Rotten Page 6

  SEGMENT 04:

  JOHN CHRISTOPHER LYDON, MY FATHER

  JOHN CHRISTOPHER LYDON FINSBURY PARK, NORTH LONDON

  I was born John Christopher Lydon in Tuam, Ireland, a little town near Galway. While it’s a very musical town, we didn’t have much to do there outside of joining the brass band. My father used to play the violin, and just like me, Johnny’s the image of him. My mom died when I was five years. I had an Irish driver’s license at the age of twelve and first drove a truck loaded with sugar beets. Then I went to Scotland and drove a truck in Dundee County. I was only fourteen when I arrived in London.

  I have a stepbrother named P. J. Lydon who was in the Irish army for twenty-two years as a band instructor. He’s still there. He’s never seen a gun in his life. You know how the army bands are. He plays marches and football matches, big shows. He was musical, a lot of the Lydons were. My sister married into a family from Castlebar, Ireland, which is in Mayo. Her husband is a professional musician; he played saxophone with show bands. All his brothers played in show bands. One of the brothers’ wives was a professional singer with a show band. Funny, isn’t it? Music is in the Irish blood—or at least in our family blood. Me, I’ve done a bit of everything. I read music. I speak Gaelic. I’m a car mechanic, lorry driver, cabdriver, crane driver, sea diver.

  When John and his brothers were wee kids, we used to put the television on. John and his brother Jimmy danced crazy all day long. Once the music was on, they got carried away—as if they were in another world completely. When they were small, I used to think they were crazy, always dancing, singing, and imitating things.

  My wife, Eileen, was musical as well. My brother introduced me to her in an Irish pub. I was working nearby when the sea wall was flooded. Eileen liked her music. Her family were country people who lived in a little village called Carrigrohane, near Cork, in Southern Ireland. Eileen loved the traditional Irish music.

  We married when I was seventeen, so I more or less grew up with the children. For years I was a crane driver on the North Sea oil rigs. Then I took up diving with the Americans. During a twelve-year period I worked on the rigs while my family was living here in London. I did that right up until the time my wife died in 1979. In fact, I packed up not six months before she died. I was still working then. When the children were young, on the weekends I was home. I’d put them all in a caravanette and drive to the seaside. The kids would be asleep or looking out the window. We’d have a day at the seaside and come back again. Often times the family would stay in London while I was working on the rigs. I had three weeks on and ten days off. They used to fly us there and home by helicopter. For years I worked with the Americans on the pipelines—when they first came to this country. I used to be up on the front end with the welders—I drove the machines. I used to drive the big American Caterpillars. The company often brought the American stovepipe welders over here because English welders were scared of the work. I worked for William Press & Company for twenty-seven years. I also worked for Press International. I’ve worked on a lot of the oil refineries in this country and most of the gasworks. Sometimes I was the crane driver. I put up fuel tanks for the planes. Sometimes when I was out on the rigs, I brought the family to stay nearby. For a year I had a job to the south on the coast in Eastbourne, where we rented a house in a holiday camp that was next to a graveyard. It was empty and strange. During the wintertime, when there was nobody living in there, we rented a chalet in the camp. So my family learned to travel with me.

  Once we were all driving along the motorway, coming back from Ireland. Jimmy, Johnny, my wife, and I were in the car. There was a set of headlights behind us on the motorway that kept flashing. I let this carry on for a while, when all of a sudden I completely lost emotional control. I pulled up in the middle of the moor, jumped out of our car and into theirs. There were four Welsh blokes in the car. Johnny and Jimmy came out with their lemonade bottles, and we attacked them right there on the motorway. Johnny was about eight. I never dreamed there would be four of them in the car, but they were no match for our Irish tempers.

  Confrontation runs in the Lydon family. I remember my Bobby; I came home from work one day, and my wife was at the door with a kid. The poor lad had squares with knots and crosses all over his face. I said to my wife, “What’s the matter with that kid? He looks silly.”

  “Never mind,” she said. “You go indoors.”

  After a while I asked her again. She told me that Bobby jammed the kid in the lift because he called Bobby an Irish bastard or something like that. Bobby grabbed him and drew all these knots and crosses on his face.

  Benwell Mansions on Benwell Road is where Johnny was born. It’s down at the bottom of Holloway Road near the Arsenal football grounds. John was football crazy—still is. We didn’t have a lot of money. We had enough to survive and buy the odd t’ings, that was all. So Johnny’s mum used to knit the gloves, hat, and scarves in the Arsenal colors for the boys. They’d go off to the football grounds to see their team play, their scarves streaming. Even today John jumps to see Arsenal; he loves them. Back then the kids would have the odd punch-up. Somebody’d nick John’s scarf and he’d nick somebody else’s. He’s got plenty of guts in him, Johnny, I’ll tell you that. He won’t back down, either. If he’s pushed to a corner, he’ll punch his way out. He’s not a chicken, he’s hard.

  When Johnny was eight he got quite ill with meningitis. He was very bad. It started off with a pain in the back of his head, and then he lost his memory. He was in the Whittington Hospital. They gave him injections in his back, and then they’d draw fluid to ease the pressure from his spine that had settled on his brain. I’d go into the hospital during the evenings because they couldn’t give him injections during the day. So we’d strap him down in the bed and give him the spinal injections. I was the only one who could hold him.

  To this day Johnny can’t stand injections. He’d probably jump through the window at the sight of a needle. I don’t know how he gets vaccinated or injected now if he needs it. That’s why I can’t see Johnny doing drugs. He’d be gone; he’d faint.

  Losing his memory completely due to the meningitis probably caused half the aggravation he suffered at school. When you have fluid on the brain, you see double. The pain is on the back of your head, not in your forehead. When Johnny came out of the hospital, he didn’t recognize anybody—not even his parents. He couldn’t spell c-a-t. So his mum sat down with him every night. I didn’t have the patience—I’ll be honest about that. But my wife would sit there every night and put things back into his brain. So his mom taught him everything that she knew. Johnny lost everything. As far as education is concerned everything Johnny knows came from his mum. She was just an Irish girl gifted in math. After a few years, Johnny became very intelligent and witty. With it. Together. I suppose he had to learn everything twice. But before his recovery he was like a dummy, so he learned the hard way how to get on. The kids would tease him, “Dummy! Dummy! Dummy!”

  As a youngster Johnny was very, very shy. For years he was so shy it was unbelievable. If somebody come to the house, he would go upstairs. He would never mix. As Johnny got older, when his mum and I went out for a drink, he’d look after the children. I have a picture of his baby brother, Martin, sitting on Johnny’s knee. Johnny was just like a dad to him. He could control his brothers and look after them. He changed Martin’s nappies. Johnny also used to work with me on the weekends. We’d do car repairs on the side. I’d do anything I can. I’m handy with my hands. Johnny used to be, but since he went into the music, he’s never bothered with any of it. He just loves music; he’s crazy about it. Even when you’re talking to him, he’s playing or listening to music.

  Sometimes I used to work locally driving a big mobile crane in London. I’d go to all the gas companies and all the oil refineries. I’d be on call at night, and if they’d ring me up, I’d do a job in the evenings on standby. Around the time Johnny first started listening to music—in this very flat here—I came home
one evening and he had long hair. Right down to his shoulders. I said to him, “When I come back this evening, I want to see that hair cut.”

  Next day he had it dyed red.

  I went away to work and for a few days thought no more about it. One evening I came in. Johnny used to listen to his record player upstairs. He’d sit up there almost twenty-four hours a day. Eventually he came down. He walked into the room and said, “Well, Dad, how do I look now?”

  And his hair was dyed green! It’s a funny thing. We had a little budgie, and it was same color green. I couldn’t look at him. I had to turn around. I almost died. What can you say? I never thought anyone would take to dressing up like that. Johnny used to do outrageous things.

  English people are very sensitive. In fact, Johnny was very quiet and sensitive when he was growing up. But as he got into the music, he changed completely. First we had a bit of a problem with his schoolteacher. I think the teacher was very aggressive, and Johnny gave him a bit of lip. Whatever happened, Johnny got expelled. He couldn’t have been more than thirteen. One Sunday morning, the doorbell rang and there he was, the cardinal—or somebody—from the Catholic church. You have a priest, an archbishop, and then a cardinal, then a pope. This little guy had a red hat. At first I thought he was a Jew boy. He was at the door. I said, “Good morning.”

  “Good morning, Mr. Lydon?”

  “Yeah, come in. So who are you?”

  “I’m the cardinal.”

  He sat down, I made him a cup of coffee, and then he said, “By the way, I’m trying to get your son back into college.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He was expelled.”

  “I never heard anything about it,” I said honestly.

  Sending Jimmy and Johnny to Catholic school didn’t work. Johnny was expelled, didn’t go to school for nine months, and I didn’t know it. After the cardinal came by and told me, I said, “Thank you very much.”

  I looked at his mother, then I looked at Johnny, and he said, “I didn’t like that damned school anyway.”

  Johnny wouldn’t take abuse from anybody. Never. I noticed that as he grew up. He was quiet up until he was fourteen or fifteen. That’s why he got expelled. He was a bit rough, and he wouldn’t swallow crap from no one. He’d always speak his mind: “If you don’t accept me as I am, then don’t accept me at all.”

  That was Johnny’s attitude and still is.

  If you’ve ever seen the big construction engineering gear, big cranes, I used to drive them. When he was in college, Johnny worked as my banks-man. He’d guide me when I was driving so I didn’t hit anything. He was pretty good at it. Once we had this job on a big sewage farm. Johnny’s job was to kill the rats, to keep them out of the cab. We drove a dragline with a bucket; it’s like a great big crane, only you use your feet to work the pedals. The cab is bigger than a house. As I’d swing it around and throw the bucket out, Johnny used to guide me and we’d lower these huge draglines together. I have a photo of Johnny on top of the drag. He could drive those things as well as I did.

  Anyway, once we were digging out a sludge ravine. It looked like an ordinary field, but as we were digging it out, we found it was all live sewage. Rats came out in the hundreds. As banksman it was Johnny’s job to keep them at bay. So there he was with this great big slash hook, chopping at them. When we’d throw down the bucket, the rats would cling to the ropes that connected the bucket to the top of the crane. As the bucket went down when I was digging the earth, the rats would run up along the ropes. Johnny would slash them up, keeping them away from me, because if they came through the windows and jumped on me, with my hands and feet engaged, I couldn’t do anything. It was hard work, but the point was that when he was on his school holidays, he had no cash, except what we’d give him as pocket money. But Johnny was never satisfied with just pocket money because he wanted to buy records. So I got him an extra job once he was off college.

  When I was on the big machine and Johnny was my banksman, I’d say to him, “I’m going to the bog. Drive the thing. Load the lorry.”

  He’d say, “I can’t drive that thing!”

  You see, your feet are on the pedals and you’re holding up the bucket with them. You have six levers in front, and you’re using your elbows and everything. I’d put the loader in gear, jump out, and leave him with it. He’d be screaming, “Dad, Dad, Dad, I’ll be killed!”

  What happens when you work those machines for a while is that the muscles on your legs build up. The backs of your legs get as strong as a horse’s. Johnny was only fourteen.

  “Look, Dad, my muscles are killing me.”

  I’d give him a boot in the back of the legs. Go on, drive it, I said, and kept booting him until he did. That’s how he learned. Once there was a guy who had a heart attack while he was driving another machine. He thought he had indigestion, but I knew he was having a heart attack. We sat him down in the canteen. Johnny was with me, and I told him to go drive the other machine.

  “I’ve never been—”

  I locked the door and switched it on. That’s how Johnny had to approach music, and that’s how he approached life.

  He’s very well educated, Johnny is. He went to Kingsway College. So did Sid Vicious, but Sid was a suffering idiot. He was like a gimmick. If he was sitting here and nobody was taking any notice of him, he’d cut his hand or something to attract attention. You’d have to take your mind off everything else and look at him. That was all Sid ever did. He could never sing or play anything. He used to come here to the house with Johnny when they went to school together. Stupid, he was—really stupid.

  CAROLINE COON: Sid seemed open but very vulnerable. Having come from a sadomasochist childhood myself and being suicidal for a great deal of my adolescence, it moved me. Having been involved with young people who were self-destructive because of their bravery and inability to confront the adults who were manipulating them, I could see something in Sid. If you’re not allowed to express what’s really paining you, if you’re left hanging in limbo with your vulnerability and pain, you’re going to be self-destructive.

  Clothes were always important, even if Johnny wore them differently. For instance, he had long hair, even when the schoolteachers were strictly against it. They were like typical sergeant majors, they thought you should do everything they told you to. When Johnny was young, he wore a uniform—a blazer—to Catholic school. That didn’t go down too well with him. So years later, when he’d become famous, me and the wife went out and bought him a lovely dress suit, including a shirt with lace. He said, “Mom and Dad, that’s beautiful.”

  He went upstairs to put it on. An hour later he came down and he’d cut it to bits and pinned it together. We spent a fortune on this dress suit and he’d cut the sleeves right off! The shirt was all torn to rags. Johnny looked like a scarecrow. He asked, “How does it look, Dad? Do I look nice?”

  If there was a hole in the floor, I’d have jumped in.

  ZANDRA RHODES: The punk movement—with all its tears and safety pins—was a creative movement that started from the street, in the sense that actual youth were being creative with something that was within their price structure. The people who were so-called punk obviously weren’t going into elegance; they went into a totally different direction.

  John was always making something different out of his clothes. If he had a pullover sweater, he’d cut one sleeve off. A brand-new dress suit with lace on the shirt, torn to bits! If the dog had been chewing it for a week, it wouldn’t have looked as bad!

  SEGMENT 05:

  STEPTOE-RAG AND THE FASHION VICTIM

  I consider myself working class. We’re lazy, good-for-nothing bastards, absolute cop-outs. We never accept responsibility for our own lives, and that’s why we’ll always be downtrodden. We seem to enjoy it in a perverse kind of way. As working class, we like to be told what to do, led like sheep to the slaughter. I loathe the British public school system with a passion. How dare anybody have the right to a better educ
ation than me just because their parents have money! I find that vile. They talk this sense of superiority, and they do have it. The upper classes have all the right connections once they leave school, and they parasite off the population as their friends help them along. You never see that with the working class. If you have any kind of success being working class, your next-door neighbors or your best friends will turn around and hate you instantly. “You’re not working class anymore.” Being successful or good at anything demotes or promotes you out of that class bracket.

  That used to worry me when I was a young boy. “Oh, my God, I’ll be classless. I’m doomed.” I couldn’t give a toss now. I regard myself as working class, but I know damn well working class doesn’t regard me that way. That’s just the way it is. It was always that way in school. If you managed to read a book and knew what it meant, then you were a snob, a poof, or a sissy. Fine, I accept all those labels. A bit of intelligence was a lot more useful than just being a beer monster and manipulated all your life.

  Music was a big thing at age fourteen. I started buying records. That would be my most fun, not actually going out anywhere, but just sitting indoors playing my records to myself. I really got off on that. I’d never had any inclination to become a musician. I still don’t. I’m glad I’m not. I’m a noise structuralist. If I can remember how to make the same noise twice, then that is my music. I don’t think you need the rest of the fiddly nonsense unless you’re in a classical orchestra. Instant pop with access to cheap emotions. The basics. I eventually began listening to classical music much later when I was in a better frame of mind. But never as a child.