John Lydon Honors His Late Parents With Public Image Ltd.

Posted on May 17th 2010 12:00PM by Steve Baltin
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Even though John Lydon once proclaimed "I am an Antichrist, I am an anarchist," the rock icon who adopted surname of Rotten still cared about making mom and dad proud. Now, he tells Spinner his late mother and father would be very happy that he's back with Public Image Ltd. "PiL, for my mom and dad, was the band that they love the most because they knew that's where my heart and soul was," he says.

That his parents were fans of PiL has to make the band's current successful comeback tour bittersweet for the singer. "There was some great personal tragedy in my life because my father died," he says of his dad's passing from a heart attack in January of 2008. That shock brought Lydon back to his post-Sex Pistols band, though financial limitations made the experience even more difficult. "The resources have been absolutely stifling and incredibly upsetting," he says. "It seems to me I've put myself in a position of profiteering from my own father's death because it brought me straight back into songs like 'Death Disco,' which is a song I wrote about my mother's death."

But Lydon, who says, "I'm definitely ahead of my time, I always have been -- just the nature of the beast," is used to not being understood. "It's not an easy life when you live on the cutting edge, as I think I do musically," he says. "Nothing's made easy at all. Record companies view us with suspicion because they don't quite know how to package what Public Image is, what John Lydon is -- or anything at all, really."

Still, he's hoping though that will change with this tour. "I have to do this tour really to show the potential of what PiL has been," he says. "The songs are as current and as up to date as they ever have been and that's some 25 years of songwriting."

Either way, PiL is moving forward after they get off the road. "We're definitely heading towards recording new material," Lydon says. We're sure his parents would be pleased.