Just before John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) flew off to the USA for his recent set of dates with Public Image Ltd. (PiL), I had a chance to visit him at his flat, near punk’s old stomping ground, the Kings Road area of London. His Victorian townhouse was unmistakable because it was the only one painted grey on an otherwise white block, and all the blinds were conspicuously pulled shut.

“Apart from the time we rehearse and record,” he said, “I sit in here and vegetate, play with my hole and love it.”

The inside was decorated in secondhand browns and greys. The furniture was sparse. In one corner there was an awesome stereo blasting dub reggae at full tilt and on the adjoining wall was Lydon’s favorite toy, his TV and Betamax. Surprisingly, Sex Pistols posters pockmarked the walls and over the fireplace used as a trashbin a sign read “Are We Not Men” without the answer.

Lydon was sitting on a couch with his cat Satan on his lap. He looked thin and messy, a shade taller than I would have expected. His reddish hair was short and spiked. The most surprising thing about his appearance was a slight overbite which came to life when he talked but looked almost goofy as he sat quietly.

About eight or nine other zombies sat around with Lydon watching a shrunken indistinguishable video image on the TV. It appeared that he liked the insulation of surrounding himself with people who didn’t say very much. When he spoke they usually just nodded and a soon-to-be-displaced drummer especially seemed like a lobotomy case, just staring and offering me cigarettes.

When the TV was finally turned off, Lydon opened almost predictably by complaining about the recording companies. Warner Brothers, his American label, he dismissed with one word, “Shit.” They never did release the first PiL album. And Virgin, his label everywhere else, he accused of being “too middle of the road.”

His problems with the record companies run like a soap opera. Although it would be hard to top the $100,000 escape clause the Sex Pistols received after their first EMI single caused record plant workers to go on strike, Lydon continues to keep record company executives up in arms. The most recent controversies focused on the packaging of their latest album as a set of three singles in a metal box and Lydon’s claim that the first album was sabotaged by Virgin engineers. It’s probably Lydon’s insistence on doing everything his way, from printing t-shirts to negotiating record contracts, that has delayed PiL’s American assault more than anything.

Not the PiL performs live much, anyway. They’ve played only a handful of gigs since their conception; their sporadic American dates are the closest they’ve come to assembling something resembling a tour, but in some ways you can’t really blame them for their reclusiveness. Most people can’t really comprehend the albums and would probably have very little patience live. “C’mon let’s see what this is about,” Lydon asserts is his audiences’ real motivation.

He also refuses to play anything by the Sex Pistols, which alienates all the Johnny Rotten fans. Referring to one gig: “It was sick. All they did all night was shout ‘Anarchy’ and ‘God Save the Queen.’ For God sake, we’re a different fucking band. I don’t like to dwell in the past.

“People always have such fond memories of olden days gone past, like there wasn’t anything to look forward to. Those cunts are so stupid. It’s really bad.”

Although Lydon abhors “getting asked the same boring questions about the past,” he acquiesed just long enough to put it in a nutshell.

“Before the Pistols began,” he said, “English music was desperately bad. There wasn’t anything. We tried to change all that but we got fucked up. Before I realized what was happening it had run away from us.”

He again accused his audience. “The whole fucking thing became so absurd. I thought people would realize...

“As soon as they’d see anything with the name ‘Sex Pistols’ on it they would buy it. Now that’s strange, that’s fucking stupidity. It could be anyone. Just put the name on it and they’ll buy it.

“I was accused of selling out when I became so-called famous. Who made me famous?—the audience.

“They’re like sheep most of the time. It’s easy, let’s face it, and quite a nice feeling to be told what to do, to have no thoughts of your own, no pressures, no worries.”

Ultimately, Lydon points the finger at Malcolm McLaren, the Pistols’ manager, for their break-up, but at the same time hints at his own involvement.

“What happened to Malcolm is his own fucking creation. He’s so pathetic. He took his ridiculousness just a bit too far. When he started acting like God I’d tell him to shut up. It was easy for him to manipulate the likes of Paul and Steve. He was laughing in their fucking faces and they didn’t recognize it. It got boring...he never accepted the facts.”

As for Sid, “It was funny that he died the night that he got out, isn’t it? The first thing he did was run back to mommy. ”

Lydon again alludes to McLaren’s involvement: “Malcolm asked me if I wanted to fly to New York to support Sid and how we would have such a wonderful time. That’s how it was. He never had any fucking intention to help Sid.”

Has he ever thought of telling “the untold 3tory”?

“Do you think anyone would believe it? They’ve already brought up a picture in their minds that’s already fixed. Why should I go around spitting and vomiting, covered with fucking beer stains? They’ve said I sold out but that was never the real me. I just kind of fucking existed. But that’s what the fucking audience expected.”

Lydon claims that he’s gotten away from all that. To avoid the problems he encountered with the Pistols, he says: “It starts right from the fucking beginning. You’ve got to get it in order then or it will fucking get out of hand. What happens is that you start with some stuff, you keep on with the same kind of people, then your audience rushes in and you’re big all of the sudden. THEN THEY WANT THAT SOUND FROM YOU FOREVER AND EVER; play the same old favorites, night after night until a 30-day tour is up. It’s nonsense. It’s rubbish. It’s a load of shit and it destroys us. You have nothing to look fqrward to afterwards. It’s not what it is all about.”

But as much as Lydon would like to avoid the entrapments of the music business, he still gets snagged. He feels that some people have a personal vendetta against him, the press in particular .

“I don’t blame them. Do your job. Anyway, they fucking couldn’t get away with it if they weren’t such a bunch of idiots .

I would like to get rid of those fucking egomaniacs, those bastards with chips on their shoulder's who like to berate other people’s efforts. It’s easy to sit behind a typewriter and criticize other people’s efforts, while you’re sipping brandy.

“The music papers ultimately work with, for and together with the business. They have to. The record companies and the press are the same thing—they are there to manipulate.

“I’ve given up caring a long time ago, the record companies don’t give two shits. It’s all a load of garbage. I just do it.”

Do you get bitter?

“I get bitter about prejudice, yeah.” Lydon recounts the adverse reaction to PiL’s gig on Christmas Day, 1978. “You can’t tell me that it was a fucking accident. Every fucking paper decides to criticize me. That’s more than a fucking coincidence.

“For some reason I also got blamed for the demise of the Sex Pistols. I’m afraid it didn’t count for much even when the Pistols existed. They didn’t have the slightest interest in them and that is fact.”

Amidst all this gloom, there is one shred of positivism that seems to justify all Lydon’s reproachments: “Anyone can fucking play [an instrument] if they fucking wanted to. Just if they fucking bothered. The attitude is that you can’t fucking play like that, it’s not music, you have to play set musical patterns. That’s fucking nonsense. Says who? Once you fucking get out of that, you’re a happy man.”

Lydon certainly seems to incorporate this philosophy in his own music. Describing the composition of PiL songs, he says, “We just do it. We don’t talk about it, we don’t fucking think about it, we just do it. There’s no bullshit involved, no intellectual reason.

“Someone has an idea and either we all do it or we don’t. Maybe Wobble will come up with a bass line, then the drums, singing \ and Keith’s guitar and then we go to the mixing board. That’s where all the fun is.”

They've said I sold out, but that was never the real me.

Are the songs written in the studio?

“That’s a trick of the trade. ”

Lydon has moved galaxies beyond the rock ’n’ roll he undermined and now dismisses as a racket. “I don’t mind a. good racket but I like a bit of variation sometimes.”

PiL’s music is more than unorthodox, it’s highly ritualized. Levine has a reputation for not practicing unless they are paying for studio time. His playing varies between a search for the lost chord and patterned abuse. Wobble’s bass is mixed to pound like a rush of nitrous oxide.

When I made the mistake of suggesting to Lydon that maybe his voice was limited in comparisdrt to Levine and Wobble, he quipped: “You’re joking, man. Mine has the widest scope. My possibilities are literally limitless. I play with my voice. They said I couldn’t sing, now they know I can’t and they’re right.”

At this point the interview disintegrated. Lydon summed up everything by saying it wasn’t worth talking about. Playing “Albatross,” one of the catchier tunes off Second Edition he lost himself in a modified huboon stomp. One of his mates gave me a t-shirt and sent me on my way, accompanied by “Dog,” a 13-year-old PiL fan, who told me that Lydon had picked him up at a Zigzag party.

Lydop’s overbearing nihilism and paranoia were hard to shake. The interview wasn’t even a series of peaks and valleys but rather like a descent from Mt. Everest to the k Marianas Tirench. It started out OK with a good smoke, but once something formal set in the mood died. When someone only reluctantly talks about their past, what they’re doing and what they’re going to do it doesn’t leave much to work with, especially when it’s impossible to fathom yvhat is going on in Lydon’s head.

Nevertheless, you have to admire him for what he’s doing, even if you c^n’t relate to it. PiL is one band committed to innovation. They satisfy no one but themselves. Even though their music isn’t pleasant, and a bit taxing at times, it slaps you in the face with brutal realism. Lydon seems to hit at the core of the things we like to think about the least—death, decadence, fear. .,.it’s all there and what makes it all the more frightening is that you can dance to it.