The Disneyfication of Johnny Rotten
Sex Pistols frontman loses court case over his refusal to use the band’s music for an upcoming movie
It’s been 43 years since John Lydon leered menacingly at a crowd of flabbergasted Americans at the Winterland in San Francisco and jeeringly asked them: “Ever feel you’ve been cheated?” before walking off the stage and leaving his seminal persona Johnny Rotten as the spiky orange-haired, green-toothed, venom-spitting frontman of the Sex Pistols, behind.
Lydon has just lost a court case against his fellow Pistols — drummer Paul Cook and guitarist Steve Jones — over his refusal to allow them to let the band’s music be used for Pistol, an upcoming Danny Boyle-directed, Disney-backed drama about their career — for which Lydon says he was not consulted and which he described in an interview with the UK Sunday Times as “the most disrespectful shit”. Perhaps it’s now the 65-year-old Lydon who feels cheated...
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