Punk superstar coming to city

EX-PISTOLS' LYDON TO PLAY QUAD THEATRE

- By WILLIAM TELFORD

PUNK rock superstar John Lydon is to talk about his extraordinary life when he brings his spoken word tour to Plymouth next week a city which helped launch his music career back in the days when the Sex Pistols were public enemy number one.

When the Pistols were banned from just about every venue in Britain at the start of their meteoric rise in 1976, they played in Plymouth twice.

The band headlined two nights of the Anarchy Tour at Woods Centre, now lost beneath Drake Circus mall, supported by the Clash, Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers, and the Damned.

Well-known Plymouth DJ Andy Howard was on the decks that night and even shared a cup of coffee with Lydon, at the time famously known as Johnny Rotten.

In 2018, Andy told us: “He was such an intelligent guy. We talked about everything: the state of music, the adverse reaction to their gigs. He was very good at reading people’s personalities.”