John Lydon makes peace with the Queen

For many of us, it wasn’t that long ago when John Lydon and the Sex Pistols were playing “God Save the Queen” on a barge over the River Thames, only to get arrested once they docked.

So, what does Lydon have to say now that the Queen’s celebrating her 70th year on the throne? It turns out his thoughts are a bit more nuanced than one might expect from the man who once compared the Windsors to a fascist regime and that Elizabeth II “ain’t no human being.” In a recent interview with Piers Morgan, Lydon explained that the song (which will be reissued to mark the occasion) that the song was “anti-royalist, but it’s not anti-human. I’ve got to tell the world this. Everyone presumes that I’m against the royal family as human beings, I’m not,” Lydon said. “I’m actually really, really proud of the Queen for surviving and doing so well. I applaud her for that, and that’s a fantastic achievement. I’m not a curmudgeon about that. I just think that if I’m paying my tax money to support this system, I should have a say so in how it’s spent.” Which is a more measured take than he gave in 1977; 45 years is a good amount of time to re-assess your views.

That said, there’s one part of the song that does represent his views: he doesn’t expect the monarchy to have much of a future. Why not? Quoth Johnny Lydon: “because Prince Charles is not going to be able to handle it. This is the man that plays Pink Floyd to his cabbages.” This, I admit, is a fair take. Everyone knows that you play heavy metal to your plants to help them grow, not prog-rock:

And before I go off on a tangent about how Cradle of Filth would be a better choice for horticulture, especially if you wanted to buy British, I should go back to Johnny Lydon. Going on about how he thinks the monarchy will fall with Prince Charles, he added that “That’s a shame in itself too, because I do love pageantry. I’m a football fan, how could I not? I like watching royal weddings, because I love watching Spitfires and B-52s and the like flying over the palace. I get quite emotional with all that. I love me country, I love me people and everything about it. But if there are problems within it, I think I have the right to say so.” And, regardless of what people might think about the monarchy (and we would prefer for the comments to not degenerate into political arguments), if nothing else, the pageantry is impressive. It’s enough that, on the off chance she dies, I plan on watching the 2006 film about her and make it into a film review/tribute to her, about how, to quote Philip Larkin:

In times when nothing stood
But worsened, or grew strange,
There was one constant good:
She did not change.