PUBLIC IMAGE LTD.
O2 Academy, Birmingham | October 20th
The penultimate date of PiL’s seven date UK tour saw Crack taking a jaunt up the M5 to take in the sights of Birmingham’s O2 Academy. You could be forgiven for thinking that once you’ve seen one Academy, you’ve seen them all, but on reaching the bar we were at least thankful that they’ve removed themselves from the watered down, corporate clutches of Carling.
Not that the eager punks in the front of the queue had received the memo; they were already several cans of the stuff down by the time we arrived. We immediately noticed that the show had attracted an interesting crosssection of subcultures – what with 2 Tone ska figureheads The Selecter as special guests – and the various public images on show ranged from skinheads, to mods with their scooter jackets adorned in patches, to the original punk aesthetic unchanged since the late 70s.
Opening act Erica Nockalls had channeled her own version of this aesthetic, coming across all Courtney Love meets Gwen Stefani with her black leather jacket and bright pink tutu. The multiinstrumentalist Nockalls, sometime violinist with The Wonder Stuff, was ably supported by her nearly all female backing band, peddling their own brand of power pop, like Lady Gaga driven by distorted guitars.
Next up were The Selecter, celebrating 35 years in the business with a reformed line-up consisting of only two original members – vocalists Pauline Black and Arthur ‘Gaps’ Hendrickson. Defying age and fatigue, the two vocalists bounded around the stage and the whole band was filled with energy, with keyboardist Greg Coulson deserving a special mention for his skills. The Selecter never quite achieved the level of mainstream success enjoyed by Madness or The Specials yet their revival is gratefully welcomed, with three most recognisable tracks On My Radio, Three Minute Hero and Missing Words all getting a huge reception at the end of their joyful set.
Love him or loathe him (and there’s no denying John Lydon splits opinions like few others), the artist formerly known as Johnny Rotten is a fascinating pillar of music as we know it today, and five days previous to this show, he was recognised with a BMI Icon award for songwriting from the Pistols days, through to his 18 active years in Public Image. And as fascinating – and often bizarre – as his life has been in the public eye, he is exactly the same vision onstage; strutting, snarling, spitting, snotting and subjecting the sound technicians to his legendary vitriol for messing up the levels in the monitors (this happens once or twice, taking some of the focus and impetus away from the performance). Taking swigs of water followed by a glug of brandy before yacking both into a lined bin in front of the drumkit – presumably to protect those ageing yet powerful vocal chords, rather than getting slightly pissed via osmosis – despite the sound techs getting an earful, he seems to have mellowed a little in his age, at least onstage. There are no rants at politicians, society, the media … He does, however, find time to make a self-deprecating crack about his weight – ‘I’ve had to get off of the butter’ – which offers an insight into his feelings towards the ‘sellout’ outcry directed towards that Country Life advert, and a working class man just trying to get paid somehow (which, incidentally, paid for the reformation of PiL, according to Lydon).
For a man so tuned into the presentation of his own public image, and the public’s representation of that image, it’s unsurprising that one of the strongest tracks performed on the night is just that – Public Image. A burning issue that will never die for Lydon, he performs in kind. Yet tonight is not all about Lydon. Guitarist Lu Edmonds (of The Damned, and formerly but not originally PiL) is a highlight and an excellent technical player, taking the sound defined by original member Keith Levene and making it his own on a series of guitars, and what appeared to be a banjo run through a distortion pedal.
Having been a surprising highlight at Glastonbury, this time around PiL delve a little deeper into the back catalogue, throwing in a couple of ten minute epics such as Albatross, alongside Reggie Song and One Drop from last year’s This Is…PiL. However the biggest shouts of the night are reserved for Rise,This Is Not A Love Song, and The Order of Death, with its “This is what you want, this is what you get” chant. PiL even find time to finish with a Leftfield cover, a fitting finish with its pulsing bassline, highlighting the varied influences which made the band so strikingly progressive in their original late 70s “not a rock’n’roll band” context. This was exactly what we wanted from tonight, and this is what we got.
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Words + Photos: Kane Aaron
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