PUBLIC IMAGE LTD - THIS IS WHAT YOU WANT... THIS IS WHAT YOU GET @ 40

 

Celebrating its 40th anniversary today is the fourth "official" Public Image Ltd. studio LP, This Is What You Want... This Is What You Get, which was released on July 6th, 1984. I use the qualifier "official" due to the fact that the unfinished and aborted Commercial Zone album was surreptitiously released by jilted former founding member, Keith Levene, in January of that year on his own independent label imprint. His version of the album contained the original recordings that had been created throughout 1982 & 1983 at Park South studio, NYC, up until his unceremonious dismissal from the band by John Lydon following a dispute over an alternate mix of the single, This Is Not A Love Song. Following his departure, Levene spirited away master tapes from the session to release on his own mix, leaving remaining members, John Lydon and Martin Atkins, holding an empty bag when it came time to produce an official version of the album for Virgin Records.

Lydon and Atkins returned to the UK after their 1983 Japanese mini tour, for which they'd hired a trio of New York lounge musicians to fill out the band's empty slots vacated by Levene and bassist Pete Jones, who departed of his own accord immediately after Keith's sacking. Once in the UK, they set up at Maison Rouge Studios and began to rebuild the album from the ground up. Five of the Commercial Zone songs got a reboot, including "Bad Life" (originally titled "Mad Max"), "This Is Not a Love Song" (originally titled "Love Song"), "Solitaire" (entitled "Young Brits" on the second pressing of Commercial Zone), "The Order of Death" (originally titled "The Slab"), and "Where Are You?" (originally titled "Lou Reed Part 2"). Two new songs were recorded from scratch: "The Pardon" and "Tie Me To the Length Of That", with the latter being improvised in the studio with Lydon and Atkins playing all the instruments. For most of the rest of the album, the NYC lounge musicians, plus a few others, worked as session players. The track, "1981", was actually an outtake from the Flowers of Romance sessions, though some minor overdubs were added to bring it up to snuff for the current LP.

Though PiL had scored a hit with the single version of This Is Not A Love Song, using the Park South recordings with Levene and Pete Jones, the album was received with a large degree of ambivalence, feeling like the soul of the band had been supplanted by the use of faceless studio musicians. Only "Tie Me To the Length of That" really offered any sense of proper PiL music, principally because it lacked the sterile presence of studio hired guns. Still, the album's version of "The Order Of Death" has popped up in numerous soundtracks over the years, including the 1990 science fiction-horror film, Hardware, and on the soundtrack to the 1999 horror film, The Blair Witch Project. It was also featured in the Miami Vice episode "Little Miss Dangerous", the Mr. Robot episode "eps2.7_init_5.fve", and the Industry episode "There Are Some Women...". It also appears in Season 2 Episode 6 of The Umbrella Academy when the Hargreeves siblings take the elevator to the Tiki Lounge to meet with their father. Finally, it appears in the 2023 remake of System Shock, as the music for the end credits.

When it came out, I was at the tail end of my obsession with the band. After the stunning artistic breakthroughs of their first three albums, Commercial Zone felt like a bastard echo of what might have been, while its troubled twin felt like a synthetic imposter version of the band. The release of the Live In Tokyo album, which sounded even more shallow and perfunctory as an imitation of the band, had driven the sense of demise further into the ground. In a sense, TIWYW...TIWYG feels like a capstone to the PiL story, at least as far as the project being a real band. After that, it seemed more like a Lydon solo project, and the sense of musical innovation felt like it had left the building. Without the presence of Keith, Wobble or Martin, who left after touring to support this album, the game had changed and the rules were all different, so I was pretty much out as far as following the band, at least to the degree that I'd been enraptured by them during their heyday.

PUBLIC IMAGE LTD - DEATH DISCO @ 45

 

Released 45 years ago today, it's that harbinger of mutant disco and Public Image Ltd's second single, Death Disco, which was released on June 29th, 1979. It was a glimpse into the striking new direction the band were heading for their soon to be unleashed Metal Box album. The single fused the otherworldly sound of dub with a furious disco 4x4 rhythm, underpinned by Jah Wobble's sonorous bass and over-arched with Keith Levene's Tchaikovsky cribbed furious guitar scraping. Weaving about within the maelstrom was John Lydon wailing away, exercising the demons of having recently witnessed his mother's demise from cancer.

The single was released in two forms, a 7" backed with No Birds Do Sing on the B-side, and a 12" extended "1/2 mix" of the title track on the A-side, and an instrumental revamp of Fodderstompf from their debut LP, titled "Mega Mix" on the flip. This B-side is the only recording to ever emerge from a planned re-recorded version of their debut album that US label Warner Bros had demanded after refusing to release the original version due to its uneven production values. The re-recorded "First Issue" never materialized, however, and the LP remained unreleased in the US for decades, with only this alternate version of Fodderstompf ever surfacing.

Drums were played by David Humphrey, who was the first to replace original drummer, Jim Walker, after his early 1979 departure. Humphrey was gone by the time No Birds was recorded, which features former 101er, Richard Dudanski, on the kit. He lasted through some of the Metal Box sessions and one live gig before departing, eventually being replaced by Martin Atkins.

The sleeve design for the single was taken from an original drawing by John Lydon. The 12" mixes remained unique to that release for many years until they were finally reissued in a couple of CD box sets, Plastic Box (1999) and The Public Image Is Rotten (Songs From The Heart) (2018). There is also a super-extended "1/2 Mix" variant on John Lydon's The Best Of British £1♫'s DVD (2005).

PUBLIC IMAGE - FIRST ISSUE @ 45

 

Released on December 8th, 1978, the debut LP from Public Image Ltd, First Issue, turns 45 years old today. After the spectacular implosion of the Sex Pistols at the beginning of the year, and encouraged by the band's debut eponymous single two months prior, punk fans were eager to see what Johnny Rotten had in store for an encore. Chances are they weren't expecting to get hit over the head with an album that kicks off with a 9 minute art-rock dirge, pleading for a death that never comes, and ends with a 7 minute disco piss-take whinging about how they "only wanted to be loved". And while it may have been dismissed by many at the time as a petulant private joke, the reality of the album was that the band were digging in their heels in order to utterly upturn the apple-cart of what punk (and pop music itself) was and could be.

PiL came into being thanks to a casual conversation between John Lydon and Keith Levene back in 1976, when they both realized that the day would soon come when they'd be on the outs with their respective bands (Sex Pistols & The Clash) and looking for new opportunities. They promised each other they'd put their heads together when that time came, and sure enough, PiL were born a couple of months after the Pistols fell to bits in January of 1978. With close friend, Jah Wobble, quickly recruited for bass, and drummer, Jim Walker, sourced via a music paper ad, the band set about inventing their music the way they imagined it should sound, as if the Pistols has actually succeeded in destroying rock 'n' roll instead of reanimating its fetid corpse.

Beginning recording in July at Virgin Records' Manor studio, the first track to emerge was the single, Public Image. I've gone into great detail on that song's single release already, so I won't repeat myself too much here. You can look it up if you want to. Suffice it to say that the song set the bar high for the rest of the album, perhaps too high. Following its completion, the next set of songs, Theme, Religion and Annalisa, were laid down at Virgin's Townhouse studio.

Theme kicks off the album with a 9 minute excruciating wall of thunderous bass, whip-cracking drums and Keith's guitar sounding like you're in a continuous auto accident with a flurry of shattered glass smashing into your face. Lydon tops it all off with his insistent wailing of "I wish I could die", though the song is not anywhere near suicidal. Ironically, there's something actually quite obstinate and life affirming about the agony being expressed and the clear indication that nothing is capable of convincing the songs protagonist to genuinely give up the ghost. Lydon has described it thus, "Didn't you ever have that feeling when you get up with a hangover, and you look at the world and think 'Count me out, I'd rather die!'?"

Religion started off as lyrics written while Lydon was on tour in the US with the Pistols. He tried showing them to the rest of the band, but they weren't interested. The idea of splitting the song into a spoken recitation followed by the full mix was another example of the LP balking at convention, refusing to pander to expectations. The song was divisive among the band members. Wobble, particularly in later years, felt the disparagement of religious belief was unfair, and he wasn't happy with the contrivances of the mix, with its radical panning of instruments and voices sounding forced. Keith always loved the track and came up with the idea of the two versions. Annalisa follows with its harrowing true life story of a young German girl starved to death by her superstitious parents, who believed she was "possessed". That wraps up the first side of the LP, while the single kicks off the second, leaving the remainder of the album to struggle towards completion.

After the first four songs were recorded, Virgin's advance dried up and the band were forced to resort to recording at Gooseberry Sound Studios, a cheap reggae studio used because Lydon knew it from the recording of some Sex Pistols demos. Lowlife, Attach and Fodderstompf were all recorded there, sounding less produced and immediate in their impact than the first half of the album. Fodderstompf, in particular, was another divisive track due to its absurdity and expedience. Jim Walker hated it, considering it a rip-off for anyone who bought the album. Keith didn't have anything to do with it. It's really all Wobble and Lydon. Built on a tape-looped drum beat & some kind of electronic squelching sound, musically it's all about Wobble's bass, which bubbles and percolates incessantly. Atop this minimalism, Lydon and Wobble exchange quips in annoying Monty Python style falsetto voices, wittering on about how they "only wanted to be loved" and how "love makes the world go 'round". At one point, Wobble lets slip the true motivation of the track, "We only wanted to finish the album with a minimum amount of effort, which we are now doing very SUCCESSFULLY!" As puerile as the humour is, if you love it, you LOVE IT! I'm in that camp, personally, and consider it the clearest harbinger of where the band would go on their landmark sophomore release, Metal Box. The formula, "slap a beat down and do weird shit on top", is sturdy and flexible and one I've utilized COUNTLESS times in the creation of my own music. The song even became an underground disco hit at NYC's infamous Studio 54, where its sentiment had an ironic appeal for the club's decadent celebrity clientele.

For the packaging of the LP, the parodying of the press begun with the tabloid newspaper style wrapping of the single was taken to another level. The record was packaged in gorgeous glossy photos of the band members, each emulating a different popular magazine cover. Lydon graces the front, with his hair a natural colour, combed and contained, all pimples covered in picture perfect foundation makeup and sporting a vacant stare that exactly captured the hollow essence of a vapid celebrity. The same is true for the rest of the band images. On the bottom of the back cover, the final indignity is printed as "Public Image Ltd would like to thank absolutely nobody. Thank you." Up yours!

With all its contrarian cantankerousness, the press had a field day ravaging the album. Sounds reviewer Pete Silverton said that the single is the "Only wholly worthwhile track on the album." He dubbed the rest of the songs as "morbid directionless sounds with Rotten's poetry running just behind it." CREEM's import reviewer dismissed the album as art-rock nonsense, comparing Lydon's singing to a rabid Yoko Ono. Yet that initial disparagement has given way to retrospective praise as the album's daring and uncompromising nature became an inspiration for future generations to push their own limits and take their own chances. It was the beginning of a process that would come to full fruition on albums like Metal Box and Flowers of Romance, albeit the latter represents something of a dead end for the intrepid musical traveller when it comes to PiL's forays into the unknown.

The album wasn't released in the US until a remastered reissue in 2013. Warner Brothers, the band's US label, felt it was unsellable and demanded the group re-record parts of it. They went back in the studio in February of 1979, but their efforts were for naught and only an alternate version of Fodderstompf emerged, used as a B-side on the Death Disco 12" single, released later that year. No other alternate recordings seem to exist, save a different mix of Annalisa, which was included on the 2018 retrospective box set, The Public Image Is Rotten. There are rumours of another song, You Stupid Person, being recorded after the single and subsequently abandoned, but only Jim Walker seems to recall it, claiming to have a cassette copy of a rough mix, but the other band members are more vague about it, and Lydon has no recollection of it at all.

As far as debut LPs go, First Issue is certainly one of the most audacious to have come from the original "punk" movement, offering numerous clear signposts for escaping out of the "Death Valley" of punk's restrictive three chord thrashing. It's a bratty bastard of an album, but it has proven to have staying power and influence well beyond the practical joke it was initially accused of embodying.

JAH WOBBLE’S BEDROOM ALBUM @ 40

 

Marking its 40th anniversary this month is Jah Wobble’s second full length solo LP, Jah Wobble’s Bedroom Album, which was released in May of 1983. After the former Public Image Ltd bassist cobbled together his debut solo releases mostly from unauthorized remixes & augmentations of Metal Box outtakes, which allegedly hastened his departure from the band, Wobble was back with an intimate collection of material recorded in his home using a modest private recording setup.

Although it had been nearly 3 years since his debut solo LP, Wobble hadn’t been exactly dormant during that time. He’d released a collaborative LP/EP with CAN rhythm section, Holger Czukay & Jaki Liebezeit, two live cassettes albums with his band The Human Condition, a single with Ben Mandleson and a couple of solo 12” singles with A-side tracks that would later appear on the Bedroom Album. However, by the time he stared working on the Bedroom Album, he no longer had major label support from Virgin Records. As a result, Wobble set up his first independent imprint, Lago Records (aka WOB Records), which released a series of singles, EPs and LPs between 1981 and 1986, before Wobble temporarily retired from music in the late 1980s to work on the London subway system and deal with his substance abuse issues.

Fundamentally, the music created for the Bedroom Album contains the seeds for what would become Wobble’s trademark “world music” style, incorporating elements of Middle Eastern and Asian influences into his post-punk, dub-wise & reggae tinged style. Certain tracks even hinted at a slightly industrial kind of “musique concrète” approach. Whereas his debut LP & EP in 1980 were characterized by a kind of puerile & mischievous humor, the mood throughout this LP is far more somber, subdued and warm, reinforcing the sense of intimacy that was consistent with the concept of recording in his bedroom. The only outside musical contributions for the album came from “Animal”, Dave Maltby, who played guitar on and co-wrote several of the songs. He was also a member of the power trio, The Human Condition, along with Wobble and original PiL drummer, Jim Walker (1981-1982).

The album’s impact is hard to assess as no reviews or charting info could be found at the time of writing this. It has never been reissued since its initial vinyl release, though it does appear in its entirety on the two CD box set, The Early Years, released in 2001 on Wobble’s 2nd indie label, 30 Hertz Records, which continues to function as his primary musical outlet to this day. That compilation even features the same cover graphic as the Bedroom Album, created by Margaux Tomlinson. Unfortunately, it seems that the master tapes for the original LP, along with several singles included on that collection, are no longer extant as the audio included on the CD is clearly derived from vinyl sources. This makes the LP something of an outlier in Wobble’s canon of recorded work, which has become vast over the course of the past four decades as he has maintained an unprecedented level of productivity. With the aura of a lost musical relic, it captures a most enigmatic time in Wobble’s early career.

KEITH LEVENE (18 July 1957 – 11 November 2022)

 

Julian Keith Levene was always a challenge to pin down as a musician. He was a peg that never seemed to fit into any hole. There was always an extra angle that stuck out and that’s what made him so innovative and difficult to classify. His deconstruction of guitar playing had a monumental impact on me when I was trying to figure out if I should pursue my interest in music beyond collecting records. Before PiL came into my life early in 1980, I’d dabbled with guitar lessons and halfheartedly tried to muck about with it, but when I got my hands on Public Image Ltd’s Second Edition, the version of Metal Box which was released worldwide after the initial UK film tin pressing sold out, it pulled the plug on every preconception I’d ever had about what you could do with the guitar. 

 

PiL’s musical genius came in a two pronged attack: Wobble’s throbbing bass and Keith’s razor edged guitar. The two complimented and contrasted wildly against each other, but always in immaculate balance, with Lydon’s moaning and sneering surfing and slithering in between them. It was completely alien sounding, unlike anything I’d heard before, yet it was also compellingly inviting. It didn’t intimidate me to think about trying to play something like that. It was like they’d exposed all the plumbing and wiring inside the architecture of music and let you see how it could be put together. And you realized it didn’t have to follow the rules that were shoved down your throat by traditional music theory. The idea of “structure” suddenly had a vastly broadened scope and it wasn’t exclusionary and elitist. It plainly said to any listener willing to hear, “You can make things like this. All you have to do is give it a go!” So I took them at their word and did just that.

 

In less than a year, I got my own band going, scraped together some money from my part-time job and started recording my own music. PiL got me on that path as surely as if they’d come straight over to my house and showed me how to do it in person. But they were so much more than music. They were a whole attitude and lifestyle. They weren’t merely a “band”. The “LTD” wasn’t just for show. They were a COMPANY and they didn’t solely make music. They had plans for all sorts of things. Sure, ultimately a lot of that was unfulfilled at that time, but over the years, the individual members showed that they were willing to go as independent as they could, forming their own labels, creating their own products and pushing their individual boundaries in one way or another. Even the way they looked and dressed was part of it. Despite the Public Image being “limited”, they still managed to be style icons for the reject crowd. I desperately wanted my hair to be as ratty as Keith’s and was always on the lookout for a good ill-fitting old man suit. The “wrongness” became “rightness”, if you understood the language.

 

From 1980 until 1984, my musical world revolved around PiL. After picking up Second Edition, I moved heaven and earth to get a sanctified copy of Metal Box in its requisite tin canister. It cost me about $60 (in 1981 money) and took about 3 months to get a copy shipped over from the UK. Getting their debut LP, First Issue also took some doing as it was not released in Canada, so I had to rely on my local shop to special order the import. I remember hearing Theme for the first time and being knocked sideways by Keith’s insane guitar thrash. It felt like being in a continuous car crash with glass from the windshield constantly flying into your face. Then there was the chime of that incredible riff for the song, Public Image, the sound that launched a thousand post-punk bands. You wouldn’t have U2 without it. Getting back to Metal Box, it was the dissonant screeching of Albatross that first catches your ear as that 10 minute dirge churns away and it sounds like seagulls dying over a stagnant ocean. The other standout is Careering where the synth takes over from guitar and Keith uses his Prophet 5 to unfurl layers of queazy atmospheric drones, all shifting and mutating, never the same, throughout the entire song.

 

After that initial one-two punch of those first albums, the future of PiL became uncertain with the departure of Wobble after the 1980 US tour. He was such a fundamental component of their sound, it was hard to imagine what they’d do to regroup. I could never have guessed that they’d say “fuck it” to the bass and, instead, make the drums the star of their next album, Flowers of Romance. Here, Keith again comes to the table with a set of off the wall ideas which, somehow, manage to work. Really the whole album is an exercise in organized chaos and it’s something of a miracle that it came together at all, let alone to form something so uncompromising and idiosyncratic. Though there was a general movement towards percussion at the time, what with the double drummer format of Adam and The Ants and Bow Wow Wow, nobody saw PiL’s take on it coming. Even Phil Collins was impressed enough by the sound of PiL’s drums to hire their engineer to get him the same sound for his next album. But Keith’s standout track from this set is the instrumental, Hymies Him, a piece composed for potential use in a soundtrack using a Balinese Gamelan Richard Branson had picked up for the Townhouse studio. It’s a remarkably rich sounding piece, full of exotic flair and intrigue.

 

After the album was completed, a promotional trip to NYC resulted in an unexpected opportunity to perform at the Ritz where PiL were invited to make use of the club’s state-of-the-art video projection system. With only John and Keith available to perform, they set about hiring a local jazz drummer and concocting a sort of video installation concept. The idea was ambitious and quite ahead of its time, but Keith was always keen to explore the potential of new media, so they arranged to perform behind the screen while the live video would project them out front. It wasn’t meant to be a live gig like a regular band, but the audience weren’t in any way clued into that. Technical issues with the video resulted in the images of the band not showing up clearly on the screen, which set the whole night into a tailspin. Egged on by John and Keith taunting the audience, it all descended into a literal riot, turning it into what has become PiL’s most notorious live performance ever.

 

Though they briefly returned to the UK after that, John was fed up with the constant harassment by the police, who regularly raided his home in Gunter Grove, along with the constant nuisance of fans and freaks showing up on his doorstep at all hours. With that, John and Keith packed up and moved to NYC, taking up residency in a rented loft. With Martin Atkins on tour with Brian Brain in the US, the timing was right for him to reconnect with PiL, bringing along his bassist collaborator, Pete Jones. In 1982, the group began work on recording their next album, tentatively called “Welcome to the Commercial Zone”, a title inspired by signage they’d seen near where they had their loft. Lydon took a break to go to Italy to work on his first feature film role in Cop Killer, aka The Order of Death, while Keith, Martin and Pete were left in NYC to record the instrumental tracks for the new album. At this point, it was principally Keith who was directing the musical creations going on and the project was going in a vastly different direction from what had been done with Flowers of Romance.

 

The idea of “commercialism” was sort of seen as a challenge to make music that was both accessible while maintaining the sense of innovation which had characterized their first three LPs. In order to help fund recording, once John was done filming in Italy, the group began touring the US, traveling coast to coast to help revive the group’s fortunes and get people talking about them again. It was at this time that they came to Seattle and I had the chance to see the newly reconstituted PiL, and it was glorious! It was one of the most intense live shows I’ve ever seen and I was stoked to be able to see them back in top form again and hear some of the new songs. But the waters were troubled and would hit the boiling point early in 1983.

 

While still working on Commercial Zone, an offer came up to perform in Japan. It was a lucrative opportunity and included the release of the first material from the CZ sessions, a 12” single of This Is Not A Love Song. Somehow, wires got crossed about different mixes of the song being considered for the release and Keith found himself working on a remix while John was off meeting with reps from Japan. Keith’s efforts were, apparently, in conflict with what John wanted and the result was that John told Keith, in no uncertain terms, to immediately stop what he was doing and “get out of HIS studio”. It all blew up into a conflict which was irreconcilable and Levene found himself out of the band while Lydon hired some lounge band session musicians to go with him and Martin to Japan.

 

Keith’s response to being ousted was to take the rough mixes of Commercial Zone and, allegedly with the blessing of Branson, press them into a plainly packaged white label limited edition LP, which Keith released on his own hastily set up PiL Records Inc imprint. Keith would pile boxes of records on his skateboard and deliver them to the local record shops himself. A few copies of the LP managed to find their way to Vancouver and I snapped one up after waiting for ages to see another new PiL release after the Japanese 12” for Love Song finally surfaced. This was all after PiL had made a huge announcement before Keith left that they were diversifying into all these different corporate sub-entities to handle different aspects of the business. There was Public Enterprise Productions and Multi Image Corporation to handle live performances and video/film projects, etc. All of this seemed to be thrown into chaos now.

 

John & Martin continued on with PiL and released This Is What You Want, This Is What You Get, which was an LP that came quickly on the heels of Keith’s Commercial Zone LP in 1984. It had many of the CZ songs, though completely rerecorded with session musicians replacing Keith’s parts. There was also a leftover from Flowers reworked slightly for the new album and a couple of new tracks Lydon recorded with Martin. The two LPs stood toe to toe with each other and reminded me of that Star Trek episode where Kirk has a transporter accident and is split into two people, each with traits of the other, but each somehow incomplete. That’s how these albums felt. They were parts of the same whole and each had its virtues, but they were also both lacking something. One couldn’t help but feel like they’d have made a spectacular whole if they could be fused together.

 

After this, Keith seemed to disappear for a couple of years until the release of his Violent Opposition EP in 1987, which was followed by another EP, 2011 Back Too Black. These were then combined with some additional tracks for the 1989 Violent Opposition album. By this point, he’d moved with his then wife to LA and was doing some session work producing groups like Red Hot Chili Peppers. After that, Keith’s music career became exceptionally sporadic and intermittent. I heard that he’d gone into working in IT/digital media, but there was little information surfacing on his activities. He was effectively silent throughout the 1990s with only a few guest appearance credits showing up throughout the decade.

 

In 2002, Keith emerged from the shadows again with a brand new website and “band”, Murder Global. There was a new EP, Killer In the Crowd, and a video to go along with it. It seemed like he was about to jump back into the music business again after a decade of absence, but the traction from this seems to have been quickly lost as Keith, again, disappeared save for the odd guest appearance until 2010 when he did this bizarre PiL revival gig with Wobble where they hired a Johnny Rotten impersonator to do vocals and they played all the old PiL songs! I remember coming across YouTube clips from the show and wondering what the fuck I was looking at as it sounded remarkably bang-on to what PiL should be, more so than the revived PiL that Lydon was touring around with at the same time. In 2012, Wobble & Levene released an EP and album of brand new recordings, reviving their collaboration and showing themselves off as the true musical innovators of PiL, while Lydon was touring with what felt like a shadow of the original.

 

Keith followed that up with the Search for Absolute Zero album of brand new solo recordings. Suddenly he was all over social media, particularly on Twitter. He’d follow-back anyone who followed him and was always willing to engage with people, responding to every inquiry. Absolute Zero was a standout collection of new songs, showing Keith was still able to put things together in a way that only he could conceive. He was doing music like he’d never done before and it was all sounding great. After completing that project, the ghosts of Commercial Zone began to surface as the 30th anniversary of its release came up. Keith ended up going to Prague where he began recording what would become CZ2014, what he conceived of as his ultimate realization of the ideas inherent in the original Commercial Zone project. This was all part of a larger umbrella project Keith regularly referred to as “2051”. It’s not clear what that all entailed, but it was something Keith enthusiastically talked about in interview as tying together all his work over the years. The mechanics and physical manifestation he intended where never clearly elucidated, but it was obvious he had SOMETHING in his mind.

 

It was around the beginning of CZ2014 production when I was able to establish a personal interaction with Keith. I’d started to exchange messages with him and had commented that I wished I’d been able to contribute to his Indiegogo campaign that was partially funding the project, but that I was unemployed and had no extra income. I was also dealing with health issues. Keith, in an act of great generosity, sent me a complete set of recordings from the new album as a gift. I wrote a review for it all, which Keith loved and shared wherever he could. I also started creating little promotional memes for him to share to help generate publicity for the project. It was all going great until Keith posted a video on his YouTube channel that included a “dedication to Ugo” in the title/description. This inadvertently caused something of a storm with his principal financial backer, who was partially financing the recordings in Prague. They were incensed that they didn’t get a dedication and I did and it all got very weird and awkward and I kinda withdrew from any further direct involvement in the promotion of the project.

 

Subsequently, I kept my distance, but also kept tabs on Keith’s activities as he moved on to doing a series of bespoke “Teenage Guitarist” limited edition art pieces and began publishing biographical texts about his days with the Clash and forming PiL. He was doing original paintings and selling them with CDs and records and copies of his booklets. He had a few different websites up and it seemed like he was all over the place with talk of a film project in the works as well, but then it all turned into a legal nightmare as his relationship with his business partner turned toxic and he was ensnared in a web of lawsuits and litigation. These issues even managed to hold up the release of Keith’s last major recording project, Jah Wobble’s Very British Coup single from 2019. With all that going on, it seemed like Keith vanished from social media and the music business. I only found a couple of interviews with him after that talking about his Bitcoin interests, but nothing relating to any new musical or artistic projects. Until hearing about his death, I had no idea he was ill or suffering from liver cancer. Hearing that hit pretty close to home because it’s what killed my dad back in 1987.

 

Keith was a spiky person in a lot of respects and that’s one of the things I loved about him. I remember seeing him and John on Tom Snyder’s Tomorrow show in 1980 and being in stitches as they made Tom beg for any kind of response to his often inept and obviously uninformed questions. Tom was usually a much better interviewer, but he seemed stumped by these two. Keith was also a bit brutal on social media. After opening up to everyone, he turned the tables and started to block anyone who said anything he didn’t like. I ended up getting blocked when I made a dumb joke about a guitar of his that had been stolen in 1983. It was just a silly comment, but it was enough to get me on Keith’s shit list. The situation with his ex-business partner was a mess and they were seemingly everywhere whenever anyone mentioned Keith, ready to pounce on even the most innocent comments. It’s not surprising he gave up on social media for all practical purposes. I was hoping he might be coming back again after seeing him talking about Bitcoin, but he never responded to my inquiry when I tried to contact the Twitter account he gave out during one of his last interviews.

 

Hearing about him passing at such a relatively young age is a huge shock. Though his output could be sporadic and infrequent, when he did get it together to do something, he managed to make an impression and do something unexpected and innovative. He certainly made an impact on me. I wouldn’t have pursued music as a form of expression had it not been for him and Wobble showing me that I could do it too. I’m sure he did that for a lot of people and that’s a pretty good legacy to leave behind. Oh and there’s all that revolutionary mind blowing music too.

PUBLIC IMAGE LTD - THIS IS PIL @ 10

 

Marking its tenth anniversary today is the ninth studio album by Public Image Ltd, This Is PiL, which was released on May 28th, 2012. It marked the end of a 20 year gap between LPs for the band and a return to something vaguely resembling their earlier, more experimental sound.

After releasing That What Is Not in 1992, John Lydon found his post Sex Pistols band getting shelved by circumstances, mostly due to owing large debts to his record label, Virgin. Because of this, it became virtually impossible for him to release new music. While a solo album, Psycho’s Path, was released in 1997, it did nothing to help his situation. The same was true of various Sex Pistols reunions held between 1996 and 2007. Lydon also took up something of a TV personality career in the interim, briefly hosting an arts magazine show (Rotten TV), a nature program (John Lydon’s Megabugs) and participating in an aborted appearance on the UK reality show, I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here. Lydon’s big break, which allowed him to finally get his financial house in order, came in 2008 when he was hired to do a series of TV advertisements for Country Life Butter in Britain. Though he was mocked at the time and accused of “selling out”, he brushed off those criticisms by promptly plowing his significant earnings directly into funding a PiL reunion and tour.

To put the band back together, Lydon first reached out to guitarist Lou Edmonds and drummer Bruce Smith, both of whom had worked with him in PiL during the late 1980s and early 1990s. The bass role, however, was still in question as Allan Dias was no longer available from that old lineup. Lydon even approached original bassist, Jah Wobble, making an offer that Wobble didn’t take seriously, countering with a financial demand he knew was over the top. The quartet finally got fleshed out with Scott Firth, who was a multi-instrumentalist who’d worked with the Spice Girls, among others. In 2009, this lineup set out on tour, backed by the cash from the butter ads, and proceeded to rebuild the PiL name, one gig at a time. They were a hit on the road and managed to eventually bank enough earnings to fund some studio time at Steve Winwood’s Wincraft Studios in Cotswolds, England.

The studio was located on a sheep farm in the countryside and, while isolated, was also inexpensive enough to fit their independent budget. Now that Lydon was clear of his record label debts, he determined to remain independent, setting up his own label, PiL Official, and recruited long time trusted friend, John “Rambo” Stevens, to help with managing this new enterprise. In essence, PiL had finally become the “company” that they’d long ago boasted about wanting to be. With this self sufficiency now baked into their DNA, PiL and Lydon were free to pursue their music as they saw fit, with no one to lay claim to it beyond themselves.

The resulting album, stylistically, straddled a line between some of the early PiL experimentalism and the angular post rock that had been their stock-in-trade after the original lineup had dissipated with the departures of Keith Levene and Martin Atkins. For some it was a welcome return, for others, if still felt sluggish and uninspired. My own opinion fell somewhere between those poles, with some songs capturing an echo of those past glories while others seemed mediocre efforts at best. Regardless, it was good to see a version of PiL out in the world again and functioning on its own terms, answering to no one.

This lineup would produce a follow up album in 2015 of similar caliber and continue to tour until late 2019. The venture, however, stalled with the outbreak of COVID in 2020. The situation was aggravated by Lydon’s wife, Nora, falling victim to dementia, necessitating constant care. Lydon has done some small speaking tours to coincide with books he's published and made a few TV appearances, but his shift into apparent conservative political dispositions, notoriously supporting Brexit and the Trump campaign in 2020, has lead to a lot of negative backlash from his fan base. Financially, he seems to be in dire straights again after failed legal battles against producers of the Sex Pistols docudrama series due for release at the end of May, 2022. There are plans for PiL to tour in the summer of this year and apparently plans to head into the studio again, so there may still be some life left in the old tab yet.

P.S. PiL performed live at the recent Cruel World Fest with Lydon looking trimmed down, though struggling to remember lyrics, at least in the clips I’ve seen.

PUBLIC IMAGE LTD - FLOWERS OF ROMANCE @40

 

April 10th marks the 40th anniversary of the release of Public Image Ltd’s third studio album, Flowers of Romance, issued on this day in 1981. It followed on the heels of the release of the single of the same name a couple of weeks prior.

After PiL returned to the UK from their short tour of the US in May of 1980, things quickly fell apart for the band. Bassist, Jah Wobble, was ousted or split, depending on who you talk to, and went out the door with a box of the band’s money as payment for his services. Wobble’s penchant for recycling PiL backing tracks for his solo albums had bent Johnny’s nose out of shape enough that a working relationship was no longer possible between the two. Drummer, Martin Atkins, was kinda out of a job too, though amicably, for no other apparent reason than the band going into a state of inactivity. PiL essentially went dormant for a few months, only releasing the live Paris Au Printemps album as a stopgap against the bootleg market and to give fans something to tide them over as there seemed to be no new music on the horizon for 1980.

The remnants of the band wouldn’t venture into the studio to begin work on a new LP until early October and they would do so with an arrest and court case looming for Lydon thanks to a trumped up assault charge incurred while on a trip to Ireland. It was an incident which would have him spending time in the notorious Mountjoy Prison, an experience which would contribute directly to one song and color John’s mood for the entire album. Add to that the near constant police and overbearing fan harassment at his Gunter Grove home and you’ve got the perfectly oppressive, paranoid and claustrophobic aura necessary to create some uncompromising, confrontational music.

However, once Lydon and Levene found themselves in Virgin’s Manor Studio, inspiration wasn’t exactly forthcoming. At first they seemed to be lost and directionless. Keith was often distracted with his “habit” while Lydon languished in front of the TV, though not without spotting the odd “ghost” in the old mansion, a specter which, though destined to become subject matter for a song, had more substance than the yet to manifest album. The Manor unsettled John enough that he took to sleeping in the coal shed because the main house creeped him out so much. The presence of a new studio toy did end up helping a bit though. Virgin head, Richard Branson, had managed to score some Balinese bamboo drums while traveling, which Keith put to use for Hymies Him, an instrumental track that was intended to be a soundtrack component for a feature film project (Wolfen by Michael Wadleigh), but that offer ended up falling through. Hymies Him was the only track to come from those first two weeks of studio time before they relocated to the brand new Townhouse studios in London, which were still receiving some finishing touches in its construction.

After Steve Lillywhite was dropped, engineer Nick Launey came onboard as co-producer. Since they no longer had a bass player, rather than try to bring someone new into the band, their intuitive decision was to shift the focus to the drums and ignore the bass guitar almost entirely. At the Townhouse, its drum kit had been set up on a wooden frame in this unfinished stone room over-top a somewhat large open pit. The acoustics in the room lent the drums a massive natural reverb effect and recording experiments found them to have a walloping great sound with little post processing required beyond pinning the levels to the absolute maximum volume. The sound they got was so impressive, after hearing it, Phil Collins would hire Launey to engineer the same sound for his solo album he’d started work on. What was missing from this equation, however, was a drummer. At the time, Martin was about to go on tour with his band, Brian Brain, but had a few days off and, after popping into the studio for a visit, agreed to come in as a hired gun to lay down some tracks. He ended up recording three credited, finished songs for the album: Four Enclosed Walls, Under the House & Banging the Door. In recent years, other tracks with Atkins such as the original version of 1981 and the unfinished track, Vampire, have surfaced from these sessions on retrospective box sets.

Atkins also did a lot of experimenting on other sounds with Launey while he was there, like the strange ticking sound that provides the background ambience on Four Enclosed Walls, achieved by placing his Micky Mouse pocket watch on a drum head for additional resonance and amplifying it with a dual stereo harmonizer effect. They also had access to an an AMS digital sampler, one of the first digital devices ever available. One day Martin played a drum groove and Nick pushed 'Loop Lock' and tried to make a perfect loop, but the device was too primitive for precision fine-tuning, so you couldn't actually edit it to get it in time. Working within its limitations, Launey randomly kept locking in different beats as Martin played them, until he got one that sounded interesting. That limping, off-kilter loop became the basis for the song Track 8.

With Nick’s help, Martin Atkins would turn out to be the “hero” during this production as his contributions ended up galvanizing the project into something that was starting to have a sense of direction and purpose. His drumming was so much more than mere timekeeping as he came up with these unusual, distinctive patterns that sounded like nothing else and contained their own musical structure, something which allowed songs to stand with minimal arrangements. With these foundations, Lydon and Levene were able to start to piece together the remaining elements, often chaotically and with a kind of mad abandon. Tracks would be left sparse in most cases with odd crazy bits thrown into the mix, like the out-of-tune banjo missing three strings that John beat with a drum stick on Phenagen. Even the TV, a fixture in the studio, became a sound source for such elements as the bits of random opera singing seeping into Under the House, the song which commemorates Lydon’s ghostly encounter at the Manor. Levene found little use for his guitar most of the time, favoring his modular Roland System 100 setup. Only Go Back featured him laying down one of his characteristically searing guitar riffs against a funky drum track, which he also played. When guitar infrequently appeared in other tracks, it was more incidental and was often heavily treated or backwards. As previously mentioned, bass was nearly entirely forsaken on the album with the exception of a bit on Track 8 and Banging the Door, where it throbbed heavy beneath swirls of droning synth ambience and Martin’s martial drum patterns, coming closest to anything done on Metal Box.

Lydon’s vocals were the cherry that would land on the top of the cake when he managed to pull his lyrics together and felt there was enough of a musical bed for them to rest upon. For this album, his lyrics were some of his most esoteric and ambiguous, like the howling call to prayer that opens the album on Four Enclosed Walls, conjuring up images of deserts and holy warriors on the prowl. Yet more concrete subject matter was also dealt with, from sexual inadequacy (Track 8), to annoying obsessive fans (Banging the Door) to right-wing fascism (Go Back) to life in prison (Francis Massacre), Lydon delivered some of the most harrowing and personal performances of his career.

Eventually, emerging from a process that seemed like some kind of barely organized chaos, PiL had an album, albeit a brief one. Clocking in at a lean 34 minutes, just over half the runtime of the monolithic Metal Box, Flowers of Romance offered a tight bouquet of nine songs with none of the sprawling 9-10 minute dirges that had kicked off the previous two albums. Three to five minutes each was plenty for everything on this record. The overall sound was expansive and spacious, highlighting the air between the instruments and the vocals. This made the elements that were there stand out in sharp relief. The emphasis on percussion was actually quite coincidentally contemporary with the trend of the time with bands like Bow Wow Wow and Adam and the Ants going tribal with their double drummers, though the end result with PiL was entirely non-commercial. In fact, it could be argued that what they delivered to Virgin Records was one of the LEAST commercial albums a major label artist ever handed to their label, at least since Lou Reed dropped Metal Machine Music on the heads of RCA.

The album’s title is a reference to the short lived punk band that Sid Vicious had prior to joining the Sex Pistols. It’s not clear why Lydon was drawn back to this name for this album, but it somehow seemed to make sense. For the packaging, which returned to the more conventional cardboard sleeve after the financially prohibitive metal canister of the previous album, both the single and LP used Jeanette Lee’s Polaroid photos, with the album opting for a photo of Jeanette herself up front with no text, simply bordered by black. She’s shown in mid frenzy, with a rose in her teeth, in what appears to be the throws of some debauchery. The rear and inner sleeve contain all the text in an archaic Middle Eastern flavored font and lyrics printed in a run-on religious script style with no separation between the songs, like a transcript from some cloistered illuminated holy book.

I remember distinctly when the album came out. I was heartbroken when I heard that Wobble had left and was concerned PiL were finished. In Thunder Bay, ON, I got very meager press regarding UK bands, so I had no idea they had a new album due when I spotted it on the racks. I was in a hi-fi stereo store I never usually bought records from as they only had a small selection of mostly top 40 releases, but this day in April, I spotted this strange looking record. I didn’t know it was PiL at first since there was no text on the front, but it looked so different from the rest of what was on the shelves, my instincts told me to pick it up. When I saw the text on the back, I felt my heart skip and rushed to the checkout. I immediately called my friend who had a good hi-fi system at his house and went over for a first listen.

When we played it, cranking up the volume for maximum effect, it was pretty obvious from the beginning this wasn’t going to be more of what had been done on Metal Box. The bass was gone and it was all drums and weird incidental sounds. It was so completely different from anything they’d done before. It was a shock and I have to admit I didn’t know quite what I felt about it at first, but it would grow on me quickly and, over the years, I’ve come to appreciate its distinctiveness as the completion of a triptych along with the prior two PiL studio albums. But it would also mark the outer limits of their experimentation and become a barrier past which they’d not be able to extend.

After this and the disastrous New York Ritz multimedia performance in May of 1981, they’d regroup and head back into more conventional rock band territory and they’d never venture this far out into the avant-garde again. They’d effectively painted themselves into a creative corner and the only direction left was irony and faux commercialism, as exemplified by the unfinished Commercial Zone LP that followed and This Is Not A Love Song, their most successful chart single. 1984’s This Is What You Want.. LP had the last dying embers of that provocative fire flickering. These efforts were not without their charms, but once Keith left, that sense of boldness and innovation pretty much evaporated from PiL’s DNA and never returned.

PUBLIC IMAGE LTD. - THE FLOWERS OF ROMANCE (SINGLE) @40

 

March 27th marks the 40th anniversary of the release of Public Image Ltd’s fourth single, The Flowers of Romance. The song title is a reference to the near mythical short lived 1976 punk band that Sid Vicious was a member of before joining the Sex Pistols. The group’s fluctuating lineup also included such luminaries as Palmolive, Viv Albertine & Keith Levene; among others. They never recorded or performed, but left enough of an impression on John Lydon that he immortalized them in the title of this song and the subsequent LP which followed.

After well over a year’s wait for new material, Metal Box being released in November of 1979, the song itself was the world’s first peek at a post Jah Wobble PiL. With his acrimonious departure after their US tour the prior year, the remaining members had decided that the best way to cope with losing their bassist was to simply drop the instrument from their arsenal. Instead, the focus became percussion and Flowers highlights this with its tribal tom-toms and Spanish Flamenco style hand-claps. The rest of the track is built from droning cello, aberrant violin and a sax solo that sounds like the instrument got caught in a tornado. The rest is Lydon’s wailing vocals with lyrics bringing to mind fragmented images of disillusioned romanticism, worn out nostalgia and abandonment.

For all practical purposes, this could easily be seen as a solo song for Johnny as he played just about everything except the percussion, which was apparently done by an uncredited Martin Atkins. When the band mimed the song on Top of the Pops, Jeannette Lee took on the cello while Keith played the drums. Of course, Jeannette never played anything, but she was responsible for the lovely Polaroid photo of John adorning the front cover of the single.

The non-album B-side, Home Is Where the Heart Is, is a heavily dub-mixed reworking of a previously unfinished song that originated during the 1979 Metal Box sessions and which can be heard on a few live bootlegs from the band’s short US tour in the spring/summer of 1980. Wobble’s bass part was rerecorded by Keith, who created a tape loop of it for the finished version and Martin Atkins, again, plays drums and, AGAIN, misses a credit as the single mistakenly lists original PiL drummer, Jim Walker, in the writing credits.

The single peaked at #24 in the UK charts and was listed as the single of the week by NME upon its release with the reviewer calling it a “sheer delight” and “One of the starkest, most single-minded pieces they've ever done.” It would certainly do the job in terms of setting the stage for the outrageously uncompromising album that they were about to unleash upon an unsuspecting fan base.

40 YEARS LATER - THE LEGEND LIVES ON... JAH WOBBLE IN "BETRAYAL"

May 9th marks the 40th anniversary of the release of Jah Wobble's debut solo LP, The Legend Lives On - Jah Wobble In 'Betrayal', which was unleashed on this day in 1980.

Let's start by reminding people of the career of another bass player for Johnny Rotten and its tragic end. After the Sex Pistols, Sid Vicious went on to self destruct rather quickly and spectacularly within a very short time after the demise of the band that made him famous. As such, Jah Wobble stepping out from behind John Lydon to kick off a solo career, being not entirely dis-similarly reputed for his indulgences (though with booze instead of smack), cast this release with its own level of suspicion. One could not be blamed for expecting this career move to potentially be as short lived and disastrous.

Indeed, Wobble pushed out the boat with a good deal of levity and frivolity for his initial outing. Frankly, the whole endeavor came off as something of a joke and, in fact, proved to be a fatal coffin nail for his relationship with the band that made HIM famous, Public Image Ltd. Surreptitiously pilfering PiL backing tracks to recycle for his solo album didn't sit well with Mr. Lydon and, once the band had completed it's US tour, Wobble found himself out of the enterprise with little fanfare. The band would go on to prove that they didn't need his bass or anyone else's on the virtually bass-less Flowers of Romance.

However, Wobble's career would prove to be no "flash in the pan" as he soon found his feet, connecting with the likes of Holger Czukay (CAN) and The Edge (U2) and ultimately forging a solo career which has spanned decades and dozens of acclaimed releases and shows no signs of faltering to this day. Within that context, it is possible to look back on this album and discover that, while it was possessed of a certain irreverence and sense of mischief, it still managed to deliver some innovation and a jolly good time, once you twigged that it was meant for a "larf"!

Personally, as a devout, fanatical aficionado of all things PiL, the thought of a solo album by Wobble was a no-brain'r. This was to be acquired, forthwith. Fortunately, I was able to special order the album through one of my local record shops. Upon its arrival, I was pretty instantly swept up in its craziness. Though the ideas weren't without precedent, this was the first record I'd come across which utilized the concept of the "remix" as it featured alternate versions of two songs from the PiL canon; The Suit, reworked and augmented to become Blueberry Hill, and Graveyard/Another, dub mixed as an instrumental, Not Another. As silly as it all seems, the album explores a lot of dub production techniques, in some ways even more extremely than what PiL had done on Metal Box. The touches of reggae were also more apparent as some songs went directly into the genre rather than offering glancing blows like Metal Box.

I loved it and still love it, though it baffles my mind that Virgin Records were willing to give Wobble money and studio time to create what was very much an indulgence and a private joke at the expense of the label. This is one of the reasons it stands out as it's a rare example where a musician has been able to get backing to go into a studio and just piss about for the hell of it and actually have the results pressed on vinyl and sold to the world. As a musician, that willingness to throw caution to the wind and try something silly has been a guiding principal ever since hearing this album. I've done a lot of crazy experiments because I was emboldened by the brevity of this LP. Yes, it was a swindle in the best "punk" tradition, but a fun and delightful listen in the end, proving that you don't have to be so goddamned serious all the time in the studio! 

 

PLAYLIST - THE LEGEND LIVES ON... JAH WOBBLE IN "BETRAYAL"