London, UK · post-punk

Public Image Ltd.

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John Lydon's second act — the band that invented post-punk's rulebook by burning the first one, still gleefully contrary.

Public Image Ltd. formed in London in June 1978, weeks after John Lydon quit the Sex Pistols. He recruited bassist Jah Wobble, a childhood friend from Hackney, guitarist Keith Levene, previously of the Clash, and Canadian drummer Jim Walker, found through a Melody Maker advertisement. The band's name, shortened to PiL, came from Muriel Spark's novel The Public Image.

The group moved sharply away from punk orthodoxy, building on dub bass, scraping guitar textures and Lydon's keening, declamatory vocals, and drawing on disco, krautrock and free-form experimentation as readily as rock. Their 1978 debut, First Issue, established this abrasive, bass-heavy approach.

Metal Box (1979) pushed the sound further into the avant-garde and is widely regarded as one of the defining post-punk records; The Flowers of Romance, which followed, has also been cited as influential. By 1984 Levene, Wobble and Walker had all left, leaving Lydon to steer the group toward the more accessible, commercially successful This Is What You Want... This Is What You Get and Album.

PiL went on hiatus in the late 1990s before Lydon reformed the group in 2009, releasing further albums including What the World Needs Now... in 2015. Lydon has remained the sole constant member across every line-up change, and PiL's catalogue is generally treated as one of the more influential bodies of work from the British post-punk era.

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post-punk