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Legendary bassist Jah Wobble reveals he left Public Image Limited with a ‘shoebox stuffed with money’

Former PIL bassist Wobble discusses playing Aberdeen with Deep Space/Ode to Joy in 2003 and his return to the Granite City

Post punk legend Jah Wobble reveals why he left Public Image Ltd. Image supplied by Ian Cheek Press
Post punk legend Jah Wobble reveals why he left Public Image Ltd. Image supplied by Ian Cheek Press

Former Public Image Limited bassist Jah Wobble has revealed he left the band with a shoebox stuffed full of cash after recording one of post-punk’s greatest albums.

Wobble had grown increasingly disaffected during the recording of the ground-breaking Metal Box, released in 1979.

PIL were formed by Wobble and John Lydon, formerly Johnny Rotten, following the split of The Sex Pistols as a primal scream against the limitations of ‘punk’.

Wobble, real name John Wardle, was a close friend of Lydon before and during the height of The Sex Pistols’ rise and fall.

However Wobble reveals how he quit the band having returned from a tour of the United States to promote Metal Box.

A telepathic collision of post-punk, dub, jazz and electronica no album sounded like Metal Box in ’79.

Now 45 years later still no album sounds like Metal Box.

Wobble will play reworked tracks from Metal Box when headlining Aberdeen Tunnels on Wednesday May 1 with Invaders of the Heart.

Post punk and PIL legend Jah Wobble to play Aberdeen. Supplied by Ian Cheek Press
Post punk and PIL legend Jah Wobble to play Aberdeen. Supplied by Ian Cheek Press

He said: “By the time we finished Metal Box I was sick of them and wanted to leave but we went to America.

“All I wanted to do was see America and come back.

“Then I went round to the PIL headquarter and the money was kept in a shoebox with £50 notes and high denomination notes.

“I took the shoebox stuffed with money and that was it, I was out the road.

“Then I went back to America with my girlfriend as I wanted her to see it.

“I hired a Thunderbird and went coast to coast and had a great time.”

Forging new sounds in the sounds

Metal Box took its name from the round metal tin, similar to a film-reel can, that initial pressings of the album were contained within.

In 2021 Wobble revisited the album by completely reinventing eight of the  songs with dub reinterpretations.

He will play track from Metal Box (Rebuilt in Dub) in Aberdeen.

In the 45 years since leaving PIL Wobble has released ground-breaking, influential solo albums such as thee recent The Light Programme.

Wobble has also collaborated with Brian Eno, Bjork, Sinead O’Connor and Holger CzuKay (Can).

He has also worked with The Edge (U2), Chris Connelly (Ministry) and Geordie Walker (Killing Joke).

Post punk and PIL legend Jah Wobble has worked with Brian Eno, Holger Czukay, The Edge and many more. Image supplied by Ian Cheek Press
Post punk and PIL legend Jah Wobble has worked with Brian Eno, Holger Czukay, The Edge and many more. Image supplied by Ian Cheek Press

He said’ “The atmosphere around PIL, I was really getting fed up with it.

“In the studio there was something to work on so it was better.

“I don’t remember being furious with them in the studio.

“But I was really fed up with them when we travelled anywhere

“I found them not particularly nice people actually.

“John (Lydon) was my mate before music and you get a lot of people around big stars who are afraid to say anything.

“And the big star develops these huge, fragile egos.

“If you know somebody from before that process you are much more likely to say stop being an idiot.

“It was awful.

“In the studio it was okay as we focused and the music was so powerful.

“Even John doing his lyrics at that time I would be very expectant when he came down to lay down a vocal track.”

‘There is an unease at play with the lyrics’

Formed in 1978 PIL were ‘anti-rock’ and released abrasive, influential debut album First Issue later that year.

Follow up Metal Box moved further into the avant-garde and is an uncompromising treatise on alienation and grief.

Wobble said: “There’s an unease at play with John’s lyrics, it’s unusual.

“It hit me one day that they are not really song lyrics, they are prose.

“There are Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter  overtones with an unease about it.

“A lot of reasons I didn’t like PIL maybe aided and abetted the making of Metal Box.

“We didn’t have good management.

“The record company let us get away with murder and as long as they got an album there were no boundaries set for us.

“We were allowed to do what we wanted.

“If we had strong management or a record label that wanted hit records they would have been ‘no way, you’re not presenting us with that’.

“The fact it was all so chaotic meant we could make a record that had a freeness about it.”

 Post punk and PIL legend Jah Wobble. Image supplied by Ian Cheek Press
Post punk and PIL legend Jah Wobble. Image supplied by Ian Cheek Press

‘You go out of time and space’

Wobble will perform in Aberdeen for the first time since the legendary Deep Space/Ode To Joy show at the Lemon Tree in January 2003.

It was a performance that underlined the visceral power of Wobble’s “total music”.

He said “Deep Space was off the back of a purple patch of success in the nineties.

“I always want to reduce it back to the basic form and the trouble with the basic form is it’s like comparing abstract art with figurative art.

“It’s going to be quite formless at times.

“There is an absolute total music to it, as it is visceral.  You have to let yourself go and dwell within the music.

“It is like a meditational experience where you’re not thinking or trying to reach any state.

“You are just sitting back in your being, your awareness.

“It does something to you as you go out of time and space.”

 

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