Public Image Ltd.
The Problem Of Being John Lydon
Big Night Live - Boston, MA - October 3, 2026
Story and Photography by JD Cohen, Edited by Theresa Palermo
On Saturday, October 3rd, 2026, Public Image Ltd (PiL) played to an enthusiastic crowd at the 2,000 person-capacity venue Big Night Live in Boston. Interestingly, the newly reformed Sex Pistols played a show in Boston several days prior. Both bands share a similar demographic, drawing a comparable fanbase who attended both shows with equal parts excitement and skepticism. The two shows raised the question: are either of these bands still relevant, do they have anything new to offer or are they nostalgia acts revisiting the glory days of an era long past? After seeing Public Image Ltd. (PIL) live in Boston on their “This Is Not The Last Tour" the question is now a bit easier to answer.
In late 2009, John Lydon revived PiL after a 16 year hiatus. However, Lydon nearly gave up touring altogether after the death in 2023 of his wife of 44 years, Nora Forster, and the passing of his longtime friend and manager, John Rambo Stevens. In 2024, he addressed these painful losses and childhood trauma he suffered during an emotional spoken word tour. The short speaking tour moved him to get back on stage with a reformed PiL. In March 2026, Lydon and the band announced a 2026-2027 North American tour.
42 dates over two legs were scheduled , marking the first live shows in North America in 8 years. A late summer / early fall 2026 leg kicked off September 3rd in Pioneertown, California, and runs through October 10th in Nashville, while a winter 2027 leg launches February 12th in Salt Lake City and wraps up March 24th in Cleveland. A recent Facebook post by John Lydon announced several new dates have been added for the February leg.
Although there has been genuine excitement for the current tour, Lydon has lost fans with his very public right wing political views and support for Donald Trump. Lydon's entire career has been sustained by a deliberate philosophy of confrontation and antagonism towards his audience. He views conflict as a form of authentic dialogue, deliberately using hostility and calculated disappointment to test the boundaries of his audience. He thrives on conflict as artistic fuel and leans into aggression. However, there is much more to Lydon than his abrasive and controversial personality; there are few artists in popular music who have managed to reinvent themselves as often as he has.
Lydon first became famous as Johnny Rotten: the sneering, confrontational singer of the Sex Pistols although his story can't be contained within that band's drama and the mythology of punk rock. After the Sex Pistols collapsed is when the most interesting story of John Lydon began. In 1978, Lydon did something that was considerably more radical than joining the Sex Pistols.
He abandoned the musical formula that had made him so famous. Instead of making another punk record, he formed Public Image Ltd (PiL) and began dismantling the assumptions and the foundation which punk had been built on. PiL was an attempt to redefine what a rock band could be. With bassist Jah Wobble, guitarist Keith Levene and a succession of drummers, Lydon created music that was inspired by dub reggae, funk, avant-garde rock, electronica, Krautrock and experimental percussion. The music was sometimes difficult, often brilliant, and unlike anything else happening in popular music.
Nearly five decades after PiL emerged from the wreckage of the Sex Pistols, Lydon is still surrounding himself with musicians capable of turning his confrontational worldview into something musically satisfying. The current PiL lineup consists of guitarist Lu Edmonds, bassist Scott Firth and drummer Mark Roberts, and has its own identity, built around a big and repetitive sound. Edmonds, who first played with PiL in the mid-1980s before returning for the band's 2009 revival, brings a broad musical vocabulary to the group, moving between guitar, keyboards and an instrument called the saz; his playing can be angular and abrasive one moment and surprisingly atmospheric the next. On stage his energy, enthusiasm and charisma make it hard to take your eyes off of him. Firth, a longtime member of PiL since 2009, provides the musical foundation. His bass often carries as much melodic and rhythmic weight as the guitar. He is an integral part of the PiL sound but during the Boston performance he mostly stayed in the shadows. New drummer Mark Roberts has injected the band with a harder, more physical rhythmic attack, giving older songs some punch and immediacy. Together, the three musicians create a dense, muscular sound that allows Lydon's voice, while still abrasive, theatrical and unmistakably his own, to remain at the center without reducing PiL to simply a nostalgia act. The sound at Big Night Live is very good and the comfortable room allowed fans to respond to the music, dancing to the beat and propulsive sounds.
Lydon remains a formidable frontman, but there is a difference between maintaining an artistic vocabulary and continuing to expand it. The current band, although technically proficient and a powerful unit, draws on the same basic musical and theatrical language and the familiar PiL canon that Lydon established decades ago. Although the music has force there is nothing new or original. During the Boston show, some songs like “Warrior” went on longer than needed to and the sentiment of the song seemed almost as hollow as the call and response to Lydon’s chants of “Fuck Off” on the song “Shoom.”
There is an uncomfortable irony in Lydon's later career. The artist who had built his reputation on refusing to stand still may have reached a point where he is no longer evolving. The restless imagination that drove the transition from the Sex Pistols to PiL seems to have vanished. The very formula that Lydon once fought against (repetition, predictability, and the recycling of an established identity) has gradually become part of the PiL experience. What once sounded revolutionary now feels increasingly like a well-established formula.
That is a particularly significant criticism when applied to Lydon because his historical importance rests so heavily on his refusal to accept formulas. Lydon has famously been quoted as saying, “My biggest fear is mindlessly and stupidly repeating myself”
I remember how exciting it was listening to Metal Box when it was first released. It was so captivating and radical because it sounded as though Lydon and PiL were on to something completely fresh and original, discovering new possibilities in the world of rock music. The album that followed, The Flowers of Romance, seemed determined to discard whatever assumptions remained from the previous record. Lydon's greatest artistic moments came from his willingness to constantly be doing something completely new and different.
The question now is whether he is still willing and able to do that. The set list in Boston, pretty much the same setlist the band has been playing each night of the tour, consisted of no new material. There is something almost paradoxical about watching Lydon who spent his career insisting that Johnny Rotten was a prison that he needed to escape from gradually becoming imprisoned by another identity, John Lydon, the perpetually contrary, confrontational elder statesman of PiL. Lydon's rebelliousness now seems more performative than purposeful, and the element of surprise in his music no longer exists. The music and the refusal to conform have become a recognizable brand.
Lydon turned 70 in January and age inevitably changes an artist. There is no obligation for a musician in his seventies to behave as though he is still 25. An artist's growth also doesn't necessarily mean abandoning everything that came before. But Lydon's own history makes the question unavoidable. If the central principle of PiL was that an artist should never be trapped by his previous work, then Lydon's most challenging creative act at this stage of his career might be to challenge the version of PiL that he himself created. The man who once told his fans “Don't get stagnant, safety is the kiss of death.” may now be confronting the irony of his own legacy.
Setlist
Home
Know Now
World Destruction
This Is Not a Love Song
Poptones
Death Disco
Warrior
Shoom
Open Up
Encore:
Rise / Religion
