In the mid-1970s, the bloated and moribund music industry was given a much needed enema by The Sex Pistols. Anarchic and swearing, they spit upon Britain's cultural icons and reminded people that rock and roll wasn't only the province of self-indulgent millionaires. In the 1950s, Elvis scared middle class parents with his blatant sexuality while his blending of country and blues music threatened the South's segregationist attitudes. In the 1960s music came to epitomize all that was wrong with society, according to the protectors of moral decency as it promoted sex, drug use, and worst of all questioning authority.
Yet when rock stars became celebrities and started earning a few bucks, it's amazing how quickly they became part of the establishment. English rock and rollers complaining about having to pay taxes when they had grown up in council flats, or were raised on the National Health system funded by tax dollars, were a fine examples of how they became those they claimed to despise (but in reality had probably only envied). While John Lennon may have given his MBE (Member of the British Empire) back, it's hard to imagine John Lydon even making it onto the New Year's honour list.
The Sex Pistols only ever put out one studio album, Never Mind The Bollocks, and self-imploded after a couple of years. Shedding the punk surname Rotten he'd worn as lead singer of the Pistols, Lydon, founded Public Image Limited (PiL) in 1978. For the next fourteen years, with a lineup best described as fluid, the band released a series of albums that challenged and defied listener's and critic's expectations. Anyone who had been expecting Sex Pistols revisited was in for a shock. Lydon and PiL refused to be buttonholed or defined by an industry that liked everything in neat categories and just to rub salt in the wounds, managed to succeed playing it by their own rules. By the time they shut it down in 1992, they had scored five top 20 singles and five top 20 albums on the UK charts.
Twenty years later, PiL is still playing it by their own rules. They reformed in 2009 and began touring with much the same line as in '92. Lydon and PiL bandmates since 1986, Lu Edmonds (guitar) and Bruce Smith (drums/percussion), were joined by newcomer Scott Firth (bass). Any thoughts the more cynical might have had about this being an "old farts looking to regain lost glory" tour will be dispelled once you listen to their new release, This Is PiL. As befitting the guy who wrote the scathing "EMI", Lydon and company raised the cash for the disc themselves and have released it on their own Official PiL label (distributed in the US by Redeye Distribution).
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