Classic Album Review: Public Image Ltd - First Issue (1978)

Craig Stephen on a game-changing post-punk classic ... 

Most commentators head straight to Metal Box for the definitive PiL album. But I’ve always had a sweet spot for their coruscating and brilliant debut. Few contemporary bands ever matched it, and the Gang of Four are likely their only rivals for any post-punk accolades.

 The remarkable thing about First Issue is that its release in December of 1978 came just under a year after the infamous implosion of the Sex Pistols at the Wonderland in San Francisco. That chaotic gig was swiftly followed by acrimony and the band splitting up. Bassist Sid Vicious went on his own tragic path, drummer Paul Cook and guitarist Steve Jones went in search of notorious crook Ronnie Biggs and singer Johnny Rotten renamed himself John Lydon and did a startling volte face to ditch the screaming volatility of punk for what would become the thoughtful confrontation of post-punk.

He recruited childhood friend Jah Wobble on bass, Keith Levene, the short-lived ex-guitarist of The Clash, and Canadian drummer Jim Walker. They would experiment in dub music, African rhythms and the avant garde. This would not be Sex Pistols MK II or another punk band.

First Issue begins with a statement of intent in the shape of the nine-minute ‘Theme’. The now John Lydon is laughing. Yes, laughing as he sings “Now I understand” to Walker’s incessant drum bashing and Jah Wobble’s insane basslines. Lydon’s vocal style is unmistakable but it’s not at the forefront, in fact you have to stretch your eardrum’s capabilities to capture his words amid the glorious din.

‘Religion’ comes in two parts, initially with Lydon on his own in spoken word format followed by the abrasive and much longer band version. The lyrics are the same, the approaches are very different. It was written on the Sex Pistols’ fateful tour of America where the then Rotten saw how much religion was embedded into the national culture. The other band members and manager Malcolm McLaren didn’t want a bar of it even after having a pop at that venerable institution, the British monarchy in the Pistols’ crowning moment ‘God Save the Queen’.

These lyrics made them look the other way: “This is religion and Jesus Christ/This is religion, cheaply priced/This is bibles full of libel/This is sin in eternal hymn/This is what they've done/This is your religion.”

The final track on the first side, ‘Annalisa’, is equally joyless and another prod at religion, based as it is on a real life story of a misguided exorcism in Germany that went tragically wrong.

The very name Public Image is Lydon’s riposte to his perceived ill-treatment at the hands of Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren and the other band members, and in particular how he felt they viewed him as the image-maker, not the songwriter or the artist.

The eponymous debut single, which came out three months ahead of the album, reads like a bitter break-up letter: “What you wanted was never made clear/Behind the image was ignorance and fear/You hide behind this public machine/Still follow the same old scheme.”

It's actually the most accessible track on the album and sold enough to warrant a place in the British top 10.

After it comes ‘Low Life’, which could be another attack on McLaren though various other names have also been banded around. And it’s possible that Lydon has more than one character in mind when he wrote it.  This “bourgeois anarchist” is an “ego-maniac traitor … ignorant selfish”.

This is as good as it gets for First Issue … ‘Attack’ is three-minutes of infantile critiques of his former band members (“All our deals confiscated/Legaling with magistrate”) while ‘Fodderstompf’ is so moronic and pointless that Lydon was moved to dismiss it. It sounds like it was a studio joke lasting seven minutes and 40 seconds that somehow ended up concluding the album, presumably with nothing else in the can to use.

First Issue wasn’t to everyone’s taste – some reviewers panned it, a court in Malta ordered it be removed from stores because of the lyrics to ‘Religion’, and it was considered too uncommercial for release in the United States.

When it was reissued, a bonus disk included the B-side to Public Image, ‘Cowboy Song’, and an unedited 56-minute radio interview Lydon did with the BBC in 1978 which was never aired because of his less than idolatry attitude towards certain stars. One of those was BBC TV’s own Jimmy Savile – outed after his death as a paedophile, and Lydon hinted that he knew about Savile’s sick tendencies.

Top 10 of ... Punk Dub

That punk rock, it was all shouty noise and noisy shouting wasn’t it?

Ah, now you see one of the great stereotypes of our times; that punk was just about making a racket. Well, it wasn’t jazz but there was far more to the genre than a lot of people think.

Back in 1976, punk and reggae seemed intertwined; at the punk clubs, reggae was played by Don Letts and other DJs as there were so few punk records to actually play. Bob Marley & The Wailers got in on the act with 1977’s ‘Punky Reggae Party’ … “The Wailers will be there/ The Damned, The Jam, The Clash/ Maytals will be there/ Dr Feelgood too.”

And punk bands found dub reggae to their liking.

That produced the cracking records from punk and post-punk outfits. Like these …..

The Ruts: Jah War (1979)

Hit singles such as ‘Staring at the Rude Boys’ and ‘Babylon’s Burning’ tick all the requisite punk purity boxes. But The Ruts were far more diverse than many of their peers, which can partly be attributed to being late starters and hearing more than the early punk rockers. ‘Jah War’ appeared on the classic 1979 debut The Crack. It has a heavy roots-reggae feel and is also political, tackling the violence perpetrated by the London Police’s controversial SPG (Special Patrol Group) during trouble in the ethnically-diverse suburb of Southall in 1979.

Released as the third single from The Crack, the BBC banned it for its message.

The Clash: One More Dub (1980)

The Clash laid their love of reggae and dub to the mast early on: a cover of Junior Murvin’s ‘Police and Thieves’ was released as a single in 1977. A year later they released ‘White Man (In Hammersmith Palais)’ which namechecked a litany of reggae stars to a Jamaican vibe backdrop.

‘One More Dub’ followed on from ‘One More Time’ at the end of side two of the triple album meisterwerk Sandinista. The standard track is about poverty and its effects in so-called ghetto towns; ‘One More Dub’ strips the lyrics down, more or less to the chorus: “One more time in the ghetto/ One more time if you please/ One more time for the dying man/ One more time if you please.”

 Generation X: Wild Dub (1978)

Generation X’s second 45, glam-punk stomper ‘Wild Youth’ was paired with ‘Wild Dub’ which revealed the band’s reggae influences with singer Billy Idol toasting at the end, “Heavy, heavy dub/Punk rockers!”. The single was produced by Phil Wainman in late 1977, and while neither track were included on the self-titled debut album, they were both part of the much-changed US version.

Stiff Little Fingers: Johnny Was (1979)

A cover of a Bob Marley & The Wailers song, the Irishmen’s version revamped the lyrics to reflect the violence of the time in Northern Ireland. While both songs convey the horror of a mother who’s son has been killed by a stray bullet, the Wailers made it non-geographical while SLF’s take added the following line to make clear where the incident occurred: “A single shot rings out in a Belfast night and I said oh Johnny was a good man.”

Steel An' Skin ‎- Afro Punk Reggae (Dub) (1979)

Steel An' Skin were a British-based group who came from West Africa, the Caribbean and the UK. Reggae, post-punk and Caribbean steel drums are all prevalent on this 12-inch record. Perhaps the punk link in the title was somewhat tenuous but there’s no doubting that some of the influences could have been from Bristol’s The Pop Group or London all-girl four-piece The Slits.

Alternative TV: Life After Dub (1978)

A-side ‘Life After Life’, B-side ‘Life After Dub’. The A-side was a clear nod to Jamaica, with vocals from Sniffin’ Glue editor Mark Perry, sounding positively positive. The B-side was a straight-through dub version with echoes and clipped lyrics. One of the band’s finest moments.

Bad Brains: Bad Brains LP (1982) 

American band Bad Brains were out on their own, with many of their songs actively fusing hardcore punk and roots reggae. They were that rarity of being a black punk band. They were also followers of the Rastafari movement, so the reggae/dub side came easily to them. The first five tracks of this debut LP are pure hardcore (with noticeable nods to reggae) then track six, ‘Jah Calling’, is akin to a dub interlude. ‘Leaving Babylon’ is another track that is 100 percent reggae and the shift in moods works perfectly, though it does seem at times that there are two bands at play on the same record.

Public Image Ltd: Metal Box (1979)

After the punk wave disintegrated by the beginning of 1978, post-punk came into play. The Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten reverted to his birth name John Lydon and formed PiL which threw out the three cord thrash and explored a buffet of divergent genres.  Jah Wobble’s booming bassline sounded like it was torn directly from dub plates. Same for the band’s production, especially on the second LP, the much-lauded and pioneering Metal Box.

Gang of Four: I Love A Man In Uniform (Dub version) (1982)

Way before the Gang’s finest hour, the Leeds disruptors were well versed in the art of reggae and dub with the band’s discordant basslines clearly being influenced by Kingston producers. This version of the group’s biggest hit single only initially appeared on US and Canadian 12-inch releases. It helped the single become a big hit in American clubs and on the dance charts.

Bauhaus: Bela Lugosi’s Dead (1979)

Bauhaus are often unfairly labelled as a Goth band, so many people will be surprised to learn that they highly influenced by dub, with bass player, David J saying that their signature song "was our interpretation of dub". Several singles contained dub-tinged versions.

Riot On The Radio: Gigs that ended up in a massive punch-up Part 2

Part 2 of Craig Stephen’s look at gigs that turned ugly …

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Phoenix Festival, Stratford-on-Avon, 1993

The Phoenix Festival began in 1993 but the only licence promoters Mean Fiddler could get had severe restrictions that made any proper festival unworkable. In contrast to Glastonbury's 24 hour bustle, at Phoenix 1993 the music stopped at 11pm, and security guards ruthlessly quelled campfires and campfire sound systems that went on beyond midnight.

On one night (I recall this as the first) this caused a near riot, to which the security guards responded by taking off their standard security shirts with their identifiable numbers, and battering punters with batons and broken up pallets.

I was at the front of the angry crowd and as always there’s one halfwit using it to sell something, in this case “riot lager” for a pound a can. A stereo was blaring John Peel’s show, and appropriately the Sex Pistols’ ‘God Save the Queen’ came on, and the volume was cranked up.

With no sign of the crowd departing, out came all these fascistic black-shirted security guards bashing whoever got in their way. I got smashed on the back, it was so hard it sent me flying but I got up immediately and ran like bloody fuck, as did everyone else.

Julian Cope’s Head Heritage site says that when a list of security guards was handed to the police to run checks on them after the event, it revealed that several of them were wanted for violent crime. Mean Fiddler defended the guards, blaming instead fence jumpers for the trouble. But according to Cope, photographic evidence clearly showed those beaten up had three-day wrist passes.

   

Status Quo, Dundee, 1969

Francis Rossi said of this gig in the eastern Scottish city: “You used to get extra money for playing in Scotland because it was so dangerous, although luckily the Scots took to us early on. We were in this brand new room with parquet flooring, and this fight broke out. I'd never seen anything like it – 1500 people, everybody punching everyone else: men punching men, men punching women, women punching men, women punching women … it was like the Wild West. People bottling each other in the back and neck, glasses flying. And we were onstage and there was no way out. Luckily someone told us to get our stuff, get out, and come back in the morning. We didn't argue, we just left. We came back in the morning and these 20 old women were there in a line, on their knees, scrubbing the blood out of this lovely new parquet floor.”

Public Image Limited, New York, 1981

PiL were in confrontational mode before the gig at the Ritz even started: arriving late, making the audience wait in the rain, then mocking them as they stood in the queue, soaking.

According to Ed Caraballo, who was the band’s “video guy”, the venue refused to let the support band go on stage until John Lydon arrived. The support act (a folk band spotted in a pub says Caraballo) thus came on an hour later than scheduled. They were booed off.

“The crowd was really cranky and pissed by then,” says video guy.

A ‘presenter’, Lisa Yipp goes on stage to introduce a pre-recorded interview with Lydon and Keith Levene.

“The crowd had it by then. They turned on Lisa for everything that happened and pelted her with beer bottles.”

Eventually the band come on, but behind a screen. At the end of the first song, ‘Flowers of Romance’, Lydon says “Silly fucking audience, silly fucking audience...”.

The crowd demand the screen be pulled back.  “John's never been one who likes to be told what to do so he's chiding the audience,” recalls video guy. “He says what fuckers they were to pay 12 dollars to see this, just taunting the audience. The more they say 'raise the screen,' he says 'we're not going to raise the fucking screen.”

After a long, largely improvisational track Lydon ups the abuse, and the response is beer bottles. “Even in the balconies, they were throwing bottles and some of it was hitting the audience down below. The more that they threw bottles, the more that John would chide them,” recalls video guy.

The manager’s demands to raise the screen are ignored by the tech team, and is told that it’s a performance art show and should have been advertised as such.

By now the crowd is pulling on the tarpaulin screen, and eventually a roadie grabs the mic out of Lydon’s hand and declares the show over.

“From the back of the auditorium, it was a beautiful site,” says video guy. “It was a sick feeling because part of me said 'wow, I'm responsible for this carnage' and part of me said 'wow, I'm fucking cool’.”

Hans Werner Henze, Hamburg, 1968

Henze and co-writer Ernst Schnabel wrote this piece as a requiem for Che Guevara. During its debut performance in Hamburg, a student hung a poster of Che over the balcony. An official then tore it down. Other students raised a red flag and a second portrait of Che, while some anarchists raised black flags. Scuffles ensued between the two groups then the police arrived. Students were hauled off, as was Schnabel.

Westlife, Indonesia, 2001

Yes, even at Westlife gigs there would be trouble.

As Shane Filan recounts: “It was an amazing gig, but it ended badly. There were about 20,000 people there because it was our biggest territory outside of the UK: our album had gone 22 times platinum or something.

“But it was afterwards that things went horribly wrong. There was total hysteria and we couldn't leave the stadium until they cleared it of people. Unfortunately, as the police tried to do so, all these security men started running at them. It was like a battle. They were flat-out attacking each other, thumping and kicking. It was unbelievable, about 100 police and 100 security. Eventually, the army got called in. It was like something out of Braveheart.”

Sixteen teenagers were said to have been taken to hospital after the concert in Jakarta.

Cockney Rejects, Birmingham, 1980

After punk, came Oi and the second wave of the movement. If the first outbreak of punk was a bit violent, this was the bloody carnage, with football hooliganism and hardline politics mixed in.

The band had just appeared on Top of the Pops in West Ham United shirts. "After that, everybody wanted to fight us, but you couldn't back down," says Rejects frontman Jeff ‘Stinky’ Turner. "Once you were defeated, it would have opened the floodgates for everybody."

So, on this night, the Rejects were backed into a corner and forced to stand and fight. Guitarist Micky Geggus was charged with GBH and affray, and the Cockney Rejects' career as a live band was effectively over.

"There was a lot of people cut and hurt, I got cut, Micky really got done bad, with an ashtray, the gear was decimated, there was people lying around on the floor. Carnage," added Turner.