Edinburgh Reporter Interview – An interview with the bassist and singer who is coming to Edinburgh on 3rd May.
“I’m Celtic. Drone, Keening, Air. That’s the right deep stuff for me.”
On a cold but bright January day in West London, Jah Wobble arranged to meet me at the Chelsea Arts Club.
The former Public Image Ltd bassist signed me in, as it’s only for private members, and the atmosphere is relaxed. Phones are prohibited and different energies are allowed. Wobble, a keen Spurs fan, sits in a corner of the club’s restaurant wearing a flat black cap as he discusses current manager and former Celtic manager Ange Postecoglou. “He’s got that Australian attitude. I’m glad he didn’t have to tan like he usually does.”
He was referring to the 2-2 draw with Man United a few days ago. After joking with the chef about their win over Liverpool in September, the conversation turned to his upcoming tour of Ireland, where he and his band The Invaders of the Heart performed PiL’s ‘Metal・Box (Rebuilt in Dub)” is scheduled to be performed.
“It was a really primitive record, and it really captured something. When the[Sex]Pistols came and went with John[Lydon]I dabbled in bass and He let me join. I thought he was my buddy, I could trust him, so I’m okay with that. He’s the best musician in that scene, a real player, Keith. – I brought Levin in. We spent a lot of time doing squats and just working. I went all in and made the most of the opportunity. I kept it simple and created patterns. I was already thinking in a conceptual way about the sounds, textures and shapes.”
Wobble helped set the tone by introducing Lydon and Levine to his first bass line, which quickly took shape as their debut single Public Image, giving the band a hit record in the UK and Ireland in the summer of 1978. I did. Public Image’s first issue was an essential post-punk long-player, but it was their second album, Metal Box, released at the end of 1979, that continued the band’s growth.
“John’s lyrics were spontaneous and in many ways prose-like, like Samuel Beckett. This is not a criticism, but I don’t think John has done anything like that since.” 2009 When PiL reunited in 2012, he reunited with Levine (who died in 2022) in 2012 after Lydon’s negotiations with Wobble broke down. “For a long time I wouldn’t touch[the Metal Box]with a bargepole, but for some shows I went to America. I got a Fender P and played it on the Metal Box. So I started working on playing all the old lines. It was like a first love and I thought, “Why did I leave you?” When I started playing more extensive shows with some of Public Image’s works, I got an offer from Cleopatra Records to consider rebuilding and re-envisioning Metal Box for an album. I said yes.
“I was already thinking about string arrangements and dub influences, and then I started doing it live.” Wobble will tour Ireland in early February, starting in their ancestral home of Cork. John Wardle was born in 1958, renamed Jah Wobble by Sid Vicious after he had trouble pronouncing his name. Early versions of reggae (blue beat) and ska were major influences on his style. “Of course, Jah’s part was perfect because I’m a huge reggae fan.”
Irish music was deeply rooted in his “core” and soon he was experimenting with different styles. Shortwave radio also provided him with an important cultural connection. “It’s deep in the core of my being, and in that sense I’m Celtic. The drone, the keening, the air, that’s just deep to me. African bass is like a bass bodhrán, It’s essentially Irish, if you like. The best music has a universal connection, and listening to Egyptian musician Umm Kultum on shortwave radio made me feel an emotional and spiritual connection. He describes the strong communities in London and Ireland where he grew up as “like a different world now” and as being at the “end of the story” of his life. “During the famine, families began arriving on steamboats, but another wave of famine occurred in the early 20th century.
Wobble’s 2009 memoir Confessions Of A Geezer is about to be republished in a new expanded edition. A gifted storyteller who provides first-hand experience of his life leading up to punk, this book is a funny and emotional story about his early friendship with John Lydon, whom he described as a “caring” and “big brother type”. I am writing about it.
Along with Sid Vicious (named Sid by Lydon) and John Gray, they were part of a mythologized group known as the Four Johns. “John (Lydon) was a big person in my life and really helped me get started in music. I lost some schooling and after being expelled, I went to do my O-levels. When I met John, he had meningitis and was making up for lost schooling.
Like me, he was a John Joseph, and there was Sid, who was also a John, and John Gray, who was another John Joseph, and the four of us always drank at Four John’s Pub. ” The 65-year-old quit drinking in 1985, calling it “the best thing I’ve ever done” and left the industry to work for the London Underground.
It wasn’t long before his musical calling brought him back to a particularly prolific period. In 1992, he was shortlisted for the Mercury Music Prize for Rising Above Bedlam, which he would play on the award-winning album Screamadelica. Wobble also met his second wife, Chinese harpist Zi Lan Lio, in the early 1990s. They continued to collaborate at various points, including the Chinese dubbing in 2009. He also performs in “Tian Qiyi” with his two sons Charlie and John.
Jah Wobble will perform at Edinburgh’s Voodoo Rooms on Friday 3rd May
Dark Luminosity: Memoirs of a Geezer, expanded edition launches on March 7th
