PARTING SHOT
Illustration by BRITT SPENCER
JOHN LYDON DESERVES AS MUCH CREDIT FOR THE PUNK EXPLOSION AS any other living human. Not that he is eager for a formal title. “I don’t see music in categories like that,” the 62-year-old says. “You should never allow yourself to be categorized or bracketed or contained or neatly packaged in somebody else’s phraseology.” As Johnny Rotten, the sneering frontman for the Sex Pistols, Lydon mocked the queen, swore on live TV and incited concert mayhem. But he has made far more interesting—and brashly anti-commercial—music as the leader of the pioneering post-punk group Public Image Ltd, which went from 1979’s abrasive and inscrutable Metal Box to an unlikely hit with 1986’s apartheid-inspired “Rise”; the band is currently working on its 11th album. Lydon’s improbably long career with PiL is chronicled in the new documentary The Public Image Is Rotten, in which everyone from Flea to Thurston Moore praises the band’s long-tailed influence. Asked if the film presents the truth, Lydon tells Newsweek, “It’s as good as anything else I’ve ever seen or heard.”