Sex Pistols will never play again, says Lydon

Sex Pistols will never take the stage together again, says frontman John Lydon.

Speaking at a Q&A event to promote his new autobiography Anger Is An Energy at London’s Rough Trade East record shop, Lydon insisted that he will never play again with Steve Jones, Glen Matlock and Paul Cook, labelling the trio “talentless fucks.”

“Those talentless fucks can fuck right off,” said Lydon, responding to a question as to whether the iconic punk band might be tempted into another reformation. “We loved each other for all of two and a half minutes. Those songs mean too much to me to go back to that situation again.”

In an entertaining and lively 45 minute Q&A session Lydon also revealed that he’d been asked to work on a duet with Kate Bush, but that the female vocalist ultimately rejected his song, Bird In Hand, which he recalled as “a song about the illegal parrot trade.” The singer also discussed David Beckham (“How many of my haircuts has that fuck nicked?”), his collaboration with Ginger Baker on PiL’s Album (“I love Ginge the minge”) and defended his decision to star in a TV advert for Country Life butter, by insisting that without his participation, he would not have been able to fund a new PiL album. “Butter sales went up 85% because of me,” he noted. “Because of me British cows were warm that winter.”

John Lydon’s Anger Is An Energy book is out now. PiL will play Indigo at the 02 in London on December 13.

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.