John Lydon has revealed that he has a stalker who claims to be his daughter, and he's been sufficiently spooked that he's filed a police report in the hope of resolving the matter.
While speaking to Uncut to promote the new Public Image Limited album, End of World, the singer was asked about the meaning behind the fifth track on the album, titled Walls.
"We all need barriers," he answers. "We need some degree of separation from others, if only just for a sense of security."
"At the moment I’m struggling with a stalker who is letting herself in my yard at night, running around claiming that she’s my daughter," he continues. "And she’s in her 50s. It’s the uncaring selfishness of it that is really upsetting. I’ve had stalkers in the past but this one is becoming just too irrational, and has potential for something much more serious, so I’ve had to report it. I don’t like to get people into trouble but it’s causing me stress. It’s making me a bag of nerves."
Elsewhere in the interview Lydon offers his opinion on the age-old debate about the origins of punk rock, specifically whether New York or London can lay claim to being the birthplace of the genre.
"There’s all this nonsense about how punk rock came from New York, it’s all fucking bollocks," the former Sex Pistols frontman states emphatically. "I came from a very strong culture, one that didn’t need America to teach us how to be punks. The American punk scene was a bunch of twats in tight trousers, reading Rimbaud poetry from the depths of New York. We didn’t need America. We had exciting things in our youth that had nothing to do with America. Punk was coming out of glam. Slade, Sweet, T Rex, Bowie, Showaddywaddy, Mud."
PiL's End Of World album is set for release on August 11, via Cargo UK Distribution.
