Lydon, John

Subterms

    Latest story

    163 Shares119 Views

    Nora Forster, 80, Who Married (and Stayed Married to) a Sex Pistol, Dies

    by

    A German publishing heiress and music promoter, she settled in London in time for the 1970s punk-rock explosion and became the muse to its baddest boy.Nora Forster, a German-born publishing heiress and music promoter who gained fame as the wife of John Lydon — otherwise known as Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols — and the mother of Arianna Forster, or Ari Up, the lead singer of the influential all-female punk band the Slits, died on Thursday. She was 80.Her death was announced by Mr. Lydon on Twitter. “Nora had been living with Alzheimer’s for several years,” the announcement said. “In which time John had become her full time career.” He did not say where she died.For more than four decades, music fans knew Ms. Forster as the emotional rock for the ever-volatile Mr. Lydon, who in the late 1970s became Public Enemy No. 1 in the eyes of British polite society for spitting invective in every direction, including the Queen’s, as the frontman for the incendiary punk progenitors the Sex Pistols.When the band imploded after its brief, explosive career, he scarcely mellowed; he continued on as the creative force of the fiery post-punk band Public Image Ltd., or PiL.Because of her husband’s enduring notoriety, particularly in England, Ms. Forster’s struggle with Alzheimer’s disease unfolded as a public drama after he went public about her diagnosis in 2018.“It’s vile to watch someone you love disappear,” he said in an interview with The Sunday Times of London in February. “All the things I thought were the ultimate agony seem preposterous now.”Her illness, he said, had “shaped me into what I am.”“I don’t think I’ll ever get over it,” he added. “I don’t see how I can live without her. I wouldn’t want to. There’s no point.”The previous month, he had teared up when taking a more wistful turn in an interview on the television show “Good Morning Britain” about “Hawaii,” a haunting PiL ballad that he had written as a tribute to her and that was the Irish entry in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. (Mr. Lydon was born in England to Irish parents.) “Remember me,” Mr. Lydon sang, “I remember you.”“I can see her personality in her eyes,” he said. “She lets me know that it’s the communication skills that are letting her down.”Nora Maier was born on Nov. 6, 1942, in Munich. After the war, her father, Franz Karl Maier, was a prosecutor who helped bring wartime Nazis to justice. He was later the editor and publisher of the newspaper Tagesspiegel.Ms. Forster went on to work as a model and to marry the singer Frank Forster, who was “kind of a swing pop star, always appearing on TV back in the ’60s,” Arianna Forster said in an interview with the music site Pitchfork in 2009, a year before she died.Nora Forster’s survivors include her husband and three grandchildren.As the 1960s unfolded, Ms. Forster promoted West German tours for acts like Jimi Hendrix and Yes, which gave her prominence on the German rock scene. “People were walking around in the living room back then, like the Bee Gees and all these big groups,” her daughter recalled in the Pitchfork interview.The bohemian lifestyle of her rock friends eventually ran afoul of the local authorities. “In Munich, the police were knocking at the door every night because of the loud acid parties,” her daughter once said. “She was fed up with it. You have to go to London to live that lifestyle.”Ms. Forster did just that in about 1970, and by the middle of the decade she had become enmeshed in the punk-rock scene that was starting to roil Britain and the music industry as a whole. She became “a den mother to all the young punks,” said Arianna, who in 1976, at age 14, would rename herself Ari Up and join with a drummer called Palmolive to found the Slits, which became a leading female punk band of the era.In 1975, Ms. Forster met Mr. Lydon, who was nearly 14 years her junior, at Sex, the boundary-pushing clothing boutique on London’s King’s Road run by the fashion designer Vivienne Westwood and the Sex Pistols’ manager, Malcolm McLaren.It was anything but love at first sight.“There was no physical attraction at first,” Ms. Forster said in a 2004 interview with The Sunday Mail of Britain. “I didn’t even think to be nice to him. I was at another gig and John passed by my table and said, ‘Drop dead.’”Despite the mutual hostility, Mr. Lydon was intrigued. “Her nose went 10 feet in the air in her ’40s film star outfit,” he said in the same Sunday Mail interview. “Long blond hair, padded shoulders — that entire femme fatale look, which I was a complete ham for.”Eventually she softened. “I fell in love with John because he surprised me,” she said. “He had a sweet attitude. He was more innocent and not like the rest of the group.”The couple married in 1979, to the horror of Ms. Forster’s father. And, to the likely amazement of those who considered Mr. Lydon a human mushroom cloud, the marriage endured.Even so, it might never have happened if Ms. Forster had listened to her friends’ advice in those early days. “One day he came up and asked why I had never invited him to my house,” she later said of Mr. Lydon. “I replied, ‘People told me you would destroy everything.’” More

    More stories

    • 125 Shares139 Views

      in Music

      Becoming Johnny Rotten, When John Lydon Would Rather You Didn’t

      by

      Anson Boon went through a grueling process to play the punk star in “Pistol,” even though the original wanted nothing to do with the project.LONDON — Anson Boon gave playing Johnny Rotten everything he had, including a front tooth.Boon embodies the punk frontman in “Pistol,” a new limited series charting the meteoric rise and fall of Rotten’s band the Sex Pistols, and the tooth was lost recreating one of Rotten’s “most animated performances,” the 22-year-old actor said in a recent interview. “I slammed my face into the microphone by accident.”Sitting in a north London park, a mile from where Rotten grew up, Boon reeled off a list of other injuries sustained over six months of filming: He fractured his coccyx when he fell over a drum kit; zealous singing dislocated his jaw; he spent several hours a day hunched over to emulate the musician’s posture, and still has back pain from it today.This roll call is, in some ways, appropriate. Rotten — who now goes by his real name, John Lydon — was one of the pioneers of London’s 1970s punk movement, known for his “divine insanity,” as John Rockwell wrote in The New York Times in 1977, and for overseeing concerts where chairs were thrown and noses bloodied.“Pistol” — which begins streaming Tuesday on Hulu in the United States and on Disney+ in other territories — is Boon’s most significant screen role to date, following parts onstage in London and in films like Sam Mendes’s “1917.”Despite the injuries, he “loved the intensity” of playing the Pistols frontman, Boon said. Besides, “It’s not Rotten to give up. I just had to power through,” he added.Each day on set, Boon would go through an hour and a half of hair and makeup preparation.Miya Mizuno/FXThis determination was already clear to Danny Boyle, who directs the series, when he saw Boon’s audition tape. One of the scenes Boon presented was Rotten auditioning for the Pistols by singing Alice Cooper’s “I’m Eighteen” into a broken shower head. Boon sang into a toilet brush.His parents watched the tape, and asked him: “‘Are you sure you can send that? You’ve really gone for it,’” he remembered. Boon thought he would either get the part, or the casting team would never let Boyle see it.As it turned out, the director loved it. The tape was “repulsive and magnetic at the same time,” Boyle said in a recent phone interview.Boon realized he needed to “transform into Rotten.” But he only knew the Sex Pistol’s most famous songs — “God Save the Queen” and “Anarchy in the U.K.” — and meeting Lydon wasn’t an option.The show is based on “Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol,” the autobiography of the guitarist Steve Jones, who hasn’t spoken to Lydon since 2008. While all the other living members of the band are consultants for “Pistol,” Lydon has disavowed the project from the start. In 2021, the frontman was sued by his former bandmates for refusing to agree to license the band’s music for the show; Lydon lost the case. He declined to be interviewed for this article.So Boon’s research process was rigorous. He read “Lonely Boy,” as well as “Defying Gravity: Jordan’s Story,” a memoir from Jordan Mooney, a friend of the band who is played in the show by Maisie Williams. Boon also created what he called a “Rotten museum” on his laptop, collecting photos, videos and charts of Rotten’s life to keep track of how he changed, Boon said, from a “shy kid” to a famous punk artist.From left, Johnny Rotten (Boon), Sid Vicious (Louis Partridge), Steve Jones (Toby Wallace) and Paul Cook (Jacob Slater) in “Pistol.”Rebecca Brenneman/FX“You usually have to tell young actors to be diligent and do their research,” Boyle said. “We had to tell Anson when to stop. He became obsessed with him. He knows more about him than I do.”For three months, Boon and his co-stars also went through a band camp, led by the British electronic group Underworld, who scored “Pistol.” The hard work seemed to be paying off by February 2021, when Mooney came to see the actors during rehearsals. At her request they sang the Pistols track “Holiday in the Sun.” After they’d finished, Mooney approached Boon: “‘Thank you,’” he remembered her saying. “‘I feel like I’ve just watched the Sex Pistols again.’”It took a team to get the actors to that point. A dialect coach helped Boon pin down Rotten’s accent and his lisp. A movement instructor helped him emulate Rotten’s posture.His vocal coach, Anne-Marie Speed, helped raise Boon’s singing voice two octaves to match Rotten’s register, “in the same way you might teach a dancer to do the splits,” Boon said. The process was arduous. Afterward, “I had to have acupuncture in my head because there would be so much pressure buildup,” he said.Each day on set, Boon would go through an hour and a half of hair and makeup preparation, wearing wigs and brown false teeth, while listening to interviews of Rotten “to get into his voice and his contrarian mentality,” he said.Boon said he wanted to make sure the world created by Boyle and the show’s screenwriter, Craig Pearce, didn’t feel “like a caricature,” he said. “I had to be surrounded by everything, completely enveloped in it, to make it feel real.”“I have never met a young actor who is as unafraid of throwing themselves in at the deep end like Anson does,” Kate Winslet said.Mark Sommerfeld for The New York TimesToby Wallace, who plays Jones in the series, saw Boon “shifting through these wild and risky choices, and committing to all of them,” he said in a phone interview.When Kate Winslet played Boon’s mother in the 2019 film “Blackbird,” she recognized a similar dedication. “I have never met a young actor who is as unafraid of throwing themselves in at the deep end like Anson does,” Winslet said in an email interview.The sense of responsibility Boon felt playing Rotten was only “amplified” by the fact Lydon didn’t want to be involved, the actor said. Recently, Lydon has criticized the show on Twitter and in British tabloids, which only “endears him to me even more,” Boon said.Boyle believes Boon has done Rotten justice. “He’s done his due diligence,” Boyle said. “He believed in himself,” in the same way “John would have.”For months after filming, Boon would automatically sit pigeon-toed with his friends at the pub, he said. And the show has rubbed off on him in other ways. Through Rotten, “I learned about that punk spirit,” said Boon, who still lives in Peterborough, a medieval city in the east of England.Does that spirit live on in him still? “I’d certainly like to think so,” Boon said. And just in case, he has that false tooth to remind him. More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Television

      ‘Pistol’ Tells Steve Jones’s Story. With a Touch of Showbiz.

      by

      A new limited series is based on a memoir by the Sex Pistol’s guitarist. Just don’t confuse it with a documentary, he says.LONDON — For Steve Jones, direct has always been best. The Sex Pistols guitarist is known for rejecting what he describes as fancy “Beatle chords” in favor of a sound without frills, and for drunken retorts on prime time British television.This approach is at the fore in his 2016 book, “Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol.” In the introduction, he writes, “I’m not gonna come out of this smelling of roses,” before detailing the rampant kleptomania of his late teens and his sex addictions. There are also details of the sexual abuse by his stepfather, his descent into addiction after the band collapsed and the near illiteracy that hampered him until well into his adult life.The book forms the basis for “Pistol,” a six-part series directed by Danny Boyle and arriving on FX/Hulu on Tuesday. The show stars Toby Wallace as Jones and Anson Boon as the Sex Pistols’ lead singer, John Lydon, known as Johnny Rotten.Toby Wallace plays Steve Jones in “Pistol.”Miya Mizuno/FXIn the series, tensions abound between the exceptional and the ordinary, and dramatic license often overcomes fidelity to Jones’s experience. Preparations have been tense, too, with Lydon losing a lawsuit to the rest of the band over the use of Pistols music in the show.In a recent phone interview, Jones discussed what he would do if he ran into Lydon, how his story got changed to fit a TV format and the impact of the band’s manager, Malcolm McLaren. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.What motivated you to write the memoir?There was just a lot of stuff I wanted to get out there, even the dodgy stuff. It was weird at first, but I got such a lot of feedback from it — from men, young guys, who experienced a lot of similar trauma stuff as kids. I didn’t realize that kind of thing happens a lot. Most guys don’t tell anybody, they take it to their grave, and it’s very unhealthy to do that. You can’t carry that stuff around with you, you’ve got to move on.In the book, you say you hadn’t minded playing second fiddle to Lydon, but when Sid Vicious joined the Pistols, you were left playing third fiddle. How does it feel to now be the dominant voice in “Pistol?”I mean, it’s OK. I’m a team player, I don’t really like being the center of attention. I’d rather be playing guitar than singing, I’ve always had that approach. I don’t really like all the spotlight at this stage of the game, at 66 years old. But it is what it is.From left, Louis Partridge, Anson Boon, Jacob Slater and Wallace in the show.Miya Mizuno/FXBut surely that was a consideration when Danny Boyle approached you, that you’d be thrust into the spotlight?Well, of course. But Boyle liked the fact that it was coming from my view. He said I was like the engine room of the Sex Pistols, and liked coming from that angle, as opposed to the obvious angle.Through the eyes of Lydon?Exactly. That’s normally the way it goes. I got a shot at telling my story, based on my book. But you’ve got to remember, it’s not a documentary. It’s a six-part series.“Lonely Boy” is a pretty frank tale that asks for little forgiveness. How well do you think that comes across in “Pistol?”Like I said, it’s based on my book. You’ve got to showbiz it up a little bit, you’ve got to make it interesting — even the relationship between me and Chrissie Hynde, the “love interest.” She watched it the other day, and she was surprised: She said, “I didn’t realize I was about this much.”“Pistol” presents that as a recurring relationship. Is that quite how it happened?I knew Chrissie, we did hang out a bit in the early days, she wanted to be a musician, and I kind of brushed her off, so that is all true. But she was shocked when she saw it last week.But I do think it’s a good story. Even if it wasn’t as long as that, my relationship with her, I just think the way it’s been written makes it interesting. If you’re a train spotter, you’re going to hate it, because it’s not in the timeline, but whatever.In “Pistol,” Chrissie Hynde, played by Sydney Chandler, is the love interest to Wallace’s Jones.Miya Mizuno/FXAnother unexpected narrative is the way Malcolm McLaren (played by Thomas Brodie-Sangster) and Vivienne Westwood (Talulah Riley) are presented as parent figures. What was your relationship with the pair of them like?They had a flat in Clapham, and I used to go and stay over there. They had Ben and Joe [Westwood’s children], but Ben didn’t stay over much, so I would sleep in one of the bunk beds with Joe. I just used to hang out with them, at Cranks, the vegetarian restaurant in Carnaby Street. I used to drive Malcolm around to the tailors in the East End because he couldn’t drive.[Meeting them] was a real turning point for me, and that’s where my loyalty lay. Malcolm showed me a different side of life — that whole avant-garde, Chelsea “posh toffs” scene. And I loved it. I was not headed anywhere good the way I was going, so I’m always grateful for him and Viv for that. Even though you couldn’t trust him, I still didn’t care.Early in your relationship, McLaren helped you avoid a prison sentence. Repaying that debt seems to justify a lot of your actions in “Pistol.” Did that weigh heavily on your relationship?That was only one part of it. I actually liked hanging out with him. One minute he’d be talking like a toff, and the next like a cop. In all honesty, he really made it all happen, and he doesn’t get enough credit for it. I don’t think it would have happened without him.Did it bother you that Lydon didn’t want to be involved in “Pistol?”We wanted him to be involved. It would have been good if he had been on board. If the shoe was on the other foot, we’d have all been thrilled, if it had been his book and Danny Boyle wanted to do something similar. At this stage of the game, we’re grown men, I don’t know why he’s not interested. But it’s par for his personality for him not to want to be involved. Maybe he’ll secretly watch it and have a chuckle.The show includes the disastrous Sex Pistols tour of the United States, which saw the band implode.Miya Mizuno/FXIs the “Pistol” fallout the final straw in your relationship with Lydon?I don’t know, I haven’t thought about it. It’s not like we hang out anyway. I live in L.A., he lives in L.A., I’ve been here 35 years, and he came just after me, and we’ve never been interested in hanging out. The last time I saw him was in 2008, when we played a load of European gigs. We don’t need to hang out, I’m good with that, we don’t need to be pals. But I do have respect for him, absolutely.What would you do if you ran into him at the shops?I’d probably run and hide behind the baked beans.Danny Boyle has said “Pistol” imagines “breaking into the world of ‘The Crown’ and ‘Downton Abbey’ with your mates and screaming your songs and your fury at all they represent.” When did you realize you had the power to shake things up?The Grundy thing [a notorious interview of the Sex Pistols by Bill Grundy on British TV in 1976] took it into a different sphere. The power came from having a label, then them giving us the boot, getting a label, getting the boot again. We were calling it on our terms, which was unheard-of back then.The Grundy thing was the beginning of the end. As far as making any more music, the creative side was out the window. The way I looked at it, then it became the leather-jacket brigade everywhere. It became mainstream, it lost its originality. Before Grundy, you had the Clash, the Buzzcocks, a bunch of bands that were very creative in their own ways.“You don’t want to fall asleep listening to what I’ve been doing after the Pistols,” Jones said.Alex Ingram for The New York TimesThe end of “Pistol” ties things up quite neatly. Were you happy with where the series ended?I did like the way it ended. There were a couple of different endings that I wasn’t keen about; [this one] left you with a feel-good-y kind of way as opposed to not being cheesy about it.What were the other endings?There was one where the cast were interviewed about their experiences, and one of those “Where are they now?” kind of endings, which was horrible to be honest with you. I’m so happy Danny ditched that one.It does leave out the third part of your book though, the fallout of the Pistols and your quite tragic personal aftermath. Were you OK with that?It could have gone on, but it would have started getting boring afterward. You don’t want to fall asleep listening to what I’ve been doing after the Pistols. More