Lydon: �The first single, Public Image, how bloody fantastically it happened. It fell together so well. The little bit Wobble knew he knew well, and Keith�s jangling over the top, the two formed such a lovely hook for me. It was like a gift from the god�s. A total change from anything I�d ever done before. And I�d just start talking about how I felt. Rather than attacking specific institution.�
Lyrically, Public Image represented John Lydon reclaiming his sense of self after the trauma of the Sex Pistols. �You never listened to a word that I said/You only seen me for the clothe I wear�. Two sides to every story/Somebody had to stop me/I�m not the same as when I began/I will not be treated as property.� Musically, too, it was a declaration of intent, sweeping away what had gone before, unveiling what would prove to be PiL�s most enduring sonic legacies, Wobble�s submariner-deep bass pulses and Levene�s agitated, shrill guitar clouds. Here was the spaciousness of dub - with which they were each obsessed overlaid with a version of rock that owed nothing to punk�s blues based chord structures. To this day, it feels staggering, a high-on perfect example of pop as polemic, personal revolution and adrenalised thrill. For the fledging group, it was both a brilliant beginning and a full-stop.
�I just think how incredible that the first thing this group did was Public Image, this gorgeous piece of uplifting pop.� says Wobble. �but there was definitely a case of nothing was enough. We really embodied the nihilistic 
attitude of the punk thing. Which was the teenage thing - I�m fucking bored of this, oh this isn�t good enough, I want more, that kind of attitude. So very quickly the whole thing with Public Image was kicked into touch. There was this desire to do something very serious. Very focused and brave.�
Lydon: �The Pistols was all well and fine but we came from a tradition. Even though we didn�t sound like any old other rock band, there was an effort made to sound like a rock band. The instrumentation and the format just leads that way. And I�d get really stifled with that. I�ve always been a problem to any institution that�s too rigorous in its applications. And Keith�s as wacky as a fucking nut, the kid�s just mental. And Wobble�s not playing with a full load. And me, the lights are on but nobody�s at home. A lot of anger. And very good though. Really fucking cleans your soul out when you�re in an outfit like that, where you just don�t have a chance! Hopeless, I�d just come from the Pistols, I knew that aiming for chart positions and all that shit - doesn�t work. You become the enemy. You before the very thing you hate the most.�
Levene: �What were we looking at musically? A bit of closure, we wanted to kick the ghost of rock n� roll in the arse completely, get rid of it.�
PiL wouldn�t fully realize such lofty ambitions until 1079, by which time Jim Walker had left. But the original quartet gave it a good go The debut PiL album �Public Image - First Issue�, was recorded quickly during the summer and autumn of 1978 at various London studios and the Manor, Virgin�s in-house facility in Oxfordshire. All the material was new, save for the single and Religion, a song Lydon had written during the Sex Pistols� ill-fated final US tour. �I couldn�t get Sid round it,� he says. �he just didn�t want to go that way. And then when PiL started it was perfect. Unfriendly, but then religion is, and has to be met head on.�
First Issue was released in December, with some reluctance on Virgin�s part, according to Lydon. �They thought no one would listen,� he says. �They couldn�t relate it to anything.� More probably PiL�s patrons couldn�t relate John Lydon to his former musical persona. Less than a year after he�d quit the Sex Pistols, leaving them to corrode their legacy via pathetic stunts like recording with exile Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs, Lydon had emerged with a mystical vehicle that evinced a new future rather than �no future�. Between them, Levene, Walker and Wobble fashioned a sound that was vast yet claustrophobic, playful and brutish, over which Lydon vented his spleen at specific foes. Low Life denounced Malcolm McLaren with homicidal relish and squared up to his inner demons in a voice so nakedly sincere it was painful to listen to. �I wish I could die.� he wailed on Theme, the album�s keynote opening dirge, adding without evident enthusiasm, �I will survive�. As punk turned into a tragicomic soap opera, its erstwhile ragged trouser red auteur was fronting something truly visionary, something, as Wobble has averred, �serious and brave�. Perhaps inevitably, the pros of the time just didn�t get it. �Morbid direction less sounds,� wrote Pete Silverton in Sounds in one of his review�s more favorable passages, and his was the prevailing opinion. Yet it�s telling the critic ----- such a pejorative mindset. PiL were simply too ahead of their time to be readily comprehensible to a music media that as still for the most part archly conservative and couldn�t really understand why Lydon didn�t just ditch the art wank and re-form the Sex Pistols.
Levene: �A lot of [reviewers] used to slag us off, but the things they�d say, they were cool! If they were saying �This is why PiL are good�, it would have been good. A lot of it was based on the idea that we were pulling some kind of scam, that we were going to turn around and go, Haha, we didn�t mean it, we were just making it up as we went along! Which we did a lot, but with musical prowess.�
Lydon: �Theme - you fucking get to feel like that, when the pressure gets to you, you do really wish you could die. �Cos there�s a nowhere to run. And you�re in the public eye, and you don�t get a moment�s rest. You can�t go round your local pub �cos you�ll either be attacked or bothered or questioned or some social climber�s trying to lig in on ya. So�isolation is what comes next. And that�s no answer. Then you start boarding with your cliques. And I think in PiL w started to go our own ways.�
The personal bonds between PiL were always bound to be brittle, due to the volatile, frequently destructive nature of the individuals concerned. Today, Jah Wobble is a sober family man, a bass guru who releases his own and other artists� records on his own 30 Hertz label, but 25 years ago, he was a booze and drug-propelled loose nut. Sessions for First Issue began inauspiciously when Wobble had a fist-fight with the assistant engineer, In Lydon�s estimation, the bassist�s bullying contributed to Jim Walker�s decision to quit the band in January 1979, though given that two years later Walker was playing in Wobble�s post-PiL project, Human Condition, it�s likely that Walker�s declared unhappiness over how much money he was being paid was a more decisive factor. But what is beyond dispute is that life in PiL was a stressed and stressful existence.
One of PiL�s company dictates was that the band managed themselves, with no outsiders interfering with their business affairs. Inevitably, as the band�s main bankable asset and the reason they had record deals with Virgin in the UK and Warner Bros in the US, the financial imperatives gravitated towards Lydon. According to him, the others were happy to let him shoulder the burden.
�Didn�t want to know, Really did not want to know. All the big ideas about we�re out own management, our own business.. Yeah, right! Hahahaha! I can�t run an office, I�m hopeless at that! It�s not my mentality. It all became too confusing and purposeless. Because the workload wasn�t being noted in that direction. I don�t rip off anybody . Never have, never will. And unfortunately, money creates fucking problem with people. It�s easier to think someone�s getting more than you than actually bothering to find out they�re getting less.�
The group�s constant drug intake probably didn�t help either. More specifically, the different drugs being done by different people. Here was a hand full of febrile genius always simmering just below the surface. Throwing hard drugs into the pot inevitably made it prone to boiling over. According to Joe Strummer, Keith Levene�s enthusiastic Class A drug use was a contributing factor in his departure from the Clash. While in PiL, the band�s only naturally gifted musician solidified a relationship with heroin.
�When you�re young, between 16 and 25, that�s the one time you can do loads of different drugs without ending up at AA meetings.� he says today in his east London studio. �All these potential problems were because everyone was drunk. We were all doing speed, we were all doing coke. I was known for doing opiates, and there was a certain tension about it. If I think about PiL now and about what happened I can see a certain manipulation that happened because of drugs. People were manipulating each other. And their situations because of the situations they were dealing with. Weather they were going on consciously or not I don�t know, but they did happen. In all hierarchical areas they happened, amongst band members or amongst record company people dealing with certain members of the band - I won�t be more specific than that.�
�Keith caused a lot of friction in the band,� says Lydon. �A lot. For very many different reasons. I don�t think drugs are ever a reason, I think they�re just a symptom, an excuse. Keith really, really lacked confidence in himself. Such a shame. He was one of the most talented fucking guitar players I�ve ever known. He made a guitar do things that were not supposed to be possible. But he just didn�t see the value in it. He thought he was letting himself down. It must be that musicianship thing creeping in, doubting yourself because it doesn�t sound like anything else, therefore it must be a mistake and a mess. And he gets very vindictive when that happens, because he hasn�t sorted himself out in his head. Wobble grew up, I think, to be a really all right person. I like the way Wobble handles his life.�
Wobble: �It doesn�t help when one persons on opiates and another person�s on amphetamines - and, of course, there were very very strong amphetamines. I never did heroine. I was into booze and uppers. It was very straightforward: this person�s completely out on barbiturates, which start creeping in� Not that that�s got any romantic connection to the forming of the music. Essentially it hasn�t got anything to do with the music, directly, but more the mood around it. In a destructive way, of course, because people are not thinking clearly. The person on smack wouldn�t want to be working, he just wants to be out scoring. And the speed freak, on speed I�d wanna be talking semi-mystical bullshit - and actually not much has changed now that I�m off it.� But when you�d done it all and you�d had your bender and a couple of days to recover, you didn�t wanna do another, you wanted to be making your music. I got very frustrated very early on. There wasn�t this build-up of tensions, it was there very early on! Hatred! What�s that line from Blade Runner, the star that burns half as long burns twice as bright? That was PiL . It was very intense.�
Lydon:�I didn�t know what else to do. My mum was dying and I was fucking upset. It was cancer, she was just withering away. Fucking big cry, innit? A screaming pile of fucking sadness. I wouldn�t know how to put it any other way. Record Mirror voted it the eighth best dance record of the year. Fucking news to me! They�re dancing to a death dirge?! It was kind of a reward. That would make my mum happy. She never got to hear it proper.�
Wobble: �There was a lot of different emotions, but very heightened A very bleak, depressive feel and a lot of non-communication and resentment and all that lark. But at times a great job as well, and a pride in the thing. I�m this person who�s never really fitted in very easily in life. And to suddenly be doing this thing very well, I�m absolutely alive with that, my life�s been saved somehow. I couldn�t keep out of the studio. It was always exciting waiting for John to come in with his lyrics. He never really gives much away emotionally, you can feel there�s this seething volcano bubbling away under the surface. And what he did was come out under great pressure. I see now, in some respects, classic signs of depression. He would spend an inordinate amount of time quietly watching videos, for hours on end. I remember feeling at the time, for fuck�s sake John, come on�! Actually, you feel like you�re losing someone as a friend.�