An artist like this has a temperamental heart.

There’s nothing this man won’t say if he believes it and should you expect anything less from the enigmatic John Lydon aka Johnny Rotten. Creative genius. Misanthrope. Contrarian. Fearless. Self-righteous. Honest to a brutal fault. Doesn’t give a shit. An artist in the truest sense. Says what he wants when he wants and to hell with the consequences. Friend or foe beware; when Prometheus starts throwing fire everyone gets burned. Enjoy these choice rants, statements, musings, storm offs, whatever you want to call the stream of consciousness of an undefinable force of nature with an opinion on everything.

Let’s start with something recent that brought Johnny Rotten back to the public consciousness. A small excerpt from his 2015 ITV appearance on “Piers Morgan’s Life Stories”. Where they played a clip from 1978 which has Lydon talking about Jimmy Savile. Serial sex predator of among other victims disabled children who went famously unpunished for decades thanks to powerful connections. He then died in 2011 before justice could be served (sound familiar?). In fact the crimes had been systemically covered up his entire career by a culture of rich assholes as revealed in an explosive series of investigative reports triggered a year after his death by an ITV documentary.

BBC radio interview clip from 1978 — “I’d like to kill Jimmy Savile. I think he’s a hypocrit. He’s into all kinds of seediness… We’re not allowed to talk about it. I know some rumours. I bet none of this will be allowed out… Nothing I’ve said is libel.” — not aired until decades later after it was too late.

Back in 2015:

John Lydon: Weren’t I right!

Piers Morgan: The fact that in 1978, at the height of the Sex Pistols explosion, there you are saying about Jimmy Savile… so you had heard the kind of thing that we now know about him or stuff like that?

JL: Ya. I think most kids did, too. Most kids wanted to go to the top of the pops, but we all knew what that cigar muncher was up ta, but I’m very, very bitter that the likes of Savile and the rest of them were allowed to continue.

PM: Did you ever try to do anything about Savile?

JL: I did my bit. I said what I had to.

PM: Did they air that? No?

JL: [Shakes Head. No]

PM: It just got suppressed for “legal reasons”…

JL: Ya… and I found myself being banned from BBC radio for quite a while for my “contentious behaviour”. They wouldn’t state this directly, there’d be other excuses.

PM: But it’s shocking! That he got away with it for another 30 odd years…

JL: Not only him… a whole bunch of ‘em… and these are the purveyors of good taste.

PM: You were too offensive…

JL: Brilliant. Idn’t it. [Shakes head in disgust.] Well I’m still here and the rest of them… what are still alive… nice bit of jail time for them. [Calls to crowd] Jail Time!

[Applause]