Johnny Lydon-Tool or Cool?

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Originally posted by the 12 th man
its called raising your public profile when your carreer would benifit from doing it.look at royston brady,says zip for a year and when the euro election looms up he starts bad mouthing the dub city councillors.

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It's because he's releasing a greatest hits, he is also doing it with PIL........ last year he refused most interviews stating the tv was almost as evil as the monerchy, low and behold he's on tv acting like a teenager having a temper tantrum c here see there.


public profile was not important to him last year, punk was no fashonable it is meant to be now (which goes against what punk stood for) so he killed the goose

I've heard he was born in County Galway but others say London. Does anyone know what part of Co Galway he was born or what part of Co Galway that his father came from?

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Originally posted by Paddy Ramone
I've heard he was born in County Galway but others say London. Does anyone know what part of Co Galway he was born or what part of Co Galway that his father came from?

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John Lydon
(Redirected from Johnny Rotten)

John Lydon (born January 31, 1956, Finsbury Park, London - although according to his autobiography this cannot be confirmed as his birth certificate was lost), also known as Johnny Rotten (a nickname deriving from the state of his teeth), was the iconoclastic lead singer of the Sex Pistols and Public Image Ltd (PiL). With his leering, swaggering and sarcastic manner he laid down a new template for rebellious youth and band frontman that continues to be imitated today.

Lydon was chosen by Malcolm McLaren to front the Sex Pistols on the basis of his image. Lydon was hanging around McLaren's clothes shop Sex (co-owned with designer Vivienne Westwood) in 1975 after McLaren had returned from a stint of travelling with the outrageous proto-punk band The New York Dolls and was hatching plans for world domination. Lydon was apparently wearing a Pink Floyd T-Shirt with the words 'I Hate' scrawled in felt-tip pen above their name when offered the job. He was always an unlikely candidate to be involved in someone else's media scam though, being at all times un-cooperative, touchy and supremely self-confident.

His interest in dub music and his post-Sex Pistols work with PiL and artists such as Afrika Bambaataa and Leftfield showed him to be far more musically sophisticated than his Pistols persona suggested. Indeed, Malcolm McLaren was said to have been quite upset when Lydon revealed during a radio interview that his influences included Can, Captain Beefheart and Van Der Graaf Generator. Such acts were not in keeping with the 'punk' image McLaren wished to see projected.

Today Lydon is a freelance counter-culture journalist in Los Angeles and has reported from events such as the Seattle Riots.

In January 2004, Lydon appeared on British reality television programme I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!, proving he still had the capability to shock by calling the show's viewers "****ing ****s" during a live broadcast. The television regulator and ITV, the channel broadcasting the show, between them received 91 complaints about Lydon's use of bad language.

In an interview previous to the shows first episode, he had described it as "moronic", and throughout the shows run he had displayed an indifferent attitude to staying and threatened to walk out on numerous occassions. 30 hours following ex football star Neil Ruddock's departure, Lydon left the show for unclear reasons.

British newspapers claimed that Lydon had won a £100 bet with Ruddock over who would stay in the longest. Lydon, however, stated on air that he felt he would win outright and that it would be unfair to the other celebrities for him to win. He had a well publicised dislike for a fellow competitor, British glamour model Jordan (Real name: Katie Price), though it is unclear wether this directly contributed to his leaving the show. When asked who would win, he said that he would like Kerry McFadden to win because "she's a real person."

His dad also John is from Tuam, co Galway and his mother Eillen who passed away in 1979 was from Cork, Johnny and all his brothers were all born in London. He does carry an Irish passport and in anything i've ever read about him he alway's refer's to himself as Irish.
I know going on that program was'nt very punk and was very much like a publicity stunt but the fact remains he had a massive impact not only to music but to society in general at that time and for a long time after. He was the first muscian (as far as i know) to publicly rip into the monarchy and slag off the hypocrisy and bull**** that goes with them. If a band was to make a song slagging them off now nobody would bat an eyelid but to do it in 1977 when mrs Battenberg was having her silver celabrations was almost like a massive bomb going off (and I can even remember all that silver party rubbish) and he ended up with not been able to walk the street's so it was more then the bank account that had a price.
Prior to the Sex pistols appearing on the scene the music industry was going through a state of total staleness, where middle class prog rock band's were the norm and even some had a good say on what band's could be signed by their record company's, so the sex pistols arrival was one of the biggest explosion's to ever happen in music, it gave music a massive kick up the behind when it so badly needed. So many bands from The Smiths, Joy division/new order, the pogues, siousie and the banshees just to name a few said they went out and formed bands after seeing the sex pistols live, even Joe Strummer hacked his hair short and formed the clash after seeing the pistols live.
So he's made a few quid far play to him a lot of the money he made in sex pistols he had to win back off Malcom Mclaran in court years later.
He told the truth back in the 70's to the working class's that the very rubbish the were all falling over to celabrate and were
subsidising were part of the regime that was keeping them down.
I hav'nt got a problem he went on to make a few quid he was part of two great bands and he upset a hell of a lot of people who deserved it.

Conor old man, that's a wonderful post! :)

agreed.....quality post!!