11.

PiL – Public Image: First Issue

I prefer Metal Box, but this is a wonderful album and it just shows you where Lydon was culturally at that point in time. And he was obviously a bright fella. In interviews he was always talking about bands like Hawkwind and Can, so you always knew he was going to come from the left field, but the album didn’t sound like anything else. I mean, Wobble’s bass, Donut [Jim Walker]’s drumming, Keith Levene’s guitar. I saw them play and Keith Levene had that metal guitar and he broke string after string during every song, Wobble was just sat down, and the whole thing just captured the bedlam but it just wasn’t delivering what people were expecting. If you listen to ‘Religion’, it is just so cutting and stark and amazing; he channelled all of the anger that he had in a way that he couldn’t with the Pistols because he wasn’t being manipulated. He was cynical by this point because of the way he’d been treated and all the bullshit, and it all came out on this album. It was a game changer, this album.