John Lydon Calls Coldplay and Radiohead 'Tosh'

Attention, international indie rock stars! Grumpy old man of punk revivalism and professional quote merchant John Lydon has a few home truths for you.

"Coldplay and Radiohead bug the hell out of me because it's so soulless," the artist formerly known as Rotten told BBC 6 Music. "It just seems pointless. It's nice, but it's tosh. I've been out of this country for a few years and you seriously do need me back here to tell you what's what".

"They don't care about you. They care about lining their coffers," continued Lydon, who is currently leading a new incarnation of his influential post-punk act Public Image Ltd on a nationwide reunion tour. "There's nothing about heart and soul, they don't know about people dying, living, aspiring."

It's not exactly surprising that Lydon would take aim at the "fiddly studio gadgetry" of Chris Martin and Thom Yorke's neo-prog rock acts. After all, the singer famously turned up for his first Sex Pistols audition in a homemade "I Hate Pink Floyd" t-shirt, and these days boasts an inexhaustible arsenal of ready-made rants against the musical great and good.

But spare a thought for big-in-the-80s Mancunians James, whose "pompous presentation" somehow ended up in the curmudgeonly frontman's rhetorical gun-sights, like so much pop cultural collateral damage.