Discography
66 releases – 2 under his own name, 1 under 1 pseudonym, 58 in other groups and 5 credits on others' music Edit
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In other groups (58)
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Credits on others' music (5)
- Tracks on others' music (10)
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In the News
( 4 stories between 14th October 2008 and 22nd February 2010 )Punk Loves Pink
Feb, 22 2010
Of all the collaborations imaginable, the pairing of ex-Sex Pistols frontman John Lydon and prog rock behemoths Pink Floyd seems one of the least likely. After all, this is the iconic leader of a band said to be the antithesis of prog, a seminal punk band that convinced rebellious, angry kids that their fathers’ favored music was pretentious and boring. In a new interview with British music newspaper The Stool Pigeon, Lydon claimed that he had been approached by Floyd’s Dave Gilmour.
“Two years ago when they came to L.A.” Lydon said, “they asked me would I come on and do a bit of Dark Side Of The Moon with them and the idea thrilled me no end. Well no, it would have been very, very neat but it stunk a little in my head of 'What am I doing here?' I came so close to doing it… it felt like I was trying to set myself up as some kind of pretentious person. I’m very wary of the jam session end of things. I just don’t want to do it. But I wanted to do it. But just not when 20,000 people were there. I’d have gone to a studio and played around with it there. But not for the bigger picture. Privately, I’d love to go into the studio and do something with the album with them.”
Lydon is known for his attention-grabbing soundbites, so it’s possible that this is no more than an elaborate ruse on his part. But if not, we hope he’ll reconsider, because we’d love to hear the results of that day in the studio.
Cranky Old Punk Gets Cranky
Dec, 19 2009
It’s almost like the last 30 years never happened: there’s a punk band on tour and they’re generating a bit of press for themselves by dissing other genres of music. Public Image Ltd. reformed this year and is currently touring Britain, and though it’s possible that the public appetite for the PiL brand of post-punk has waned, the old school venom and anti-establishmentarianism seems to be as alive as ever. In his time-honored style, frontman John Lydon spat: "Coldplay and Radiohead bug the hell out of me because it's so soulless. It just seems pointless. It's nice, but it's tosh. It’s too much with no content. They don’t care about you. They care about lining their coffers. There’s nothing about heart and soul, they don’t know about people dying, living, aspiring.”
It’s all a bit déjà-vu: he said much the same -- as Johnny Rotten -- about the established acts which were selling albums at the time of his original band, the Sex Pistols, in the mid-1970s. It worked then, and fired the souls of the first wave of teen punks, but whether it will work quite so well in the cynical noughties is doubtful, especially when your punk credibility's been damaged after a few wasteland years doing daytime TV and commercials. Lydon said “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," but if that means more butter recommendations, will anyone still be listening?
John Lydon
Sep, 7 2009
Early contender for Reunion Story Of The Week is the emerging news that John Lydon plans to reform Public Image Ltd., albeit without original co-founders Jah Wobble and Keith Levene. The band, which he established in 1978 after the dissolution of the Sex Pistols, disbanded in 1993 after increasingly lackluster album sales, but Lydon seems to feel that public appetite is keen enough to give it another try. "We'll see where we can go," 53-year old Lydon told Brit newspaper The Guardian, "some things may be quite similar, some may not." Certainly Lydon may find it difficult to re-cast himself as the angry poster child of the punk revolution, especially in light of his recent forays into reality television shows and advertisements for butter. Middle-aged British punks can see how he and his band fare during a planned five-date tour in December, tickets for which go on sale on September 11.
