Dante Ross: Look how young John Lydon is.

Janette Beckman: Look how funny Sid looks. I mean, just the whole thing. I remember the day, it was like typical London, slightly gray day. We were walking around by Hyde Park and they were like, “Oh, let’s jump in this dumpster!” So they jump in the dumpster and I take a picture, go to the next one and then they were like, “Oh, look at that old lady on the bicycle, we’ll push her off her bike! Ha, ha, ha, wouldn’t that be funny?” I mean, they were just goofing around. They were like 17, 18, 19-year-old guys, just out to have a good time. And then we spent the day wandering around London with them, taking silly pictures. And then we went and they were rehearsing obviously in this what we call Tin Pan Alley, it was this little tiny street at the back of Charring Cross. It was obvious that they weren’t really trained musicians… They just were kind of pretty crap, but it was punk so it didn’t really matter.

That was the point, kind of. Did you remain friends with them? Because I know you shot John Lydon a bunch of times. Explain this John Lydon photo [top image above] to me because he looks like a genius. What’s going on?

Sex Pistols were broken up, he’s got this new band now, PiL with Jah Wobble and Martin [Atkins] and I go around to his house. Actually, Vivien Goldman and I were working a story for Melody Maker and I remember all the ashtrays were full with cigarettes and joints. Everybody was drinking and it was a mess, so I figured I wasn’t going be be able to take a group shot. So I’d just go around, hanging out and I took a picture of Johnny with a gun. There were stuff all over the place and stuff written all over posters, there’s piles of shit everywhere and it was just crazy chaos and Vivien was trying to do her interview. Janet Lee was there trying to organize everybody and we decided to go to a pub. I remember Johnny pissing in a big pint of glass and that was just such a punk moment and foolishly, I didn’t have my camera and I probably wouldn’t have done it anyway because I’m too polite, but it was a punk moment like, “I don’t give a fuck, I’m drunk!” He’s got that fuck you look about him, doesn’t he? He had it, from the very beginning.

His eyes are always a little crazy.

PiL was just a fucking incredible band.

Sometimes I think they were cooler than the Sex Pistols.

I think they were. I don’t think the Sex Pistols were cool.

They sounded like Black Sabbath on glue.

I mean, they started something and they were kind of like the headliners with that whole kind of fuck you, fuck the Queen, fuck everybody and no future and all of that stuff, which was really…

It was important.

It was very important. That’s how London was, there was no future. There was no job for anybody, it was a dark and dreary country.

Being an American and being in the punk rock thing, probably 1979, 1980, I was waiting for something. I was like, “Led Zeppelin sucks, fuck Pink Floyd. What the fuck is going to happen?” There was Black music and not much else.

Yeah.

I mean, I was listening to my old Who records and I like Jimi Hendrix, but I remember seeing The Song Remains The Same with my pothead friends and going like, “This sucks, please save us!”

Something! We need a bit of a revolution. England was very dreary back in the ‘70s. The economy was terrible, people couldn’t get jobs, kids couldn’t get jobs.

New York was similar. It was lawless.

Well, that’s what’s so weird because when I came here in 1982, it was exactly the same thing — bad economy, kids rebelling, and it just had to happen. I mean, these guys, not solely, but they were there when the whole thing turned tits up and before that England has this whole class system thing going on where if you were born, and your father is wealthy, and you own a big fat house, and you go to Harrow, you’ll probably going to be prime minister at some point.

Yeah, and these guys aren’t probably going to get their…

Janette: They’re not going to get anywhere, their dad might be a cab driver. Nothing wrong with being a cab driver, but you know what I mean, it’s class system in England. And these guys, The Clash and all of those bands, they turned all that over and it was really a slap in the face for the whole of the English society, in my view.