John Lydon revealed he’d been accused of profiteering from the 2023 death of his wife Nora.
The former Sex Pistols vocalist said he enjoyed the scary experience of his spoken-word shows, but added that some people appeared to attend in order to show nothing but hatred towards him.
“There’s nothing quite like standing up on a stage completely alone, the shit fear of it. I’ve no script, nothing… And I fucking love it,” Lydon told Louder in a recent interview.
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He continued: “But the reception’s not always favorable. There are some real haters who travel miles, buy tickets, just to come in and say ‘yah boo sucks’ to nanny.
“At one gig somebody stood up while I was talking about my childhood, and said, ‘Isn’t it true you’re trying to profiteer off the death of your wife?’ That’s evil, beyond any concept I can relate to.”
Lydon said he was still dealing with grief over Nora’s death, a process which had been complicated by losing longtime tour manager John ‘Rambo’ Stevens and an uncle. “When you go to bed at night you wonder, ‘Should I just be thinking of Nora?’” he said. “I can’t leave John out; he meant so much to me too. And my uncle now. And of course I went through it all before with my mum and dad, and all that comes back.
“So sleep’s quite hard to get through. The juxtaposition of tragedies – how can I handle them all? I just have to let it flood over me. And it does. Every single night.” He added: “I can hear every one of them, every now and again shouting inside my head. ‘Oh, Johnsies, that song is awful!’ from Nora… You have whole conversations, and you’re not faking them – the dialogue just pops up automatically.”
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Predictably, Lydon was asked about the current version of the Sex Pistols, who are touring with English vocalist Frank Carter; and equally predictably, he didn’t hold back.
“It’s weird,” he said of the lineup. “A dumbing down of all the integrity, intensity, genuine honesty and heartfelt emotions I put into that band. Of course, it’s karaoke, but it’s like, ‘Come on, Mr. Carter – you’re not Johnny Rotten, I am. Right? Stop it.’ Though I actually think he took it on in the right spirit.”
He compared Carter’s approach to that of Billy Idol, who toured under the name Generation Sex with Pistols Steve Jones and Paul Book in 2023. “Poor Billy, he ran out of wind,” Lydon said. “He can’t sing them songs.”
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