Originally published at: Watch Johnny Rotten call out Jimmy Savile decades before Netflix | Boing Boing
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Anger is an energy…
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Oh Johnny… It’s really disappointing how much Lydon has turned into a right wing shithead in recent years (pro-brexit, pro-Trump). That’s most likely come out of his own sense of contrariness, as he seems to have bought into the narrative that the neo-liberal turn in Democratic and Labour politics is worse than the racism and xenophobia of the Tories and Trump. But he used to be a genuine cultural rebel, as evidenced in this video. Let’s not forget the things that got his first band thrown off their label and made people attack punks all over the UK (and was the origin of the American punk panic in the 80s), including the Grundy incident…
And getting arrested for staging performance of God Save the Queen on the Thames during the Jubilee…
But of course, there was PiL…
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Seems like the entire interview was on BB before and is now unavailable
but you can still watch Lydon from 1980.
I almost didn’t watch for the Piers Morgan, but of course he’s willing to grant white male John Lydon some modicum of respect.
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Well… in more recent years, yeah. Not so much back then, though.
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Occasionally, two assholes will say the morally right thing.
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In the video above, Johnny Rotten sits down with Piers Morgan
Ugh. I’ll take your word for it.
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“decades before Netflix”?
Jimmy Saville’s crimes were exposed ten years ago long before the Netflix documentary.
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Both are clearing a very low bar in the case of Savile. They’re still jerks.
Morgan was always an arsehole, a grasping and clawing Fleet Street hack who went to work for Murdoch, prospered by it, and made the smooth transition into entitled and narcissistic TV personality.
As @mindysan33 notes, Lydon – like too many white male rebels in the West – let his youthful anti-elitism curdle into right-wing populism when he got older. He’s turned the BBC management’s obviously unforgivable toleration of a particularly horrific “missing stair” into a more general condemnation of what he suggests are decadent liberal tastemakers and intellectuals. That sort of heel turn is why I’m also always distrustful of loud-mouthed brocialists and “dirtbag leftists”.
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I wasn’t saying that the odds were that spectacular. I do agree with you and Mindy tho.
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Two knobs discuss a third knob…
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Has anyone actually been able to confirm this?
Lydon seems to be the only source, I’ve never seen anyone else confirm it, and even his story claims the segment never aired/was never released. And the very first time he mentioned it was pretty recent. If he “did his part” you’d figure he would have brought it up more than once.
There’s also listed BBC TV and Radio appearances by Lydon and PiL in 1979 so any ban apparently didn’t last long.
There was no directive for an archive prior to 1981… although I believe actively wiping tape to save costs as a practice has largely ended by the mid-70s officially, it still continued until the 81 directive to keep an archive.
So, yes, it’s entirely possible that this happened and that there is no recording of it.
I really don’t think that decades of covering up Saville’s crimes should be down to someone who had an often contentious relationship with the British government and media… there are far more people who should be held to account for letting this predator abuse children for so long. But he had the backing of polite society, and polite society likes to pretend it has a lock on morality just because they act “proper” in front of the cameras, something Lydon never had any interest in.
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I don’t think Lydon is any stranger to self-aggrandizing bullshit.
And Morgan? It’s his staple diet.
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2013:
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Sure. Never said otherwise. He was also never afraid to call people out on their shit, either. Nor is he the same person he was when he was in his late teens and early 20s. Apparently, that’s a difficult concept for people to wrap their heads around.
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Agreed
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PiL recorded a Peel Session with BBC Radio in 1979, and Lydon appeared on Juke Box Jury in June of 1979. Recordings of both still exist, and details of the appearances are known.
Other appearances can be documented without recording still existing.
So any ban would have lasted about a year, although Lydon doesn’t seem to have specified when in 78 this went down.
I’m not expecting a recording to pop up, as he claims the comments never aired in the first place.
But there were people at the BBC at the time. And people involved with Lydon.
He’s also a habitually self aggrandizing asshole, who seems to have a loose association with the truth.
Not what I was saying.
The fact that Lydon never seems to have brought this up, even just that there was a ban. Until after Saville was exposed. Is sketchy. It looks a lot like taking credit for something he had no involvement with.
I’m confused. The segment Morgan played to him, and which we heard in the video, was from a recording made in 1978 - that was clearly stated by Morgan.
So it happened. Am I missing something here?
Talking of Peel, Sheila - his wife - notes (in John’s autobiography/biography - “Margrave of the Marshes”**) that in 1968 she went with him to his first national broadcast at the BBC… (my bold below)
“…as I was sitting there, watching the engineers behind the glass and listening to Jimmy Saville doing the handover, I felt petrified - not because there was anything particularly terrifying about Jimmy Saville (no more than will be immediately apparent to anyone who meets him), but because here was a man I was becoming fond of, and he was poised to broadcast to the entire country”
*(*A highly recommended read, BTW - first half written by John, second half by his family after he died.)
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I suspect that the popularity of John Peel’s show gave him leeway to do what he wished, with regards to who he played on the program and who he recorded for Peel sessions.
the comments were recorded and are in the video. It’s a recording of him saying that he wanted to shoot Saville and that he was a hypocrite and into all kinds of seediness… it was on a PiL recording. The recording itself exists, but was taken from a longer interview, and not originally aired… so in this case, yes, the recording DOES exist of him calling Saville out.
And he was still right about Saville being a major problem in 1978. Of the two, the child rapist is the bigger asshole.
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