Anger is an Energy: My Life Uncensored by John Lydon

be a lot of preponderance on what your thoughts were, but that was
good because it dragged that out of me, and slowly but surely I came out of my shell.
    I found that I could actually do what I could do socially now, also in an educational scenario. What a thrill. And to not be shy, to be able to stand up and read out aloud a piece of poetry or a
section out of a novel. I learned public speaking, I suppose. That’s not what I went there for, but that’s what I got from it – the emphasis on words, and sentence structures and
all of those delicious things. I suppose I was writing things of my own. I’d tease myself with a subject I knew nothing about then I’d go out and find as much information on it as I
could and put together a thing on it, a piece, to educate myself, and I liked doing that. At Kingsway I could actually share those ideas with other people because they were doing the same kind of
thing, and I’d be able to stand up and proudly present my thesis. It was creative writing, really. I was ready for something, I just didn’t know what.
    The English Literature teacher there in particular was great – loved her. Really proper analysis of poetry and the written word. Even Samuel Pepys’ diaries, we’d have a poke at
that occasionally. Just loved it. Behind the scenes, I’d be reading everything and anything. Chaotically. Probably the same way I approached music – ‘I like the colour of that
electric-blue book!’
    I loved Ted Hughes. That was fun. Years later I had a conversation about him with Pete Townshend from the Who, because he wrote the intro – in German! – to a Ted Hughes anthology.
Wow! Ted Hughes’ poetry was just great. The first one that pops to mind was a poem called ‘Thrush’, as in the bird. No, not
that
bird,
a
bird. It was great stuff at
that level, great stuff for kids of sixteen, seventeen, to be reading. It seems quite complicated and confusing, but as you grow older you realize that that’s quite a childish level. Small
steps get you there in the end – don’t rush into Polish philosophy straight away!
    Dostoyevsky: there’s another hard one at an early age – you can’tquite get to grips with the sheer audacity of the size of it.
Crime and
Punishment
, yes, but Tolstoy’s
Anna Karenina
I kind of disliked. And I had no tolerance at all for them bloody
Jane Eyre
-type novels. That’s Barbara Cartland territory
to me, I can’t relate to it, can’t empathize with the self-pitying woman having to deal with a man’s world. It’s Presbyterian, that’s the word. Everybody’s so
overly nice in it, and the cruelties are so exaggerated as to be cartoonish, so I have no time for it.
    Oscar Wilde I found outrageously funny. Way ahead of the game, that fella, and wouldn’t be ground down, and led what was a very dangerous lifestyle at that time. Not delving too much into
exactly what it was he was doing, because there are no hardcore details, but it was the fact that he mocked the class he came from so well; he got at all the faults that were there. He was really
criticizing himself at the same time, and I liked that, I learned from that. We’re not perfect. And if I’m approaching things in my working-class way, I’m damn well sure I’m
going to be mentioning all the negatives along with that. And there are many.
    Sid went to Kingsway too, and within a week or two, I’d met another John – John Wardle, whom Sid named Jah Wobble one night when he was so pissed he couldn’t talk properly. The
three of us were all problem children, for very different reasons. One way or the other, we didn’t fit into the system, and I don’t suppose many people can or do. The system I think
should be adjustable to us, and our tastes and needs. If you’re not meeting our expectations, then you’re going to get these oppositional scenarios.
    Wobble, again, was hilarious. He looked so weird, a little warped. He was trying to affect a tough-boy look but it didn’t