Public Image Ltd. (A trip)

After reading John Lydon’s autobiography, I’m now deep in my Public Image Ltd trip. I’m a huge fan of Metal Box, for me it’s one of the greatest albums in history, crowning dub bass as king over the grave of Chuck Berry’s guitar.

I’m still conflicted about First Issue, the band was still taking shape. Those were songs Lydon already had worked out for the Sex Pistols, and it still sounds like pure punk rock, although Keith Levene’s guitar was already showing itself as the definitive influence on bands like The Birthday Party, Flipper, The Jesus Lizard, and Big Black.

I wrote a review of The Flowers of Romance, one of my absolute favorite records by the band and the one that always brings back those late 70s stories of Lydon wanting to become the singer for the German band CAN.There are other PiL albums I’ve been diving into lately, like Album and Commercial Zone. 

Album feels to me like producer Bill Laswell trying to make a Peter Gabriel type record but way more edgy. The idea of having Ginger Baker on drums, Steve Vai on guitar, Laswell on bass, and Lydon on vocals sounds like a total supergroup, yet in reality it comes off more like a fabulous Lydon solo album. I’ll tell you about Commercial Zone next.