John Lydon has blasted the other members of SEX PISTOLS for touring without him.

After debuting with three fundraising nights at London’s Bush Hall earlier in August 2024, SEX PISTOLS guitarist Steve Jones, drummer Paul Cook and bass player Glen Matlock (who was kicked out of the band’s original lineup and replaced with Sid Vicious),teamed up with Frank Carter of GALLOWS and THE RATTLESNAKES for a U.K. tour last September. They have since announced a number of appearances for 2025, including at Download, Glasgow Summer Sessions, Dreamland Margate and Rock For People festivals, as well as participating in the annual Teenage Cancer Trust concert series at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

In a new interview with The I Paper, original SEX PISTOLS singer Lydon (a.k.a. Johnny Rotten),who has been estranged from the rest of the band after unsuccessfully attempting to block the use of SEX PISTOLS songs in “Pistol”, a Hulu miniseries based on Jones‘s 2016 memoir “Lonely Boy” that dramatized the band’s story, stated about SEX PISTOLS‘ collaboration with Carter: “When I first heard that the SEX PISTOLS were touring this year without me, it pissed me off. It annoyed me. I just thought, ‘They’re absolutely going to kill all that was good with the PISTOLS by eliminating the point and the purpose of it all’. I didn’t write those words lightly. They’re trying to trivialize the whole show to get away with karaoke but in the long term I think you’ll see who has the value and who doesn’t.”

He added: “I’ve never sold my soul to make a dollar. It’s the Catholic in me — that guilt I don’t want to trip. Like Nancy Reagan, I’ve always found it easy to just say ‘no’. If something challenges your heart and your soul and your mind and your sense of purity of what is right and wrong in the world, then just say no. Which, according to the corporate thinking which riddles the music business earns me the title of ‘difficult to work with’ — a title of which I’m very proud.”

Jones recently revealed to the “Rockonteurs” podcast that he hadn’t been in touch with Lydon for nearly two decades. “I haven’t spoken to him in years,” he said. “2008 was the last time I spoke to him. We did 30 shows around Europe. We did a bunch of festivals and all that — Japan, Australia — [and] we ended up at Hammersmith Odeon (now Hammersmith Apollo),and then we had one more show in the Basque Country, and that was it. I was done after that. No more. It’s too much, too old, too much, not enough done.”

Asked why he was doing it again, Jones replied: “This is different. It’s a different vibe, mate. It’s night and day.” Steve went on to say Carter, who was asked to join the band as he knew Matlock‘s son, “doesn’t try to be John” and had become “more comfortable” with the band as they continued to play together. Speaking about the partial reunion, Steve said: “We got the idea of, why don’t we just do all PISTOLS songs with a different singer, because it ain’t gonna happen with John.”

In a separate interview with Classic Album Review, Lydon was asked if he thought the SEX PISTOLS‘ spirit is missing now that the band is performing without him. He replied: “I wrote the fucking songs, didn’t I? I gave them the image. I was the frontman. I am the voice, what made the whole world sing. And now you’re going out, as they did the year before with Billy Idol. It’s just karaoke, really.

“I would love to be embarrassed by high-quality songwriting from them,” he added. “They’ve had long enough to get that together now, haven’t they? But no. They profess their hatred for me, but they can’t live without me. I am the punishment that goes on giving. [Laughs]”

In recent years, Lydon has publicly voiced his support for Brexit and Donald Trump.

When asked by The I Paper what he thought of Trump once again becoming president of the United States, the British-born Lydon — who has lived in Malibu, California for the past 40 years — replied: “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

“I won’t be fooled again,” he added. “I had high hopes for Obama but then I found out he was nothing but an officious bureaucrat altering every single institution into a political entity before taking into account common sense and life experiences. But if you’re going to repair a broken business, you might as well get a businessman to do it.”