"The Written Word is a Lie"

Tom Snyder's interview with John Lydon has to be one of the most sublime moments in all of television. The only was to save rock 'n roll was to kill it.



Snyder's insistence that Lydon defines himself and PIL simply demonstrates his inability to grasp what punk was all about and that Lydon and Levine intuited the postmodern condition. "There should be no difference between who's onstage and who's in the audience" (4:40).

This is an aesthetics consonant with much of deleuze's thinking. PIL, in Lydon's description is pure difference.



Snyder's query about "What do you like?" could easily be "what are you for?" as opposed to what are you against; be positive Snyder demands, but Lydon doesn't give up. He only against, only a rebel without a cause and endlessly at that. With so many having gotten the Sex Pistols wrong, there is more to the end of rock 'n roll. and PIL's endeavor is to expose that pure difference by melding with it. It is anti-stardom and Lydon is a consummate writer of anti-stardom.

Lydon's writing, of course, is preceded by Artaud and followed by Cobain. And Sirc has traced out how Cobain's writing is important as a heuristic. We might go so far as to follow Cobain back to Artaud through Lydon and apply the same description to them as Sirc does to Cobain: Orpheus, all of them, gazing from below and exposing the world of the dead.

Anger is an energy
May the road rise with you
Anger is an energy
May the road rise with you