By Marshall Fine
Gannett News Service

(July 14, 2000) -- Don't go quoting Neil Young to John Lydon. Not after Young stiffed Lydon for an appearance on Lydon's VH1 television show, Rotten TV.

Lydon, better known as Johnny Rotten, contacted Young's management about getting the classic rocker -- whose song My My Hey Hey (Out of the Blue) includes the lyrics "The king is gone but he's not forgotten/This is the story of Johnny Rotten" -- to sit still for an interview. Lydon was turned down.

"I was told Neil Young only talks to people he knows," Lydon says, alternately sipping black coffee and skim milk in a hotel lounge on a recent morning. "That will make for a very lonely existence for Neil, I'm afraid. I thought it was very curious that he could write a song about me but not want to talk to me."

He pauses, then succumbs to a subversive smile when asked what he thought when he first heard Young's song: "I was confused by it and I still am. I have no idea what on Earth he meant."

Blunt, brutal honesty: It's Lydon's trademark and always has been. It's what Rotten TV, a series of specials on VH1, is about. And it's the reason Lydon agreed to participate in The Filth and the Fury, a documentary about the Sex Pistols that is in limited release.

"Why'd we make the movie? To get at the truth, which is far more enjoyable than anything else," he says. And the most important truth in the film, he points out, is that the group's manager, Malcolm McLaren, had very little to do with the band's music or success -- McLaren's myth-making to the contrary.

"It wasn't so much him as the fact that the media was willing to propagate that nonsense," Lydon says with a voice that seems veined with ennui, even when he's engaged in his subject. "Maybe the truth was too much to bear. We are disgusting and dreadful people. We really meant it. Some of the survivors still do."

No longer a victim of British dentistry, Lydon looks healthier and more solidly built than when he was the snaggle-toothed wraith who fronted the Sex Pistols in the mid-1970s. Dressed this day in a stiff black denim jacket with a lime jersey peeking through, he looks better-fed than in the days when his every movement and utterance hit the front pages of easily shocked British tabloids.

Oh, the hair is still a color not found in nature: on this day, an orangey yellow. But Lydon's penchant for speaking his mind is no longer the red flag it was when the Sex Pistols and punk rock were considered a sure sign of impending societal apocalypse. He rejects the notion that he's become a rock icon in the intervening quarter-century, Neil Young to the contrary.

"I'm an icon-buster," he claims. "I don't mind influencing people but I do mind when they imitate me. That's not what anything is supposed to be about. When I wave a flag, it means you should wave your own flag, not stand behind mine."

As The Filth and the Fury shows, the Sex Pistols shocked the world during a nova-like run between 1975 and 1977. At the same time, the Pistols were victimized by a sensationalist British press, which exaggerated their antics into national scandals. By the time the band reached America, the American press was primed as well.

"The media in England were so confused -- how on Earth could it get clearer here?" he says. "We were far too young to clear it up, and far too dissipated.

"I remember Malcolm at the time saying to let the press have free rein, to ignore what they were saying. And we shouldn't have. I don't like suffering from hindsight but I do remember thinking that was a bad decision, that we should have fought back. It became impossible to tell when they were writing the truth and when they weren't."

The band was signing megabuck contracts, but McLaren's mismanagement meant the musicians were broke, scraping to find enough money to eat on a regular basis.

"It wasn't even a hand-to-mouth existence -- it was foot-to-mouth," Lydon says. "It was worse than being unemployed because when you're unemployed, at least you have the dole."

Did they ever see any of the money? "Eventually, many lawsuits later."

Part of the problem was that the group disintegrated at the end of its only American tour in 1977 and members spent years arguing and sniping at each other in the press, even as they tried to press their case against McLaren. "Unless you take a stance as a whole band," Lydon says, "you can't take a stance at all."

The group recorded one album, but The Filth and the Fury includes loads of previously unseen live footage of the Sex Pistols in performance. That's the part of the group's history Lydon recalls with the most fondness.

"There were many excellent moments, which is a fact that is almost completely overlooked," he says. "The most enjoyable thing was the total freedom onstage. And yet being onstage was discipline. Our tempos were actually quite slow. I found we got more power and poignance that way. You know, it's very easy to drive a car full-speed -- but it runs much longer if you lay off the gas. The same with a song: You don't need to cram it all into a minute and 30 seconds."