John Lydon has insisted that there are “no cultural heroes” in music today.
The 67-year-old rock star – who was formerly known by his stage name of Johnny Rotten – shot to fame as part of the controversial band the Sex Pistols in the late 1970s and enjoyed massive success with their single studio album ‘Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols’ but insisted that there is nothing on the scene like the ‘God Save the Queen’ rockers today.
He said: “You have no cultural heroes now. Just fraudulent political theorists!”
Meanwhile, the ‘Pretty Vacant’ hitmaker – who was born in London but had Irish parents – had been hoping to represent Ireland in the Eurovision Song Contest later this year but failed to advance past the qualifying rounds of the competition and admitted it had been “hard” to throw himself back in the spotlight after years of providing full-time care for his wife Nora, 80, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2018.
He told The Sunday Times: “I’m never asked to do anything in Blighty! It’s hard to live down sensationalist headlines. ‘Filth!’ ‘Fury!’ I lost control of my good name an awful long time ago and it doesn’t seem worth fighting back. [I’d been] thrown in the deep end and I don’t know if I can survive. Will my ego come back? It’s hard to go from 24/7 care to this. I’m unprepared. I have to bring this illness up to the public but leaving Nora disturbs me. It’s a rock and a hard place. But what do I do?”