If side one of Public Image was loosely themed around religion, the more accessible second side was largely concerned with the tribulations of being the punk messiah.
"Low Life" fingered McLaren (Malcolm, Sex Pistols' manager) as the "egomaniac trainer/traitor" who "never did understand", while the foaming paranoia of "Attack" showed that the mental scars from summer 1977, when Lydon was U.K. Public Enemy Number One, were still livid.
What's striking in retrospect about PiL's debut is that, for all the rhetoric about being antirock, a hefty proportion of Public Image actually rocks hard. Combining raw power and uncanny dubspace, "Low Life" and "Attack" sound like Never Mind the Bollocks might have if Lydon's reggae-and-Krautrock sensibility had prevailed.
PiL - Low Life - 1978
Pil - Attack - 1978
As often happens with bands commited to progression, the most extreme track on the preceding album is the springboard for the next. On one level, "Fodderstompf" was a throwaway, an extended disco spoof, almost a parody of Donna Summer's "Love to Love You Baby", with Lydon the antisentimentalist taking the piss out of romance, affection, committment.
Donna Summer - Love to Love You Baby - 1975
On "Fodderstompf" Lydon and Wobble yowl "we only wanted to be loved" into an echo chamber using shrill Monty Python-style housewife voices, ad-lib insults at the studio engineer behind the glass, blast a fire extinguisher at the mike, and generally goof off.
"Me and John, I think we'd had a bit of wine or whatever that night", chuckles Wobble. The track runs for almost eight minutes because its raison d'etre was to fulfill the minimum album length of thirty minutes stipulated by the band's contract.
In a pointed fuck-you to Virgin, and arguably to the record buyer too, Wobble at one point warbles, "We are now trying to finish the album with a minimum amount of effort which we are now doing very suc-cess-ful-leeee". Says Wobble, "It was this confrontational thing, a real mickey take on the record company".
Yet musically the track is the most compelling thing on the debut. Its hypnotic dub-funk bassline, subliminal synth burbles, and monstrous snare sound (drastically processed and absurdly prominent in the mix) look ahead to 1979's Metal Box, on which the group would fully embrace the studio-as-instrument methodology of disco and dub.
"People loved that track", says Wobble. "It's got quite a sense of anarchy. In its own way, it's as mental as Funkadelic. And it had the perfect funk bassline".
PiL - Fodderstompf - 1978
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