John Lydon says its “wrong” to credit Patti Smith with punk’s beginnings
John Lydon has said that he believes it’s “wrong” to credit Patti Smith and, more broadly, New York with punk’s origins – saying the UK did it first.
Smith was an essential part of the punk movement within the US with her 1975 debut album ‘Horses’. The former Sex Pistol and Public Image Ltd frontman, however, claims that the UK is the actual birthplace of the genre with acts such as David Bowie, T-Rex, Sweet, The Clash, The Dammed and the Sex Pistols.
In an interview with The Sun, Lydon said: “I’ve heard an awful lot of American journalists pretending that the whole punk influence came out of New York. Well, hello? Bands like Sweet with ‘Ballroom Blitz’ and Mud with ‘Tiger Feet’ — that’s the do that, man!”
He continued: “T.Rex, David Bowie, Slade, Mott The Hoople, The Alex Harvey Band — their influence was enormous. And they try to write that all off and wrap it around Patti Smith. It’s so wrong!”
Lydon then proceeded to blame New York punk band Ramones for the “all that uniformed, studded leather jacket nonsense” before speaking about his past bandmates and their new supergroup Generation Sex which consists of former Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones and drummer Paul Cook along with Generation X’s Billy Idol and Tony James.
The ‘Anarchy in the UK’ singer is not a fan and revealed he and his bandmates used to call Idol “the Cliff Richard of punk”, though he insists he was a “nice fella”.
“Good luck to them but come on boys, get it together. The Pistols side of it is songs they never really understood and Billy’s got to come in as a translator. What has poor Billy taken on? We used to call him the Cliff Richard of punk and he was such a nice fella and easy to get on with. Him and Sid [Vicious] used to be quite ludicrous about who could do the best Elvis Presley sneer,” he said.
In other news, Lydon’s current band, Public Image Ltd have released their 11th studio album today (August 11) ‘End of World’. You can listen to the new LP here.
Last week, the singer revealed that he has a stalker who claims to be his daughter.
“At the moment I’m struggling with a stalker who is letting herself in my yard at night, running around claiming that she’s my daughter,” he continued. “And she’s in her 50s. It’s the uncaring selfishness of it that is really upsetting. I’ve had stalkers in the past but this one is becoming just too irrational, and has potential for something much more serious, so I’ve had to report it. I don’t like to get people into trouble but it’s causing me stress. It’s making me a bag of nerves.”
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Anagricel Duran
NME
