John Lydon Revisits His Childhood Home

very much pleasure the latest in our series where we take a famous face back to the home they grew up in is a real cracker the man who became Johnny Rotten goes back to where he spent his formative years before changing the face of music with the Sex Pistols my name is John Lydon I was born thirty first to the first 1956 that's new my early childhood memories were bemble mansions that was a complete slum of damp smelly vile Victorian monstrosity of a building until aged 11 we were lucky enough to be able to move to six acres of State Finsbury Park this is where I'll spent most of my early childhood it's different it's neater the fixtures of fittings are nicer because my mum and dad had awful hideous taste those two chairs there for my mum and dad that's where they'd sit in that far corner there was two budgies and a hamster which we used to call Sid Vicious in fact that's where the name Sid Vicious comes from named after my hamster you know he used to look a bit like a hamster because he had kind of Sai bucked teeth and there's a little white thing it was very friendly little hamster and Sid was a very friendly chat before the drugs took hold of him I was seriously ill most of my early life I had meningitis and I slipped into a coma for three months and when I woke up I had no idea who I was or who anybody was and my mother really had to coax me back into remembering who they even were I mean it's a terrible thing not to know your own parents for a long time and it caused a lot of damage to me into people around me this is the kitchen again all modern nice appliances what strikes me is a how all your different episodes of my life here are all now come crashing in and I I'm not kind of coordinating them that I eat appropriately is you know a series of events they're all colliding at once so forgive me if I jump from one subject to another but it's fairly flooding my head right now and it's not a pleasant feeling we had a little table which is approximately the size of that tiny little one there but that was there and on that table when I used to make my own tea that's where I wrote god save the queen I just took out a pen found piece of paper and just wrote it all in one go call that poetry if you have one this is the bathroom where I didn't spend much of my time the sink is still way down low I remember also my dad used to keep toothbrushes there and I had no concept what they were for because I'd always see him cleaning his boots with them so you know there was no oral hygiene I was nobody hygiene going on here it's all but over the years I have changed my habits I've progressed to using you know soap occasionally and this is the bedroom seemed so much bigger when I was younger those window frames permanently leaked permanently damp mold black mold on the walls I remember that because it used to make me ill all the time this is where I just would sit for hours playing Captain Beefheart reggae bits a soul alike bits of everything really but it would be always causing arguments all right there'd be these neighbors up above call the skinners and they never liked what I was playing and then they'd be the mother and father units downstairs in the kitchen banging upwards as boom bang boom bang the sadness is coming back to me now's cuz my mom died and but when she dies I kind of emotionally left this place so that's now flooding into my head odd I'd like to say if you listening mum thank you love ya he raised me well I'm doing alright see you soon peace out cool I'm actually there just about your your memories colliding at once and flooding your head have you managed to kind of make any yeah and they're just seeing that bit now right because that's the first time we're seeing it it's it's even worse it's really bizarre how I'm you try to remember your life historically event after event but life isn't really like that when it really matters is it you know at what a sad thing that was but at the same time like add more memories of flooding happy times Arsenal lend their house so you know a couple guna country they got mixed you got me mixed feelings generally I so it's an obvious point well I missed my mum you see and that's it that's the house I remember cuz you know that's that in the house she done

Channel: undefined

Views: 583,763

Rating: 4.9228592 out of 5

Keywords: john, lydon, sex, pistols, PIL, punk, johnny, rotten, finsbury, park, london

Id: t92cEZFkxOk

Length: 5min 38sec (338 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 04 2009

Reddit Comments

[u/429300]

There’s some interesting stuff on the wiki page:

Sid Vicious was born John Simon Ritchie.

• The hamster was named Sid after Syd Barrett, co-founder of Pink Floyd.

• John Lydon nicknamed John "Sid Vicious" after Lydon's pet hamster Sid, who had bitten Ritchie, eliciting Ritchie's response: "Sid is really vicious!"The animal was described by Lydon as "the softest, furriest, weediest thing on earth.

• At the time, Ritchie was squatting with Lydon, John Joseph Wardle (Jah Wobble), and John Grey, and the four were familiarly known as "the Four Johns

• According to Lydon, he and Vicious would often busk for money, with Vicious playing the tambourine. They would play Alice Cooper covers, and people gave them money to stop.

• Vicious was in the band, but he could not play well and had no bass guitar experience, so guitarist Steve Jones played bass on the band's debut album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols. Vicious appeared only on "Bodies", which he was allowed to play bass on, even though it would be overdubbed later on by Jones.

• On 25 December 1977, the band played a matinee for the children of Huddersfield during the firemen's strike. John Lydon claimed in the documentary Never Mind the Baubles that Vicious needed a serious talking-to beforehand because he wanted to be the "hardcore, tough rocker bloke" and that swearing and being tough wasn't "the right way" to "get the message across" to the children.

Edit; corrected spelling of Syd Barrett as per u/bolanrox

[u/PeppinoImpastato]

I am an Antichrist...

[u/NeonNintendo]

Flogging a Dead Hamster

[u/G01ngDutch]

This just made my day