1. John Lydon is the lead vocalist of post-punk band Public Image Ltd, which he founded and fronted from 1978 until 1993, and again since 2009.
47 Facts About John Lydon
1. 2.
The band scandalised much of the media, and John Lydon was seen as a figurehead of the burgeoning punk movement.
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In subsequent years, John Lydon has hosted television series in the UK, US, and Belgium, in 2004 appeared on I'm a Celebrity.
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John Joseph Lydon was born in London on 31 January 1956.
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The flat is adjacent to the Highbury Stadium, the former home ground of Premier League football club Arsenal FC of whom John Lydon has been an avid fan since the age of four.
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John Lydon spent summer holidays in his mother's native County Cork, where he suffered name-calling for having an English accent, a prejudice he claims he still receives today even though he travels under an Irish passport.
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At the age of seven, John Lydon contracted spinal meningitis and spent a year in St Ann's Hospital in Haringey, London.
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John Lydon disliked his secondary school, the St William of York Roman Catholic School in Islington, where initially he was bullied, but at fourteen or fifteen he "broke out of the mould" and began to fight back at what he saw as the oppressive nature of the school teachers, who he felt instigated and encouraged the children to all be the same and be "anti-anyone-who-doesn't-quite-fit-the-mould".
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John Lydon gave Ritchie the nickname "Sid Vicious", after his parents' pet hamster.
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McLaren was impressed with John Lydon's ragged look and unique sense of style, particularly his orange hair and modified Pink Floyd T-shirt.
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McLaren was said to have been upset when John Lydon revealed during a radio interview that his influences included progressive experimentalists like Magma, Can, Captain Beefheart and Van der Graaf Generator.
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The reasons for this are disputed, but John Lydon claimed in his autobiography that he believed Matlock to be too white-collar and middle-class and that Matlock was "always going on about nice things like the Beatles".
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Matlock stated in his own autobiography that most of the tension in the band, and between himself and John Lydon, was orchestrated by McLaren.
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John Lydon declined to go, deriding the concept as a whole and feeling that they were attempting to make a hero out of a criminal who attacked a train driver and stole "working-class money".
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John Lydon refused to have anything to do with it, feeling that McLaren had far too much control over the project.
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In 1978, John Lydon formed the post-punk band Public Image Ltd.
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In 1983, John Lydon co-starred with Harvey Keitel in the Italian crime thriller film Copkiller, released as Corrupt, Corrupt Lieutenant and The Order of Death.
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John Lydon later had a small role in the mockumentary comedy film The Independent.
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In 1984, John Lydon worked with Time Zone on their single "World Destruction".
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John Lydon: We went in, put a drum beat down on the machine and did the whole thing in about four-and-a-half hours.
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The format of the show was a look back at events in popular music and culture occurring on the particular broadcast calendar date about which John Lydon would offer cynical commentary.
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In 1997, John Lydon released a solo studio album on Virgin Records called Psycho's Path.
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John Lydon wrote all the songs and played all the instruments; for one song, he sang the vocals through a toilet roll.
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The US version included a Chemical Brothers remix of the song "Open Up" by Leftfield with vocals by John Lydon, which was a club hit in the US and a big hit in the UK.
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In November 1997, John Lydon appeared on Judge Judy fighting and winning a suit filed by his former tour drummer Robert Williams for breach of contract, assault and battery.
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In January 2004, John Lydon appeared on the British reality television programme I'm a Celebrity.
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In late 2008, John Lydon appeared in an advertising campaign for Country Life butter, on British television.
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John Lydon defended the move by stating that the main reason he accepted the offer was to raise money to reform Public Image Ltd without a recording contract.
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John Lydon financed the reunion using money he earned doing a UK television advertisements for Country Life butter.
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John Lydon was cast to play the role of King Herod for the North American arena tour of Andrew Lloyd Webber's sung-through rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar.
31.
In 2021, John Lydon competed in season six of The Masked Singer as the wild card contestant "Jester" which was the show's second human character after Larry the Cable Guy's wild card character "Baby".
32.
In 2008, John Lydon had extensive dental work performed in Los Angeles, at a reported cost of US$22,000.
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John Lydon was married to Nora Forster, a publishing heiress from Germany, for around 44 years until her death in April 2023.
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John Lydon was the stepfather of Forster's daughter Ari Up, known for being the lead vocalist of the Slits.
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In 2018, John Lydon revealed that Forster was in the mid-stages of Alzheimer's disease.
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In June 2020, John Lydon said that he had become full-time carer for his wife as her condition has been deteriorating.
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John Lydon became an American citizen in 2013, in addition to his British and Irish citizenships.
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John Lydon wrote in the liner notes of the Public Image Ltd.
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John Lydon describes himself as a "pacifist by nature" and expresses admiration for Mahatma Gandhi.
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In 2018, John Lydon was photographed wearing a shirt that read Trump's campaign slogan Make America Great Again.
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John Lydon signed it off unironically with "God save the Queen".
42.
In 2010, when Elvis Costello and Roger Waters announced their intention to cancel performances in Israel and boycott the country, John Lydon elected to continue with a Public Image Ltd concert in Tel Aviv.
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John Lydon expressed his view on gay couples raising children in a 10 February 2005 interview on the BBC's Sunday morning religious programme The Heaven and Earth Show.
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In 2020, John Lydon reiterated his personal support for Farage during another interview on Good Morning Britain.
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John Lydon has expressed disdain for Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair and described former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as a "racist, prejudiced bastard" in response to the allegations of antisemitism in the Labour Party.
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In 2022, during the Conservative Party leadership election, John Lydon stated that he'd like to see Jacob Rees-Mogg as the next UK prime minister.
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John Lydon noted that "I love that World War Two respect, put Britain first attitude he has".