Green Day have once again been the subject of a verbal tirade by none other than the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten.
If you’ve ever witnessed a conversation between two punk fans, you’ve undoubtedly encountered the age-old argument of what is and isn’t ‘true punk’. However, it seems that this debate reaches all the way to the frontman of one of the genre’s most iconic groups.
Speaking to the New York Times recently, former Sex Pistols frontman John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) discussed the current state of punk music, noting he’s surprised that today’s musicians continue trends that began in the ’70s.
“It is embarrassing, really,” Rotten explained. “How many bands are out there like Green Day now? I look at them, and I just have to laugh. They’re coat hangers, you know. A turgid version of something that doesn’t actually belong to them.”
Rotten also went on to explain how certain genres have changed over the years, calling punk a “caricature,” and rap a “perfect backdrop to sell a pair of sneakers.”
Of course, this is nowhere near the first time that Johnny Rotten has hit out at Green Day, with the pop-punk group frequently appearing in his sights.
“Don’t try and tell me Green Day are punk,” Rotten stated back in 2006. “They’re not, they’re plonk and they’re bandwagoning on something they didn’t come up with themselves. I think they are phony.”
He again opened up in 2012, stating, “I don’t believe them at all. I find them very foolish,” before blatantly telling Rolling Stone in 2015 that he has “never been a fan of them”.
“I just don’t understand it,” he explained. “I think it’s kind of a tinny, two-bob version of something that was far deeper and carried more significance. And, uh, that for me, as a band, they’re not very significant. They’re a mélange. They’re closer to Billy Idol than myself.”
More recently though, Johnny Rotten was interviewed by Newsweek last year, when he again seemed to get hung up on the topic of being ‘punk’ while discussing the lack of a liveable wage for musicians in the genre.
“It ended up with Green Day running around in studded leather jackets,” he noted. “There’s no personal animosity there with members of bands, but it’s like, don’t use the term punk, because you’re not. Why don’t you use your own terminology, your own expressions. To me, they were karaoke.”
Needless to say, it doesn’t seem like Green Day will be on the Christmas card list this year.
Check out the Sex Pistols’ ‘Anarchy In The U.K.’:
