|  After
years of cult status, great appreciation and only small public resonance
it seems the time for PIL has come. Yet the crucial innovators Jah Wobble
(bass) and Keith Levene (guitar,keyboards, synthesizer) have left the
band long ago (like Wobble) or just recently (like Levene). While Jah
Wobble was something like the natural band genius, autodidact and spiritual
sound seeker (see SPEX 1/80 and 7/81), and John Lydon figurehead, singer
and chaotic person, Keith Levene was rather the man in the background,
a musician who generated most of the innovations in sound and chaotic
constructions. Wilfried Ruetten talked with a self-confident but never
bragging Keith Levene in New York.
LEVENE: "I have left
Public Image Ltd. and I'm doing my own thing now. My company is called
'Multi-Image Corporation'. And regarding my musical ideas, I just want
to do 'multi-music'. The material is there, but mainly I want to produce
other people. Actually I want to produce soundtracks for films, and
I'm very interested in jingles and commercials too. I'm living in the
United States now and I am married to an American."
SPEX: "What about PIL
now?"
LEVENE: "Only John Lydon
and Martin Atkins are left. And there had been problems between them
and me. With Martin the problem was rather musical rivalry than anything
personal. But it had become impossible to talk reasonably with John.
He just couldn't be bothered to do anything. Regarding my situation
within PIL, I was a person with many ideas and I wanted to realize these
ideas with and through PIL. But they weren't interested. On the contrary,
they were building up barriers and weren't interested in ideas. Or rather,
they were interested but didn't understand them. Lydon says the separation
has been amicable but that's not true. I should have left PIL a year
ago. Regarding the band, it had worked on a one-man level for long anyway.
And I was of the opinion that this one man was me, and I left. Okay?
As long as I was in the band I considered it as a common thing and everything
was done in a common way. But it turned out that ...there comes a point
when you're fed up with it. So I'm really glad not being part of it
anymore and not being John's friend anymore, and I 'don't respect him
as an artist anymore too."
(During this tirade Levene
gets faster and faster as if he had thought it over a hundred times
already and doesn't want to hear it anymore. His language is full of
reassurances with the listener like 'you know', 'okay', 'like' and similar
phrases. And despite his new residence in New York he kept a strong
Cockney accent. This and his surprising 'normality' for a cult figure
was very similar to Jah Wobble. But his anti-Lydon tirade is over as
quickly as it started.)
LEVENE: "Regarding Lydon,
I had a deep respect for his abilities as an artist, yes I thought he
was 'great'! But now I don't want to have anything to do with him anymore.
The concept of PIL will be continued with my 'Multi-Image Corporation'.
And concerning the PIL name: Lydon can run around and call himself PIL
all he likes. Legally I own half of the name, but I don't want to be
PIL anymore, I want to start something new! I'm trying to express myself
in as many multiple ways as possible. No, I'm rather interested in soundtracks
for video games, films, jingles and admittedly in commercial singles.
It's true I'm under contract with Virgin Records in a way, but that's
handled mutually rather vaguely. So I'm in a rather independent position
and can give myself time. One of the things PIL wanted to be in the
USA was being 'independent'. And I will continue that way. I'm not interested
in dollars, rather in research scholarships. I'm fed up with being motivated
by money."
SPEX: "Virgin don't
have a reputation for leaving their artists in peace."
LEVENE: "Being signed
to Virgin can have its advantages. It's true they aren't 'new new' anymore
but they are still taking risks. But the understanding between PIL and
Virgin was never optimal, they didn't do much to promote our albums
although they have good people. They still have the tapes for a further
PIL album but I'm not involved in mixing it. We had called the album
'Commercial Zone', I had written the music."
SPEX: "Perhaps it was
a wrong decision to move to the USA?"
LEVENE: "We never made
much fuss about it, I had come over on my own and could arrange this
video show at The Ritz. So I brought over the band. There was a punch-up
at the gig which made the whole thing interesting at least visually
and earned us a lot of publicity. So the outlook was quite good at the
start but, like, things just didn't happen. We had lots of difficulties
to record the album, which probably will not be released now. We also
had no deal for the USA because we left Warner Brothers. Because Warner
had boycotted us downright. Despite the fact that they had given us
a 75,000 dollar advance for the album! But they hadn't released our
first album, then 'Metal Box' without the metal can in a paper sleeve,
and then with the third record they threatened to fire members of their
staff if they did anything to make the album a success! And two people
were actually dismissed! But at the time when the Pistols had split
and I had left The Clash our contracts were really quite good. That
I left The Clash was actually alright. I just didn't want to be involved
in all this..."
SPEX: "In what?"
LEVENE: "I didn't want
to have anything to do with rock'n'roll, and neither with preaching
politics. I think The Clash are really honest, but they absolutely don't
know what they are talking about. I'm not interested in preaching politics,
I'm interested in 'interesting art'. The reason I left The Clash? Listen
to The Clash and listen to PIL, and you'll know! And just like with
Paul Simonon in The Clash we teached Wobble to play bass. But Wobble
was great! He wasn't conditioned to 'rock' at all. Wobble never knew
what the others were doing, and he never played something like rock'n'roll
in the slightest. And he made up his own bass lines. Just terrific.
It had a big influence on the sound of early PIL music. He left because
of the conflicts he had with John, and with me too, because he had stolen
my music for his album. I can respect that: good for him!"
SPEX: "What made 'Metal
Box' special for you?"
LEVENE: "It was three
twelve inch singles without an example in a traditional way, the music
was conceived for maximum volume, there were no rules and it developed
spontaneously for a large part. It's just an album, I dunno! But in
the moment my main interest lies in film. Film, not video, because video
is just an electronical process. I'm occupied with computer graphics
for video games and even with computer graphics for simulations, and
because they look interesting. But it's very difficult to get access
to the appropriate devices. That is more time consuming than anything
else. We're talking about costs of thousands of dollars per second!"
SPEX: "And where are
these facilities?"
LEVENE: "Please don't
ask. I'm working on it since eighteen months and I'll succeed. With
a bit of luck I'll be able to work with the MAGI SynthaVision."
SPEX: "---?"
LEVENE: "It means Mathematical
Applications Group, Incorporated. They did the electronics for the 'TRON'
movie and work for General Motors in the field of computer supported
designs, and they also make TV commercials. I'm heavily into the computer
branch, I'm occupied with artificial intelligence and the big devices
like 'Creon' and 'Cyber 12-5'. But the whole matter has one big disadvantage:
you have to be involved in the development of something like an MX missile,
teaching it artificial intelligence which tells the missile how to reach
its target, if you want to get into real interesting graphics. They
use the 'Creon' for it, that's the biggest computer on the market which
costs around 11 million dollars, and everybody who works with it is
under government surveillance so nobody deciphers secret codes. But
without the Department of Defence budget there wouldn't be any computers.
The Pentagon is the biggest client. And what they want is super-intelligent
pilotless flying devices. There's a lot of good programmers around who
are just doing the wrong things. Nelson Max for instance has designed
beautiful works of art on the computer. Now he works on teaching missiles
not to confuse trees with a target. I don't know what's the reason for
it, but all the intelligent people who are into computers are working
for the government, and they just don't question the things they are
doing. They don't care whether they are blowing things up or not. And
during their work they design all these wonderful computer simulations
which are just about testing shock absorbers or about pressures a metal
part has to sustain. To me it looks very nice.
But machines with 400 millions calculations a second are still being
needed for the arms race in space, because they want to place laser
weapons up there. I'm in search for young scientists who don't work
for the government. But I am rather on my own so far." |