• Title: Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs
• Author: John Lydon
• Genre/Subject: Music Biography
• Publisher: Picador
• Publication Date: 1995
• Start date: 8/4/24
• Finish date: 8/7/24

Review:

Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated? Those were the last words spoken by Johnny Rotten as a Sex Pistol. Johnny Rotten was the pseudonym of John Lydon, the front man for the Sex Pistols and this is his story. Much has been written about the Sex Pistols, Sid Vicious, Sid and Nancy but this is the only authorized autobiography of the man whom many consider the founder of punk, punk rock and the Sex Pistols.

This was an excellent biography. It was also very grim. That should be stated in caps, GRIM. And when I was reading it, we got rain. Highly appropriate.

In quantum theory there is a principle which states that when you observe a particle the act of observing it changes the particle. So with punk, the minute you say “I’m a punk” then you cease to be one. And according to Lydon this is the correct way of approaching not only punk but any subculture. Essentially once something gets to be mainstream then it ceases to exist. I disagree but this isn’t about what I think, it’s about what the author thinks.

Lydon starts way back at the beginning with his Dickensian childhood as the son of Irish immigrants living in a slum in 1960s London. And it was grim, but he never suffered from a lack of love and support from his parents so that tempered the grimness. A little.

Lydon makes it clear that he didn’t start the punk scene or at least he didn’t sit down one day and say I’d like to start an anarchic youth movement that would change music forever. The word that would be used now would be organic, in that something gets going on its own and then continues under its own momentum. He also makes clear that if it wasn’t him starting it then someone else would have been. It was an idea whose time had come.

For once, Sid and that dead cunt Nancy were not the center of attention. As a matter of fact there was no more attention given to Sid than to any other band members or the surrounding cast of characters. This was a breath of fresh air. Did Sid murder Nancy? Who cares, she’s dead, he’s dead and that’s great. That’s me talking, and John agrees.

My criticism is the one thing that I keep encountering in so many books, lack of good editing. This book was a 330 page monster that could have been solidly excellent within 200 pages. Banging on about Arsenal hooligans for several chapters could have been easily dropped without any harm to the narrative. As could the song by song retrospective, but I get that many people would scream bloody murder if it wasn’t included.

This was a good book, if it had a better editor it would be a great book. I could go on, but then the same criticism would apply to this review. Good, not great, here endeth the lesson.