PiL - Public Image (First Issue) - Side A

Lydon and his colleagues overhauled their image, purging anything redolent of punk clichés and instead wearing tailored suits. This anti-rock 'n' roll image culminated with Dennis Morris's artwork for PiL's debut album, fashion-magazine-style portraits of each member of the group, immaculately coutured and coiffed. Lydon appeared on the front under italian Vogue lettering, while the reverse saw Wobble sporting a debonair 1920s lounge lizard mustache.

The album was uncompromising, throwing the listener in at the deep end with the nine-minute death wish dirge "Theme", a near cacophony of suicidal despair and Catholic guilt, with Lydon howling about masturbation as mortal sin.
It was nothing if not an orgy of twisted guitar virtuosity, Levene generating an astonishing amount of sound from a single guitar.

Pil- Theme - 1978


Next up was the anticlerical doggerel of "Religion I"/"Religion II" (a blasphemous ditty written for the Pistols and originally titled "Sod in Heaven"), followed by the hacking thrash funk of "Annalisa", the true story of a German girl who starved to death because her parents believed she was possessed by the devil and turned to the church rather than psychiatrists for help.

PiL - Religion I - 1978


PiL - Religion II - 1978


PiL - Annalisa - 1978