John Lydon on how he’s channelling grief into a new “raucous” Public Image Ltd album

nme.com:

John Lydon has spoken to NME about how the upcoming Public Image Ltd tour and working on new “raucous” music is helping him navigate bereavement.PiL – the influential post-punk band that Lydon formed out of the rubble of Sex Pistols’ implosion in 1978 – are embarking on a series of dates for their ‘This Is Not The Last Tour’, beginning in May.From his home in Los Angeles, Lydon said he was “very much” looking forward to hitting the road again, and poignantly explained how it might help him with the grief he feels after his wife of 44 years, Nora Forster, passed away from Alzheimer’s in April 2023.“I need to get out of the house,” he told NME. “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. You cannot stop the sadness when it comes on, but enough already.”Looking to how events would shape new material, he said: “Sadness is an energy” – paraphrasing PiL’s iconic 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 Forster in 1975 at SEX (the London boutique run by Vivienne Westwood and Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren) and they married four years later.

When Forster was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2018, Lydon became her full-time carer. Lydon, 69, candidly reflected on how he is only now processing the pain of her last days.“Now I’ve had to face the deeper reality which is now the memories are very clear in my head,” he said. “I had to push them aside for a long time, but her final day was extremely painful for her.