Sex Pistol John Lydon blasts Ozzy Osbourne for promoting drug abuse

Mar 6 2011 by Lorne Jackson, Sunday Mercury

JOHN Lydon is a spiky individual. Spiky hair, spiky music and a spittle of spiky comments.

When I meet up with him in Birmingham’s swanky Malmaison Hotel he’s as in your face as a surgeon’s mask.

Lydon, who called himself Johnny Rotten when he was lead singer of The Sex Pistols, is now 54.

At such a mature age you would think he would have evolved into some sort of gentle gent. Not so. Rancour is still his anchor, as he proves by having a pop at a rival rocker, Birmingham’s very own Ozzy Osbourne.

“Paranoid was one of the world’s greatest ever singles,” says Lydon, talking about Ozzy’s most famous song, which he recorded with Brummies Black Sabbath.

“But since then, the rumours of biting pigeon heads really, really haven’t impressed me. Ozzy now acting like a senile delinquent is equally unimpressive. The sly innuendo of promoting drug abuse and catatonic stupidity offends me.

“I’m not one for banning drugs. Quite the opposite. But I understand how to use them, and they don’t use me.

“Ozzy is clearly a victim, and selling that loser lifestyle s**t to other people equally victimises them.

“That’s a shame. Ozzy’s a working class man, like me, yet he allows that to happen. By acting like he does all the time, he implies that we’re all stupid, the working classes. But we’re not, you know. We’re not! We’re the proper Britain, us lot.”