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

there was still M.C. etched on the back. And he went, ‘Have you got any spray paint?’ You know, ‘Come on, Sid, have Man City really come to town wearing that? Hmmm, I don’t
know, I think that stands for Maria Cachuba – a girl’s name or something.’ ‘No, no,’ Sid goes, ‘I won it in a battle!’ He didn’t. It turned out it
was stolen off a hippie.
    But Sid wasn’t a threat to anybody. His thing was: I look better than Bowie, and I’m a virgin. That was his selling point. At that age, that was incredibly brave. Everyone our age,
between fourteen and fifteen, was like, ‘Oh no, I’m not a virgin.’ You know when you’ve got your three weeks’ summer holiday, then you come back, and everyone tells
you how many women they shagged. I doubt it’s any different to this day, except maybe the age has dropped to thirteen or fourteen. But that was the basic principle, and Sid ran it the other
way: No, I’m a complete virgin. I loved that very much about him.
    I may’ve taken the piss out of him for the Bowie thing, but then trying to be like anybody else leaves you open for ribbing. At that time, I had really long hair, and I had Hawkwind
emblazoned on the back of the jean jacket that I wore over my school uniform – with no sleeves – very biker-y, I suppose. The very thing I was accused of at William of York, I’d
adopted as an image.
    Sid did a hilarious drawing of me: it was this tiny little head withone string of long hair, and huge wide shoulders, looking very much like a brick with a pea on top,
and one thread dangling. That was his image of me, so how on earth we ever got to hang out with each other is anyone’s guess. Other than, I think, humour, and his preference at the time for
being called John when it was really Simon. That was, ‘Oh, another John – after me, John Gray, John Stevens, etc. How many of them do I need!’
    There was another John at that school; he had extremely long hair, but he had a tendency to be psycho-violent. He was a brilliant artist and a great footballer, but very antisocial and he ended
up in some criminal alcove somewhere. He was adopted and not liked by his adoptive parents, so he was having real problems, mentally and socially. I learned a lot from him, and nothing at all from
the art teacher. So, another John – after the war everyone ran out of ideas. ‘Call him John, he probably won’t live long.’ And if they did, they could pick their own.
‘It’s up to you now. Call yourself what you want, just get out of the house!’
    Friday nights at Hackney & Stoke Newington would be the college dance nights. I ended up running them, and that would be a brilliant juxtaposition of events – lots of Kool & the
Gang-type stuff, and then hardcore reggae, and the occasional Hawkwind thrown in, and it absolutely went down a treat. A great mixture of different belief systems in music coming together because
it was a chance to sneak in drinks and be naughty, and watch the girls and see how they were when they were ‘off duty’, when the guard is let down. That’s what social events are
all about: it’s being able to drop your guard and be rewarded for it, rewarded with friendliness and openness from others. Music’s a great leveller in that.
    We started going out clubbing in Hackney, because there were loads of places to go. I’d go down to Sid’s first, and there’d be trouble – ter-wubble! – no matter
where we went, just because of the way we were wearing our clobber. Many a time we’d have to run back to Sid’s place because we’d missed the last bus, and I weren’t going to
walk through that particular area at night. I’d always stayat his, because there were no buses running, and it was way too long a walk back to Finsbury Park, and very
dangerous at night too. You’d go through Hackney, then Stroud Green, and all manner of things could go wrong.
    Sid’s mother, Anne Beverley, never really spoke to me. She never really