Johnny's not rotten

Too often John Lydon is portrayed as simply a bitter, angry, cynical caricature of himself, when in truth he can actually come across as warm and even (by his own admission) sentimental. Take this recent Music That Made Him feature for Pitchfork, for instance, in which, rather than talking dismissively about bands and artists he doesn't like (other than Television), he's instead invited to enthuse about those he does.

Lydon duly obliges, and engagingly so, revealing in the process the sort of catholic tastes that would probably cause many an old-school punk to recoil in disgust: Alice Cooper, Nirvana, Kate Bush, PJ Harvey, even Dolly Parton and Cliff Richard. Perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise, given that he struck up an improbable and sacrilegious (in punk circles) friendship with Keith Emerson of prog behemoths ELP when the pair were neighbours in Santa Monica.