Public Image Ltd ‘Rise’
In 1985 John Lydon found himself in a New York studio with producer Bill Laswell and a group of session musicians. The result was to become one of PiL’s most recognisable tracks.
In 1984, the artist formerly known as Johnny Rotten was feeling “cast aside” and lost. It had been six years since John Lydon had escaped the wreckage of the Sex Pistols and formed Public Image Ltd, whose second album Metal Box in 1979 — with its primal screaming, dub bass and avant-garde guitar noise — had helped define post-punk. But over the ensuing years, successive line-ups of PiL had fallen apart and now Lydon, suffering from a rare moment of self-doubt due to a lack of support from his label Virgin Records, was wondering whether or not to quit the music business altogether.
“I didn’t know where I stood in the music industry,” Lydon says today. “The purse strings were being withheld and everything was difficult. PiL as a band was under real severe pressure and that pressure eventually cracked us and left me kind of stranded there. I didn’t know what really to do with myself.”
Enter Bill Laswell, the New York-based musician and producer whose own discography at that point included experimental punk-funk with his band Material, as well as production credits for Laurie Anderson (Mister Heartbreak) and Herbie Hancock (Future Shock). Come ’84, Laswell was working on a track with hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa which the latter thought could benefit from a cameo appearance by a rock singer. Laswell suggested John Lydon.
“The first two PiL records I thought were great,” says Laswell. “As a sound I always liked [bassist Jah] Wobble and I thought that [Keith Levene’s] guitar was very influential. Between the guitar and the bass they influenced so many bands. It minimalised all the references, you just heard the fundamental. So I was really into PiL.”
Together in BC Studio in Brooklyn, Laswell, Bambaataa and Lydon created the landmark 12-inch Time Zone single ‘World Destruction’, one of the first records to meld rap and rock. “It was done pretty spontaneously,” says Laswell. “The beat was the Oberheim DMX. The whole style in drum machines went from the 808 to the 909, and all the pop stuff was the LinnDrum, but the more raw hip hop stuff, most of it was the Oberheim DMX. So we went to the studio and Bambaataa had prepared some lyrics. We just made up a piece and then John came in.”
“Bam had the basics of his song,” says Lydon, “but he had no hook and chorus and bam in I came with the [sings] ‘Time zooone’ bit. The whole thing came together relatively quickly.”
For Lydon, the bringing together of rock and rap seemed an obvious fit. “The thing you’ve got to understand about Bambaataa is his DJ background,” he says. “As well as Parliament and Funkadelic and things like that, he was spinning Kraftwerk and there’d be the occasional mad rock tracks in there. So it wasn’t too difficult a journey for me. We had a similar love of different kinds of sounds.
Following the release of ‘World Destruction’, Lydon and Laswell forged a plan to make the next PiL record together. Simply titled Album, it produced a number 11 UK hit in the shape of the hypnotic and heavy single ‘Rise’, featuring the singer’s “anger is an energy” hookline and memorable “may the road rise with you” chorus. Album featured Lydon and the bass-playing Laswell alongside an impressive cast of session musicians including drummers Ginger Baker and Tony Williams, guitarists Steve Vai and Nicky Skopelitis, Fairlight programmer Ryuichi Sakamoto and electric violin-player Shankar. “I gotta say that working with Bill was a good pickup at that point,” Lydon admits, “and definitely making Album. The amount of A-league players that would come into the studio, and very willingly, was a refreshing reintroduction into why I love music so much.
“It proved to me that I could work with anyone,” he laughs. “The best of them as well as the worst.”
THE TEAM
