Customer Reviews

Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs

5 star:		(41)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

At long last, John Lydon (aka, Johnny Rotten) has opened up, nearly twenty years later. The Sex Pistols remain one of my favorite bands, and Johnny Rotten one of the more interesting media figures in the pop culture, so I devoured this book. It combines first-person accounts of all sorts of punk notables and wannabes, and the observations of Lydon himself, co-written by Keith and Kent Zimmerman. I'll admit a bias up front - so much of the history of punk has been obfuscated, I value anything that comes along. I was eight at the time the Sex Pistols did their thing, and I remember being scared when I heard the names "Johnny Rotten" and "Sid Vicious" - I didn't know who they were, but they seemed scary names (and remember, this was before MTV), and the radios weren't playing them - they were phantoms and boogeymen, and all the adults seemed scared of them. I remember when I was a teenager, finally buying their album, and thinking, "What's the big deal? This music rocks!"

I'm glad to see some light shed on this period by one of the people at the center of the media storm. Lydon fills the book with tart observations - he retains his spite and anger and seems as volatile as ever. At the same time, I feel like he's pulling one over on the rest of us. Some of his recollections seem contradictory - perhaps very real to him, but everybody knows that one's perception of things changes over time. There's a subjective quality to this account that makes me long for corroboration. Some of the first-person commentary does back up Rotten's assertions, but I get the feeling there's impression management occurring (check out Goffman's "Impression Management" and you'll know what I'm talking about). Sort of retroactive damage control on Lydon's part.

My only complaints about the book are minor - I wanted more pictures, and I'd hoped for more commentary. I was really wondering what he was thinking in some of those shots, and the cryptic comments make them all the more enigmatic. Again, probably the way he likes it. My other gripe is the book seems to raise more questions than it answers - I wanted more!

The fact that he went to bat in court for the band (which is detailed at the end of the book), and didn't cut Jones and Cook out of it, even when they repeatedly sided with McClaren, is a character-revealing moment. They'd consistently shafted him, and Rotten could have easily blown them off and pursued the case for his exclusive benefit. But he kept them in, eventually winning them over once they realized where their interest was. Contrasted with McClaren's machinations, this righteous persistence on Rotten's part is inspiring. On page 283, he says:

"'Nice' is the worst insult you could ever pay anybody. It means you are utterly without threat, without values. Nice is a cup of tea."

That's part of what I love about John Rotten - he's a nutcase, wit, cynic, revolutionary, and clown, and you're never sure whom you're dealing with; he's a chimera, and he's certainly not "nice". All you can be certain of is that he's laughing at all of us. In this age of immaculately-packaged music superstars, Rotten's aura remains refreshing and subversive - downright threatening. It is simply hard to safety pin him down, and I think that's the way he likes it.

You don't have to be a SEX PISTOLS fan to enjoy this book. If you remember the 'uproar' punk rock caused in 1977-1979, this is for you !

John Rotten is such a breath of fresh air, compaired to all the other rock stars of the past. He is witty, downright RUDE at times, and a 'kid at heart'.

Basically, this book talks about him growing up in the working class part of London and what started the whole punk rock scene. He takes us from Kings Row to the recording studio to Buckingham Palace to small club gigs and then to America, to wrap up the ENTIRE Sex Pistols' career. It's all here: Sid's battle with heroin, Johnny's feuding with manager Malcome McLaren, Steve Jones (guitarist) & Paul Cook (drummer) remeberences of what it was like to be a Pistol, the battles with Sid's girlfriend Nancy and the trouble she caused, Johnny's court battle with Pistols management after the breakup of the band, ect. ect....

If you EVER had an interest in the Pistols, you will LOVE this book. ALL questions are answered and put to rest. If you always HATED the Pistols, I suggest reading John's book ANYWAY because it will make you think again about the 'tallent' this band had. They changed the face of music...Without THEM, there would have been NO indie rock - NO alternative rock - and NO 'new wave' rock. They were WAY before their time.

John's book is honest and down to earth...He admits his mistakes...He admits his faults...He admits the Pistols had little or no tallent as a touring band...This is a man everyone always thought of has having an EGO problem. Read this book ! He could very well be the most CARING person in the rock industry...You might not always agree with WHAT he says, but he will make you THINK....And THAT is a sign of a true artist !

History is written by the victorious, or so the old aphorism goes. Luckily for us, scions of the information age, history is now as mercurial and conflictive as it should be; the advantage of the mass media - and the circumnavigation tool of the internet - gives the diligent scholar as many points of view and divergent perspectives as one could possibly wish. So much has been scribed about the Punk revolution of the late 70's - a general amalgamation of myth, fantasy, drug-hazed 'facts' and grim reality - that a fairly clear and lucid standpoint on the whole glorious fiasco can be readily gleaned with a little bit of literary brow-sweat and comparative analysis. Along with the Sex Pistols documentary *The Filth and the Fury*, this particular tome, Johnny Rotten's autobiography and personal screed, is a great starting point for anyone seeking insight into what this whole Punk scene was about: how it began, briefly flourished, and inevitably went down in flames. And for the learned, *No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs* is a fantastic reflection on an era of poverty, discontent and chaos, and the artistic movement that resulted from such oppressive circumstances.

We are all now familiar with the Rotten (nee Lydon) persona: the madcap clown, the malcontent, the snarling sarcastic commentator on all that is, well, rotten in contemporary society; the punk anti-idol, the media blackguard (thanks VH1!!), the experimental artist who bafflingly slid into late-80's mediocrity. But rather focus on Lydon's 90's/00's image - the decrepit curmudgeon with the neon hair-spikes and atrociously funny bad-taste suits - this autobiography begins with the early years: Rotten as the sweet momma's boy, Rotten the spinal meningitis victim, Rotten the school outcast and all-around reprobate. Interchanging multiple perspectives and time-frames, cutting between Daddy Rotten's nostalgic musings and the Pistol's rapid disintegration in San Francisco, *No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs* proceeds to unleash a salvo of caustic commentary, humorous anecdotes and enough bald truth to encapsulate the reader in the crazed rebellion and smarmy post-modernism of the punk aesthetic.

"We were fed up," Rotten intoned on *The Filth and the Fury*, and by the shape of this autobiography, he's still pretty jaundiced-eyed about the outcome. No one is spared the dregs of bitterness: the British monarchy, the English middle-class mindset, Bill Grundy and public media in general, the record executives and the recording industry, the 'Teds' and even the 'Punks', whom Rotten feels (rather rightly) to have unwittingly betrayed the movement for fashion and ego-excess. Foppish Malcolm McLauren and the Beatles-lovin' Glen Matlock seem to get the most of the bile when the book covers the inner turmoil of the band, yet it was exactly this tension that sprung forth the sloppy, raw, uncontrollable energy of *Nevermind the Bollocks* and catapulted the Sex Pistols into superstar infamy.

For make no mistake about it: the Sex Pistols spearheaded and came to epitomize this new, loose genre; they were the voices of a disaffected generation...and the echo-howl of more generations to come, as punk 'evolved' and became the sounding board for millions of down-trodden and/or upper-middle wannebe outsiders, eventually resulting in today's top-40 gloss-dross that subsumes the original social/political outcry of the genre for joke-songs and superficial cleverness. A rotten legacy indeed! Johnny was none too happy with the tribalistic conformity that seeped into punk not long after its inception. A natural subversive stylist (confirmed by documentary footage), Rotten glowered with 'unhappy cool' and his ripped shirts and garbage-bag inventions, along with Sid's black leather jackets and mutilation fetish, soon became the de jour image-assimilation for anyone seeking fast shock n'yall. "Sheep!" the mentor snarls, and rightly so - 'Punk' (originally a term for a prison sex object) is now the most easily identifiable symbol of nonconformist consumerism, the cultivation of faux-poverty. Pretty damn vacant!

*Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs* covers the short duration of the Sex Pistols, gives interesting coverage of the period's general unrest, and captures the sneering, antagonistic persona of the young Rotten, in all his filth and fury. Unfortunately there is virtually no coverage of what went after the final dissolution of the Pistols. I personally would have liked at least some explanation (or even half-hearted justification) for the eventual alterna-pop joke that came of Lydon's follow-up band PiL, and some more information on the career/life trajectories of the main players of this sordid tapestry. But no matter. This is Rotten's life, Rotten's perspective...and the lucrative benefits of history assure that coverage of these missing factors have been or will be documented in just as exhaustive a fashion.

I must say that I thought it was just a biography of the Sex Pistols, when it actually is an autobiography of Johnny Rotten, but it's great anyway. It's not only John's point of view about the band and all the controversies involved, but also the point of view of other people close to the band. It's quite easy to read, as John makes an amazing use of the words -everything he tells seems to be amusing!

It isn't wll-written, in the sense that John has written everything that would come to his mind, but I find it more real like that. I guess you'll agree.

To sum up, highly recommended ;)

The constant criticism of this book is what is perceived as Rottens one sided ego about the events that created the Sex Pistols and the movement that would become punk in mid 70's England. What these critics fail to realize is that the book is from his point of view which he has had to become very defiant over due to all of the mis-information that has been reported over the years. This book represents his chance to set the facts straight and you can feel the underlying frustration that obviously drove him to write this book as you read the pages. Rotten explains in plain facts the atmosphere in England in the Mid 70's and the conditions that would combust into what the press would end up dubbing "punk rock". Reading this book allows outsiders to really understand what was going on beyond the masses of mohawks and leather jackets that would later cast the movement in a generic style void of it's original creativity. The book is hard to put down and provides a ton of laughs to go along with the vivid picture of life for the young working class Brits frustrated with a system too willing to wallow in drudgery and maintain status quo. Many at the time thought that Rotten was trying to insight anarchy when he was only trying wake the sleeping masses up to come alive and create change for the better in a time when England needed it most. A great companion with this book is the documentary "The Filth and the Fury".

First, I wish to take issue with other reviewers who admit to knowing absolutely nothing about the '70s London punk scene, yet feel qualified to critique dear Johnny's representation of it. The picture painted in this book matches up quite well with all the others I have encountered in my journey to understand this punk world that I unfortunately am too young to have been a part of. From "The History of Rock and Roll" documentary to the Clash's autobiographical documentary ("Westway to the World") to books and essays by and interviews with people who were actually there (Jon Savage's "England's Dreaming," Mikal Gilmore's essays and articles from "Night Beat," Greil Marcus's work, etc.), John's portrait of the scene flawlessly fits in with the others. As far as I am concerned, it positively reeks with accuracy.

Second, yes, John Lydon is obnoxious. It's not a secret that you're letting anyone in on. He knows it and takes pride in it, and his fans know it and love him for it. He is superior and he hates everything and he really is a c*nt (sorry if you disapprove of the language, but it's how the man describes himself). If you don't like him, that's just fine by both him and me. Punks didn't put much stock in trying to be liked by anyone. If you're trying to learn more about the scene, that's one key fact you should be getting out of this text.

Third, if you don't know what the Ramones "stood for," you obviously should have started out with something much more elementary in your "School of Rock--Punk" lesson. The Ramones stood for a return to the '60s. They wanted to take rock back to the happy place it occupied when it was synonymous with pop music, which is a noble quest. However, I suspect most of Mr. Lydon's distaste is based on the fact that the Ramones idolized the Beatles (their name was taken from an early stage name of Paul McCartney's--he called himself Paul Ramone for a while), and John hates the Beatles. Glen Matlock loved the Beatles, and it got him kicked out of the Sex Pistols.

Fourth, Clash fans have no right to criticize just because they see the Clash as a superior band and John doesn't share their admiration. Technical skill has absolutely nothing to do with what makes a good punk band. It's all about what you say, what your philosophy is, what you "stand for." I would venture to say that the Clash and the Sex Pistols are completely equal in their excellence on all counts. Besides, it's ridiculous to rate bands on musical proficiency alone. Claiming that the Clash were better than the Pistols because they played better is like saying that the Monkees were better than the Stones because they played better--sloppiness was part of the *point* with the Stones, as it was with the Pistols. If we based our like of rock on how professional and well-played it was, we'd all be hailing Yes and ELP as the greatest bands of all time. Which, you may have noticed, we aren't doing.

Fifth (and I promise this is the final count), how in good God's name can you critique an autobiography for not being objective? I should think it would be obvious that one cannot be at all subjective when considering one's own life. You want objectivity, read an encyclopedia.

There. Now that all that's said, I'll say my short little piece on the book itself. Great autobiography. The reader definitely comes away with a sense of the writer's (extremely abrasive) personality, a coherent look at the events of his life, and a clear idea of how he thinks of them. We see the rise of the London punk scene through the eyes of one at the center of it. And if you doubt the complete veracity of this representation, remember: the view from the eye of the storm isn't always the clearest view of the storm itself. Think about the Beatles at the center of Beatlemania. They couldn't comprehend all the fuss going on about them, but they were about the only people with a clear view of the group itself. In the same way, amid all the furor surrounding the punks, only one of the punks themselves can tell you what it was really like. If you don't agree, well, you weren't there.

I think one reason I liked it was that Johnny Did Not Glamorize or Glorify anything. He writes about himself in a natural, almost maybe "humble" way, which anyone can appreciate in a writer's story.


His childhood is revealed and detailed wonderfully, and what an Interesting Childhood he had ! His "rat catching" stories,childhood thoughts, preoccupations and feelings are refreshing to read and learn about.

The photos are intriguing and very "for real". Don't expect professional, glossy ,Glam photos. He's displayed the "REAL"


Great book for people looking beyond The Sex Pistols, behind the stage persona and interested in john Lydon for himself.

I love this book and writing style because it captures him authentically and genuinely.

You needn't be a "Sex Pistols" fan to enjoy this unexpected biography.

Highly recommended for any readers !

There is only one John Lydon. This is a great read. Gives the story behind the media interpretation of the story. This is a great read.

Punk Royalty King John Lydon/Johnny Rotten's no bollocks account of the fast and furious rise and fall of THE 70's punk group The Sex Pistols. From their beginnings at Malcolm MacLaren's leather shop on King's Road in London to their final concert in San Francisco ... John Lydon/Johnny Rotten ... says it like it is ... and you don't get the feeling you have been cheated.

Judging by the cover of my copy of "Rotten," I expected good old Johnny Rotten (lead singer for the Sex Pistols) to use his autobiography to deliver a snarling attack on both other rock musicians and the world at large. I was only half right.

While a good portion of the book is devoted to allowing the voices of other punk musicians to describe the era, there is a high level of anger toward other bands and punk figures. Sid Vicious comes across as a clothes-rack on drugs, while almost every other band labled punk gets called 'copier.' Quite a lot of snarling goes down, which gets old after a while.

At the same time, Lydon spends much of the book trying to dispell the myths and legends surrounding his role as the menacing personification of punk. In fact, as I was reading, I got the feeling that his underlying message was, "Hey, everybody, I'm not so bad after all--I'm really just a regular guy!" I found myself comforted by his rational and very un-menacing explanations of everything from the origin of gobbing to the Pistols' infamous and contraversial R-rated talk show appearance. Johnny Rotten even tells us that: 1) he loves his mum, and 2) he wanted to be a teacher! Most startling, however, are the very human reactions Lydon describes when detailing events such as the death of Sid Vicious and the breakup of the Pistols. However, just when I get cozy with this new image and accept him as a shy man blown out of proportion by the media, Lydon gives us anecdotes about cooking his own waste in a pan and serving it to guests.

Is this the real Johnny Rotten? Or are we just being pulled in as part of a Rotten plot to fool the personality-hungry types who read autobiographies? Although Lydon comes across as an extremely intelligent, interesting man, the pull of his media personality is so strong that I had trouble resisting it enough to allow myself to accept what the man says about himself as truth. I guess that's why he hates the media so much.

Overall this is a smartly written book, very entertaining, with a thorough look into the life of a fascinating person. For all of Johnny's explanations of the facts, though, I felt that he left out some of the intangible things surrounding the Pistols that made the whole thing come together: the feeling of the time, his own personal charisma, and the luck of discovery.