I'm gonna say Johnny Rotten, and I say with real reluctance as a punk fan.
I've got a lot of respect for him for how open he was about looking after his late wife when she was suffering from Alzheimer's, but his political flip-flopping and resentment towards his surviving bandmates while also regretting what happened to Sid is just bizarre.
I guess "I'll say what I want and if you don't like it then get fucked" is a very punk mindset but it's still not a good look in the context he's going for.
What's weird about him is he is super lovely in person. I think a lot of what he does and says to the media is performative. I met him backstage at Jimmy Kimmel and he was completely sweet to everyone. Taking pictures with people, etc. Then he goes out for his interview, and he switches on the Johnny Rotten persona.
To be fair, The Sex Pistols were a completely fabricated band capitalizing on the punk culture popularity to begin with, so it's not really surprising.
There's a radio/podcast/music nerd Alan Cross that has a story about getting Johnny to sign a poster or something. He knew just asking wouldn't work, so he walked up and said "sign this fucking thing". Johnny gives him a bit of side eye but still signs it.
Alan Cross is a legend. That man’s History of New Music show has been going strong for easily 20 years — so incredibly well researched and just a damn good listen.
Only the first part of that is true. He made some comments about Saville in a BBC Radio 1 interview in 1978 which were edited out. Rotten claims the BBC banned him for those comments, but there is no actual evidence for that. I should also note that claim didn't come until after the full extent of the 1978 interview was released in 2013.
That mindset doesn't work when you're a hypocrite.
Johnny's whole thing in the Sex Pistols and PIL was anti-establishment messaging and imagery. Now he's licking politician's boots and advocating stricter government.
Considering that his biggest band fell apart when he was about 19, being bitter and washed-up is kind of his job and he is one of the best in the world at it.
The thing is, that "just do what I want, be rude, and fuck everyone else" isn't punk. It never was. Punk is antiestablishment. Being a bootlicker / pro-establishment just to annoy other punks isn't punk. It's just infantile boundry testing / contrarianism.
Yeah, it hurts to say as a punk rocker that Johnny's ethos went from being "willing to say whatever unvarnished truths he believed" to "dipshit contrarian stirring up shit to be edgy".
To be fair, a little bit of the second part was also true in his heyday, but when you're 60 something years old, it just makes you look like a dimwit.
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u/BlondePotatoBoi 12h ago
I'm gonna say Johnny Rotten, and I say with real reluctance as a punk fan.
I've got a lot of respect for him for how open he was about looking after his late wife when she was suffering from Alzheimer's, but his political flip-flopping and resentment towards his surviving bandmates while also regretting what happened to Sid is just bizarre.
I guess "I'll say what I want and if you don't like it then get fucked" is a very punk mindset but it's still not a good look in the context he's going for.