But many of Lydon's arguments against the significance of, say, McLaren, or Situationism, seem to boil down to 'Nah-nah, can't prove it. Certainly Lydon has carried on the most interesting post-Pistols career (though I don't think McLaren is actually that far behind him). But he seems more football fan than rock star somehow, and somehow this regular guy thing struck me as a tough sell. Lydon comes off in this autobiography as a decent human being and an interesting enough cultural figure, sarcastic and radical and embittered though not unpleasantly so.

But the books by Greil Marcus and Jon Savage make powerful and persuasive cases for the importance of McLaren and, rather more incidentally, for Glen Matlock, who made significant contributions as a songwriter. As Johnny Rotten in the Sex Pistols he is the first anyone would think of as the chief player in that drama, with Sid Vicious playing a critical supporting role. For me, if anything, it tends to undercut his case, which is powerful on its face. It's basically an oral history with Lydon's voice overwhelmingly dominating the transcriptions. It feels as if Lydon considers himself ultimately above all this, and so he is. But then Lydon practically compounds the problem with this 'authorized autobiography' (though a nice touch, that) 'with Keith and Kent Zimmerman,' which casts an air of the smug and self-satisfied.

He was a little late to the party, trailing 1989's Lipstick Traces and 1991's England's Dreaming, which effectively set the outlines, thanks in part to a combination of Malcolm McLaren's arguable overparticipation and Lydon's own underparticipation in those projects. John Lydon here takes on the difficult and neverending task of 'correcting the record,' in this case the highly visible, and visibly pored over, history of the Sex Pistols.

Rotten no irish