John Lydon might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but you can’t argue against his legacy. Yes, he’s outspoken, and potentially finds himself presently on the wrong side of history, but he is, first and foremost, an artist of generational proportions. After all, he’s the frontman and figurehead of one of history’s most significant acts, and a man who opened the gates for countless others.
Not only did he lead Sex Pistols, the vanguard of punk’s first wave, but after the band’s implosion, Lydon was already charging headfirst into the new era his old group had created, firmly at the forefront of post-punk experimentalism with Public Image Ltd.
Since his heyday, many acts have cited Sex Pistols, PiL and Lydon as a central influence on their own art. One of the most prominent is Californian pop-punk progenitors Green Day. The trio are one of the world’s most successful bands, bringing the punk ethos to a new generation with their early records, then to the children of that generation with 2004’s sprawling punk opera, American Idiot.
There are clear disparities between the work of Sex Pistols and Green Day, but there’s no doubting that the anarchistic lyrics, snotty attitude and buzzsaw guitars of the former left an indelible mark on the latter. Despite this link, Lydon has repeatedly distanced himself from his American disciples, and been outright rude about them.
Lydon is a complete gatekeeper of the whole ‘punk’ tag and ethos, and hasn’t been appreciative of any band that’s followed in the wake of Sex Pistols. But the act he undeniably hates more than any other in modern punk is Green Day. Mentioning them to him is like taking a match to a leaky gas tank.
During a 2007 interview, he said damningly: “I think Green Day f*cking stink. I think they’re the biggest load of fake nonsense I have ever seen. This lot really irk me. They’re everything that’s wrong.”
Explaining further why he hated the biggest punk band in the world at that point, when appearing on Sex Pistols bandmate Steve Jones’ radio show, he said: “It’s hokey little silly sods like Green Day that come in and think by sucking up to that system that you’re somehow ‘beating the system’. You’re not. You’ve become part of it.”
The frontman added: “We made it easy for ’em to come in and nick our things off us, which is alright, it’s nice, but they’re silly, rich fat kids.”
This was not the first time Lydon had torn into Green Day, despite them continuing to fly the flag for punk years after its emergence. Sharp-witted Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong had already sent a pointed riposte to Lydon back in 1997, following Sex Pistols’ cynically titled reunion jaunt, The Filthy Lucre Tour, regarded by younger punk purists as nothing more than a cash grab.
“I heard that Johnny Rotten was running around telling people that we’d ripped him off,” Armstrong told SPIN. “It’s funny, because if it wasn’t for the Sex Pistols there may not have been Green Day, but if it wasn’t for Green Day, the Sex Pistols wouldn’t have done their big reunion tour. To each his own.”
