John Lydon — the guy who said there is "something missing" in same-sex marriages, called Nigel Farage "fantastic," voted for Trump and supported noted old-school conservative weirdo Jacob Rees-Mogg — has accused his former Sex Pistols bandmates of murdering the band's anti-establishment legacy.
In an interview with The New Cue, Lydon talked (once again) about Danny Boyle's Pistol, the six-part Disney+ series based on guitarist Steve Jones's memoir Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol. In the interview, Lydon doubled (tripled? Quadrupled?) down on his well-documented distaste for the project, saying that it's done serious damage to the Sex Pistols name.
"They've murdered it," he told The New Cue's Chris Catchpole. "They've just absolutely torn it to shreds and taken anything of value and purpose out of it and turned it into a commercial farce. It was very sad to have seen that documentary… I expected better from Boyle."
When asked if he'd watched it, Lydon said he had. "Yeah, it was painful," he continued. "Painful, misguided and mis-directed. Openly abusing something that was truly real — and terrifying at that time — into some kind of middle-class schoolboy fantasy. It felt like it was a script for Grange Hill. The advance publicity of it was incredibly difficult for me."
Later in the interview, Lydon lays out some deeper personal grievances with his former bandmates, angrily discussing their behaviour at a time when his late wife Nora was seriously ill.
"There was some pretty damn insulting things done about Nora around that time frame from them," Lydon states. "I could not take that. There were things implied that were really hurtful. They knew Nora was ill, Paul Cook definitely knew, and they showed no care in the world and just marched me into court and basically cost me a lot of money, which I could have done helping Nora. They left me in a pretty shit financial state, thank you very much, and then put that out there. Ridiculous nonsense. I don't mean to mock it, but it does upset me what they've done. They've killed the energy of it."
Being an aging punk doesn't seem like much fun!
In an interview with The New Cue, Lydon talked (once again) about Danny Boyle's Pistol, the six-part Disney+ series based on guitarist Steve Jones's memoir Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol. In the interview, Lydon doubled (tripled? Quadrupled?) down on his well-documented distaste for the project, saying that it's done serious damage to the Sex Pistols name.
"They've murdered it," he told The New Cue's Chris Catchpole. "They've just absolutely torn it to shreds and taken anything of value and purpose out of it and turned it into a commercial farce. It was very sad to have seen that documentary… I expected better from Boyle."
When asked if he'd watched it, Lydon said he had. "Yeah, it was painful," he continued. "Painful, misguided and mis-directed. Openly abusing something that was truly real — and terrifying at that time — into some kind of middle-class schoolboy fantasy. It felt like it was a script for Grange Hill. The advance publicity of it was incredibly difficult for me."
Later in the interview, Lydon lays out some deeper personal grievances with his former bandmates, angrily discussing their behaviour at a time when his late wife Nora was seriously ill.
"There was some pretty damn insulting things done about Nora around that time frame from them," Lydon states. "I could not take that. There were things implied that were really hurtful. They knew Nora was ill, Paul Cook definitely knew, and they showed no care in the world and just marched me into court and basically cost me a lot of money, which I could have done helping Nora. They left me in a pretty shit financial state, thank you very much, and then put that out there. Ridiculous nonsense. I don't mean to mock it, but it does upset me what they've done. They've killed the energy of it."
Being an aging punk doesn't seem like much fun!