ENTERTAINMENT and CULTURE/SOCIETY: Johnny, Say It Isn't So: The Times, They Have Been A-Changin'

I found this on the website of the band, Chumbawamba - www.chumba.com. Even though the clip is 18 years old, I still found it interesting and intriguing. Of course, it should be noted that Chumbawamba might be found slightly radical by some - they are the band that said on national television that they didn't care if you shoplifted their cd. At least, now I don't have to feel guilty about burning a copy of their cd from the library.

"Johnny Rotten (of the punk band, The Sex Pistols) - the man who once screamed about Anarchy in the UK - has booted squatters out of his luxury West London Flat. John ... was furious when squatters moved in at the same time his flat went on the market. Says a spokesman; 'Yes they were punks, but they're not there any longer. I am not sure how John got rid of them. John may have been a punk himself, but he's an upstanding citizen now. I am sure he never had to squat anywhere." News cutting in Raising Hell Fanzine, 1987.


You know though, I already knew of Mr John "Johnny Rotten" Lydon's conservative tendencies before I saw the Chumbawamba piece. If you hadn't seen it, John had a short-lived tv show on VH-1 called, of all things, Rotten Television. And if you hadn't seen it, you missed out.

There were only three episodes that I know of. The first consisted of a variety of stuff. One segment was him getting kicked off Roseanne Barr's short-lived talk show.

Another scene had him buy a bunch of stuff from a rock auction. If I remember right, we had a signed Beatles album, a signed t-shirt of some band, a guitar I believe was from Hendrick (but I could be wrong) and a note from his Sex Pistols bandmate, Sid Vicious. He put the t-shirt on a scarecrow thing, leaned the album and guitar on it and shoved the note in the mouth.

And this was all filmed on a camera that was obviously on a tripod with no one behind it. Then John steps away and blows the whole thing up! Then he walks up to the camera and sticks his face in it and says something along the lines of (all in his thick working class British accent) "None of this is important, just the music they left behind."

He also had one where he went to a film festival, because it was showing "The Filth and The Fury", a film of Sex Pistol concert footage. In it, he drags Dean Cain from the Lois and Clark tv show around and hassles all the stars, much to Dean's amusement and embarrassment.


But getting back to John's conservative tendencies, which started this whole thing off. John had a Rotten Television episode where he went to the party conventions. And he talked to a bunch of politicians, and the two he seem to admire the most were Jesse Ventura and, of all people, Newt Gengrich. Needless to say, John definitely has a more conservative bent these days.