John Lydon on how he’s channelling grief into a new “raucous” Public Image Ltd album

John Lydon has spoken to NME about how the upcoming Public Image Ltd tour and working on new “raucous” music is helping him navigate bereavement.

PiL – the influential post-punk band that Lydon formed out of the rubble of Sex Pistols’ implosion in 1978 – are embarking on a series of dates for their ‘This Is Not The Last Tour’, beginning in May.

From his home in Los Angeles, Lydon said he was “very much” looking forward to hitting the road again, and poignantly explained how it might help him with the grief he feels after his wife of 44 years, Nora Forster, passed away from Alzheimer’s in April 2023.

“I need to get out of the house,” he told NME. “I’ve done enough wallowing, which of course you can’t avoid, even if you think, ‘No, be the bigger man’. You cannot stop it. You cannot stop the sadness when it comes on, but enough already.”

Looking to how events would shape new material, he said: “Sadness is an energy” – paraphrasing PiL’s iconic 1986 track ‘Rise’. “It can either be applied or you can let it eat you alive. The second option is not very interesting to me, so I choose the other way.”

Lydon met Forster in 1975 at SEX (the London boutique run by Vivienne Westwood and Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren) and they married four years later. When Forster was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2018, Lydon became her full-time carer. Lydon, 69, candidly reflected on how he is only now processing the pain of her last days.

“Now I’ve had to face the deeper reality which is now the memories are very clear in my head,” he said. “I had to push them aside for a long time, but her final day was extremely painful for her. She was screaming in agony. It was not an easy send off, and she was utterly confused, asking ‘John, what is happening?’. Every part of her was giving up – the body had given up.”

“And now I’m in this frame of mind where I know I have to face it, but I want to face it, and that might help me perform ‘Hawaii’ live.”

Released in 2023 and a track off PiL’s eleventh studio album ‘End of World’, the single ‘Hawaii’ was a tender ode to Forster; its title was inspired by a cherished holiday Lydon shared with her to the destination in the 1980s.

“Forgive me if I can’t get through it,” he continued, of the difficulty performing it live on the forthcoming tour. “I think you would understand. This is so deep a pain, it’s very, very hard to get over. Definitely I’ve lost about 50 per cent of myself there. You can’t replace it. It’s like a hollowness.”

When ‘Hawaii’ was announced as one of six contenders to represent Ireland at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2023, eyebrows were raised at the prospect of PiL entering the competition, but Lydon (who was born in London to Irish parents and holds an Irish passport) sought to bring awareness to a disease which affects nearly one million people in the UK and 55 million worldwide.

“That was the most wonderful gift Irish television could have given me, ‘cause a couple of people there knew what I was going through and gave us that offer,” he said.

Although the Dublin band Wild Youth were eventually chosen by TV viewers and national and international juries to fly the Irish flag at Eurovision that year, Lydon admitted he never expected to progress beyond the one The Late Late Show selection show performance in February.

“No one expected, least of all me, that it would go any further than that one show, and you’ve got to understand I didn’t want to either, because that would have meant I’d have been further and longer away from Nora,” he said.

“So the opportunity to do that live, knowing I could play that back to her, and share it with her, was lovely. Her comments were, ‘Yes, but why are you crying?’ How could I not? It’s almost an impossible mountain to climb.”

With admirable candour, Lydon said he’s approaching life alone in a “much more open and healthy way”, having previously found solace in alcohol and food. “I couldn’t go into these details last year, because I wasn’t ready to. I couldn’t deal with how punishing the physical torture of her death was for her, let alone myself,” he said.

“You’ve got to hit it on the head and see it this way – that if I’d have died and left her alone, that would have been unacceptable. I would have beaten the fuck out of god for that one. I could never bear the idea of her being alone, and so it’s a small price.”

The punk trailblazer who once ranted the famous credo ‘Anger is an energy’ on PiL’s 1986 track ‘Rise’ (a lyric he later employed as the title of his 2014 autobiography Anger Is An Energy: My Life Uncensored) is now forging ahead by working on new music and embracing his modified mantra: “Sadness is an energy.”

Asked what the embryonic new PiL tracks are sounding like, Lydon laughed heartily: “Oh, it’s great, it’s called ‘A Tragedy in 33 Parts’! It’s 72 hours long and the violins don’t stop screeching and wailing until the last ten minutes!”

Joking aside, he said the band intended to return back-to-basics for their 12th album. “It’s not going to be a dismal record. We’re going to take it back to the roots of a proper rock band, tearing the fucking building down. It’s going to be full on.”

With an “absolutely smacker of a new drummer” recently replacing PiL member Bruce Smith, who departed the band due to personal reasons, Lydon has recommended the group listen to Vanilla Fudge (a New York outfit known for covering well-known songs in a heavy-rock, psychedelic-tinged style) to get a better idea of the “ideology” for new material.

Praising Vanilla Fudge’s 2005 album, ‘Spirit of ‘67’, which he’s specifically using as a lodestar, Lydon said: “They do versions of  The Doors’ ‘Break on Through (To The Other Side)’ and everything else you care to mention, but in a proper, raucous, smash-your-face-in style. Love it! And it’s a good starting point for us to get back into the raw anger and energy of it all.”

“We all need that. And that will help me mentally no end. It’s like shout therapy,” he added.

Check back at NME soon for more of our conversation with Lydon for this week’s edition of Does Rock N’ Roll Kill Braincells?! – where he also shared his views on Frank Carter fronting a high-profile reformation of the three other remaining Sex Pistols.

PiL will be embarking on a full UK and Ireland tour in May. Visit here for tickets and more information. The band have recently shared plans to release the “long lost” alternative US mix of ‘First Edition’ for Record Store Day 2025.

Lydon is also embarking on a live speaking I Could Be Wrong, I Could Be Right – Q&A Tour. For further information visit here

For information and advice about dementia, Alzheimer’s Society runs the Dementia Support Line on 0333 150 3456.

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