this old town ♪

Happy? and a couple of those albums,

they played them better than they recorded them, you know.

The songs' structures were too tight and regulated.

And the expectation was put upon John to

put himself into those arrangements.

He's not well served by that kind of compositional approach.

♪ Nothing ever happened And everything ♪

♪ Remained the same again What in the world ♪

♪ What in the world ♪

♪ What in the world ♪

♪ Get up, get up, get out Get out, get out of my world ♪

-[John] Louis. -[Louis] John.

Do you remember all them years ago?

I'd bank on you learning all this stuff.

Fucking idi-- you did two, didn't you?

Which stuff?

Flowers of Romance with McGeoch.

What a murderous, fucking ensemble of disaster.

That could be night after night.

That's an interesting way of putting it because you're right.

I have to say it was very hard playing with McGeoch because

he was always top organ, he was...

He, he wouldn't listen to anyone, you know.

He's a great player, lovely man but

I just always end up going "Just go and play keyboard."

["Rise" playing]

♪ May the road rise with you ♪

♪ May the road rise with you ♪

♪ May the road rise with you ♪

♪ May the road rise with you ♪

It just sort of kept going.

And with John was happy, you know,

anyone liked being with us, you know.

'Cause he'd been, had quite an unstable lineup.

We are all equal. We all contribute equally.

And this is the permanent lineup of Public Image now.

And will be for a long time.

[ringing sound]

Lu...

He had a condition called

tinnitus? Tinnitus. Sometimes it's what he called.

Guitar EMS turned up so extremely loud.

It recalls this ringing in your ears.

[interviewer] What did you feel like? What was it like?

Well, suicidal tendencies.

I wanted to die.

And much as he didn't mean or want to leave, he had to.

You know, he's like gotten a death sentence,

you know, it was very sad.

[clears throat]

And he was gone.

[strums guitar]

[music plays]

When you're young, you want more and more volume and everything

because it makes you feel bigger and better

about what it is you're doing.

You're not actually listening to what you're doing at all.

Then, it has that, uh, that period where you begin to like

what it is you're doing a lot.

And you like getting it right.

And these things are too damn loud.

By that time, man, we were like solid, we were tight.

And we're just having so much fun and it was getting on good

and it was devastating, man.

♪ You, you're just a Really bad person ♪

♪ Who won't, you won't Listen to anyone ♪

♪ No, not you With those half moon eyelids ♪

♪ Just babbling on ♪

♪ Your useless defenses ♪

"Disappointed", um...

that's a song John wrote about all of the

people who have fallen by the wayside.

The single is called "Disappointed"

which is again about

disappointed about you people, that's what friends are for.

No, it's about friends letting you down.

That's an emotion all of us have experience,

at one time or another.

It's not anti-friendship.

It's just telling you that this will happen.

And choose your friends just a little more carefully.

Sound advice, I think.

Is this a general lyric or is this

about specific friends that--

It's, it's general but

it could apply to several of my ex-managers.

I couldn't really remember the exact day

when we stopped working together.

But it was because we had a huge brawl, you know.

The problems that we had, you know, working relationship

was because we were friends as well.

It made it difficult

to separate the friendship from the work.

Um, that got to a sort of breaking point.

♪ Disappointed a few people ♪

♪ When friendship reared Its ugly head ♪

♪ Disappointed a few people ♪

♪ Well, isn't that What friends are for? ♪

♪ What friends are for? What friends are for? ♪

♪ What friends are for? What friends are for? ♪

♪ What friends are for? ♪

[John] Many of my friends are convinced that it's about

them personally and it really isn't.

But the refrain in it that they don't grasp and they should

'cause it's a huge compliment is, uh, what friends are for.

That's, that the bottom line. That you've up with the, uh,

you know, the mistakes and errors of friends because

you accept them for what they are.

[engines roaring]

So we didn't have any big falling yet.

I think he was very pissed off when I left.

Um, which is understandable.

Really the reason that I stopped playing there was I

was not in very good shape, I mean,

I wasn't in good shape. We've been on tour all the time.

I did-- was doing a lot of drugs.

You know, basically the routine of album tour

is six months of... optimism.

Didn't really worked out so well for me.

And with the drinking and drugs and nightlife. It just...

got into a tailspin for me.

It was either my health, well-being

Or I was gonna die. I mean, I was gonna just...

implode? Fall apart?

And I had to bail.

I've take set of people come and people go

and it really breaks my heart.

You know, and I obligate myself to the human beings.

I don't want that to stop anytime soon.

You gotta accept that it does.

["Cruel" playing]

♪ Body and soul ♪

♪ An animal ♪

♪ As a sword ♪

♪ Swing double edged ♪

♪ Dig deep down ♪

♪ That monthly frown ♪

♪ You have the tools To make men fools ♪

Aah.

I hope you know how fucking happy I am

when the missus is back in the house.

It's very important.

[interviewer] Since we're here and Nora's here, maybe, uh...

No, she won't. It ain't possible. You know it.

-[interviewer laughs] -Nope.

My baby's ran off and closed the door.

-Yeah? -Nope, she's not gonna have it.

[interviewer laughs]

See, that's private. And that's how we are.

It's not public domain. Say, do whatever you want about me

but you're never gonna get the opportunity

to do about that, the people that,

that don't deserve that torture.

I'll vow us through it.

I loved this very, very much.

The dragon in the corner. This is done by, um,

I think it was Pablo. One of the twins. Ariane's kids.

When they were young and they came to live with us.

Ariane, the lead singer of The Slits, is, uh,

my wife's daughter.

Their mother, she just couldn't cope with them anymore.

And you know, with her musical career.

And they had a major, major brawl.

I said, "Well, let them live with us."

"We'll-- we'll take care of them."

Then, so, you know, in, in what you can conceive as

two decades of not working. [laughs]

Johnny had to become daddy. [laughs]

It was tough, man.

It was tough because you're taking on

two 14-year olds, you know.

Had very serious opinions of, of the problems they had to

endure up to that point with their own mother.

♪ Domestic bliss ♪

Give it a little time to, to settle it down into,

into a proper family unit.

Very, very difficult but, uh, I learned so much about meself

because I, I found that bit that was missing in me for so long.

That I loved the company of kids

when they're young, I just really do.

Terrific. And in a weird way, family-owned youth again.

[music playing]

If you look at all those video clips of

them on television at the time, you know,

and just like how antagonistic it is, you know.

Especially on the Tom Snyder show,

The Tomorrow Show in New York.

That was like, people talked about that forever.

How they just kind of like, um,

completely took the piss from this guy, you know, just like

you know, we're so combative

to the point where he has to be late.

[laughs]

He was known then as Johnny Rotten,

the head singer and founder of the Sex Pistols.

He continued creating a vent of music in the 1980s

with his band Public Image Limited.

And after nearly 17 years since first we met,

we're back together again tonight for the second time.

John, welcome and thank you for joining us here at CBS.

I don't what happened 17 years ago tonight.

Yes, you do. You just showed it.

[laughter]

I mean, I don't know where I was or you were then

but if I did something to offend you, I apologize for it.

No, it's all right. I mean, it's just

entertainment, isn't it, you know? TV.

Exact-- right. It's only television.

I sometimes forget that.

John did some, um, some work with some TV films and programs.

[animals howling]

They say a gorilla was here. A gorilla.

I think you'll like it, Lydon.

He goes, I got nothing to say to gorillas,

Well, we went out with gorillas

we had the best time alive.

John Lydon, punk superstar,

national icon and mad-key natural historian.

With best mate, John Rumbo, he's embarked on a

once in a lifetime journey into the heart of East Africa.

The ultimate aim of meeting his oldest relatives.

The gorillas who date back to a time

when dinosaurs ruled the Earth.

[chanting in African language]

[chanting in African language]

♪ This is pil Pil ♪

We were always mates for years, years and years.

You know, I'd work and hang out with him every day.

He do his thing, I do my thing.

And, um, we just, eventually

just teamed up properly, you know.

It's hard sometimes because we're mates

so it's hard whenever, we're not--

we never, ever, ever had an argument

before I started working with John.

Ever.

We don't have any arguments.

I want to get the best out of John.

I didn't wanna do any more Pistol stuff.

And John went, "Well, we could start PiL."

And I was humming in high.

'Cause I thought it was almost an insurmountable barrier.

'Cause of a serious financial debt.

It was always eaten away. I had to get this back together

but I just didn't know how.

Do I buy country life butter because it's British?

[upbeat music]

Bye, bye country life because

I yearn for the British countryside.

[honks car]

Or because its made only from British milk?

[cows moo]

It's not about Great Britain, it's about great butter.

Yeah, a butter company approaches and, you know,

to be the, the spokesperson or figurehead for butter?

[laughs]

And naturally, instinctively, I said no but

they said I'm basically a free hand.

The money wasn't complete genius

that came out of it, let me tell you.

They got me on the cheap. But it

definitely helped us set up PiL.

[music playing]

When I rang up Bruce, we haven't spoke in,

oh, 18 years, something like that.

I'm like, "Hello." He goes,

"Hello, John."

I certainly wasn't expecting it.

Anybody said was, "If we can get this off the ground," you know,

"would-- will you play?" It's kind of like that.

Louis was just hilariously difficult to talk to.

"Are you sure? You're putting your own money in it, John."

"Don't put your own money into it."

I'm like, "You can't be serious."

'Cause I remember John before

and he was, I guess, pretty different than he is now.

I think the difference is Rambo.

As a manager, he's got John into a position

where John can feel that he can do

this, you know, in a particular way.

I'll tell you, when I rang Wobble and spoke to him,

I didn't recognize his voice at all.

John called me. I was getting me feet done.

It's already nice summer's day, rather cold.

I like the old reflexology. Yeah, they talked about

doing, you know, Would you come with us?

I said, "Well, look... My people are sort of your people."

You know, so...

For me, it wasn't the venue

we used to play either. It wasn't the way to do it either.

So aesthetically, financially, could go over the first hurdle.

And then it was really the bass player and Scott.

It was great.

[music playing]

And I looked to his website and I thought, "Just genius."

He's perfect PiL.

He wrote everyone from Stevie Winwood to the Spice Girls.

That sense of openness is completely

what I'm always looking for in a human being.

Major thing he was trying to make us all fit as one thing.

Because he got the old stuff

and all the stuff through the 80s and 90s,

he's trying to make it fit as art.

So like it's, it's coming from the same place

where we played it live.

[music plays]

They did first rehearsals,

absolutely guaranteed to be the--

These lads, my gosh.

I mean, I put them in a room, I arrive slightly late

the first day of rehearsal.

And they were already banging way out of "Albatross".

You know, not the most easiest of, of,

of free form things to be approaching

but gosh, I walked straight into the room,

straight on to the mic, and bang, that was it.

♪ If I wanted to ♪

'Cause it gets hard. Some of the players like "Albatross".

There are no parts. There's just this

scene that, scene this, scene just-- and they,

and you can't say when anything will follow anything.

And when John's singing, I have to sort of,

sometimes I have to preempt things,

sometimes I have to be after him.

I've got no idea every time I play.

And I'd never want to play it the same way twice

because it would kill him.

♪ You are and always will be ♪

♪ Unbearable ♪

♪ You ran away ♪

♪ You ran away ♪

♪ You ran away ♪

♪ You ran away ♪

[John] I have many, many managers over the years.

You constantly tryna

get some kind of structure in my life that would work and,

and I find the only way that really works best for me

is Rambo because he's,

he's um, he's like me

and he's not really dependable.

I just want a little man.

It isn't, Dave. It's not quite finished yet.

Is this my standing position?

Indeed.

Am I allowed to go outside or is that--

[John] I mean now, there's some security presence in PiL, it is,

it's Rambo standing on one side.

So I'm there. I'm also feeling, you know,

I don't wanna get too focused on

the music, I'm watching the crowd.

I could spot someone that might try to get on the stage.

If they get on stage, sometimes they're okay.

Some are like, I'm gonna fight you.

♪ Better days ♪

♪ Better days will never be ♪

♪ Better days will never be ♪

♪ Better days will never be ♪

[John] Let's go around once more.

You fucking idiots.

[crowd cheers]

Yow!

With also like to watch out as well when security,

security beating ourselves to the crowd.

I'll let John know and I'll let John say something.

You know, we don't hold any punches,

we really love our crowd.

They come to support us so

you know, we really want them to

be part of it and not be bullied.

[faint music]

There you go. Last night. [sighs]

Before we start all over again.

I think I'm gonna miss it, I'm gonna miss it like mad

and the gaps are gonna drive me nuts.

'Cause I've got, I've got to really, really like doing this.

First time in 30 years. It's like, it's not painful.

-It's fucking enjoyable. -[laughter]

[exhales]

-First count. -First count, come on.

-[John blowing nose] -[crowd cheering]

Yeah, right. He's only showing off for the camera.

[crowd cheering]

[John] This is PiL!

[crowd cheers]

-[John] Hello! -[crowd] Hello!

Are we ready, boys?

["Public Image" playing]

♪ Hello! Hello! ♪

♪ Hello, hello, hello! ♪

♪ You never listened To a word that I said ♪

♪ You only seen me from The clothes that I wear ♪

♪ Or did the interest Go so much deeper ♪

♪ It must have been to The color of my hair ♪

♪ Public image ♪

♪ Oh what you wanted Was never made clear ♪

♪ Behind the image was Ignorance and fear ♪

♪ You hide behind This public machine ♪

♪ You still follow Same old scheme ♪

♪ Public image ♪

I have to be this centrifugal force or this will fall apart.

It needs direction like I suppose everything in life.

Gosh, I think I'm advocating monarchy.

[laughs]

♪ Public image ♪

Hello!

[crowd cheers]

["Shoom" playing]

♪ Fuck you ♪

♪ Fuck off ♪

♪ Fuck sex ♪

♪ Ya bollocks ♪

[door closes]

[laughter]

[inaudible]

[laughter]

[Allan] That was wow. I haven't seen you in so long.

[John] Well, that must be fucked up, you know...

Can't make it any worse than this.

[filmmaker] And you were friends from youth?

-Yes. -This is great.

About 12. 11, 12.

Well, that's the best of friends like any else.

Yeah, it is.

-[inaudible] -I know.

-But it's true. -[laughter]

[indistinct chatter]

[John]... we'll not be enemies, laying out all of them...

[chanting]

[host] Ladies and gentlemen, BMI's 2013 Icon,

-Mr. John Lydon! -[applause]

♪ Is another ♪

- ♪ Fuck off ♪ -[crowd] Fuck off!

- ♪ Fuck off ♪ -[crowd] Fuck off!

♪ Fuck off ♪

["The One" playing]

♪ Ah wooo ♪

♪ Ah wooo ♪

♪ Maybe you were there ♪

♪ Or maybe you can Struck with me ♪

♪ Somebody there ♪

♪ Or maybe they are with me ♪

♪ And in the embers veil ♪

♪ Get up in the fire So when the boat comes in ♪

♪ You're not be the one So when the boat comes down ♪

♪ You're not be a clown ♪

♪ Ah wooo ♪

♪ Yeah you got that one ♪

♪ You're not a clown ♪

♪ You're not the one ♪

♪ Wondering ♪

♪ Where you can put that sun ♪

♪ Under the moon ♪

♪ Or maybe I'll be home ♪

♪ Like a modern man ♪

♪ With a full feather plan ♪

♪ Maybe you're the one ♪

♪ Maybe you're the one ♪

♪ Maybe you're the one ♪

♪ Ah wooo ♪

♪ Ah wooo ♪

♪ Ooh ♪

♪ One ♪

[music fades out]