16/12/2010

John Lydon AKA Johnny Rotten

The Sex Pistols were in the vanguard of punk rock - the anti-establishment youth culture which sprang up in England in the mid 1970s. To the mainstream press they became public enemy number 1 and editorials denouncing them abounded. But the more they were vilified, the more records they sold. Their time in the spotlight was brief - within 2 years they'd split and Sid Vicious, their bass player, was dead from a heroin overdose - taken while he was awaiting trial for the murder of his girlfriend.

The lead singer Johnny Rotten - whose real name is John Lydon - is still going strong. He lives with Nora, his wife of thirty years, in Los Angeles. Now 54 years old, John has been looking back over his eventful life for a newly published limited edition scrapbook containing previously unseen photos of his life - and he's been speaking to Matthew about his journey from a sickly young child growing up in a North London slum, through those heady days of punk mayhem to his new life in California.