Contrary to his infamous T-shirt slogan, the punk-rock patriarch is such a fan of the prog-rock royals that he came close to accepting an invitation to perform live with them

John Lydon, notorious for his hatred of Pink Floyd, not only loves Dark Side of the Moon – he'd like to head into the studio with the band. The PiL-leader and Sex Pistol recently revealed that he turned down the invitation to perform with Floyd frontman Dave Gilmour in Los Angeles, fearing he would look "pretentious".

"You'd have to be daft as a brush to say you didn't like Pink Floyd," Lydon explained to the Quietus. "They've done great stuff." This wasn't Lydon's opinion 35 years ago, when he was Johnny Rotten – and famous for wearing a T-shirt reading "I Hate Pink Floyd". The problem, he now says, was the band's "pretentiousness". "There was an aura of 'Oh, we're so great there's no room for anybody else,'" he said. "[And] they've done rubbish too."

In person, Pink Floyd are "not [pretentious] at all", Lydon admitted. "There was kind of a misreading and a misrepresentation in the press and they're not holier than thou ... Dave Gilmour I've met a few times and I just think he's an all right bloke."

Lydon said he loves Dark Side of the Moon, and two years ago, when the surviving members of Pink Floyd came to Los Angeles, "they asked me would I come on and do a bit of [it] with them". "The idea thrilled me no end," he said. "I came so close to doing it ... [but ultimately] it felt like I was trying to set myself up as some kind of pretentious person. I'm wary of the jam-session end of things."

The punk-rock patriarch seemed torn. "I just don't want to do it," he said. "But I wanted to do it. But just not when 20,000 people were there. I'd have gone to a studio and played around with it there. But not for the bigger picture. Privately, I'd love to go into the studio and do something with the album with them."

Lydon drew a parallel with an Alice Cooper gig at London's Hammersmith Apollo. "[Alice] wanted me to do School's Out with him," he said. "A sweet gesture but it's 'AHHHHHH!' y'know? As a young concert-going person I was never enamoured with celebrities who would walk out to feature in certain songs and then walk off. It struck me as being like Come Dancing. A little pony. And a little old. What old people do."

John Lydon is 54.