Lydon Recording New Pil Album

The former Sex Pistols star regrouped PiL last year (09) for a string of dates in the U.K. in December (09), and they kicked off a massive 24-date American tour with a show in Los Angeles on Tuesday night (13Apr10).

Lydon has revealed the rockers plan to hit the studio once they complete the tour to work on their first new material in 18 years - using the money from the gigs to fund the recording sessions.

However, he's angry that the band has not received any financial backing for the project.

He says, "The lack of record company involvement or interest has been utterly appalling. But I must say that comes as no surprise to me, because when I first started PiL, right from its outset, the record company was amazingly distant and quite negative about it all. Public Image for me has always been a financial struggle to make ends meet.

"Thereā€™s a whole bunch of new material to be recorded, and we need to go out live first to raise the funds, the appropriate funds, to be able to get ourselves into a recording position, and then release on a proper label."

But fans won't be able to hear any of the band's new songs on the current tour - because Lydon is worried the tracks would be copied.

He adds, "We canā€™t go out and perform new songs straight away, because weā€™d be unprotected. Weā€™d have no copyright control. And over the 30 years Iā€™ve been in the music industry, the one thing I can guarantee you is that everybody loves to copy me! So, even though theyā€™re breaking copyright-control law all the time now, Iā€™d still rather be in that position than to give it to ā€˜em on a platter."