The phenomenon of punk rock, like most things of real intrinsic value, became heard not through the mainstream megaphone, but from a seemingly inevitable accumulation of street-level whispers, hand-drawn flyers and self-released vinyl albums. In many ways, such DIY movements are reminiscent of the “The Twilight Barking” from the story 101 Dalmatians, in which information is passed along by one vocal dog at a time until it eventually travels around all of England.
Perhaps it is the same grass-roots quality that, curiously, makes it also necessarily hatched in a place like the U.K. A nation that once bellowed about how the sun never set on its empire, England at its core remains nonetheless an island where, at least on some level, everything is local. It still has only a scattering of major metropolitan newspapers and, until relatively recently, everyone watched the same few channels of state-owned television and listened to the same state-run radio. Now, it’s become a required stop for aspiring bands, actors and actresses, films and more. Its hit-culturing petri dish of entertainment development has spawned shows like The Office, The Weakest Link and Pop Idol, which inspired American Idol, now one of the most watched programs in the U.S.
John Lydon, though he’d probably take a piss on stage if he were to perform on American Idol, ironically enough also rose to notoriety through a popularity contest of sorts. He was selected by manager/impresario Malcolm McLaren to front the London punk phenomenon The Sex Pistols, in which he became known as Johnny Rotten. Chosen not for any particular musical talent but for his “look,” Lydon boasted a fashion sense that was (at the time) original, warrior-flavored, and above all offered a curious cultural candy for a stuffy British society that was just starting to embrace the freedoms of the ’70s and apparently harbored a fetish for the intriguing stench of an urban savage.
Having been brought up on a council estate (roughly the equivalent of public housing in the U.S.) by Irish Catholic immigrant parents, Lydon was a lad from the wrong side of the tracks, and not only dressed the part of an angry, disenfranchised youth but also found that he had plenty to say about being one. McLaren gave the angsty, leather-clad 19-year-old a megaphone that reached every radio in a country that was still ruled by a bejewelled monarch and, well, the rest is rock ‘n’ roll history.
As things have a way of doing in the world of punk rock, however, shit got fucked up pretty quick. The Pistols replaced original bassist Glen Matlock with the even more musically helpless but exponentially more attitude-filled John Simon Ritchie, who, thanks to Lydon, is remembered forevermore as Sid Vicious. Drugs, crazy girlfriends, suicide attempts and troubles with the law ensued (including Sid’s being charged with the murder of girlfriend Nancy Spungen in October of 1978), and just like the high-flying fireworks of the band’s lifestyle, The Pistols quickly went down in flames, barely a year after the release of their only studio album (Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols), with the bass player’s death by heroin overdose.
Having smelled the flesh of his band burning by this point, Lydon was already on to other things, having formed Public Image Ltd. in 1978. PiL’s debut album First Issue explored the dub and reggae influences he had always harbored, and had further nurtured during a stay in Jamaica.
Touring and/or studio versions of PiL have included members of The Clash, The Fall, Ministry, Killing Joke, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Slits, The Damned and even fusion stalwarts like Tony Williams, Bernie Worrell, Ginger Baker and wanker supreme Steve Vai, who has been credited as saying that his solo work on 1985’s Bill Laswell-produced PiL effort Album was some of the best work he’s ever done. Despite the occasional employment of instrumental prodigies, however, PiL often strives to create nothing more than good pop.
“I love pop music,” Lydon told The Onion‘s AV Club last month in an interview. “It’s not easy to write a good pop song. It may be easier to put out a fake jazz album, as Sting does from time to time.”
When AVC asked why so many musicians had drifted in and out of the PiL lineup (39 by his own reckoning), Lydon replied “Well, you know, you help someone along to a certain point, and they might just decide to go off in their own direction. That’s perfectly fine. But it’s very hard for them to come back and pick up the pieces, the bits they missed out on. Sometimes they’re not actually capable of that. But it’s really down to personalities, mostly. I don’t want any volatile personalities on tour. Too often they’re off in their own universes, not really of a caring and sharing nature. I do this because I somehow hope—na?ve though I may be, utopian, possibly—that my music has some kind of calming effect on the universe, that it’s somehow beneficial to people.”
The band’s experimental sound and use of emerging technologies has also been mentioned as inspiration for The Edge’s guitar tones as well as Phil Collins’ industry-transformative drum sounds, and for the general proliferation of synthesizers in ’80s music. Though some of the experiments (technological or compositional) led to borderline pop singles, much of PiL’s material was purposefully allowed to ooze out into the cracks of whatever creative foundation it was placed on.
“‘Albatross’ [a 10 minute and 32 second opus from 1979’s Metal Box] is about the confusion of things,” Lydon says, trying to explain the “art” side of the band’s raison d’etre. “It’s about the [antiwar] riots outside the American Embassy [in London] in 1968. It’s really about nothing. The song really tries to capture that, the confusion of that moment. You can’t really sum up a riot in a verse-chorus format. It’s a slow, grinding, deliberate, purposeful examination.”
Public Image Ltd. plays Pearl Street Nightclub at 10 Pearl St. in Northampton on Sunday, May 16, at 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $32.50/advance and $35 at the door. For more information, call (413) 586-8686 or visit www.iheg.com.
