Something Rotten in Highgate Cemetery

"Johnny Rotten recalls in his 1993 autobiography No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs: 'So many people were doing it ... loonies mostly, running around with wooden stakes, crucifixes and cloves of garlic ... it was almost a social club down there." — "Della Farrant" (Haunted Highgate, page 44)

Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, to give the book its full title, is a 1993 autobiography by John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols), co-authored by Keith Zimmerman and Kent Zimmerman. 

In the book, John Lydon expresses condemnation toward former members of the Sex Pistols band, Malcolm McLaren, their manager, hippies, rich people, racists, sexists and the English political system. Unsurprisingly, he also shares his deep hatred for religion. Lydon says: that "A lot of people feel the Sex Pistols were just negative. I agree, and what the fuck is wrong with that? Sometimes the absolute most positive thing you can be in a boring society is completely negative."

That "Della Farrant" feels him worthy of appraising what was going on at Highgate Cemetery half a century ago is revealing in itself. She leaves out something crucial about Lydon, however, ie where he says: “So we go in there with stakes and hammers and you would hear all this rustling and it would be another bunch of vampire hunters.” John Lydon claims to have hunted the Highgate Vampire himself.

The same gentleman also partook in a 1980 British mockumentary film, directed by Julien Temple and produced by Don Boyd and Jeremy Thomas, that was partially shot at Highgate Cemetery. Click on the image at the top and fast forward two minutes to see some stills from that stylised fictional account of the formation, rise and subsequent breakup of the Sex Pistols. Their then-manager Malcolm McLaren can also be seen in the video clip viewed when clicking on the image below.

What would John Lydon know about the goings-on at Highgate Cemetery where a malign supernatural phenomenon was being witnessed (and, of course, pursued in order to exorcise it) by local people? The answer is: about as much as "Della Farrant." 

John Lydon married a publishing heiress from Germany in 1979, lives the multi-millionaire lifestyle in Los Angeles, California, where he has resided since the early 1980s while also keeping a residence in London. He supported the United Kingdom remaining in the European Union during the referendum in June 2016, stating that being outside of the European Union would be "insane and suicidal." What is insane is anyone taking the slightest notice of what John Lydon says about what went on at Highgate Cemetery in the 1960s and 1970s. 

He is someone who constantly revises his position on everything, and now claims that he is not an anarchist despite writing and singing the punk anthem "Anarchy in the UK" back in 1976. The constantly repeated lines from the song, which later featured on the album Never Mind the Bollocks: Here's the Sex Pistols, are:

I am an anti-Christ 

I am an anarchist

We get a far better idea of what John Lydon was really saying about Highgate Cemetery from this article that was published in the Hampstead & Highgate Express two years before Haunted Highgate:

Nothing is out of bounds for Lydon. He recalls the early Pistol years when he would squat in Hampstead, behind the station. “Oh lovely. Squats we have loved,” he laughs. “I had to squat for a long period. Me and Sid, we found this wonderful old block of flats and all manner of people in that period. We were in run-down old derelict buildings really that were viewed by the council as unliveable and they put boards up. But, hello, we had nowhere to live so what we would do was move in and clean the place up and sort out the plumbing and make the toilets work and the council would then come in and take it off you and rent it out.

“It’s a different world now. It’s a lot of upper class toffy kids practising at being slummy. Having a bit of rough. This was a necessity. I couldn’t live at home at that point. I didn’t have any money and yet I was in a band that was notorious. I had to find some hole to crawl into at night – poor old little ratty. So Hampstead, that was where we squatted, we covered the area well. We were just behind the tube station there for about two years.”

“I like the pubs round there too. I ran into many of the Monty Python lot, who were borderline insane, but great fun. And people like Peter Cook, who I really, really respect. Although that was not my class or upbringing, I found that we could get on well with each other. If you are honest about what it is you are in life you will find that you can form very good friendships with all manner of people.”

They also used to go vampire hunting in Highgate cemetery. “There was books out saying a vampire rested there. What a thrill to a young lad. So we go in there with stakes and hammers and you would hear all this rustling and it would be another bunch of vampire hunters.” He laughs before playing with a spot on his face. “I like festering them,” he says. “Sid was fantastic for that. It was his favourite hobby. In fact, his only hobby. Big volcanoes and build up til the final yellowhead eruption in the mirror,” he laughs. “Oh I miss my friend. Stupid rock deaths, too many of them. They don’t understand that drugs are for fun and recreation and you should never take a daily dose.”

At 56 years young (as he puts it), he’s lost a few of those close to him too early. Still, his life goes on, being Johnny on TV, Johnny in the pub, recording in a field in the Cotswolds or performing among the egos of the music crowd. “At festivals, if you have seven acts, it is like the seven deadly sins backstage, all the egos.” He still likes a party, having even got “blindingly drunk” just last night. Will he ever give up and retire? “I’ll work until I’m 100 and think about it. I love what I do and I don’t want to stop.”

— Rhiannon Edwards (Hampstead & Highgate Express, 2 August 2012)