John Lydon: Yes, well, we got this little tour coming up. But it's quite amazing the bleedin' obstacles put before us. We've gone through tour managers at a relentless pace. They seem to come in, look at us, and run. Record companies, no interest at all from them. As far as sponsorship goes, nobody wants to have a tax cut on our name. Even Tampax turned us down. Sanitary napkins? We'd be more than happy! I know I'm one of the disenfranchised and always will be. And so what? I don't care. That's our audience also. And there are many like us. We're the majority.

PB: Hasn't it always been that way?

JL: Yeah. I don't expect no help from this industry, I don't care for it. You've got your Rock and Roll Hall of Shame, and if that's what people are going to judge reality by, that's a world I don't need to live in.

PB: It's surprising you haven't scored a sponsor.

JL: It's the way we are. We tend not to give a shit. And I suppose we went fishing a bit too late. The second they heard I was ferreting into playing in Baghdad, wooo. We're talking some unreturned phone calls.

PB: Was there a political backdraft there?

JL: I don't know. What do any of us know? I'm not going over there to play for the troops. I can play to the troops in their own countries. I'd be going there for the people. I don't see a problem in it.

PB: How tricky is that to set up?

JL: You wouldn't believe it. You would not believe it. I don't mean to be paranoid. Hello, we're probably being monitored right now. And so what? Tits! Tits! Tits! Let's just talk tits and cunts!

PB: Can't you ring up your friend Tony Blair to sort it out?

JL: Ah, ha, ha. I do not see eye-to-eye with that man. I don't like socialism. We're not all equal. We're not supposed to be.

PB: So, then, do you prefer the British class system to the more Darwinian American way of life?

JL: I cannot stand the class system. I don't like that kind of oppression.

PB: You've been living in Los Angeles for a long time. Do you enjoy life in the States?

JL: I like Americans very much. No problem. [Belches] I like England, but I don't like the government. And the government here is as wack as anywhere else. Ain't no different. I don't know where that lot [the Bush Administration] go to breed. It's ridiculous. I suppose in England they vote in idiots that can talk clever or sound clever and have a bigger vocabulary, but they're still idiots. At least your idiots can't spell potato.

PB: So you're still untangling the red tape to get to Baghdad?

JL: Gawwww. [Laughs] Last week, I was asked that. I said, yeah I got bigger scissors. It's now a fucking chainsaw. There are internal and external negatives coming at me. But that is not a silly novelty trick. I don't do things for those reasons. I would like to see the Sex Pistols become the Iraqi Water Pistols.

PB: Are you sure it's not going to be like Sting waltzing into the rain forest, glad-handing the pygmies?