PiL - Public Image (First Issue) - Side B

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

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

PiL - Public Image

Given Lydon's initial talk of PiL as antimusic and antimelody, the group's debut single, "Public Image", was a massive relief for all concerned-the record company, Pistols fans, and critics. It's a searing, soaring statement of intent.
The glorious, chiming minimalism of Wobble's bassline and Levene's plangent, ringing chords mirror Lydon's quest for purity as he jettisons not just the Rotten alter ego ("somebody had to stop me/...I will not be treated as property") but rock 'n' roll itself.
"That song was the first proper bassline I ever came up with", says Wobble. "Very simple, a beautiful interval from E to B. Just the joy of vibration. And incredible guitar from Keith, this great burst of energy."
"Public Image" is like a blueprint for the reborn, purified rock of the 1980s. One can hear the Edge from U2 in its radiant surge. "It's so clean, so tingly, like a cold shower", says Levene. "It could be really thin glass penetrating you but you don't know until you start bleeding internally".
In "Public Image" Lydon reasserted his rights over "Johnny Rotten"-"Public image belongs to me/It's my entrance, my own creation, my grand finale"-only to end the song by shedding the persona with an echo chamber yell of "goodbye!"

PiL - Public Image - 1978

John Lydon surprises listeners during his radio show "The Punk and His Music" - 1977

Those who tuned in anticipating punk rock were immediately thrown for a loop by the first selection, Tim Buckley's "Sweet Surrender", a lush, sensual R&B song swathed with orchestral strings.
When he talked about identifying with Dr. Alimantado's "Born for a Purpose", a song about being persecuted as a Rasta, Lydon gave his audience an advance glimpse of PiL's aura of paranoia and prophecy, casting himself as a visionary outcast in Babylon, U.K.

Tim Buckley - Sweet Surrender - 1972


Dr. Alimantado - Born for a Purpose - 1976