John Lydon Aka Johnny Rotten (The Sex Pistols)

0:26John Leidenstien beside me. What are you doing? He lives. He does live. How are you feeling? How are you doing? Happy to be touring again after 20 years of being stifled by corporate record labels and having to fight and claw my way back. I'm now, I find myself in a happy position of a most excellent record which a truly supporting love and adore, a wonderful tour and a brilliant record label which is now our own. So this is Pill, is on Pill official. We are now completely uncorruptible. It's been 20 years since the last Pill record so when did the writing for this start? Have you been writing all this time? No, we were touring because we had to raise the money to get into a recording position

1:16so it was almost consistent like touring until I got the money booked to barn in the Cotswolds run by Stevie Winwood with a little mixing desk and more or less free formed it. So you didn't have the songs created before you went in? No. Everyone kind of jammed and made it work? Yeah, no we made it work because we were all biting and gagging at the bit and the way we are as a band and the way we communicate we all knew where we were going to go with this and so there's a lot of head work and the instrumentalized side of things and the lyrics came very quickly and very naturally. Really? Yeah. Was that always the game for you? As a true Pill situation should be.

2:01I've always set it up like that. You write very quickly? No, it's that you have the energy and you're inspired by the fellows you work with. You book the studio and you get in and you enjoy the moment. So with Lew in a band his guitars look incredible. These weird medieval kind of instruments. They're not guitars, they're combinations of broomsticks and pots and pans. That's great. You know from his travels around the world. I sing in a different scale than most people and Lew plays in a different scale and different patterns than most people. Between the pair of us I think we've got something really exceptionally interesting going on and Lew and Bruce Smith the drummer, the two I've worked the longest with in any Pill

2:50environment. So for me it was automatic that I get back together with those two people. They're very very different musically but that's just the positions of events and we really needed a solid bass player and we got one in Scott. His selling point, tip tip for us, was his resume which declared everything from Stevie Windward to the Spice Girls and anyone who has that kind of dexterity and free for all and love of all kinds of music is perfect for us. You know because you've got to get rid of snobbery in music. Is there too much snobbery these days? I think so. How, why? Well this is why you end up with people alleging that Radiohead and Coldplay are

3:35a genius. They're not. You know and that's again that's studio monstrous trickery. Five quick questions, one word answers. Rode or studio? Both. One leads to the other and then the other leads back to it's a wonderful cycle. Lennon or McCartney? Lennon and I've met McCarthy and I really liked him so that's a puzzlement too. Can you hear a song that usually hits you first, lyrics, melody or rhythm? It can be either, it depends on the mood. I mean if I'm out like clubbing and trance is bound to be the music isn't it or lack

4:21of or the correct application of machinery but for me generally it's the lyric. My whole focus and attention is on the word. See I come from reading, I love reading when I was young that was my big big thing in life. I'd read anything in a book. I love books and so song writing it's always about the lyric because that's a human species that's our best way of communicating. And actually and using music the combination of word and tone is for my mind the penultimate form of communication. Takes us to the next one and song you've written you're most proud of? All of them.

5:06In one word, John Lennon. Thank you very much man, appreciate it.