John Lydon, it seems, is not overly receptive to unexpected phone calls. “I just had to make sure you were who you said you were,” he explains. “For all I know this could be a crank call.”

Though it’s softened a little over the years, the playfully unhinged twang is still irrefutably him; and while our trans-Atlantic phone call (Lydon has lived in America for the past 20 or so years) gets off to a somewhat prickly start, it soon becomes clear that the punk patriarch is more than game for a chat.

Having fronted one of the most important bands in history, Lydon’s place in the rock ‘n’ roll hall of fame is assured – though he’d probably be disgusted to be there. The figurehead of Britain’s most potent musical export, punk, his famously unruly hair, generation defining wardrobe and notorious manic stare (apparently the result of a childhood bout of spinal meningitis), has made him undoubtedly one of the most iconic figures in twentieth century popular culture.

Recent years though, have seen Lydon make – shall we say – some odd career choices. Having set the mould for the angry, anti-establishment rock star in the seventies, some would think it a sorry fact that the today, the majority of 13 year olds in Britain would identify Lydon as “that guy off I’m A Celebrity” or worse still “the man from the butter adverts”. For him, though this is anything but a bone of contention...

“I did a commercial last year for a British company called Country Life Butter,” he tells me, matter of fact (like I didn’t know already). “They have paid me not over the top money but they have paid me enough to fund the putting together of this tour. Because of that I can get people back on the road again, because I have no financial support form the record company and no sponsorship, so it kind of played in rather well.”

So then, that explains it. Having decided to put Public Image Limited back together - Lydon’s massively influential post Sex Pistols project - for a special, one-off UK tour in December, he knew he needed some money from somewhere; his label wouldn’t give him any (apparently they never have) and the butter men came a knock-knock-knocking. Well, that that’s then. Fair enough I guess. Err, apparently not.

“I did the ad because it struck me as ‘well, that’s as politically incorrect as you can get’. People seem to write laws for me and declare ‘this is this’ and ‘that is that’, when really in my life you should ask me what my rules of commitment are. The term “sell out” for me implies making rubbish music for the masses, and I have certainly never been doing that.

“But as for making money on a product that you actually like, and I do like butter, to imply that there’s any wrong doing there really leads me into thinking ‘is there some spite machine out there that would deny me any money for doing anything at all?’

“Using the money to do this proves my point because frankly Country Life Butter has done me better than my own record label, and I’ve been in the music business with them for how long? And they couldn’t scratch two halfpennies together for me. I have been approaching Virgin Records for help in one way or another consistently for nearly 30 years and it has not got me very far. I mean I’m constantly hearing of people having a wonderful time with their record company. I don’t appear do be one of them. I don’t understand it. I remember the £18 million rumours flying around about Janet Jackson. Isn’t she something to do with Virgin? I ain’t seen nothing like that, and guess what: I’m far more productive.”

Right then, that really is that. But really, this interview wasn’t supposed to be all about butter. And we all know John Lydon doesn’t like record labels very much. So why are we having this little chat? Oh yes, PiL.

In December Public Image Ltd will commence a six date UK tour to mark the thirtieth anniversary of their groundbreaking 1979 album, Metal Box. It will be the first time the band has played together in 17 years.

Though less iconic or revered than The Sex Pistols, some would say it was with the more innovative Public Image Limited that Lydon found the freedom to truly flex his creative muscles. Having been a large part of the creation of not just punk music but the punk movement in the late seventies, Lydon – a lover of all types of music – felt perhaps partially bound by it, and weighed down by the ballast of The Sex Pistols and the array of controversy that surrounded the band.

“I’d go on Radio shows and they’d ask me what sort of music I was into and it wouldn’t be the same old clichés. I mean yes, I love The New York Dolls, yes I love Iggy but I also love everything else as well.

“Thank God for The Sex Pistols, you know. What a bleeding education. That really was a crash course in teaching you anything that can go horribly wrong all at once. Somehow I managed to survive all of that so when I formed PiL I wanted the shackles taken off. The Sex Pistols was sort of limited musically and I felt that if I carried on in that rigid format the material would suffer, from my part anyway. I wrote ‘Religion’ while I was in The Sex Pistols but I knew it couldn’t work in that format.

“So with Public Image I wanted people who were not necessarily the best musicians in the world but who could freefall and get outside of the box. That freedom is a wonderful thing and a total achievement because what it means is that you can use formats but you are not obligated to them. Writing pop songs at the same time as dealing with far more serious subjects about real, hurtful emotions. Everything can be approached in an honest way.”

Being one to “laugh in the face of adversity”, The struggle to get Public Image records made with limited record company backing was something that Lydon resented and reveled in with equal measure. Using studios at four am that were booked for other bands, he tells me, though impractical, ended up adding to the characteristic honesty of the Public Image sound.

“It means that you can improvise really, really well because you have to. There’s no 22 vocal takes, so you better get your emotions correct. A rawer sound but a more genuine one that’s straight from the heart, and with that added spice of desperation,” he laughs. “It makes for a better commitment.
“The sheer feeling of falling flat on your face; it’s an amazing precipice to put yourself on. PiL always improvised live. It was just the nature of the beast, and the current line-up is absolutely catered towards this. I worked with these guys a really long time and we know each other really, really well.

“With an emotional backdrop like that I can really let rip vocally. When we play a song like ‘Death Disco’, that’s not fake nonsense and pop tweeisms, that’s genuine heart felt anger and grief at the death of parents. I lost my mother years ago and she asked me to write a song for her while she was dying of cancer and that was it. And then my father’s death last year also. I’m ready to let rip on stage. That song still tears my heart inside out.”

Having been in at least one and possibly two bands that revolutionized music, John Lydon is unsurprisingly scathing about the lack of originality he sees in today’s young bands. Seeing modern inventions like MySpace and Facebook as bland promotional gimmicks that put the emphasis on the trivial aspect of endorsement rather than the music itself, he seems to feel cheated by the way music has gone in the last few years – not to mention by how many bands have copied what he’s done in the past.

“It’s really difficult what I do and it costs time and money and there’s an awful lot of acts who have come along, given us a listen and then lock, stock and barrel ripped us off and it’s been consistently like that,” he tells me. “I’ve watched Virgin signed bands that have been just outright PIL imitators over the years. They seem to be quite happy with that and I’m thinking, ‘my God, originality doesn’t seem to pay off here, except for those who copy something original’.
“Being original is actually really easy. It’s the one little thing that none of these wallies seem to realise, where as waiting and hanging around for someone to come up with an idea that you can copy, that’s difficult. Unfortunately, that’s the way genres are created; like ‘rock ‘n’ roll’; ‘progressive rock’; ‘heavy metal’. Someone had a good idea and then suddenly a whole load of people suddenly had the same idea also.

“There’s people out there with ideas, there always will be, it’s just that bland over promotion and packaging seems to be more important than the content. It’s because the content is what’s being copied, and nobody wants to hear second hand content.”

So then, John Lydon is still an angry man. And, rightly so. The difference is these days it’s all rather pantomime; he’s too lovable to be truly offensive. It’s so often a bore to transcribe an interview, but with Lydon it’s an absolute joy. Before I put the phone down I ask him what he thinks of being called ‘a national treasure’. The answer is typical Lydon. He almost gives into his softer side, then remembers just who he is…

“Who came up with that? Isn’t that sweet. This seems to be the latest thing they can swing at me. I think that’s utterly irrelevant. What a load of nonsense. I’m not one that handles compliments very well, if indeed that be a compliment?”
Believe me John… It is.

Public Image Limited
play Brixton Academy on 21 and
The Electric Ballroom on 22 and 23 December