Public Image Ltd - Dub paranoia

Having left the Sex Pistols behind, Johnny “Rotten” Lydon founded Public Image Limited (PiL), through which he gave shape to a dark, experimental project with claustrophobic atmospheres, close to the dark-punk of Siouxsie and The Banshees and Joy Division. What had been wild rage in the Sex Pistols became, in PiL, psychological drama: a sinister, paranoid portrayal of existential anguish and the “mal de vivre”. In PiL, the former king of punk was free to give full rein to his creativity, placing himself in the lineage of experimenters such as Wire, Gang Of Four and Fall, drawing on a wide-ranging palette of sounds: from Can to Captain Beefheart, from reggae dub to ethnic music, all fused with the visceral charge of post-punk. The result is one of the most intriguing sonic blends of the British new wave.

The original lineup features the gloomy “dub” bass of Jah Wobble, the razor-sharp guitar of Keith Levene (ex-Clash) and the tribal drumming of Tim Walker. Over this sonic architecture spread Lydon's muezzin-like wails, the desperate prophet of an approaching apocalypse, whose hallucinatory incantations represent a new frontier for vocals in rock music.

The first album, First Issue (1978), is steeped in desolate, alienating atmospheres, ranging from the “danse macabre” of “Fodderstompf” to the bleak hardcore of “Theme”, all the way to the muscular anthem “Public Image”.

But it's with the following double album Second Edition (originally released as Metal Box, in a distinctive metal packaging) that PiL manage to forge their sound at its very best, combining rhythmic tribalism, driven by Wobble's dismal bass, with disorienting, lysergic atmospheres.

An ordeal that begins the moment you open the door onto a room thick with smoke, so dense it obscures the view and forces you to stumble through a disarray full of jagged fragments dropped by the bass, seized by a dark, piercing sob: “Albatross”. Ten gruelling minutes steeped in the most hallucinated claustrophobia.

But the will to power is such that one emerges unscathed, wearing with remarkable candour every single shred, survivor of a war against one's own raw, irritated nervous system, through a danse macabre, convulsively Arabesque and as if clinging to a diseased tree amid the apocalypse (“Memories”).

Right after, in three suffocating movements of a Self shattered against its own phobia, we're flung into a noxious dub abyss one hopes has no bottom (“Swan Lake”, a marvellous “acid” reworking of Tchaikovsky's “Swan Lake”, with a searing Lydon on vocals and Levene's guitar alternating between filigree and clattering riffs). “Pop Tones” is a sticky binder of sonic textures vibrating with an anguish that seems, in its own way, to answer the most desolately crumbling moments of Ian Curtis (“Careering”).

The second half of the record continues with the chilling rhythms of the instrumental “Graveyhard”, with Jah Wobble choosing to tease out the slowest, most blood-soaked sounds his bass can produce.

The observation of a humanity reduced to the mortifying schematism dictated by an unwitting obedience to primary and secondary needs becomes the central theme of the bored monotony of “Suit,” before reawakening with adrenaline in the electrified atmosphere of “Socialist,” a pre-A Certain Ratio psycho-dance, with the last stretch of this inextricable reel dissolving into liberating tears, after the despair of a long nervous breakdown (“Radio 4”).

A nervous breakdown that, salvific, finds its most painful yet resolving catharsis in a metal box, where everything is petrified and electrified, still sobbing with the most violent electroshock that society, sworn enemy of awareness, could inflict on the fragile inner fabric of post-modern man.

For Flowers Of Romance (named after Sid Vicious's first band), PiL let go of bassist Jah Wobble and bring in drummer Martin Atkins, widening their instrumental palette with violin, batha, bagpipes, African and Balinese percussion. "But the exotic sounds don't follow any specific purpose," the band explained. "We don't love any particular genre of music; right now we only listen to Renaissance suites. And all we're interested in is experimenting with electronic music, especially ambient music."

PiL's "flowers" are obsessive, tense, alienating tracks. The obsessively tribal rhythms laid down by Atkins and the maniacal streams of consciousness intoned by Lydon are essentially all that makes up the songs' structure. Here and there timid layers of electronics and guitar distortion appear, while the bass is reduced to an occasional accessory. The result is a record that retains only a superficial kinship with punk and goth, instead pointing straight toward avant-garde music.

"Four Enclosed Walls" opens the album with Martin Atkins keeping a beat as steady and precise as a metronome: but Lydon's vocal wanders off in an entirely different direction, detached from the song's skeleton, closer to the agonized wail of a Middle Eastern muezzin than to the sneers of the old Johnny Rotten. Even more complex is "Track 8": this time Atkins's rhythm becomes as anxious and dark as any dark-punk manual would dictate, but once again none of the other musicians seem willing to fall in line with it: Levene launches into a concerto of guitar dissonance, the bass limits itself to a listless, detached grumble, and Lydon recites a handful of lines as if in a trance. "Phenagen" thus throws caution to the wind and abandons once and for all any resemblance to rock music: this time it's an out-of-tune, mistuned piano that dictates the theme, left to its own devices by the litany intoned by a Lydon who is well past the brink of a nervous breakdown, accompanied by bells, faint pulses, and stunning guitar distortions.

The title track complicates the arrangement by introducing violins and ghostly choirs, along with a slight electronic presence: but it's still Atkins's ethnic percussion and Lydon's vocals that dominate the scene, updating the spleen of the poètes maudits to the derailed psyche of the punk generation.

Extraordinary is the pairing of "Under The House" and "Hymie's Him", two solo showcases for an increasingly unleashed Atkins: the first relegates voice and effects to the background in favor of the drummer's show; the second is an instrumental in which a percussion concerto, by turns dissonant, metallic, ceremonial and industrial, is joined by keyboard drones that give the piece a visionary, mysterious stature, recapturing the true essence of "goth." "Banging The Door" is perhaps the most conventional track, while "Go Back" even attempts to reclaim the roots of "rock" with Levene's opening riff: a shame that Lydon's robotic vocal and the counterpoint of a few scattered piano notes sink even the slightest semblance of normality into demonic chaos. It's time for the closer, entrusted to "Francis Massacre", the most hallucinated piece on the record: Atkins pounds like a madman on whatever he can find within reach, Lydon screams like a psychopath, while electronic hums and fleeting piano interjections can be heard in the background.

Nothing happens by chance on this record: everything is calibrated with meticulous care to achieve a total disintegration of sounds, words, even of the images it manages to evoke at every turn in this singular, monolithic, delirious and terrifying kammerspiel that is Flowers Of Romance. As with "Ju-Ju" by Siouxsie and The Banshees, the use of ethnic music combined with electronics converges into a kind of hallucinated trance, an esoteric ritual with macabre undertones.

In the band's later work, the experimental vein grows fainter, but the quality of the songwriting and the ideas remains high, at least in the standout moments. Take, for instance, the single "This Is Not A Love Song" (1983), which manages to combine the claustrophobic atmosphere of their early days with an irresistible disco beat, becoming one of their biggest hits. It would also serve as the icebreaker track on the following album This Is What You Want (1984), alongside the stunning "The Order Of Death", likewise built on the obsessive repetition of the same line ("This is what you want/ This is what you get") driven by hammering beats and gorgeous keyboard phrases that slice through the dark like blades.

These and other flashes of inspiration partly make up for the absence of a cornerstone of the group like Levene.

In 1985 Lydon collaborates with Afrika Bambaataa on an EP, and shortly afterward releases Albums (1986), with an extraordinary lineup featuring Steve Vai on guitar, Ginger Baker on drums, Bill Laswell on bass, Ryuichi Sakamoto on keyboards and Ravi Shankar on violin. But despite a few striking tracks (above all "Rise"), Lydon seems to have lost the sparkle of his better days.

Happy (1987), featuring John McGeoch (Magazine, Siouxsie and The Banshees) on guitar and Bruce Smith of Rip Rig & Panic on drums, leans more heavily into funk and disco sounds, landing a solid hit ("Seattle"), but adding little to their repertoire.

The following 9 (1989) is even more bland, offering little beyond the noisy exuberance of the single "Happy". The success of another single, "Don't Ask Me", serves as a prelude to That What Is Not (1991), which marks the sorry swan song of a band now bereft of ideas. Having repeatedly accused the record industry of "only wanting stupid boogie tunes", Lydon now seems to have abjured any experimental intent altogether.

And his solo album Psycho's Path (1997) is merely a techno-pop reworking of the Sex Pistols' punk fury and PiL's funereal ceremony. It's a path he would soon abandon, however, with the idea of reforming PiL. To that end, in order to raise funds, he even took part in a controversial advert for "Country Life" butter. But that wasn't Lydon's only eccentric move: two years earlier he had taken part in the reality show "I'm a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!", broadcast on ITV, a sort of British version of the format behind "L'isola dei famosi", with that edition filmed in Australia. He would later also host a documentary about insects and spiders titled "John Lydon's Megabugs" ("Gli insetti di John Lydon"), broadcast on Discovery Channel.

But the long-awaited Public Image Ltd. reunion really does happen.

This Is P.I.L.: more of a proclamation than a title, it marks the return of Lydon's historic moniker in 2012. But what immediately strikes the ear is just how weak the sound is, set against a Lydon who is as aggressive and in his own way credible as ever, now enriched by the lyrical flights he's developed in recent years. There's no industrial-sounding drums or guitars slashing through the air like sabers, just the repeated cries of "we cannot change us" on "One Drop", where the vocal marries reggae cadences to punk declamation (of post-punk, there's not even a trace here). Things improve slightly with "Deeper Water", where the melody is pleasant, if repetitive (we certainly weren't at risk of forgetting the bridge even if it had been sung a dozen times fewer), and the arrangement shows a few flashes, including in the sound itself. "Terra-Gate", on the other hand, is a genuinely convincing and inspired track. The cold, passionate air of Sturm und Drang blows once again, and blows strong, amid great reverbs, direct and piercing sounds, and a superb vocal performance.

The attempt to modernize past clichés on "Human", despite the lyric's usual socio-political commitment — never more fitting than in this bleak May — doesn't fully work. What's left to reignite the spirit is Lu Edmonds's guitar "solo" at the 2'32 mark. "I Must Be Dreaming" aims for radio-friendly rock, well supported by Scott Firth's treated bass, but it amounts to little, here too weighed down by an overabundance of backing vocals that dilute a track which was never going to be particularly memorable anyway. "It Said That", on the other hand, is an excellent track, able to open up into Arabic-tinged melodies over post-punk rhythms and vocals. This does feel like a possible and interesting new face for this band's history. "The Room I Am In" is equally interesting, with its sardonic, spoken-word delivery of the lyrics paired with the lysergic hypnosis of the instrumental backdrop. "Lollipop Opera" plays with punk, electronics and hip-pop in a curious way, though it ends up feeling a bit flimsy in the studio version — I'd be curious to hear the track live. A surprise nonetheless. "Fool" and "Reggie Song" aren't bad, while "Out Of The Woods" is unbearable, only slightly lightened by a banjo in the middle section that eases off the track's excessive radio-friendliness, itself made worse by Firth's (out-of-place) electronic keyboard sounds.

A comeback that neither thrills nor disappoints, better than what the Bauhaus did with "Go Away White". They may still be PiL, but the sonic fury of their early days is a distant memory.

Three years later came the follow-up, What The World Needs Now… (2015). Eleven tracks that add little to Public Image Ltd's current repertoire.

Lydon quotes himself, with a certain craft and undeniable self-deprecating humor, from the alienating punk of "Double Trouble" to the pseudo-reggae of "The One", from the acid pop of "Spice Of Choice" and "The One" to the funk of "Whole Life Time". Backing up his ever-incisive vocal performances are the usual murky bass and a guitar that can be dissonant but also light-footed. The result, however, is just an honest rehash of a sound that already gave its best a long time ago.

End Of World (2023) marks PiL's return after eight years and confirms a band that repeats typical post-punk tropes without seeking any real breakthroughs, ultimately producing a set of songs that would have been outtakes from their most celebrated records.

It's genuinely hard to imagine anything on this album making the cut even as a bonus track on the English band's classic LPs. Taking that as a given, there's no denying that "Penge" is a decent post-punk track, just as the title track has a solid guitar base and Lydon's voice hasn't changed all that much from his younger years. Between self-references (the bass on "LCFC", the histrionic vocals of "The Do That"), sincere autobiographical nods (the rain falling on the sad clown in "Down On The Clown"), and the new wave of "Car Chase", it's hard to find any truly thrilling moments.

Some particularly conservative lyrics come as a surprise (and not a pleasant one), written by none other than someone who built his career on transgression and tearing down rock's old idols in his youth. Take "Being Stupid Again" (perhaps the most original track here), where Lydon mocks younger generations, accusing them of stupidity for protesting over things he deems trivial (from the environment to saving whales to opposing war), dismissing them as mere hippies who fancy themselves Marx or Lenin.

The young rebel Lydon "Rotten" has today turned into something like a prudish father lecturing his children, and that is surely his gravest sin.

Contributions by Mimma Schirosi ("Metal Box"), Claudio Milano ("This Is P.I.L."), Valerio D'Onofrio ("End Of World")

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