(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)

Anyone with a vested interest in the UK punk scene of the late 1970s will know that the Sex Pistols were pitted as the poster boys for the movement and that everything they stood for—both musically and in their socio-political outlook—was ardently anti-establishment. Punk aimed to go against the grain, forging an alternative to what they saw as a stagnant and limp classic and progressive rock scene, and frontman John Lydon, under his Johnny Rotten persona, became the mouthpiece for this way of thinking.

However, when the band predictably imploded under the weight of their own brashness after just one album, Lydon moved onto pastures new and quickly established a new project in Public Image Ltd. PiL were still a punk band at their core, but it was evident that Lydon had more intent to create meaningful art that drew on inspiration from a variety of other places, rather than a simple desire to be a provocateur.

You can hardly call PiL a softening of Lydon’s personality, but it was almost definitely an expansion of his identity as he began to explore elements of dub, electronic music and even the Pistols’ former nemesis, progressive rock. Yes, you heard that right – Lydon rowed back on some of the inflammatory things he had previously said about the genre and began to explore elements of it in his new project, proving that his statements were nothing more than an attempt to rile up individuals who were susceptible to dismissing what he had to say.

That ‘I hate Pink Floyd’ T-shirt that he once famously adorned was a lie, and he actually had plenty of appreciation for the famous progressive rock act, stating in an interview with The Quietus that “you’d have to be daft as a brush to say you didn’t like Pink Floyd,” revealing that he has a special place in his heart for Dark Side of the Moon in particular. Moving towards a poppier and more commercially successful yet still decidedly progressive act that Lydon adored, he also held a love for Kate Bush. “Her shrieks and warbles are beauty beyond belief to me,” he would later reveal, claiming that her unusual vocal style was a similar deterrent to listeners that he was subjected to.

Prog rock isn’t all whimsy, though, and Lydon no doubt appreciated the heavier side of the genre. His love for Van der Graaf Generator was decidedly less surprising than his love for Bush and Floyd, and he would claim that he and frontman Peter Hamill shared a number of qualities, whether they meant to or not.

“I love all his stuff, it is about punk,” Lydon revealed on Tommy Vance’s Capital Radio show. “He didn’t mean it to be, but it is.” 

In addition to this, he also held a longstanding love of a future punk and hard rock legend’s earlier prog adventures, singling out Lemmy’s contributions to Hawkwind before forming Motörhead. While the two would later become friends and contemporaries, Lydon insisted that he and the bassist went way back together.

“I used to follow Hawkwind around the country and go to all their gigs,” he would later reveal to What’s on Southwest, although a large amount of their early interactions supposedly involved copious amounts of drug-taking.

Lydon also had a massive love for the mutations on prog that were happening in mainland Europe, and he singled out Magma and Can as being two of his favourites, which inspired the work of PiL to a large degree. He would state that “Can is its own thing” in his praise for the German act while also commenting that the French act Magma were “truly, truly masterful.” In a future comment on Magma, his musings managed to sum up this sudden revelation that he appreciated prog on the whole.

“It’s quite a good thing to be multi-languaged and indeed, open to multiculturalism,” he would claim. We think it’s a good thing you opened your mind up to it too, John.