“I’m watching one of those ridiculous ‘mysteries of the universe’ programmes,” he continues, fixing me with one of his comedy bulgy-eyed stares.
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“But there’s no clue as to MY existence!”
It’s great to hear Lydon accepting what we all know — that he’s a true one-off, a bona fide mystery of the universe.
Since bursting on to the scene as brattish, spiky-haired Sex Pistols frontman Johnny Rotten, spitting out his lines like there’s no tomorrow, he has relished his status as rock’s arch-provocateur.
“But there’s no spite in me,” maintains the eternal outsider. “I just enjoy the tits for tats that conversation can bring.”
And yet, as his band Public Image Ltd releases studio album No.11, End Of World, I discover a very different John Lydon.
His latest songs go hand-in-hand with a tale of personal grief which reveals a tender, more compassionate side to the 67-year-old punk icon.
For much of the past five years, he has been primary carer of his beloved wife Nora Forster as she descended into the twilight world of Alzheimer’s.
Her death in April has hit him very hard and only now is he coming to terms with his loss.
Speaking from the home the couple shared in Venice Beach, Los Angeles, Lydon says: “I’ve reached that phase where I’m remembering all the good times, which is where I wanted to get to — that’s very important to me.
“Even towards the end, Nora’s humour was there, you see,” he adds in his singular way.
“She was never mean or miserable and I’m much the better person for her being in my life, much the better person.”
It was in 1979, a year after the Pistols imploded and PiL had emerged, that Lydon married the German publishing heiress, 14 years his senior and a leading light in London’s punk scene.
He became stepfather to Nora’s daughter, the late Ari Up, singer in one of his favourite bands, The Slits, and later legal guardian to Ari’s sons.
In the early Eighties, he and Nora moved to California and, for the past four decades, it has been his main base.
“I’d be ill all the time in England with the mould and God knows what else,” Lydon explains.
“I’ve got respiratory problems from childhood illnesses so it’s important I’m not in damp climates.
“But my heart is British and that’s all there is to it.”
In 2018, just as his new Public Image songs started to take shape, he announced that his partner was in the mid-stages of Alzheimer’s.
Lydon picks up the narrative: “The first recordings were interrupted because Nora was beginning to show the signs.
“She’d started to panic when she was alone in our room at the studio and would go wandering off.
“In 30-second bursts, she would be completely mystified about where she was.”
Lydon tried bringing in expert help but eventually had to “knock the sessions on the head”.
Then, as his partner’s condition worsened, “came the bloody Covid disaster”.
“Not only was it financially crippling but, for poor old Nora, the lockdowns meant people couldn’t visit her,” he says.
“And those who did were wearing masks, which was very hard for her to understand. Like me, she lived for communication.”
Despite their challenging situation, Lydon reports that Nora loved the new PiL songs, particularly the wild Car Chase, which chimed with her familiar sense of panic.
“She connected with that song in a very serious way — that feeling of wanting to run away from whatever was making her freak out,” he says.
Lydon describes how looking after Nora became “24/7 care and an awful lot of work”.
“So, we spent a lot of our time together listening to music and, because of her sheer effervescence and love of life, she encouraged me to continue writing songs and not dwell on misery. We laughed to the end.”
Among Lydon’s happiest memories with Nora before she became ill, is an idyllic holiday in the heart of the Pacific Ocean. It has inspired the new album’s final track, a moving ballad called Hawaii.
“At the end of a PiL tour of Japan, we had to change flights in Hawaii for some weird booking reason,” he recalls.
“I decided to stay there for a bit and got Nora to fly out to meet me. We had a fantastic holiday.
“Our manager knew a lot of top surfers so we were hanging out with them and doing magic mushrooms. I tried my hand at surfing in very dangerous waters!”
The song Hawaii is a departure for Lydon, toning down PiL’s post-punk squall for something altogether gentler.
He says: “Not enjoyable to compose but with a wonderful result that Nora loved and appreciated.
“The loveliest thing about the lyrics — and she knew this too — is the word aloha because it means hello AND goodbye in Hawaiian.”
The track achieved wide publicity earlier this year when Lydon, whose parents were Irish, entered it into Ireland’s Eurovision heats as part of his mission to highlight cruel Alzheimer’s.
“We’ve hit people in many different ways and I’m really pleased with the reaction,” he says. “The world is fed up with criticising me, about time they flipped the coin!
“I love the show in Ireland for giving me the opportunity to perform it before Nora died. She even picked out the pink suit I wore.
“It was heartbreaking to sing it live, knowing what was coming, but it had to be done.
“That’s the story of my life really. You use adversity as a weapon. You fight back.”
For Lydon, music is one of his main sources of comfort right now. “I’m hoping it’s a fantastic form of therapy because I’m sitting here alone at the moment and it’s not healthy,” he admits.
His affectionate regard for Nora comes with an astonishing anecdote to do with the coronation of King Charles III.
To set the scene, remember that this is the singer who once snarled: “God save the Queen, she ain’t no human being.”
Since the Pistols’ anarchic anthem appeared in 1977, Lydon has softened in his views on the British monarchy.
I remember him telling me years ago that the late Queen was “probably a lovely old dear” and that his beef had been with “spoilt brat” elements of The Firm.
So on May 8, coronation day, Lydon held what he calls “a good theme party to send off my poor lovely Nora”.
He says: “I invited close friends and immediate neighbours to come over and we watched the choral work from the Abbey and giggled hysterically — even if I secretly love that tonality in the singing.
“Then we ate sausages and mashed potatoes and we got wildly drunk. I had decked the whole backyard in Union Jacks and they’re still up,” he tells me.
At this point, Lydon gets to his feet, walks outside and shows me, via his iPad, all the red, white and blue bunting festooned around the place.
The man who once hilariously advertised Country Life butter compares the scene “to a good fun English pub in the countryside”.
“I also got a fantastic life-size cardboard cut-out of Charlie and Camilla, which was the thrill of the day,” he says, before adding with a cackle, “I noticed that they’ve both got very strangely shaped bodies!”
I suggest he might have to change over to God Save The King and this brings us to the new PiL song, L F C F (Liars, Fakes, Cheats and Frauds), which is a thinly veiled swipe at his Pistols bandmates.
Lydon is seething about director Danny Boyle’s Disney drama Pistol, based on guitarist Steve Jones’ autobiography Lonely Boy.
Jones and drummer Paul Cook sued their old frontman after he objected to the original songs being used.
Lydon lost the legal battle in August 2021 — and it still rankles.
“I think those poor sods made an error of judgment when they sided with the Disney corporation,” he says. “That was a ‘nice’ way to go down in flames.”
So did he actually watch the series? “Well, I had to, just to see how absurd it was,” he replies. “I’m sad to say it fulfilled all my negative expectations. They turned a valid, historical moment into a Grange Hill six-parter.
“I didn’t recognise the characters. It was so disappointing that the whole thing was done behind my back ’cos I’m the bloke who wrote the songs and created the image. So bizarre.
“It was like an act of rebellion against what made the band popular and famous. Or unpopular and infamous!”
On the court case, Lydon says: “I needed that like a hole in the head. They were well aware of Nora’s illness and they came at me at a particularly weak time emotionally.”
Despite his stance, he remains immensely proud of their classic album Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols.
“I don’t think the mockumentary tarnishes that. It’s their foolishness which shines through,” he laughs.
Lydon well remembers how Public Image Ltd rose from the ashes of the Pistols in 1978.
“It happened very quickly,” he says. “As soon as I got back to London, I hunted down my friends and we got into it straight away.
“I had completely different gears inside my head. I wanted to shapeshift into something better and more serious.
“The Sex Pistols was my first pair of shoes and they were quite comfortable but I outgrew them and needed a new pair.
“Johnny Rotten is a cobbler! Never mind the cobblers!”
In 2023, PiL is still the central outlet for Lydon’s creativity and End Of World is typically uncompromising.
It begins in laugh-out-loud style with Penge, an epic Viking anthem set in an unassuming suburb in South East London, no less.
So why Penge? “It’s a wonderful sound, isn’t it?” answers Lydon. “The pronunciation is doom-laden Anglo-Saxon and it makes for a rollicking good singalong.
“It’s a place that strikes fear in people’s hearts as they drive through it to get to somewhere else, like something from a Carry On film.” Another belter is The Do That, which sounds joyous and funny but comes with a deeper meaning.
“I’ve heard an awful lot of American journalists pretending that the whole punk influence came out of New York.
“Well, hello? Bands like Sweet with Ballroom Blitz and Mud with Tiger Feet — that’s the do that, man!
“T. Rex, David Bowie, Slade, Mott The Hoople, The Alex Harvey Band — their influence was enormous.
“And they try to write that all off and wrap it around Patti Smith. It’s so wrong!”
When punk exploded, the Pistols’ chief rivals were bands such as The Clash and The Damned but Lydon was more attracted to acts with female singers.
“I loved X-Ray Spex, The Slits and The Adverts. Really exciting and the more different they were, the better.
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“But I didn’t like what it turned into with all that uniformed, studded leather jacket nonsense. I blame the Ramones!”
It goes without saying that he’s not a fan of the current mash-up of the Sex Pistols (Jones and Cook) and Generation X (Billy Idol and Tony James) called Generation Sex.
“Good luck to them but come on boys, get it together,” cries Lydon.
“The Pistols side of it is songs they never really understood and Billy’s got to come in as a translator.
“What has poor Billy taken on? We used to call him the Cliff Richard of punk and he was such a nice fella and easy to get on with.
“Him and Sid [Vicious] used to be quite ludicrous about who could do the best Elvis Presley sneer.”
As for the irrepressible Lydon, he has no intention of hanging up his mic.
“By the time I’m fully finished with making sounds and putting words together, it will be the day I die,” he decides.
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