JOHN Lydon, the ex-Sex Pistol and now chairman of Public Image Limited, chats to Mick Burgess about I’m A Celebrity, two upcoming shows in the area and how the band’s resurrection is thanks to a spread of butter

The Northern Echo:

In June will start your first UK tour in a couple of years. Are you looking forward to getting out there to perform again?

This will be the first time in years where I'll actually be touring in the summer. It always seems to be around November and I'm really prone to flu, chills and ills so this'll be a nice surprise to be 100% healthy. I won't know what to do with that.

This tour celebrates the 40th anniversary of PiL. How do you go about constructing a set list that celebrates such an occasion?

With great difficulty because you`re spoilt for choice. We'll leave it until the last four days which is when we`ll rehearse and when we`ll know what we feel good about. It's a last-minute decision and I think those tend to be the best because you do them under stress and I`m one of those war horses that works better under stress.

On June 12 you're up in Newcastle. How have the Newcastle crowds treated you over the years?

Apologies to the people of Sunderland and Middlesbrough. I hope they can be Newcastle friendly for one night and come and see us in the one place. Newcastle is a very friendly place and has been very good to us over the years.

The band were put on hold in 1992. Did you feel the band had run its course at that point?

No, I didn't. I didn't want the band to stop. What happened was that the money was being withheld by the label again. They said I had overspent and until they had recouped they weren't going to put another penny into me. So how can you recoup if you can`t tour? It was Catch 22 for me really. It went on for a decade and a half, it just didn't make any sense. I had to claw my way out of that hence the butter campaign.

So the butter advert helped to resurrect PiL as a band?

It did as it meant I could money towards the alleged debt. It meant that I could buy myself off that damned label and go independent and here I am today, thank you Dairy Crest. I love British butter. It's done me wonders.

You made your name in the Sex Pistols. Did it you feel that you had to have a complete clean break from that and do something completely different?

Not deliberately so but I knew I wasn't going to drive on repeating myself. My thought processes had changed. I thought the Pistols were a great cleaning house for me to attack institutions but I wasn't going to do that for the rest of my life. In a weird way Public Image Limited was a soul-searching band to find out what was wrong with myself before blaming others.

You really tapped into a whole movement at that time. Do you think that the timing was just right both musically and socially for you to strike a chord with the disaffected youth?

They were just instinctive responses to our frustrations. You have to remember at the time the unemployment, the marches, garbage cans all over the streets and the riots. This was our healthy backdrop. There we were disagreeing with each other on top of it and a manager who wanted to take credit for everything, like he invented the universe. Out of all of those dangerous moods, something healthy always comes out. That`s why I say about the great calamities of the word…..wait for the end of the sentence.

You created probably the biggest stir with God Save The Queen during the Silver Jubilee. How would you feel if you got the call for a knighthood?

I think I`d say, thanks but no thanks. I've never asked for it, don't need it and she might be a very angry old lady, so I'll not let her put a sword anywhere near my neck.

You were reintroduced to a lot of people who saw a different side to you on I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of here. What possessed you to put yourself thorough that ordeal?

Just the sheer devilry of it. They'd been asking me for years and I kept turning it down. I finally thought that there were a few charities out there that could do with the money. That's what I did it for. One of the charities helped an albino monkey in Sri Lanka but I found out it died soon after. There was also a charity for orphanages that I wanted to help. I'm not looking for any grand awards for this, I do it on the quiet. You have to look after fellow humans. My Dad used to look after orphans when my Mum died but they stopped that when they found out that his son was Johnny Rotten.

Looking to the future, what's next for PiL once this tour is over?

We have written some of the songs and we travel back between shows to record them. The principle is to use the raw energy of the live performance and try to instil that into the grooves of a record. That occurred to us on the last tour that we needed to do that so we`re working on a new album but don`t know when that will be coming out as it`s still early days.

  • Public Image Limited play at the O2 Academy on June 12 and Hardwick Live Festival on August 19. Contact venues for ticket details.