PUBLIC IMAGE FIRST ISSUE @ 45

A boomy bass wanders in space before a distant scream brings a drum roll and a big spacy pattern filled with heavily treated guitar playing what sounds like a metalwork shop with saws and the kind of tools you don't want to share a room with. More screams before Lydon comes in with lines about boredom, change and the repeated refrain, "I wish I could die." This might be Lydon's disgust with the scene he and his former cohorts did so much to make. The old punks (meaning those veterans form a very short lived scene) clung to what had become cultural traditions. The call to arms of British punk turned out to be more of a fanfare for the expansion and exploration of post-punk. Electronica, industrial, dub, and anything else that worked. That was the real revolution. Lydon's final words after nine minutes of oppressive dirge are spoken like a doctor pronouncing cause of death: Terminal boredom.

Religion is a spoken word track. Lydon rails against religion with a series of attacks. Religion II is the same with some expansions and a three chord grind like the opening track. I clearly recall how thrilling this was, hearing someone take aim like this. Then, perhaps less than a few listens later, it sounded like the poem that the Year 11 malcontent couldn't get into the school paper. The musical version packs more punch.

Annalisa begins with a bass and drums groove as substantial as a soul workout. Keith Levene's guitar, as effect laden as any of the other tracks (probably a combination of ring modulation and chorusing, but I'm guessing) gives more settled form to the rhythm, adding more of an offset. Lydon's vocals are high and whining but very effective. The song is the story of Annaliese Michel whose religiously extreme parents took her neurological condition for demonic possession and effectively tortured her to death. The song is not aired for shock value like the previous one, there's real compassion in there, even if it can be difficult to detect at first.

Side two begins with the anthem of the year. Public Image begins in steps. A bass playing quavers alternating between first and fifth. Drums enter with a slapping snare as Lydon repeats "Allo, Allo..."  before hte guitar comes in with a ascending progression which sets off ignition with a laugh from Lydon. Levene's riffing on this song is epochal. Huge fanfare-like figures of two note patterns that sounded in 1978 that you would never be able to learn them by ear. After John McKay's sabre slashing style on The Banshees' debut album, this sounded like it was imagined in widescreen. Lydon's verses could be about his former manager Malcolm McClaren or just as easily about Sex Pistols fans, railing against the scene's expectations and misrepresentations. Here, he claims his own, singing with neither the sneer nor the snarl of his Pistols vocals, hitting the notes he needs and sounding in total control. The chorus is the title, an elongation of the vowels as Levene's new fanfare rides the rhythm section like waves. A classic of the past fifty years and beyond. It never fails to excite me.

Low Life is like a shrill retelling of Public Image. More directly about McClaren, the "bourgeoisie anarchist". While there is none of the awe-inspiring musicality of the previous song, this packs its punch in clear terms. Lydon's vocals are clear but low in the mix. There are a few echoes of Steve Jones Major third descents in the guitar in the chorus for good measure.

An echoed slag-gather. The band comes in all at once for Attack with another Pistols like chord progression. Like Low Life the mix is kept low. Lydon's vocals are even more buried and drenched in delay. The attacks of the title refer more to those received buy Lydon, this new band and the one he was cast from. Judges, ministers, press, and anyone else are targeted in a series of J'accuse tirades. the song ends in a brief shambles.

Fodderstompf. What to say? Tinkling piano. Bass and drums play what sounds like contemporary disco. Keith Levene was absent so no guitar. After a few taunts like, "be bland, be boring." Jah Wobble and John  Lydon are at the mic rambling in high shrieking Monty Python voices. Lydon at one point intones, "we only wanted to finish the album with the minimum amount of effort which we are now doing very successfully." This goes for almost eight minutes. The first time you hear it, it's funny. It doesn't survive the first listen. "We only wanted to be loved," is screamed repeatedly and forms a chant or chorus or whatever your mood at the time makes of it. The drummer, Jim Walker describes feeling angry every time he hears mention of the track, let alone the track itself. He just hears Jah Wobble and John Lydon ripping off their fans. Something like that means that the track will have its devotees as well as detractors. Me? My mood decides.

In the very early '80s the bass player of the band I was in saw the cover among my records and asked: "Did you buy this because of the single?" He meant Public Image and his grin told he had, too, and then lived through the rest of it. Yes, I had. It was played on local commercial station 4TO who had been surprising in some of their staff's support of the edgier music coming from the U.K. at the time. I thought it sounded marvellous. It felt like Lydon was really moving on rather than getting bogged down and ther result was that from what I considered greatness he had burst into flames of inspiration. I was sixteen.

So I went down to the import record shop around the corner (Ken Hurford's Inport Records) and asked about it. They neither had it nor had heard of it so I ordered it. I was called a week later. I was surprised as I assumed it was coming in from the U.K. It was on the Australian Wizard label (as the Pistols had been). It was on translucent green vinyl.

I played Public Image about five times in a row, mostly buried in headphones to live inside that gigantic fanfare. Then I turned it over and heard the rest, right up to Fodderstompf. Fodderstompf, at least to a sixteen year old Pistols fan who was expecting the ascension from the greatness of Never Mind the Bollocks to even greater wonders, fucked the whole canvas up. The endless dirge of Theme passed by without effort because, once you knew it, you knew that it wasn't trying to be a snappy pop song but an atmosphere. Religion caught me at the right age but I'd skip the spoken word part. The rest I liked but missed the rallying cries of No Future or Pretty Vacant and I only wanted them brought into the greatness of Public Image. That wasn't the band on this record, though, nor on any after it.

Things got better; Metal Box and Flowers of Romance were classics of the post punk aeon. But this angry, contrary, mess of a record stopped everyone who might have rallied. And if they listened to the words, rallied in the best way by using it as inspiration. Having your trust thrown back in your face like a bucket of beery piss was not going to do that. Whose would? Well, it changed. The following year saw the release of The Great Rock and Roll Swindle which had fun moments but also a lot of prognosticative bullshit as well. We had to wait until Metal Box for PiL, as they started calling themselves. In the meantime the sounds from good radio stations ironed out the need for heroic band names and titles and could swathe us in the sounds of discontent that were by turns violent and breathtakingly beautiful. This was a speed bump, however inadvertently, but speed bumps are there to keep us alive and ready for more roads. So, maybe they did waste seven minutes of our time sounding like high school Monty Python kids at three a.m., maybe we needed the pause.