With hindsight it's easier to take stock of those few scant months, a band gone almost before anyone noticed, disintegrating in a shambolic mess of drug abuse, accusations and law-suits. Journalist Jon Savage was there as a fan and his outstanding 1991 book England's Dreaming attempted the impossible in making sense of it all. Rotten is singer John Lydon's promise to set things straight; his autobiography. Or is it? It claims as much, but this is autobiography like no other.

For starters, despite long-standing claims, Lydon himself never actually wrote the thing. Co-credited to Keith and Kent Zimmerman (who they?), this reads like a rambling, protracted interview - it is a rambling, protracted interview - which is cause for concern in itself. Lydon is an erudite, witty man, but given free-range he is too taken to repetition and veering off at a tangent. As a consequence Rotten suffers the lack of a cohesive narrative beyond the bare bones of a familiar story.

The book is particularly good on his childhood, predictably because that's the one part of the man's life about which we know the least. (Irish stock in London's Finsbury Park, desperate poverty, a strong family, stuttering education and a musical grounding in Can, Captain Beefheart and reggae inform the young Lydon's roots.) Once we hit the story of the band however, the familiar begins to settle in, albeit messily. For an autobiography there is a quite astonishing amount taken not from the loud mouth of the man himself. This would be problematic if it were not for the fact that more often than not it provides the book's real substance. Former band members are extensively quoted (though not, unsurprisingly, bassist Glen Matlock), as are various friends and acquaintances from Chrissie Hynde (who almost married both Lydon and Sid Vicious), Billy Idol, and film-maker Julian Temple, to Lydon's wife, Nora (mother to a member of punk cultist-band The Slits).

Lydon hates Matlock. Lydon hates The Clash. Lydon hates designer-freak Vivienne Westwood. Lydon is not much taken with ex-manager, Malcolm McLaren either. None of which comes as a surprise (you'll search in vain for contrasting quotes from these players), but so shabby is the editing that he finds himself repeating such vitriol every few pages. Anecdotes are rehashed. The book roams stylistically. The picture annotation is atrocious. The number of spelling mistakes is painful. On and on.

Rotten is a grievously wasted opportunity. Savage's colossal book (guess who hates that?) for all it seeks to reset the history within a wider political context, at least captures the genuine sense of fun about punk. For all he was at the epicentre, Lydon actually seems to have understood very little. Little accident then that it's the before and after that makes the most intriguing reading in here. There are a few nice details (touring the Deep South with a black driver, playing Dub between gigs) but overall this is scrappy, bogged-down by sneering, often petty prejudices, and with astounding lapses in quality from the publishers. Savage 1, Rotten 0.