PiL's third: Flowers of Romance

A breakthrough of sorts occured several days into the sessions for recording of PiL's third album, Flowers of Romance. Instructing the engineer to keep the tape rolling no matter what, Levene tapped out some percussion patterns on a strange bamboo instrument that Virgin boss Richard Branson had brought back from Bali, then added synth sounds ('the animals' inside the percussive jungle, as he puts it). The result, entitled "Hymie's Him", was the weakest track on Flowers of Romance, but it broke the deadlock and gave the group a direction.

PiL - Hymie's Him 1981

Flowers is the PiL album on which Lydon the non-musician contributes most - he actually plays instruments, like the three-stringed banjo on "Phenagen" (a track named after a heavy-duty sleeping pill). On Flowers, Levene's guitar appeared only on "Go Back" (self-parodically) and "Phenagen" (psychedelically reversed).

PiL - Go Back 1981


PiL - Phenagen 1981

Summoned at the studio to lay down beats, Atkins found Lydon and Levene weren't there. So he worked closely with engineer Nick Launay to create striking rhythm tracks. 'I'd fallen asleep with my Mickey Mouse watch against my ear and then woken up to that sound. So we put the watch on a floor-tom skin so it would resonate, and then Nick harmonized, looped and delayed that sound, and I drummed to it, and that became "Four Enclosed Walls".

PiL - Four Enclosed Walls 1981

Atkins was also heavily involved in the album's stand-out track, "Under the House" - a stampeding herd of tribal tom-toms with string sounds shrieking across the stereo field. Lydon's processed vocals seem to emanate from his throat like malignant gas or ectoplasm. The lyrics allude to a supernatural experience - some accounts claim it's about a ghost that haunted the Manor studio, although Levene believes it refers more to an abstract sense of evil to which Lydon was unusually attuned.

PiL - Under the House 1981

The title track on the album lived up to [NME writer] Vivien Goldman's hype about PiL inventing 'a new kind of rhythm'.

PiL - Flowers of Romance 1981

Released as a single in March 1981, "Flowers of Romance" reached number 24 and resulted in another deranged Top of the Pops performance: Levene pounding the drums in a lab technician's white coat, PiL's videographer Jeanette Lee dwarfed by her double bass, and Lydon, dressed as a white-collared vicar, sawing dementedly on a fiddle.

PiL - Flowers of Romance (Top of the Pops) 1981

Such was PiL's eminence that when the album finally arrived the next month, it was automatically hailed as another paradigm-shattering masterwork. More sceptical commentators, though, noted the distinct lack of work involved - from the paltry length (thirty-two minutes) to its desultory packaging (a Polaroid of Jeanette Lee with a rose between her teeth).

Of the leave-me-alone whinge "Banging the Door", Lydon later said, 'It's horrible to listen back to that kind of paranoia'.

PiL - Banging the Door 1981

A creepy account of being seduced by a female journalist, "Track 8" is particularly repellent, its vindictive imagery of fleshy tunnels 'erupting in fat' and naked, bulbous bodies betraying Lydon's Catholic fear of the flesh.

PiL - Track 8 1981