John Lydon: The lead singer of the Sex Pistols on losing his memory and finding his mojo

It’s hard to imagine what the landscape of popular music would look like without John Lydon. As the front man of the Sex Pistols, Lydon is forever emblazoned in the cultural lexicon as Johnny Rotten—the spitting, snarling antithesis to everything establishment and the forever face of punk rock. While his “Rotten” past will always be a pivotal moment in the history of rock and roll, the now 59 year-old musician is quick to point out that he is still much more than a Pistol. Last year Lydon published Anger is An Energy: My Life Uncensored, a surprisingly sentimental autobiography that details Lydon’s tumultuous childhood (including a harrowing, coma-inducing bout of meningitis at age seven that caused him to lose his entire memory), his equally volatile life with the Sex Pistols, and a sprawling career filled with controversy, music, and various stints doing everything from stunting on reality television, hosting nature programs (“John Lydon’s Shark Attack!”) and the arguably very non punk rock act of hawking Country Life butter in TV ads. This fall Lydon returns with What The World Needs Now…, an excellent new album from his other iconic band, Public Image Ltd. Given his reputation as one of the world’s great loose canons, chatting with Lydon is predictably hysterical and radically honest.

T. Cole Rachel: You’ve spent a lot of time this past year out supporting your book. Were you surprised by the way people reacted to it?  

Lydon: Generally, yes. It deals with all those things in my childhood I never really wanted to be brought out into the public eye until now. The reason being, of course, I didn't want to be accused of self-pity or going for the sympathy votes and that somehow, that would've helped my career. I've had a very long career here without all of that stuff and now it's like: here's what's really going on. Have a bang at this number, babies!

Rachel: I love that about it. I know this sounds kind of preposterous, but the book is also very humanizing. I think it makes people see you in a different kind of light.

Lydon: I hope so. I haven't always had the easy life, but I'm not moaning about that. There really is no self-pity. For me, the greatest achievement in my whole life was recovering my memory. What can I tell you? Having to endure those four years of being outside myself looking in when I was a child, wondering who I really was or indeed, who anyone was, or if I even belonged anywhere or to anyone. That set me up really kind of well for the future. Without that, I don't think I could've been quite the Johnny Rotten I turned in to. My greatest achievement was that and then the Pistols and P.I.L. were just like cherries on top of a dreadful, torturous cake.

Rachel: When people meet you for the first time, are they're expecting to have the full Johnny Rotten experience?

Lydon: Which should be what?

Rachel: I don't know. Scowling, cursing, ranting…

Lydon: When you read my book, you realize there's ever so much more to that cartoon characterization that the sensationalist media headlines implied. As indeed, of course, there had to be. Nobody can be that two-dimensional. My life is not a post card.

Rachel: I just wondered if that reputation ever felt burdensome to you.

Lydon: No. I've got to say that in all of it, the negativity included, that I've got a great sense of fun that somehow in my life, I’ve basically managed to offend everybody all at once.

Rachel: You’ve lived in the U.S for a very long time now. Could you imagine living somewhere else at this point or you feel like this is definitely your home?

Lydon: No, I don't want to live anywhere else. I was shocked that America accepted me. The only reason that the American government wouldn't allow me to be a citizen for such a long time was because of the British, who kept an open file on me under the Terrorism Act.

Rachel: This new P.I.L. record is your 10th release with the band. Has your process changed much?  

Lydon: No, it’s pretty ad hoc. Fly by the seat of your pants and hope that all those conversations leading up to the actual recording process were valuable and indeed, they always are. You can't make a record like we do unless communication has gone on before--and I mean in-depth self-analysis.  What it is we try to do is study the human emotions-all of them, the good and the bad-- and try to find some sense of value by being honest about these things. I suppose what I'm looking for, which is what I'm always looking for in other peoples' work, is transparency-that I can see straight through to what it is they're trying to communicate. Sometimes words don't do that enough for me. There aren't enough words that are capable of expressing completely the human emotions. Sometimes has to come with sounds, texture. That being said, the classical orchestra to me is incredibly boring. It's where is the humanity? For me, the first musical instrument in all of nature is the human voice.

Rachel: How do you feel about your own voice?

Lydon: It's a work in process. It's far from perfect, but then again, it doesn't need to be. It's accurate. It accurately portrays what I'm trying to get across in the sentiment of any particular song. It affects me a great deal, performing them live, some of these songs. I'm not just talking this album, but all the way through my P.I.L. years and some of these songs break me down on stage and I will go into a full-on cry because they're so close and personal.

Rachel: In your book you are very candid discussing your own self-doubts and your fears about letting other people down. A lot of people wouldn’t think that about you, given how outrageously self-assured you’ve always seemed.

Lydon: It'll always be there. A lot of people avoid the issues of self-doubt through, well, drugs like heroin-the greatest substitute for that, but nothing good comes out of you on drugs. You lose your soul. I found that fear and self-loathing and all of these things that are wrapped around self-doubt to be actually useful tools. What that is is your body and your mind telling you to get ready to deliver something genuine.

Rachel: Writing a massive memoir requires you to go back and really examine your life, for better or worse. Was that hard for you?  

Lydon: Let's say I didn't do it with rose-colored glasses. It's painful sometimes, but it's there and it exists. I lost my memory for something like four years. That was very, very painful, that sense of isolation. I was a walking zombie and feeling I belonged to no one and I didn't know why. I resolved that and that's why I will never tell a lie to people. I can't stand it, because I know what it's like to have to endure a lie and believe in it because you're so desperate to believe in anything at all that anybody tells you in order to find yourself. Don't lie. Don't inflict that on your fellow human beings.

Rachel: You’ll be on tour for much of this year. Are you excited?  

Lydon: Yes, I am. I really like to push myself to the utmost Nth degree and drive myself almost slavishly to make up for those periods of indolence, which some might call a holiday. It's an odd thing with me; I'm like the world's laziest workaholic.

Rachel: That's good though.

Lydon: That's the influence of mom and dad. My mom, she couldn't care if the house fell down around her, and my dad, he'd be up at 4:30 every morning, no matter what, and he'd have to be brushing or cleaning or banging about for some reason and then off to work. He'd come home and he'd do the same thing all over again and go to bed for four to six hours, at most, and back at it. I've got a bit of both of them in me. It's in time you recognize these things, but in particular, once they've died and you really see them in you. Your parents never really die, they're constantly in there. I know my mom and dad are constantly telling me, "Get up, you lazy cunt…and don't tell no lies!"

The original version of this story first appeared in Man of the World No. 13

Born Again as FATHER JOHN MISTY, singer-songwriter Josh Tillman is raising just the right amount of hell

At a time when so much popular music seems to be literally made for children it’s refreshing to see an artist that is audacious enough to take on the messy business of complicated, adult-sized relationships. For singer and songwriter Josh Tillman—better known these days by his musical nom de plume, Father John Misty—the desire to explore the intricacies of human connection has proven revelatory. After years of toiling in relative obscurity and touring in the shadows behind other more established artists, the 34-year old musician found himself at an impasse. Bored to tears of the sensitive man-with-an-accoustic-guitar trope that felt unavoidably inherent in being a singer/songwriter, Tillman abandoned his previous approach and rechristened himself with the ministerial moniker of Father John Misty, a kind of alter ego that provided him with a creative rebirth. As a result, Tillman has become a kind of sex symbol for the indie-rock world—playing the part of the charmingly erudite louse that sometimes says bad things but ultimately means well, a jerky romantic who wears his heart on his sleeve and isn’t afraid to talk about fucking. He makes folk-inflected pop music that is both sprawling and, at times, incredibly intimate.  More importantly, Tillman is making the admirable effort to actually speak the language of grown ups.

“I'm making music for adults,” says Tillman, calling from a tour stop in Lawrence, Kansas.  “I know it sounds pedantic to say that, but at the same time it's shocking to me how many young kids are at these shows. I'm like, ‘Wow, you're not even going to know what these songs are about for another 10 years or something.’”

Adult-sized attention might be a relatively new thing for Tillman, but he is hardly new to the music business. He spent the better part of his twenties trying, in various guises, to make a name for himself as a songwriter. Having fled from the conservative confines of his evangelical childhood in Rockville, Maryland, Tillman eventually landed in Seattle. It was there that he would eventually spend the better part of the next decade quietly releasing eight full-length records of earnest singer/songwriter fare under the name J. Tillman--to very little notice. It wasn’t until he took on the job of drummer in Seattle indie-folk band Fleet Foxes in 2008 that his musical life began to radically change. Though he was essentially a hired gun in the band with little creative input (he eventually jumped ship from the band in 2012), the experience of touring the world emboldened Tillman to rethink his own creative ambitions. Thus, Father John Misty was born. His first album under the new moniker, 2012’s Fear Fun, proved to be a kind of sleeper hit, eventually charming its way onto lots of critical “best of” lists and turning Tillman into the indie-rock equivalent of a rock star.

“I've never been particularly sentimental about the past,” says Tillman of his early body of work. “To be honest, it was sort of surreal to plunge the knife into that 10-year body of work and just be like, ‘This is over, and something else has to grow where all of this is going to die.’ I'm ambivalent because I have some empathy for 21 year old me. I was just addicted to some fucking archetype. I was trying to embody something that just wasn't me. I think that for that period of time I was looking for a painless existence. I was trying to anesthetize my life, and I think that in my mind being a working singer-songwriter was going to cure my life. I was a kid, you know?”

Tillman’s most recent album--2015’s I Love You, Honeybear—is decidedly not kid stuff.  Both beautiful and occasionally exasperating, It’s a record that balances a very tenderhearted narrative about romantic love (the album is essentially a document of Tillman’s courtship and eventual marriage to his now wife and frequent collaborator, Emma) and a kind of snarky indictment of all the things it is supposed to be celebrating. It is, as one Pitchfork critic described it, a record “so cynical it’s repulsive and so openhearted it hurts.” One of the album’s many pleasures is trying to decode where the joke ends and the sincerity begins. The album is packed with zinging one-liners and smirky delivery (“Mascara, blood, ash and cum / On the Rorschach sheets where we make love”), but Tillman isn’t kidding. At its core Honeybear an album about the ridiculous and amazingness of falling in love with someone and allowing yourself to really be seen by another person. (“Everything is doomed / And nothing will be spared / But I love you, Honeybear”) In a culture that seems increasingly only comfortable operating in absolutes, the fascinating slipperiness of Father John Misty is arguably Tillman’s greatest achievement.

Since releasing Fear Fun in 2012, Tillman has cultivated a formidable persona—equal parts modern day lothario and intellectual rogue whose work treads an almost invisible line between irony and sincerity. He is a showman—an artist prone to grand gestures and occasionally ham-fisted stage antics involving props and audience participation—but his music is imbued with a kind of emotional maturity that belies the fact that Tillman himself can occasionally be a clown (albeit, a sexy one). Not only are there very few other artists are writing as honestly or as ruthlessly about sex and love, it’s hard to imagine any of Tillman’s current indie-rock peers writing a song called “When You’re Smiling and Astride Me” and have it sound not only sexed-up, but deeply romantic.

“I could just start ranting and raving, but I do think that by and large songs about love are typically advertising some fantasy, some faith-based reality that doesn't exist,” says Tillman. “Love and companionship in this day and age is viewed almost strictly in term of compatibility. Is this other person going to be this source of constant amusement for me for the next 40, 50 years? Will we get bored? Will this person help facilitate a painless existence for me?”

Given the deeply personal nature of Honeybear’s subject matter, it’s understandable that Tillman initially had reservations about performing the record live. Now, deep in the middle of what looks to be another full year of nonstop touring, he seems to have come to terms with not only sharing his music (“The last time around, the shows could be sort of borderline antagonistic,” he says. “Because I was so skeptical of myself and skeptical of the whole enterprise. Thankfully that feeling ran its course”), but he also accepts the often conflicted way that people view him. Though he is quick to point out that there exists a difference between himself and Father John Misty, the question of sincerity—whether Tillman is doing something deeply satirical or if he really means it—remains somehow central to his appeal. The irony that Father John Misty might actually be the most deeply authentic thing he’s ever done is not lost on Tillman.

“People need me to be one thing or the other,” he says. “I've been called a pretentious blowhard by some, and then by others I'm regarded as a total clown. I do think that it's difficult to reconcile the two sometimes…but I don't see any other way forward in terms of portraying life as I see it. To me, exploitation is lying to the audience, or manipulating the audience in some way. On a personal level, I want to play chicken with the audience. I think there's some kind of... it is not a morbid thrill, but I think it's some kind of variant on something that happens in my relationships, too. It's sort of this baring of yourself, you want to show more and more.”

The original version of this story appears in Man of The World Issue No. 12

THE NOTORIOUSLY ELUSIVE JONI MITCHELL OPENS UP ABOUT HER INCREDIBLE NEW UNDERTAKING, AND WHY SHE’LL BE THE ONLY ONE WHO TELLS HER OWN LIFE STORY

Before I can dive headlong into a conversation with Joni Mitchell, there are a few things that the 71-year-old icon needs to clear up. “You aren’t going to call me a folksinger, are you?” she asks. “You aren’t going to say that I’m like the female Bob Dylan—or worse—a singer-songwriter, are you?” It’s a jarring way to begin an interview, but in Mitchell’s case a totally understandable one. Although she is one of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century, Mitchell remains deeply misunderstood. Some will always see her as the sunny-haired, dulcimer-playing folk naïf of “California” and “Both Sides Now” but Mitchell’s body of work—a back catalog 19 albums deep—is unlike any other in popular music. Her sense of harmonics, innovative song structures, and uncanny take on jazz remain totally singular. Given the scope of her influence, Mitchell has earned the right to be a little thorny when it comes to the subject of her legacy. “I’m liable in interviews to get frustrated and become stupidly boastful,” she says. “I just want things to be acknowledged. It’s like, don’t make me say it.“