This November saw the death of two guitarists who would help set the stage for the next stage of Punk after the UK Punk explosion of 1976-77 known as Post Punk in the persons of Keith Levene of the original line up of Public Image Ltd and Wilko Johnson of Dr Feelgood.
PUBLIC IMAGE LTD ~ "PUBLIC IMAGE";
The very name Post Punk is a bit of a misnomer as it obviously implies that it followed Punk but in fact it grew up at almost exactly the same time and by the time of that Post Punk was considered as officially kicking things off with their first single "Public Image" in 1978 several of the most important Post Punk bands had already been in the studio or would shortly do so including Siouxsie & The Banshees (with guitarist John McKay), Magazine (with John McGeogh, future guitarist for the Banshees and PIL), Joy Division, Wire, Ultravox, The Fall, The Cure, The Soft Boys, The Slits, Simple Minds, Japan and shorter lived and now largely forgotten but then important bands Subway Sect, Alternative Television and the Desperate Bicycles. By 1979 we could add in Bauhaus, Gang Of Four, Killing Joke, the Psychedelic Furs, Clock DVA, The Pop Group, A Certain Ratio, The Au Pairs, Delta 5 and early U2 among others. While Post Punk was largely a British (and more specifically English) movement there were some American bands who should be included as well both for their sound as well as general presentation and attitudes some of whom actually predate some of the above bands notably Pere Ubu, Television, Talking Heads (on their first two albums), the Motels (ditto) and possibly Devo and the hard to classify Suicide. Similarly Canada had a few more obscure but influential entries with Simply Saucer, The Scenics, Cardboard Brains, the early version of Martha & the Muffins and possibly FM, all from Toronto aside from Simply Saucer from neighbouring Hamilton.
PIL ~ "THE FLOWERS OF ROMANCE":
The difference between Punk and Post Punk then was not strictly chronological but musical as well as having a different (if related) attitude and aesthetic. Musically Punk took aggressive rejected the bloated monster Hard Rock had become in the hands of lumbering Blooze Busters like Led Zeppelin and Cream, Metal dinosaurs like Black Sabbath and Uriah Heep, Prog Rock leviathans like Emerson Lake & Palmer and Southern Rock Boogie bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd, all of which relied on extended solos, long songs, shrill banshee or bellowed vocals, sluggish tempos and murky, downtuned sounds. Instead they took their inspiration from 60's Garage and Proto punk bands found on the hugely influential "Nuggets" and "Pebbles" collections with the likes of the Count Five, the Sonics, Chocolate Watchband, Shadows Of Knight, Standells and Seeds as well as later bands like the Stooges and MC5 along with more contemporary bands the New York Dolls, Flamin Groovies, Thin Lizzy and Ramones. Being British they also added influences from Glam and Glitter bands T Rex, The Sweet and Ziggy Stardust era Bowie. What they had in common was a belief in stripping the music down to its basics, three or four chords played fast with short solos, lyrics spat or sneered out between clenched teeth and boundless energy if not rage. Instead of the crushing steamroller of Metal or Blooze & Boogie bands with their heavily distorted and bass heavy fuzz sound and booming drums Punk guitars went for a buzzing high treble chainsaw guitar sound and staccato drums.
PIL ~ "DEATH DISCO";
Post Punk bands however were different. While many took their inspiration from the thrashing guitars of Punk and some even started out that way they quickly discarded it for a more brittle, choppy approach with a cleaner sound and plenty of space between the instruments. The bass became a more important feature with more prominent and catchy bass lines influenced by Funk and Dub. While most Punk bands had rejected Art Rock as snobbish and pretentious, Post Punk was happy to embrace some of the more underground Art Rock bands like the Velvet Underground, Pere Ubu and Can.
Punk rock was about energy, immediacy and emotional intensity and honesty while Post Punk was obscure, coolly detached, intellectual and moody. In its aesthetics Punk was similarly direct and in-your-face. In rejecting the long hair, flares, oversized jackets and earth tones of the late sixties and early seventies for their look Punk basically took the traditional Rockabilly leather jacket, tight jeans, boots and pompadour and crossed it with the day-glo colours and flash of Glam filtered through a Dada lens. Post Punk in turn rejected the flash of Punk in favour of somber blacks or greys, button down shirts, sweaters and short hair. The graphics for Punk records and posters were similarly flashy with bold colours and jagged cut-up graphics while Post Punk went for austere simplicity. Lyrically Punk songs were either traditional R&R songs about love, sex and partying or angry politics done in very direct no-nonsense rants while Post Punk lyrics were much more literary and willfully obscure. Punk appealed to mostly working class youths while Post Punk often came from slightly older middle class university students who studied art, design, literature, film or fashion. Punk was music for extroverts while Post Punk was for introverts.These are generalizations of course; Joe Strummer was famously well read and articulate but it was as hard to imagine Joy Division or Robert Smith slam dancing in the pit as it was to picture the Damned in a library.
PIL ~ "CAREERING";
Public Image Ltd became the face of Post Punk not because they were the first, they were not, but because singer Johnny Lydon made a point of saying so and he had been the face of Punk. After leaving the Sex pistols he emphatically rejected Punk as being as brain-dead, conformist and obsolete as the hippie stoners they despised and insisted there was a need to move on to a Post Punk future, although whatever that might mean wasn't entirley clear. And Johnny Lydon had the profile and charisma to be that face. The other reason Public Image Ltd (hereafter referred to as PIL) became the face of Post Wasn't Johnny at all but his band, specifically bassist Jah Wobble and guitarist Keith Levene. Previous Post Punk bands hadn't quite figured out a distinctive enough sound yet. At this point most still sounded like artsy Punk bands with slower, more angular songs and obscure lyrics. Jah Wobble provided the missing catalyst with his deep, rumbling but crystal clear basslines influenced by Dub Reggae (hence the name Jah) and Funk. PIL may have been annoyingly impenetrable and pretentious but they were often irresistibly danceable as well and this would become the trademark for the likes of Joy Division, Bauhuas and Gang Of Four. Almost as important as Wobble's bass was Keith Levene's guitar. He had actually started out in the original five piece line-up of the Clash but they fired him citing his drug use and unreliability. Unlike the early lineups of the Banshees, Wire, Joy Division, Ultravox, Simple Minds, Japan or Clock DVA this Clash lineup sadly did not record so we do not know how his sound evolved but by the time he was recruited to join Lydon's post Pistols project he too had developed a distinctive sound. Instead of the buzzsaw power-chord riffs of Punk he added sheets of even simpler chords weaving in and out or crashing over Wobble's simple but impossibly catchy bass lines for a sound that was far away from the turbo-charged Garage rock of the Pistols and other first generation but even more challenging. Wobble's basslines at least had obvious if unexpected precedents in Dub and Funk but Levene's (who also cited as influences the very Prog Rock guitarists scorned by all right thinking Punks) cascading shards of incredibly tense fragments of Glam riffs seemed as far removed from the direct simplicity of Punk as they were from the Blues of Country riffs all Rock is based on and yet somehow still related.
PUBLIC IMAGE LTD ~ "THIS IS NOT A LOVE SONG";
Perhaps predicatably PIL turned out to be only slightly more stable than the infamously fractious Sex Pistols and after two brilliant and groundbreaking albums with "First Issue" (1978) and "Metal Box" (1979) that essentially codified Post Punk as a genre they started to fall apart. After a 1980 live album ("Paris Au Printemps") Wobble was out along with the drummer. Becoming even more experimental and willfully obscure Lydon decided not to replace Wobble at all and Levene switched to synthesizer for the next album "The Flowers Of Romance" (1981) which dabbled in the sort of Post Industrial Rock that Cabaret Voltaire, Clock DVA and the Virgin Prunes had also been exploring with mixed results. The sessions for the next album (tentatively called "The Commercial Zone") turned into an even more fraught affair and ended up being scrapped forcing the band to kill time with another mediocre live album "Live In Tokyo" (1983) by which time Levene was out as well taking with him the demo tapes for the aborted fourth album which he would release in 1984 under the PIL name much to the fury of Lydon who would head back into the studio and re record some of the same songs under under the title "This Is What You Want This Is What You Get" in 1984 which actually did score a mild hit with "This Is Not A Love Song" but got mixed reviews with most critics preferring the Levene versions. Lydon accused Levene of never forgave Levene (or Wobble) and PIL took a few years off before returning with the strong but surprisingly mainstream "Album" which became PIL's biggest hit and led to four more albums of fairly straightforward New Wave with a band that included guitarist John McGeogh, formerly of the Banshees, Magazine and Visage. McGeogh was a fine guitarist and had also done some groundbreaking and even breathtaking work in his previous bands but by this point he was burned out and perhaps so was Lydon who now lacked partners to challenge him. Or perhaps he had tired of banging his head against the wall making experimental albums few people now wanted while watching some of his contemporaries like the Cure, Banshees, New Order, Simple Minds and U2 scoring hits and filling stadiums. At any rate the late 80's PIL albums sound little different from the bands they were now opening for like INXS and New Order with little standing out aside from Lydon's now tamed but still impossible to miss voice. But while these latter albums were solid and successful enough at the time they have not dated particularly well. PIL broke up for good in 1992. John McGeogh retired from music and died in 2004 aged only 48. Lydon released an electronic solo album 1997 that went nowhere (Note; I actually interviewed him at that time and can report that in spite of his reputation for being difficult he was in a good mood and quite chatty) and that was basically it. The Sex Pistols would do a reunion tour in 1996 to mixed but reasonably friendly reviews (I saw that tour and interviewed guitarist Steve Jones who was also perfectly nice). For the past several years he has written his well received memoirs, taken part in the excellent Sex Pistols bio film, dabbled with PIL reunions, the inevitable Broadway show (aborted of course) appeared on "The Masked Singer", feuded with various former bandmate and journalist (I once saw him chewout a paticulaly smug reporter), got fat and become a supporter of Brexit and worse, Trump. To be fair, unlike fellow Brexit and Trump supporting eighties Post Punk singer Morrissey, Lydon hasn't endorsed white nationalism or fascism. He just seems like a cantankerous old troll at this point although he has disappointed more than a few people (song reference!).
PUBLIC IMAGE LTD ~ "THE ORDER OF DEATH";
Levene's post PIL was more low key. After releasing his "Commercial Zone" tapes he moved to LA and dropped out of sight for a while aside from producing some tracks for the Red Hot Chilli Peppers "The Uplift Mojo Party Plan" in 1986. In 1989 he recorded a solo album backed up by the Chilli Peppers that attracted little attention. He also made a few more obscure recordings and produced some demos for Ice T and Tone Loc. In 2010 he reunited with Jah Wobble to play some gigs and re-record some instrumental songs off of "Metal Box" for an EP and then another album of instrumental songs from "Commercial Zone" in 2014 and that was about it. He died of liver cancer aged 65.
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Wilko Johnson was the guitarist for Dr Feelgood, a band that never got much, if any, attention in North America but scored a number of hits in the early days of Punk. Dr Feelgood were not really a punk band themselves, let alone a post Punk band. Instead they were one of the greatest of a peculiar English genre known as Pub Rock that slightly prestaged and co-existed alongside Punk in the mid-seventies. Pub Rock, which included the likes of Nick Lowe and Dave Demunds and the band Rockpile along with Chris Spedding and more obscure bands the Inmates, Nine Below Zero, Ducks Deluxe and the early Elvis Costello, Graham Parker and even Dire Straits played traditional Blues based Rock & Roll, without any frills but usually with some energy. Although essentially musically conservative in the 1970's they were rebelling against the same bloated and scloratic music industry that Punk was and shared some of the same clubs and independent labels and thus saw a fair amount of crossover appeal in early days of the Punk revolution which they largely sympathized with.
DR FEELGOOD ~ "ROXETTE";
Dr Feelgood were particularly noted for their high energy shows but even more for Wilko Johnson's guitar work. While other Pub Rock guitarists like Dave Edmunds, Billy Bremner and Chris Spedding played energetic and stripped down but basically traditional sixties Rock & Roll guitar Johnson developed his own style noted for his choppy, staccato runs and short sharp spidery solos and his crisp tense sound. By offering a viable alternative to the three power chord thrash of Punk that still had real bite and drive while allowing plenty of space for the bass to drive the song Johnson would give Post Punk guitarists room to experiment and would be cited as an influence by bands that did not at first glance seem to share much with the resolutely not artsy Feelgoods especially Gang Of Four, The Delta 5, and even early Banshees, Joy Division, Wire and the Cure.
DR FEELGOOD ~ "SHE DOES IT RIGHT";
Dr Feelgood would have another thing in common with Punk bands in being a fractious unit and after four albums stretching from 1975 to 1977 Johnson stomped out in a huff. The band would replace him and carry on recording several albums with lead singer Lee Brillaux being the only constant member until he died in 1994. In fact a version continues to tour today having had no original members for almost thirty years. Johnson would record several albums of his own along with working with Ian Dury and Roger Daltrey but he would get the most attention in America appearing in "Game Of Thrones" as the mute executioner. He died, also of cancer aged 75.
DR FEELGOOD ~ "BOOM BOOM";
