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And Finally Artist News
John Lydon tells Americans to stop overstating the New York scene’s influence on punk
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 14 August 2023
John Lydon would like all the American journalists out there to stop “pretending that the whole punk influence came out of New York”. Because, you see, it was clearly British artists who paved the way.
This came up during an interview with The Sun last week. Lydon was mainly there to talk about the new PiL album ‘End Of World’, but he got a little bit retrospective as well.
“I’ve heard an awful lot of American journalists pretending that the whole punk influence came out of New York”, he mused. “Well, hello? Bands like Sweet with ‘Ballroom Blitz’ and Mud with ‘Tiger Feet’ – that’s the do that, man! T Rex, David Bowie, Slade, Mott The Hoople, The Alex Harvey Band – their influence was enormous. And they try to write that all off and wrap it around Patti Smith. It’s so wrong!”
As for what was influencing Lydon himself back at that time: “I loved X-Ray Spex, The Slits and The Adverts. Really exciting and the more different they were, the better”. So, now we know. American journalists, please take note.
