"Everyone in Public
Image Ltd. is equal," says singer John Lydon. "We have equal
say, equal merits; we each have our parts to play, blah, blah. Hopefully,
we’re not just crawling up our own assholes."
Lydon, his bright red hair
strikingly set off by green polyester pants and an oversize checked
jacket, is ensconced in the basement studio of Virgin Records’
London town house with two of his three fellow PiLs: Keith Levene, the
group’s gaunt guitarist, and Jeanette Lee, a slight, brunette filmmaker
whose PiL videos have yet to be shown. The fourth member’ of the
collective, Dave Crowe, handles its finances. They have just wrapped
up their fourth album, Flowers of Romance, and Levene is at the
mixing board with PiL’s whiz-kid engineer, Nick Logan, who’s
setting things up for a playback. Lydon notices Logan diddling with
the dials, and, lapsing for a moment into his best Johnny Rotten snarl,
cracks, "You’re just trying to draw attention to yourself.
We’re not impressed."
Suddenly, a savage scream
erupts from the speakers: it’s "Four Enclosed Walls,"
the album’s opening track. As the tape winds on, it’s apparent
that this LP is highly percussive—an interesting development, since
Public Image Ltd. has no full-time drummer. "We’ve had a lot
of trouble with rock & roll merchants," Lydon explains. "They
would only play get-down-and-boogie stuff. Some people found it hard
to stretch their brains outside of that."
For Flowers of Romance,
the group hired one of its former drummers, Martin Atkins, to play
on a few tracks. Levene drummed on others, as did Lydon — who bashed
away on whatever was at hand on such cuts as "Phenagen" and
untuned the strings of a banjo while hitting them with a drumstick on
the album’s title tune.
F lowers of Romance (the
title was the name of Sid Vicious’ first band) will be released
on February 25th, in America, unlike PiL’s debut album and their
recent live set, Paris au Printemps. And while PiL’s dense,
discordant music bears little resemblance to the Sex Pistols’ roaring
rock & roll, Lydon certainly seems to have the Pistols’ late
bassist in mind when he sings: "I can’t depend on these so-called
friends / It’s a pity, you did depend / I’ll take the pressure
and start all over again."
Like much of the LP, "Flowers
of Romance" sounds vaguely Middle Eastern, with violins weaving
through the hypnotic rhythms. One song, "Hymie Hyme," even
features a tubular percussion instrument from Bali. "But the tribal
strains, Eastern or whatever, aren’t done on purpose," Levene
points out. "AII it amounts to is that we don’t like
any music at the moment. The only records you’ll catch us
listening to are some Renaissance suites. We’re interested in different
sounds and in electronics—not in terms of wah-wah, but ambient
sounds."
"Well," says Lydon,
summing up this latest chapter in the PiL saga, "it ain’t
rock & roll, that’s for sure." |