Released in June of 1983, Public Image Ltd’s most commercially successful single, This Is Not a Love Song, turns 40 years old this month. This may have been THE most anticipated record to ever keep me hounding my local record shop in my entire life.
I originally became obsessed with PiL in March of 1980, when Second Edition (Warner Bros NA version of Metal Box) showed up in Records on Wheels, an Ontario based chain that just opened up in a little strip mall next door to the Burger King I was working in at the time. I’d read a review for PiL’s debut LP, First Issue, in CREEM sometime in 1979, but never got to hear it at the time because it was not domestically released in the US or Canada. Their sophomore album got repackaged as Second Edition after the Metal Box edition sold out, and it became my musical muse for at least six months after I got it. I played it in its entirety at least once a day, minimum. As soon as I heard Wobble’s booming bass and Keith’s discordant guitar and synths, I was hooked and I collected every little nugget I could from them, including solo releases from Wobble and Martin’s Brian Brain project.
By 1982 however, PiL were in an uncertain state, with Wobble gone and John & Keith relocated to NYC. There wasn’t a lot in the press at the time, at least since the Ritz riot in NYC in 1981, so I had no idea what was happening with them. It wasn’t until I moved from Thunder Bay, ON, to Vancouver, BC, in October of 1982 that I heard PiL was going to play in Seattle the following month. After their bizarre "multi-media" show at NYC's Ritz nightclub, with its "hired hand" old man jazz drummer, which instantly became legendary for its sheer madness, I had no idea what to expect, nor who was in the band. But I dutifully got myself a ticket and a bus down to the show. Once there, I discover that PiL had reconstituted into a surprisingly tight, potent quartet again. Martin Atkins was back on drums and Pete Jones, from Brian Brain & Cowboys International, was on bass, with John and Keith fronted the band.
At the show, before the gig started, they played a recording of a brand new song, Blue Water, which sounded amazing and was a clear proclamation that they were working on a new album and SOMETHING was in the pipes for immanent release. During the gig, they debuted a couple of other new songs. I definitely remember Bad Life being one of them, and I think Where Are You was the other. After the gig, I managed to find a mailing address for them and wrote off a gushing fan letter about how much I loved the show and inquired as to when the new LP would be available. I was thrilled to get a response back from Martin, informing me that the album was going to be called "Welcome to the Commercial Zone" and that it would be "coming soon”, though there was no release date stated.
This was early in 1983, so for the next few months, I was in my local record shop, Odyssey Imports, at least once every week, especially on the days I knew they got their shipments of new records. I’d be lurking around the back counter where they unpacked the boxes, waiting like a dog for a treat, to see if the new PiL record was in. I must’ve driven them nuts with my constant inquiries, and after a while it, seemed like it would NEVER materialize. Word eventually reached the press that Keith had been ousted from the band due to some falling out with John over a mix of the new single, so I was starting to wonder if anything would EVER be release.
Finally, sometime near my birthday in June, the day actually came when I stepped into the shop and there was this inconspicuous white 12” single, a Japanese import, with a large PiL logo subtly embossed on the front and a tiny text in black with the title, THIS IS NOT A LOVE SONG. Flipping it over, I was thrilled that the B-side had Blue Water, which I had committed to memory from the gig and was desperate to hear again. Rushing home with the record, I slapped it on and was immediately struck by how stripped down and minimal it was, but with a solid groove and bare-essential embellishments by Keith on guitar and synth. Martin and Pete laid down an insistent beat while John whined about “going over to the other side” and being “happy to have, not to have-not”. It was a statement of capitalistic intent which I really didn’t quite know whether to interpret as ironic or not. Blue Water sounded as wonderful as I remembered at the show, and was a much stranger animal than the A-side, showing that PiL were still able to straddle both commercial accessibility and their experimental tendencies.
The single became a hit in the clubs and the video found frequent rotation on MTV, which was just staring to make a mark on the landscape of pop music. The single became PiL’s most successful to date and remains so to this day. But it was ultimately a capstone of sorts in the end, at least in terms of the PiL I fell in love with. A couple of months after its release, the dreadful Live In Tokyo album came out, showcasing what would become disparagingly referred to as the “Holiday Inn” incarnation of the band. John was still working with Martin, but they’d hired a trio of lounge band hacks to fill in for Keith and Pete, who abandoned ship shortly after Keith’s dismissal, and it was a completely different ballgame. While the album technically sounded great, being one of the first ever digitally recorded live gigs, the performance was mechanical, lifeless and entirely too pedestrian, by PiL’s standards. It was like a lame cover band imitating PiL.
The fate of the Commercial Zone album was up in the air at the time that Love Song was released. The following year, Lydon and Atkins re-recorded most of the album with some session musicians finishing it off with some leftovers from Flowers of Romance and a couple of new tracks, producing This Is What You Want, This Is What You Get, It's a somewhat middling, though occasionally satisfying last gasp of the original PiL remnants. Keith, on the other hand, spirited away his rough mixes of the Commercial Zone album, which he subsequently released on his own independent label in a limited white sleeved edition just prior to Lydon’s LP in 1984. The two records ended up going head to head, attempting to make their own arguments as to who made the better album. Personally, I favoured Keith’s release, but it was like they were both incomplete and wanted to be put back together again to create a proper whole. What Commercial Zone lacked in professional polish, it made up for in soul, while the latter had all the spit & polish, but felt like a bit of put-on. Ultimately, those were the final shots fired by the band that merited much interest from me.
After that, PiL pretty much became a solo venture for Lydon, though he’d get proper musicians after his collaboration with Bill Laswell, producing "Album". It had its moments, while it underscored the fact that Keith and Wobble brought something to the table which couldn’t be replicated by any other musician, no matter how capable. After Love Song, I don’t think I ever got as excited about a new record ever again.
