Anger is an Energy: My Life Uncensored (33 page)

Anyway, while I was auditioning for the movie, I’d get my moments on film, my sketches, delivered to Gunter Grove, and they’d arrive in these great big film canisters. It turned out
that Dave Crowe, who was still living at Gunter at that time, knew the company who made these canisters in Britain, because their factory was out in Borehamwood, where he’d lived when he was
younger. So, one thing led to another, and we had a ground-breaking new way
to present our ground-breaking new music – literally, in a metal box.

It was a great idea to present all these expansive tracks across three 45rpm 12-inch records, but almost our entire budget for
Metal Box
was frittered away on this extravagant packaging.
We spent more than we did on recording, and Virgin didn’t pay for it – we did.

How the boxes themselves turned out was awkward in the extreme. What we ended up with was like two round sweetie trays put together. They were hard to prise apart, and it was impossible to get
the records out. It was appropriate, though, because what you were about to listen to could’ve been construed as distinctly unpleasant – it was made for those consumers who were
prepared to put in a bit of effort. Then, once you were inside, the bass was so deep, it’d kick the needle clean off the record. We were slightly in advance of the hi-fi gear of the era.

When
Metal Box
came out, in November ’79, it got good reviews, but I trust those even less than the bad ones. It sold out of its first pressing straight off, but its influence just
grew and grew over the years. In interviews, I’d describe it as ‘mood music’ – I knew that one would hurt.

Going out to play gigs around this time was impossible. In September ’79, we’d headlined an indoor festival in Leeds called Futurama – a catastrophe of a gig. It was so badly
organized, and it made us really angry. Outside the venue, as you drove up, was a bunch of blokes dressed in Nazi outfits, sieg-heiling and handing out National Front publications. What?
That’s unacceptable. There was no security of any kind, the exact opposite of overbearing security, so there were people just wandering around and unplugging whatever equipment they fancied.
While you were up there, you knew stuff was getting nicked out of the dressing room, so you’d constantly have one eye on the back of the hall. Just silly, stupid, unnecessary chaos. Thank God
for friends like Rambo, who turned up and paid attention and stopped people doing all that.

Unplugging equipment was a very big and popular thing in them days, people would get onstage and go straight for a lead or whatever, just to try to unplug something and
see that as an achievement. These weren’t what you would call fans or people that were into the music; these would be football-y type gangs that would go to venues and deliberately try to
wreck them. Particularly if you were touring up north and you were from down south. Whoa –
getcha!
That was their mentality. It required a lot of bravery to stand there and fight back,
to take that on without resorting to violence. You have to understand the psyche of the audience and control what you do in those situations.

People wanted me to be the bad boy, but they also wanted to pull me down for it. It was just walls of animosity. It was a problem, because every time you stepped out, you had all these
prehistoric monsters who wanted to drag you back to the past. It’s always going to be that way when you deliberately put yourself out there on the cutting edge of learning. I could take that
kind of situation quite happily, though, because sooner or later, those people who are at first against you for being oh-so-different, eventually get it. It took years for the first PiL album and
Metal Box
to be understood. By that time I was two or three albums down the road and, of course, those were then the albums they weren’t understanding, so I’m always three, four
or five albums ahead of the learning curve.

There was trouble at these shows, but for my mind there were always mitigating circumstances, which were not considered. Britain was in a steady situation of catastrophe there at the turn of the
1980s, with endless strikes, riots, football violence and everything. It was a very violent time, and all bands faced this agenda when you did a gig. But it was very convenient for certain
newspapers to hang that firmly on me, and that did a lot of damage. A lot of promoters wouldn’t touch us because they thought the exaggerated press reports of those incidents would create
even further trouble down the line.

It’s always down to promoters, because they’re the ones that raise
the money, but only if they feel your record company’s properly behind you. It
affects gigs quite seriously. If your record company backs up whatever it is you’re up to, those economic problems that promoters can bring in wouldn’t arise. Suddenly we had to sign
these insurance clauses before we walked onstage, making ridiculous guarantees that somehow if you agree to them you’re implicating yourself as the creator of any riot that may happen –
by signing that you’ll try your best not to inspire a riot, it’s an implication that it’s in your framework. You know, Jesus, I’m not responsible for what a mass of people
do,
I’m
responsible for what
I
do.

Very quickly, we were more or less cancelled out of Britain. The impossibility of getting gigs – again! – was taking away our lifeblood. It leads to all kinds of powerfully
antagonistic internal confrontations, usually focused – again! – on ‘I want more money!’ What else do you want, when you’ve got nothing else to do? It’s an
understandable human reaction to frustration, and that then becomes your maypole and your bone of contention. And trouble comes from that, it’s very hard to control. It caused
fractionalisms.

So we were in a pretty bad way by the time we went to do PiL’s first American tour in April ’80. I had virtually nothing to wear, but I heard Wobble had used my mate Kenny MacDonald
to make some suits for himself, that I found out PiL had paid for. By chance, as we were leaving for the airport, I’d talked to Kenny. So we got to the hotel, and Wobble opened his suitcase,
and my first thing was, ‘Right, I’m having that, because I paid for it!’ I was always mix-and-match, anyway: my suitcase was equally open to anyone I was working with. Wobble
never said anything, but I knew it created a real bitter agenda inside of him. He shouldn’t have been using my mates to make clothes without telling me, and having it put on my bill.

Regardless of such disagreements, our media profile was fairly confrontational.
High Times
put us on the cover, with Willie Nelson on one side, and Johnny Fucking Rotten on the other.
Underneath, it said something like, ‘The two sides of music’, or at least that was the implication. Fantastic! I was thinking, ‘Willie Nelson isn’t
the enemy, you’re kind of getting this wrong, fellas!’ I’ve always had a keen listen to Willie’s lyrics. He’s a rebel in his way: he doesn’t want anybody telling
him how he should or shouldn’t be living.

In another interview, I declared, ‘Rock ‘n’ roll is shit, it’s got to be cancelled.’ From that point onwards, honestly, America declared war on us.
‘
Whoargh
, how can you say such a thing?’ Well, I was right. Rock ‘n’ roll had become a very lame duck. Expecting anything new in music to fit into that established
genre was repulsive to me. It had become a ball and chain. Think outside the box.

Metal Box
was being repackaged on both sides of the Atlantic as a ‘conventional’ double album called
Second Edition
. We did a radio ad for the release proclaiming it as
‘twelve tracks of utter rubbish from Public Image Ltd’. Complete and utter rubbish, for your dubious pleasure! I hoped the humour would be picked up on. It was an attempt at
friendliness and openness, using irony, which is something that’s possibly not understood in America.

We’d signed back with Warners for America, but we’d had problems with them again. They didn’t like the first album very much, and passed on releasing it altogether. They
didn’t know what to expect. I suppose they were hoping for ‘That great rock ‘n’ roll band the Sex Pistols Part Two’, but this is the same lot that couldn’t
accept the Sex Pistols Part One. This meant I was one step further away from being caught up on.

We played about ten dates, mostly in theatres in key cities including New York and LA, as well as a legendary TV appearance on Dick Clark’s
American Bandstand
. It all got off on the
wrong foot when we arrived and they suddenly informed us that it would be a mimed thing. Our equipment hadn’t arrived in time, apparently, but we soon got even more upset when they said,
‘Oh no, you couldn’t play it live anyway, just mime to the record.’

They’d made up some edited versions of ‘Poptones’ and
‘Careering’, and gave us a cassette to check out beforehand. ‘Oh my God,
they’ve cut it down to
that
? I don’t know where the vocals are going to drop. What are we supposed to do?’ None of us knew. Just thinking about trying to sing it like the
record was . . .
aarghh
! You can fake it with an instrument but you can’t as the singer. ‘Okay, so you’ve cut out the point and purpose, it’s like removing the chorus
from the National Anthem, just because it makes for an allotted time slot on a TV show. That’s arse-backways!’

Just before we went on I said, ‘Right, let’s just freeform it – basically as a cover for me, please!’ I started the ball rolling. I made no attempt to mime, moved around
the place, and dragged all the audience up on the stage to dance. For all of the problems that caused – such spontaneous behaviour didn’t fit with their usual cosy format – Dick
Clark, the host of the show, who was a massive star of US network TV, became really friendly afterwards – even though Wobble had messed around with his wigs. We found Dick’s room
backstage in the make-up department, and hanging on hooks were all of these different hairpieces which, you know, got assaulted. But in the end it played out really well because when Dick Clark did
a rundown of the greatest ever performances on
American Bandstand
, Public Image were up there in the Top Ten. And he’d been running that show for decades – almost half a
century.

I knew that in that world they were all sycophantically grovelling and arse-kissing each other and cliqueing it up, and expecting anybody new that comes in to fit into place. That’s what
music wanted from me, that’s what everything has wanted from me, and it’s not going to happen. Not ever. I don’t need to find a niche in that kind of society. The more they annoy
themselves about my kind of personality the better it is for me, because I honestly don’t think I’m doing anything wrong here.

On the plane home from the tour, Levene had a massive withdrawal. I don’t remember too much about it, but I wasn’t very sorry for him. My attitude was, it serves you fucking right.
Keith
kept saying he wasn’t going there, but it was clear he was. Having to deal with liars really upsets me. I’m very forgiving with friends when they lie, I
try and understand what made them do it, but a bit too much of it – when it becomes a public display – and I’m furious.

Wobble at that point had gone beyond the point of endurance. His bullying behaviour towards the drummer was just not acceptable. With his animosity towards Keith, he was causing too many
personal situations. He was involved in too many of these issues all at once to be just merely a coincidence. His girlfriend would turn up at the house and ask where he was, and insist on coming
in, in case he was in the house and hiding from her.

He’d become very mercenary. He’d cultivated this aura of Jack-the-Lad, coasting just for the money. That was the vibe he was projecting, and unfortunately a little too loud and
proud, and so he got what he asked for. As long as he’d been in the band, he’d never offered anything like a resolve or an answer to anything. Just sit back and snigger and never
actually contribute, never. Never wanted to make a commitment that he might be judged on later, if it be right or wrong. Believe me, that wouldn’t be a problem in PiL. But no involvement at
all
is
a problem in PiL.

Making wrong judgements is not a problem. Making mistakes is not a problem. These are things we can deal with and move on from, but lack of commitment is a serious error. Knowing that he made
himself somehow seem above it all, that was unbearable. You cannot be in a band that works like PiL, and disassociate yourself from the problems, and from the writing situations, and hold your hand
out at the end of the month expecting a cheque. That’s gonna come up against a brick wall.

Everybody was arguing about money, everybody wanted more. But when there isn’t more, what can you do? I had my mate Dave Crowe in there to try and run some kind of accounting, because he
was very good at Maths. I didn’t even have a bank account, really, or a credit card, or anything at all up until PiL, but then it became
necessary. The wages side, I
didn’t have direct access to, what I wanted was for Dave to control that, so there wouldn’t be any suspicions that I was going and pilfering on the sly. Money is the root of all evil.
If there’s any there to be had, everybody else wants more. And there’s not much of a way around that, I’m afraid. That’s the original sin.

Unfortunately around this time Dave Crowe stopped working for me because, let’s just say, he had his own problems. It was too risky that the financial side was being orchestrated by a chap
who would forget to go to the bank on Friday and leave us all broke over the weekend. That’s all he had to do: walk 150 yards, because there was a Barclays Bank right around the corner from
Gunter Grove, and he just somehow couldn’t seem to make that. That made me feel like a fool, because I’d be the one that would have to explain to everybody else why there weren’t
no money this weekend. There was money in the bank but I couldn’t do sod all about it.

This was before 24-hour ATMs, and there was no alternative. I didn’t even have a chequebook. I just didn’t see the need for such things. I’d be quite happy on ten quid a day, I
still am, but you can’t be like that when there’s other people expecting their wages, whether earned or not. It is your obligation, and that sense of responsibility is very serious and
must be taken serious. So there it goes, I had to let Dave go, and we’ve never really talked since.