John Lydon, né Johnny Rotten, hasn’t heard from any of his former bandmates in the Sex Pistols and, in a new interview, he appears to be the only person on Earth surprised by that fact. “I expected some kind of connection when [my wife] Nora died [in 2023], but nothing,” he recently told The Times.
Lydon’s revelation comes after years of quarreling with guitarist Steve Jones, bassist Glen Matlock, and drummer Paul Cook. Jones and Cook sued Lydon in 2021 for use of the Pistols’ music in Danny Boyle’s Pistol miniseries, based off of Jones’ memoirs. Lydon lost the lawsuit, and the musicians claimed a “majority rule agreement” allowed them to overrule Lydon’s veto. The three formerly ex-Pistols have since reunited the band without Lydon, hiring Frank Carter as vocalist for recent tours.
When the Times asked if Lydon would consider reuniting with his former bandmates, he gave a one-word response: “No.”
Lydon added that he believed the Pistol series was “terrible,” though he had hopes for it despite his public objections. “Something in me wanted it to be good, but it might as well have been about the Partridge Family,” he said. “I don’t like anything to do with it because I wasn’t asked to contribute.”
The way the other Sex Pistols have shunned Lydon in recent years is no surprise to anyone who’s kept up with the band. In a recent Rolling Stone interview, Jones recalled attempting to break his own wrist to give a premature end to a 2008 Pistols reunion with Lydon because, “I didn’t ever want to fucking hang out with [Lydon] again.” Matlock described Lydon’s behavior on the tour as “childish.”
Drummer Cook shot down the idea of reuniting with Lydon for a Never Mind the Bollocks 50th anniversary tour in 2017 wholesale. “We wouldn’t want to do it, and John definitely wouldn’t want to do it after what’s happened,” he said in the Rolling Stone interview. “So, that’s it. And I don’t want to do it with John anyway.”
In 2017, Jones told Rolling Stone that he had “no friendship” with Lydon. “He lives in L.A., I live in L.A., but we just don’t talk,” he said. “I think the last time I spoke to him was 2008 when we did a tour of Europe. I have no desire to speak to him and he has no desire to speak to me. That’s totally fine.”
Although both the Pistols’ reunion with Carter and Lydon’s post-punk band, Public Image Ltd., have tour dates scheduled for Europe next summer, none of the dates overlap. Neither group currently has dates scheduled for the U.S.
