Free Anger is an Energy: My Life Uncensored by John Lydon

outwardness. ‘Gurls luv me!’ he always said. When that ended up in
the Pistols documentary,
The Filth And The Fury
, there was a double stroke of joy in it for me because it was something he said right from the very first minute I met him. I know he knew
I’d get it. It cracks me up to this day. That’s so typical him, he was so
not
gorgeous – brilliant, hahaha!
    His real name was Simon, but he never liked it, so he was using his other one, John. The story he told me was that his father was a Grenadier Guard. He’d proudly say, ‘Yeah, just
like Bob Marley!’ His mother was an Ibiza hippie, and it was an unwanted pregnancy. The father didn’t want to know, so she brought him up. She was a well-educated person, was
Sid’s mother, but she didn’t seem to have an occupation. She’d be one for the long flowing hippie dresses, and the black fingernails. But sometimes I’d see her in what
I’d call a nurse’s outfit, but in khaki. Very odd. I don’t know what she ever did. She probably bagged nails. Somebody had to put all those nails in boxes.
    Ritchie was his father’s surname, Beverley was his mother’s, so how he was registered on his birth certificate I don’t know. He couldn’t get to
grips with it, so he was more than pleased when I started calling him Sid, because that was a new name to add to the repertoire. It was after my pet hamster, a stupid thing, but very friendly,
hence it was appropriate. At the time Sid was such a downer name, because, with the direct correlation to Sid James, it meant everything awful, a very bad working-class name, so he loved it all the
more, he revelled in it. That was Sidney.
    He used to live with his mother in Fellows Court, a grim high-rise in Hackney. At first I thought, what a great place to live. NO!! Its elevator never worked, and it was always up eleven flights
of stairs when you went to see him, so I wasn’t too eager about visiting initially.
    Sid was very witty, and again that was his survival technique – humour. To pronounce
Vogue
magazine ‘Vogg-you-ee’ was very funny. I would’ve been none the wiser
but for the fact that we had French taught at William of York. In fact I, along with Sid, preferred ‘Vogg-you-ee’. It seemed to sum it up much better. But he used to treat it like it
was the Bible. Of course, he never bought a copy. He’d just go to the news-stand and read it. Or view the pictures, actually, no reading involved. He liked his fashions to hilarious degrees,
and for Sidney, David Bowie was his fashion icon of all time. If Sidney ever wanted to be anyone, it was Dave.
    The Sid speciality was getting his hair to stick up like Bowie’s. He would get two chairs from the living room and put them in front of the oven, open it and lie upside down with his head
inside with the gas on, and the heat would make his hair stiff. He once caught fire that way too. Sometimes it would frizzle at the end, but it was a good look. You know, ‘How does Dave Bowie
get that happening?’ ‘Well, just like you, Sid!’
    It was hilarious to bring Sid into Finsbury Park. There were top Gunners left right and centre, going, ‘
What the fuck is that?
’ I went, ‘That’s a brave fella,
you’ve got to admit. It’s mid-winter andhe’s wearing a sleeveless shirt because fashion comes first!’ ‘Yeah, fair point!’
    One time I took him to the back of the North Bank at Arsenal. As it turned out, he had good mates there – serious mates; I was surprised. There was one chap that years later became a
really serious problem – a real battler. He weren’t no weak heart, Sid, and there he was with his Dave Bowie quiff that he’d spent two days with his head backwards in the oven
perfecting – because the idea of hairspray or a hairdryer never occurred to him!
    He turned up at my family’s house one day, and he’s in a thin T-shirt, but he’s wearing this Afghan coat that he said his mate had nicked off a Manchester City supporter, and