Roy Jurgens on November 4th, 2018

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“Thank you for 40 years,” bellowed a Rubenesque John Lydon as he trod to the mic in front of a teeming Fonda Theatre crowd of aged punkers Saturday night. Part man, part monster, a minstrel, a mockery, Lydon has made himself quite a career out of being the caustic protagonist, and tonight was a 40th anniversary celebration of all that vintage piss and vinegar. 

Yes, it’s been 40 long years since the breakup of the Sex Pistols, with all four members carrying on, or not. Sid Vicious allegedly murdered Nancy Spungen and died with a needle in his arm. Steve Jones and Paul Cook started ‘The Professionals” with middling results, and were seen earlier this week playing down the road with Billy Idol. And lastly, the vulgar orange-coiffed one, Johnny “Rotten” Lydon, birthed a musical art collective known as Public Image Ltd., which spawned 10 studio albums while grinding through some 40 contributing members, among them such luminaries as Jah Wobble, Bill Laswell, Ginger Baker, John McGeoch, Bernie Worrell, Tony Williams, Steve Vai and Ryuichi Sakamoto. Lydon’s magic lies in his ability to tie his musical risks together. 

He is the man you hate to love. Taking the piss is the national sport of England, and Lydon has always been a championship contender. But this Lydon was different, no longer the acerbic and confrontational asshole, he’s now a portly headmaster, still trying to get a rise out of the audience, but with a Cheshire cat’s grin. The old Lydon, the one engaged in the beautiful paradox of displaying raw contempt for an audience paying to see him, has been put out to pasture. The L.A. show, the penultimate of PiL’s “The Public Image is Rotten” U.S. tour, was delightfully non-vitriolic, given Rotten’s current obsession with President Trump. Ever the charlatan, one justifiably wonders if his current political affections are tongue-in-cheek, just to counter a counterculture he helped create.

Swigging Martell and Pedialyte (there’s a yummy cocktail), the snotty (literally) Lydon stopped mid-show to smile over the assembled and exclaimed, “You must really love me.” One person who wasn’t feeling Lydon’s love was the sound engineer, who had the enviable task of satisfying Lydon’s monitor demands amid the verbal daggers tossed at him. That said, the sound was sublime and the crowd was engaged, especially the tweaker with the mohawk alongside me who was rigorously chewing on his teeth.

Rolling his Rs and sneering in his sing-song monotone howl, Lydon steered his fantastic band through a career-spanning set that cut across PiL’s discography. Smartly dressed in shirt and tie, comfy baggy pants and adorable shoes, Lydon stood behind his music stand the entire show, flipping through laminated lyric sheets after each song, reading glasses gripping his nose. While no longer the animated frontman of the past, his familiar finger-wagging and head tilts still remain his calling card.

The band, comprised of the sublimely talented Lu Edmonds on all things stringed, Scott Firth plucking a thundery bass and Bruce Smith’s Swiss timekeeping, are worthy successors to those multitude of sidemen who’ve toiled alongside Lydon over the years. There was the scraping post-punk of “Public Image,” the industrially tinged “This Is Not a Love Song,” the Motownesque “Disappointed,” the Dali-esque “Death Disco” and the football anthem “Rise” — all pretty kaleidoscopic stuff from a man who had rather one-dimensional beginnings. Lydon’s brilliance has always been his ability to take disparate musical subcultures such as dub, EDM, avant-garde noise, world and jazz, and cook them into a kettle of noxious of post-punk. 

Given that the Damned played the Fonda the previous night, and that Jones and Cook were in town, one hoped that perhaps some sort of magical collective class reunion might be in the offering, but it wasn’t to be.

Alongside the tour is the documentary film about Lydon, “The Public Image Is Rotten,” which is currently being screened at art houses across town. Additionally, a five CD/two DVD box set, “The Public Image Is Rotten (Songs From The Heart)” featuring the PiL Singles Collection (1978-2015), B-sides, rarities and a live concert from NYC’s Ritz from July of 1989 has just been released.

PiL finishes up their U.S. tour tonight at the Observatory in Santa Ana. Tickets are available here.

Setlist: Deeper Water, Memories, Body, Disappointed, Warrior, The One, Corporate, Death Disco, Cruel, I’m not Satisfied, Flowers of Romance, Love Song, Rise. Encore: Public Image, Open Up, Shoom.

Photos by Roy Jurgens