PiL - The Public Image Is Rotten (Songs From the Heart)

The Guardian 60

From the rubble of the Sex Pistols arose a ‘consortium of like-minded loonies’ whose collision of dub, funk and punk smashed open the mainstream

Like any good rock’n’roll yarn, the story of Public Image Ltd tends to change according to the narrator. Rising from the rubble of the Sex Pistols’ spectacular implosion in 1978, John Lydon’s second band gave him a clean slate for his weirder musical impulses, without the interference of his scene-stealing manager, Malcolm McLaren. At that time, Lydon – who’d just added to his notoriety by accusing Jimmy Savile of “all kinds of seediness” in a BBC interview – was living on Gunter Grove, just off the King’s Road in Chelsea. With an open-door policy, his house had a “thriving community spirit”, recalls Lydon – punks and rastas blasting reggae all night, hanging out with Joan Armatrading one week, John Barry the next. PiL’s first drummer, Jim Walker, saw it differently. Gunter Grove was “very dark”, he remembered, “very depressing – this messy little oasis of speed, heroin and hate”.

Chaotic and druggy as it certainly was, Gunter Grove was the crucible of one of the most influential bands of the post-punk era – a “consortium of like-minded loonies”, according to Lydon. Dub, funk and disco fused with an experimental punk spirit, eventually shaping the pop music of the next decade. That mainstream-grazing trajectory is the one traced by this box set of five discs and two DVDs, of singles, B-sides, rarities and live recordings covering the entirety of PiL’s career up to 2015’s Double Trouble.