A Weekly Song Episode 10: John Lydon & PiL
PiL - Public Image Ltd.
Updated October 2020 (at bottom)
There are some songs that always sound to me like they were recorded yesterday, no matter how familiar I am with them. They sound so fresh, so unique, they’re like bottled time.
That’s actually true of a lot of John Lydon’s output, but particularly so of Public Image Ltd, the song from which the band took their name (or vice versa).
Bass, guitar, drums, voice. The bass is played from somewhere deep inside a primeval cave, the drums crash in, London-inflected ‘ellos, Lydon laughing, then guitars like sudden rainfall. That’s how it begins and that’s all it is, reduced to ingredients, Lydon’s voice suspended over that thundering bass for just under three minutes. Three minutes, and yet it’s one of the most exciting things I ever heard or will ever hear. Every time I hear this, I’m fifteen again, and the possibilities are endless, infinite. How does it always sound so huge, so thrilling, so new?
You can read the lyrics here and what it’s ostensibly about elsewhere, but here’s what it means to me. It’s inspiration, pure and simple. It’s a refusal to be defined by anyone else, to not be controlled by some puppeteer, to be known only on one’s own terms. It’s individualism; the self created by the self (but not fuelled by “likes” like the selfie, nor venal self-interest). It’s raw self-expression.
“You never listened to a word that I said…”
It’s art, basically and I went out and bought it on a piece of plastic that revolved at 45 rpm and played it over and over again.
“Two sides to every story…
“I’m not the same as when I began…”
I knew the Sex Pistols of course, and I knew Johnny Rotten had left that band, changed his name back to John Lydon and was making music with two new blokes called Keith Levene and Jah Wobble. Apparently they sounded like a cross between punk and dub. I knew that Sex Pistols fans were pissed off with Lydon because this new band effectively meant the final and absolute end of the Pistols, an impression the British Music Press went out of its way to support. (The British Music Press was my conduit to all music news and they were powerful in a way that it’s impossible, in this Internet age, to really appreciate.)
At the time, I was busy listening to arty post-punk bands like Magazine and investigating the back catalogue of Roxy Music and the Pistols were so two years ago. It was my friend Annette who really sparked my interest in PiL – we were in a pub somewhere one night and Public Image came on. “I love this,” she said. I listened, and she was right. After that, I went out and bought it.
PiL recorded many other classics – Poptones, Death Disco, Flowers of Romance, This Is Not a Love Song, Rise, Disappointed to name just a few. But Public Image Ltd. is, as far as I’m concerned, one of the greatest singles of all time. I don’t actually have a hell of a lot to say about it, but you can play it, and the theme to Battle of the Planets at my funeral. Just so you know.
Lydon remains a unique character, beholden only to his own whims and the occasional need for dosh, which means we get to see him play live sometimes (and it’s always worth seeing him perform).
I met him briefly, back in 2015 when he did a book tour. We were asked not to converse with him and not to touch him, but when it was my turn to get his autobio signed, I thanked him for the inspiration. He looked up and laughed it off with a characteristic, “Naaah, naaah.” Then he stuck his hand out to shake mine. He couldn’t have been friendlier.
“The public image belongs to me
Abadzis meets Lydon, 2015. They say “Never meet your heroes” but well, see the 2020 update below.
Update, October 14th 2020
It took me a while to digest the interview John Lydon gave to Barbara Ellen for The Observer, “Don’t get entrenched in one opinion and get stuck there forever.” Suzanne Moore wrote a terrific piece in the Observer’s weekday companion newspaper (here) counterpointing the interview, essaying the idea that culture is a sham and your heroes don’t owe you anything. True enough... in the end, they’re human beings with private lives as rich, strange and contradictory as anyone’s. There’s always more than two sides to every story, and not every aspect of their character is going to fall into line with what their admirers project onto them. (Just look at Morrissey.)
Lydon came out in support of Brexit a few years ago, and although that was a tough swallow, his anti-European stance didn’t seem out of character for a man who carries his own frontiers around with him that you cross at your peril.
There’s a sort of mobile parochialism to his character, a sometimes wise, sometimes glib bluntness wilfully distinct from any trendy, reasonable (centrist) thinking - but that’s why we love him, isn’t it? He’s the court jester or Shakespearian Fool who lives abroad, who carries his own castle and armaments around with him. He’s always been an oddball, an eccentric, illuminating different potential pathways from the norm.
On Brexit, that tendency made him sound like a rich ex-pat luxuriating in the distanced privilege his fame and notoriety had earned him. He didn’t sound like any Londoner I know and yet there he was, opining from his home in LA, part of one of those very “coastal elites” the far right that he was parroting say they despise.
Prior to that, I met him in New York on a 2015 speaking tour to promote his book Anger Is An Energy (as detailed above) and he was very kind to me and Mrs A. He transcended the rules of the speaking engagement, allowed a quick chat and shook our hands. He kindly gave to us a few genuine moments of his attention and we were thrilled.
When Barbara Ellen describes the way that Lydon cares for his wife Nora as she lives through her dementia, that humane image chimes with how I’ve always imagined the man to be beneath the spiky exterior. I feel like that’s the person I glimpsed on the speaking tour.
(Again, maybe I’m projecting, or getting stuck in one opinion...)
How Lydon can’t extend that worldview beyond his immediate bubble eludes me. “Anger is an energy,“ Lydon sang once. Yeah, it is - misdirected anger fuelled Trump’s ascent, emboldened a minority of previously marginalised bigots and neo-fascists and caused the divided USA and western world we have now. At this time of writing, it threatens to topple the USA from a democracy into a police state ruled by a malignant narcissist. If, like Lydon, you have mixed race grandkids and you’re more worried about the taxes you pay than their welfare and safety in society, if you’re more concerned about the short-term economic outlook than the real threat to their future from climate change… that feels to me like an unforgivable moral failing.
I really wish Lydon would stop spouting thoughtless far-right bollocks. This time, this year, at this juncture, this is not a circle I can square. Never thought there’d come a time where I’d hope he’d shut his mouth. Never thought there’d come a time when he’d seem irrelevant.
So it goes. Have it your way, John. You always do, and realistically, you’re not going to give a toss what this disappointed fan thinks or feels, and you always took the piss out of us anyway for occasionally worshipping the legend a little too fervently.
Like you, I’ll also vote with me pockets - I won’t be buying yer new book, new music or anything that comes out of your gob ever again.
Public Image LTD: “You never listened to a word that I said.” Oh, I did, but you’re not the same as when you began, so, I won’t anymore.