I am still rather taken with the design for Public Image Limited’s 1986 Album. Yes, I know Generic Flipper did it first, but Lydon and co. did it better.
 

 
PiL Single and Label, after the jump…
 

 
In 1979, John Lydon made an unexpected appearance on the goofy Jukebox Jury television panel show. His fellow panelists included Joan Collins and Elaine Paige!

(The expression on his face, above, sums up perfectly, I feel, what most Brits probably think about Noel Edmonds, the host of Jukebox Jury ....)
 

Johnny Lydon meets Big Youth, photo by Dennis Morris
 
It’s well-known that John Lydon has been a lifelong and very knowledgeable fan of reggae music and dub. In 1978, after the demise of the Sex Pistols, Lydon traveled to Jamaica with filmmaker/DJ Don Letts, photographer Dennis Morris (who designed the PiL logo and Metal Box) and journalist Vivien Goldman on the dime of Richard Branson’s Virgin Records to scout and sign reggae talent.

From an interview at Punk77 with Don Letts:

Some have conjectured that Lydon formed the embryo of the idea of the bass heavy structures in PIL from his trip to Jamaica, and the sound system dances they attended together there. Don is not so convinced that the trip to JA was as formative an influence on Public Image as some have presumed.

Don Letts: No, John already had that spaciousness, that blueprint in his mind long before we went to Jamaica. As long as I knew John, he had always listened to sparse avant-garde music, stuff like Can , and he really knew his reggae, I have to emphasise that, him and Joe Strummer, Paul Simonon, Jah Wobble, they understood dub, deeply, they had a lot of music I didn’t have you know. Lydon, Wobble and the others, they were turning me on to tunes I never had, it wasn’t always the other way round. We went to a lot of sound system sessions here in London too, people like Jah Shaka, Coxsonne, Moa Ambessa, so really, his experiences in Jamaica were an extension of what had already been in his mind for years, back in North London. Isn’t that just so obvious when you listen to those early PiL tunes, the stuff he was making with Wobble and Keith just after he left the Pistols.

Branson had financed the whole journey, as a chance for Lydon to “cool off”, and at the same time he was to act as a talent scout, signing up emerging reggae stars for the new Frontline roots label. Whilst in Jamaica, Letts and Lydon had met all their “heroes” on the roots and culture scene of that time: rebels, visionaries, chanters and mavericks, microphone chanters like Prince Far I, Big Youth and I Roy and deeply spiritual singers like The Congos, musicians who had produced some of the greatest spiritual masterpieces of their time.

Don Letts: You know, sometimes me and John just had to pinch ourselves to remind ourselves that we weren’t dreaming all this! It was great for us to be meeting and working with these guys, guys whose music we really admired and loved!

What did the Rastas make of Johnny Rotten? I had heard numerous stories and reports of John Rotten, dressed entirely in black from head to toe, clad in heavy black motorbike boots, black hat and heavy black woollen overcoat, walking through fruit markets in the heat of a full Jamaican summer! So was this fanciful rumour?

Don Letts: Yeah, it’s not rumour, that’s true! You know why he did that? John didn’t want to go back to London with a tan! Respect to you John!

So what did the Rasta’s make of John then?

Don Letts: The Rastas loved John! To them he was “THE punk rock Don from London” they were aware of all the trouble he had stirred up in London, and yeah, they were into what he stood for and his stance, and they dug it… We smoked a chalice together with U Roy for breakfast, and then went out to one of his dances, miles out in the countryside, quite a long journey by car. I remember the dreads stringing up this sound, and kicking off with some earthquake dubs. Now let me tell you this sound system was LOUD, and me and John both of us, literally passed out! I remember hours later some dreads shaking us awake, it was like, “Wake up man, dance done, dance finish now man!” Yeah, it was pretty wild for me and John out in Jamaica. We loved it. John just had a vibe you know, people were drawn to him. It was the same in London; it was the same in Kingston. John is Irish, and there is a definite affinity between Jamaicans and Irish! We’ve all heard the saying “no Irish , no blacks, no dogs”, which used to appear in pub and lodging windows and well, there must have been a reason for that, that ethnic grouping together, that ethnic rejection ! Jamaicans and Irish people have always got on together in England, though I can’t say for sure why. A similar attitude to life perhaps? Who knows why they should tune in to each others psyches so well…Is it that both are oppressed peoples, or that both have a natural rebelliousness of spirit? Someone should do a study of it!

Although there have been several interviews where Lydon has spoken about what Jamaican sounds he was listening to and radio shows where he’d play some of his favorite reggae tracks, an undated letter that Lydon sent a PiL fan (on embossed PiL stationary, to boot!) who asked where to start with the genre is the most complete listing of the reggae that Lydon was skankin to in the 1970s. What a list it is! Still great advice!
 

 

 
British punk and reggae examined:
 

 
Via Fodderstompf, Vicious Riff and Punk77

Previously on Dangerous Minds
Johnny Rotten plays his own records on Capital Radio 1977

Big Youth:Natty Universal Dread

 
In 1978, at a time after the end of the Sex Pistols, but before Public Image Ltd. was formed, John Lydon gave an actual friendly interview to Janet Street-Porter. Cheerful, not at all rotten Mr. Lydon—seen here looking even more Dickensian than usual in a top hat he says he purchased at Disneyland—discusses how he’d like to see Malcolm McClaren dead, how he made no money whatsoever from the Sex Pistols and he touches ever so briefly on his recent trip to Jamaica, where he’d been scouting reggae talent (and meeting some musical heroes) for Richard Branson’s Virgin Records.

Lydon also reminds us that tickets for the USA Sex Pistols tour cost two bucks!
 

 
Via Flaming Pablum/Glen E. Friedman

 
‘Vampire’ - unreleased and unfinished track from Public Image Ltd’s 1981 album Flowers of Romance.
 

 
I’ve seen and heard of some pretty out there tribute bands in my day. For instance, there was a lisping Elvis impersonator who (literally) sang for his supper in a fast food place. He was quite good, but when he sang “Suspicious Minds” the folks eating at the tables near him got their food sprayed with spittle. (As we watched him sing, Lux and Ivy from the Cramps walked past the place and waved to him).

Then there were the fake Beatles I tried to hire for an event who came with their own Linda and Yoko in tow, who fawned all over their personal “Lennon” and “McCartney”—they even had a manager named Brian whose only qualification seemed to be that he was from Liverpool. And named “Brian.” They kept asking me if I knew of any labels that might want to give them a record contract (“No” I told them, honestly). 

I also saw a Velvet Underground tribute band in Tokyo, complete with Nico (although Moe Tucker was played by a boy!).

But one band that seemed immune to the tribute band treatment was John Lydon’s Public Image Ltd. Until now, that is! A group formerly making the rounds in the UK doing a Sex Pistols tribute act decided to think outside the (metal) box and do a PiL panto as well, morphing in the process from The Sex Pistols Experience to Public Imitation Ltd.!!!

As someone who saw the original PiL line-up (post Jah Wobble, but with Keith Levene and Martin Adkins) in 1983—a life-changing experience for me as a teen (I decided then and there to not go to college)—I was expecting the worst, but this guy can actually do a better Lydon in 2010 than Lydon himself can, take a look:
 

Ari Up by Caroline Coon
 
This weekend I read Zoe Street Howe’s newly published biography of The Slits, Typical Girls? (Omnibus Press) and quite enjoyed it. My main criticism of the book is that 95% of it is taken up with the formation of the band and the recording of their debut album, Cut and there is precious little about the recording of their equally amazing second LP, Return of the Giant Slits. Still, if you are a Slits fan, Typical Girls? is a credible history and the author interviewed all of the Slits and key members of their circle including one-time Slit, Budgie (better known as the drummer in Siouxsie and the Banshees), PiL guitarist Keith Levene, journalist/professor Vivien Goldman and producers Dennis Bovell and Adrian Sherwood.

I pulled both Slits albums out this weekend and played each all the way through twice. I’ve owned Cut since came out and its punky reggae sound was very, very appealing to me straight off the bat. I’d read about the Slits, in books like Caroline Coon’s 1988, but they were the last of the formative punk bands to put a record out. When I did finally hear them, Cut was a bolt from the blue to my 14 year-old brain. Reading Typical Girls? brought me back to that time when it seemed like there would be no end to the parade of innovation that was the post punk era. There was so much good music coming out every week that it seemed inexhaustible. It was a terribly exciting time, musically speaking, to come of age. (Simon Reynold’s book Rip It Up and Start Again captures the feeling of the era well, I think).

The Slits were, to my ears, amongst the most sonically “far out” and experimental of the post-punk groups, in the same category as Public Image Ltd. in terms of the astonishing originality of their music. The Slits sound was like no other, a perfectly melded hybrid of punk, dub-drenched reggae and Afro-pop with the riotous, white Rastafarian cum St Trinian’s girl run amok front woman of Ari Up (who was all of 14 when she joined the group) . Truly the unruly, inspired, nearly uncategorizable sound of the Slits deserves a better place in the history of punk than it’s been accorded thus far. Hopefully Zoe Street Howe’s Typical Girls? will go some distance in redressing this grievous oversight.

Here’s the Don Lett’s directed promo for Typical Girls:

This extended clip from the German movie Girls Bite Back includes performances of Animal Space, I Heard It Through the Grapevine and a dubbed out cover of Dennis Brown’s Man Next Door. How I wish there was more of this!

Audio only link to the Slits covering Marvin Gaye’s I Heard It Through the Grapevine

Audio only YouTube clip of one of my top favorite Slits tunes: Earthbeat

Previously on Dangerous Minds:

 
Keith Levene and Jah Wobble won’t be attending, but, since Metal Box is turning 30 (!), chances look good for a live Poptones (see below).  From today’s NYT:

John Lydon, the former frontman for the Sex Pistols, who is better known as Johnny Rotten, told The Guardian newspaper that his band Public Image Limited, or PiL, is back after a 17-year break.  Though fans will have to do without two original band members, Jah Wobble and Keith Levene, the guitarist Lu Edmonds returns in the reincarnation, along with the drummer Bruce Smith.  A five-date tour is to begin in December with a new member, Scott Firth, and a couple of other changes, it seems.  ?