On the surface, it looked like the most rotten thing rock's most famous punk has ever done to sell out his image.
"I buy Country Life because I think it tastes the best," the artist formerly known as Johnny Rotten sneered on screen in butter commercials smeared all over U.K. television in recent years. That's right: The guy who infamously declared himself the Antichrist had suddenly gone pro-butter.
As with the Pistols' publicity-driven firestorm of the 1970s, though, John Lydon says there's a deeper story behind those ads. They bought him the freedom to become more punk than he's ever been in his 35-year recording career.
"Shilling for butter is a lot less harmful and denigrating than dealing with a record company," Lydon said in a surprisingly gracious phone interview.
Headed to Mill City Nights for his first Twin Cities performance since 1989, the British music legend is back on the road with his post-Pistols dance-rock band Public Image Limited. The group's first new album in 20 years, "This is PiL," dropped over the summer.
Lydon says PiL could not have returned without those Country Life ads, or the equally surprising TV stints he did in the '00s.
"For 20 years there, I was under these stifling obligations by major record labels that made it impossible for me to function," Lydon explained. With his wicked, iconic laugh, he added, "Thank God for British butter! We're completely independent of the shitty record-label system, and we're raring to go."
"This Is PiL" is a solid representation of the new wavey, electronically addled, rhythmically jagged sound that Public Image trademarked in the late '70s to mid '90s with a series of critically welcomed records, especially its 1979 collection "Metal Box." Commercial success, however, was fleeting for PiL outside of the semi-poppy mid-'80s singles "Rise" and "This Is Not a Love Song."
