The words “Johnny Rotten” and “love song” seem so diametrically opposed, it is downright inconceivable to think of them meshing well. Rotten, a/k/a John Lydon, originally fronted the seminal, 70s punk band, the Sex Pistols, and he’s now written a poignant, modern love song with his band of the past 40+ years, Public Image Ltd (PiL).
What piqued my interest initially was that the song, called “Hawaii”, and is dedicated to Lydon’s wife of almost a half-century, Nora. You see, Nora is suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease, and Lydon believes this song is “…going to melt her, Alzheimer’s or not”. The tune represents a moment when, according to Lydon, “We spent a magnificent holiday in Hawaii after a tour once and it was just the greatest week of our lives. Now her memories are fading, I wanted to bring something like that back to her. I get broke up even thinking about it.”
What a beautiful sentiment from someone not often associated (publicly) with beauty, love, and warmth. After all, this is the guy who penned such moral shockers as “God Save The Queen”, and “Anarchy in the U.K.”, and whose band brought us the startling “Who Killed Bambi?” in the late 1970s (though he was very upset at the Bambi crime in that song). Lydon/Rotten once gave his bandmate a renown nickname that stuck- “Sid Vicious”. While many were indignant and repulsed by the Sex Pistols look (dynamic progenitors of piercings and spiked hair), sound, and antics, they helped birth the punk rock movement and questioned British social mores.
Fast forward 45-years, and Lydon, who still makes statements as controversial and outlandish as ever, considers himself his wife’s full-time caretaker. “For me, the real person is still there. That person I love is still there every minute of every day and that is my life. It’s unfortunate that she forgets things, well, don’t we all?”
We sure do. The song, “Hawaii”, has lines like “Remember me, I remember you”, “All journeys end, Some begin again”, and “Falling in our hearts, Here again, Hawaii”. Perhaps we’re all invariably accountable as the sum of what we say and do, but most of us have shades and textures. To hear Johnny Lydon gift a beautiful song about Hawai`i and express verbal sentiments about his ailing wife in 2023 reminds me to look for often unseen nuances in everyone and everything.
Think about it…