John Lydon had to scrap a planned Public Image Ltd album because he was too preoccupied on his wife’s Alzheimer’s disease.

The 64-year-old rocker had gone into the recording studio with the band earlier this year but admitted he ended up scrapping the “rubbish” songs he’d written as he wasn’t in the right place due to his spouse Nora’s dementia diagnosis.

Asked by MOJO magazine about the rumoured record, he said: “It was a very difficult time even before the lockdown, because of Nora's Alzheimer's, which had just kicked in.

"We were in a recording studio in the middle of the country with nothing but sheep about and her mind just freaked out.

"All my attention was on that, and the bits of songs we did put together were rubbish-y and confused.

“I wasn't together. It was my fault. I couldn't juxtapose between a 'happy' album and all that calamity.”

But John has since come to terms with 78-year-old Nora’s condition and has viewed it as a “test” to his confidence.

He said: “I've come to grips with it since, you have to. "I related it to my meningitis as a child, and what that feeling was like. A bit of empathy cures a lot

"In a weird way ... I'm not a Christian kind of bloke, but God does like to test you doesn't he? Or is it Mother Nature? They do like to drop these bombs, just when you're at your most superciliously confident, it's like a well-earned kick up the arse. But it gives you an opportunity to be open and honest."

Meanwhile, the former Sex Pistols rocker insisted he won’t be forced into getting a vaccine against coronavirus as he thinks it’s just another way to make money for “greedy” people.

He said: "On one hand, I'm very lazy but on the other I love to work. I don't think locking us up is the answer and now they're talking of shutting down everything again. I don't believe the death tolls - no one seems to be keeping proper statistics, can you believe?

"And there's a lot of profit to be made from vaccines. Big money going on there! To bring in mandatory injections of vaccines, which they're talking about, for me that comes with serious issues. “You don't have the right to pump chemicals in me if I don't want them. There is no great conspiracy, just headless chicken-dom.

"A few greedy, self-serving self-appointed people being completely incompetent."