John Lydon Channels Grief in New Music: “You Cannot Stop the Sadness When it Comes to it”
The former frontman of Sex Pistols is working on some new music while mourning the loss of his wife, Nora Forster, who passed away from Alzheimer’s in April 2023. Meanwhile, his post-punk band, Public Image Ltd is gearing up for the “This Is Not The Last Tour” tour, starting in May 2025.
John Lyon told NME that while he couldn’t do a thing about the natural process of grief, he has decided to let it run through the veins of new material and the upcoming tour, which includes a song that he wrote for Forster. “Sadness is an energy,” he said, paraphrasing from PiL’s 1986 track, “Rise.” “It can either be applied or you can let it eat you alive. The second option is not very interesting to me, so I choose the other way.”
Lydon met his late wife in 1975 and got married four years later. In 2018, he became her full-time carer after Forster’s Alzheimer's diagnosis. The musician revealed that those last days were not easy.
“Her final day was extremely painful for her,” he said. “She was screaming in agony. It was not an easy send-off, and she was utterly confused, asking, ‘John, what’s happening?’”
He watched her suffering as “every part of her was giving up,” and now, he’s facing “the deeper reality” of the memories from those last days. “This is so deep a pain, it’s very, very hard to get over.” He said he had lost half of himself.
“It’s like a hollowness.”
“Now I’m in this frame of mind where I know I have to face it, but I want to face it, and that might help me perform ‘Hawaii’ live.’” — the track from PiL’s 11th studio album, ‘End of World,’ was an ode to Forster inspired by a holiday they shared.
Lydon is looking forward to “getting out of the house.”
“I’ve done enough wallowing, which of course, you can’t avoid, even if you think, ‘No, be the bigger man.’ You cannot stop it.”
The PiL are working on their 12th album and Lydon joked that it’d be a 72-hour long album with non-stop screeching violins called “A Tragedy in 33 Parts,” but no, he isn’t going to inflict the pain on anyone. “It’s not going to be a dismal record,” he promised, teasing that they’re returning to “the roots of a proper rock band” and “tearing the f*cking building down,” whatever that means.
Meanwhile, Sex Pistols are going on a reunion world tour with a new frontman, Frank Carter. Lyon has previously blasted his former bandmates and called the reunion a “karaoke” with “something darker going on behind it.”
Guitarist Steve Jones told Rolling Stones that their relationship has become further strained over the years.
“We don’t talk,” Jones said. “The last time I spoke to him was 2008…We had a great time when we were young, and it was life-changing for all of us. But after the court case with Pistol,” referring to the legal battle over the use of the band’s music in the frontman’s biographical miniseries, which Lydon lost — “it wasn’t even worth asking John [about the reunion tour]. I don’t think he was interested.”
Source: NME
