Cooler Than You: Public Image, Ltd.

Forget the Sex Pistols. Punk is not dead, it was stillborn. Punk was not the coming apocalypse of pop music. It was a false start that cleaned the slate. Cleared the table, as it were, for the real revolution which was to come. Thus, the most significant thing that the Sex Pistols wrought was not "Anarchy in the U.K.," which never occurred, but Public Image, Ltd., which most certainly did.

The Pistols formed in '76, released their record in '77 and busted apart in '78 ("do you ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"). By the end of '78 Lydon had not only moved on, but had moved incredibly forward, as exhibited by the debut release of Public Image, Ltd., Public Image (First Edition). With Keith Levene on guitar, Jah Wobble on bass, and Jim Walker on the traps, Public Image, Ltd., produced a kind of music that seems inevitable in the wake of punk. After the Sex Pistols, where does one go? Certainly not up.

Public Image (First Edition) opens with "Theme" (which is kind of funny since the album also has a song called "Public Image," but more on that later). Through this "Theme," Public Image, Ltd., announces itself with an eerie wail, slow deep down below the ground bass, and the crash of drums and piercing sound of Keith Levene's distinctively painful guitar tone. The drums pound away, and Levene throws out shards and sparks, and Lydon moans ands wails "I wish I could die," and Wobble's rock solid bass anchor is the sticky muck that holds the whole mess together. No verses, no choruses. Not even much by way of melodic progression. The song trudges on for a full nine minutes. It is un-rock. It is anti-pop. It is beautiful.

Lydon, finding himself with creative musicians, rather than the hired stooges that staffed the Sex Pistols, finds a more fitting outfit for his abrasive, snotty, nasally vindictiveness. No longer stifled by the inherent limitations of punk, which is, after all, just a dumber subset of the pop-rock it was supposed to be a reaction against, Public Image, Ltd., was free to explore their influences. Dub's physicality and kraut-rock's experimentalism get mixed up with avant-garde structure and bound together with a keen pop sense of self-promotion, irony, and provocation.

The album peaks with "Annalisa," a quick, driving number, the most straightforward rock song on the record. Here is where one can hear what would inspire countless others. Levene's jagged guitar bursts underpinned by Wobble's steady groove provide the foundation for Gang of Four's stilted white boy avant-funk. The artificial, sheet-metal guitar tones were heard throughout the Eighties by such indie luminaries as Big Black and the Jesus Lizard. The herky-jerky rhythms are a veritable blue-print of post-punk energy, how to rock without really playing rawk, as utilized from everyone from Joy Division to Fugazi and so on.

Which brings us to "Public Image." It is the most pop song on the record, and the one that seems to most directly address the conundrum that would ultimately bring down Public Image, Ltd. Is Johnny Lydon or Rotten? In ¹78 he was accusing the listener of never listening to a word that he said, that we had gotten what we wanted in the manufactured pap of the Sex Pistols. Public Image (First Edition) seems to be a bold statement against Lydon's earlier career as punk's poster boy.

The future of Public Image, Ltd., however, was not to be so clearly defined. They went on to make a few more good records. Second Edition (originally released as Metal Box in a metal box) more thoroughly mines the sludgy dub of "Theme" and is a more challenging record. By The Flowers of Romance, their most difficult album, the group had begun to fall apart. Wobble had left and Walker was replaced by Martin Adkins, technically a better drummer, but lacking the looseness which added so much vitality to the early songs. Levene put down the guitar in favor of keyboards. Levene left halfway through This is What You Want... This is What You Get, and, all of the sudden, Public Image, Ltd., is producing slick pop tunes.

It seems Lydon had begun to buy into his own Public Image and was shortly consumed by it. It's hard to accuse the Sex Pistols as being fraudulent, as they were never sincere. There is no authenticity in a marketing scheme. With Public Image, Ltd., however, after the tremendous promise and achievement of their first three records, Public Image (First Edition) in particular, what they produced post-Levene gives one the distinct feeling that, if not cheated, one is certainly being betrayed. The final records were not what we wanted, but it was what we got.