Album (Public Image Ltd album)

Album (also known as Compact Disc or Cassette depending on the format) is the fifth studio album by English rock band Public Image Ltd, released on 3 February 1986. It features John Lydon backed by a group of musicians assembled by producer Bill Laswell, including Steve Vai, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Tony Williams and Ginger Baker.

Most of the songs were written by Lydon with Mark Schulz and Jebin Bruni and registered in September and October 1985, such as "Round And Round (European Cars)",^[5] "Fairweather Friend",^[6] "Fishing (Pearls Before Swine"),^[6] "Black Rubber Bag"^[7] and "Things In Ease".^[7] "Fairweather Friend" featured originally music written by Schulz and Bruni. An unrecorded Lydon/Schulz composition "Animal"^[7] was registered too. Schulz and PIL tour bassist Bret Helm had previously registered a further (presumably non-PIL, therefore unused) composition called “Cat Rap”.^[8]

The packaging concept is a pastiche of generic brand products, possibly in reference to those used throughout the cult punk film Repo Man.^[9] Flipper, a punk band from San Francisco, California, had released an album with the same concept and a near-identical name, Album - Generic Flipper, in 1982. Later in 1986, Flipper retaliated by releasing a live album entitled Public Flipper Limited Live 1980-1985.

In the liner notes of PiL's Plastic Box compilation (1999), Lydon remarked that Album was "almost like a solo album" since he was working on his own with several musicians. He said that Miles Davis came into the studio while the album was being recorded and commented that Lydon sang like Davis played the trumpet. Lydon said it was "still the best thing anyone's ever said to me."^[10]

Track listing

Listed on the album cover as "Ingredients"

1. "F.F.F." (John Lydon, Bill Laswell) – 5:32
2. "Rise" (Lydon, Laswell) – 6:04
3. "Fishing" (Lydon, Jebin Bruni, Mark Schulz) – 5:20
4. "Round" (Lydon, Schulz) – 4:24
5. "Bags" (Lydon, Bruni, Schulz) – 5:28
6. "Home" (Lydon, Laswell) – 5:49
7. "Ease" (Lydon, Bruni) – 8:09

Track by track commentary by Lydon and associates

"F.F.F.":

• John Lydon (1986/99): “Farewell to fairweather friends. There's a hell of a lot of them in the music business, clingers, dead wood, dead weights. So I had a great pleasure just flicking them out of my life.”^[11] “Farewell, fairweather friends! [...] It could be applied to quite a few people [...] There's a few, there's a whole host of them. They know who they are.”^[12] “'F.F.F.' is also pretty much clear - more references to people falling by the wayside. Not that I have a problem with that, I've always thought it's inevitable. When you work with people, you eventually drain each others' ideas and energy, and then it's time to move on.”^[10]
• Martin Atkins (former PIL drummer, 2002): “I think I initially left [the band in 1985] to try and jolt John into realising how awful I felt. He simply fuelled the shit storm with my betrayal - 'F.F.F.'!”^[13]
• Steve Vai (session guitarist, 2004/06): “Bill Laswell, the producer, called and I flew in and out of New York from Alcatrazz shows to cut the [solo guitar] parts. I did basically all the guitar parts in two days. Bill Laswell took a very interesting approach to the production of this disc. Some of the material I'd never heard and just went in and started playing on it. At the end, Johnny Lydon came in and liked it [...] There was the consideration of putting a band together - him, myself, Bill Laswell on bass and Ginger Baker on drums. Would have been quite a band.”^[14] “I went in in a day and did everything, then I flew back out on tour. And then I went in for another half day, and Lydon came in on the second day. He's just like ultracool and it's the first time he's heard any of my parts and he goes 'This is fucking great, man, how did you fucking know I wanted it like that?' [...] We were thinking about turning it into a band - me, him, Bill Laswell and Ginger Baker, but well, I was doing some other things, you know? It would have been cool. To this day that's one of the projects I'm most proud of.”^[15]

"Rise":

• Sid Vicious (1978): [about new Sex Pistols lyrics] “Yeah, we've got one about South Africa, about how those, about how the, like, blacks are repressed so bad there. And, like, that's not on and they are gonna rise up and they're gonna kill those, those people.”^[16]
• John Lydon (1986/92): “I read this manual on South African interrogation techniques, and 'Rise' is quotes from some of the victims. I put them together because I thought it fitted in aptly with my own feelings about daily existence.”^[17] “The song is not as personal as it could be because I've never been to South Africa, but it can apply to lots of other situations.”^[18] “I am PIL. Most of the songs on the 'Album', for instance, were written at home and put onto demonstration tapes. But I didn't think the [1984/85 touring] band were good enough or experienced enough really to, like, record the song properly. And that's why I use session people. [By using session musicians] the songs obviously changed - their shape, and not their direction.”^[19]
• John McGeoch (1990): “I actually heard demos of the stuff from before, songs like 'Rise' which was called 'South African Song', and 'F.F.F.' and stuff, and it wasn't written as a heavy metal album as such. But with the players and stuff it came out like that.”^[20]

"Fishing":

• John Lydon (1986/92/2007): “I'm referring to people who have to be in crowds, who can't stand up for themselves and who have no point of view.”^[21] “I'll never work with [drummer Ginger Baker] again: too many problems, and he's too old, always going 'Well, in my day...'”^[22] “Ginger Baker was an absolutely smashing bloke, as was everyone on 'Album'. Steve Vai, Shankar, Ryuichi Sakamoto - we came together as friends. There was more talk than there was actual play, which was very important. And the late, great Tony Williams, what a fantastic, wonderful human being!” ^[23]
• Ginger Baker (session drummer, 2010): “I never met or even spoke to John Lydon, it was all arranged for us to go into the studio and just put the tracks down. Tony Williams and I did half each, but as they released the record without the personell on it, all the reviews and write-ups could never tell who was who. We had a big laugh about it!”^[24]
• Bill Laswell (producer, 1999): “The whole thing with [Ginger Baker] came out of John Lydon suggesting playfully that he wanted Ginger to be the drummer in PIL, and I thought that was a great idea. So I was stupid enough to go to the north of Italy and find Ginger. I kind of brought him out of retirement and brought him back to New York and we did these tracks with Lydon.”^[25]
• Roger Trilling (Bill Laswell's manager, 1999): “I wasn't there, but apparently Ginger played for Bill in his barn. Just solo with the horses there, apparently the trees swayed and the flowers cried. The drum god would return. One small step for Ginger, one giant leap for John Lydon. The rest of the cast was quickly assembled - Tony Williams, Steve Vai, Bernie, Nicky, Aïyb. First we recorded the drums, with Jason Corsaro in the Power Station and its huge concrete resounding garage. Then we moved over to Quad for bass, keyboards and rhythm guitar. I would give John bulletins as we drank beer in bars - 'Today Steve Turre blew into conch shells, tomorrow a didgeridoo. Oh, Sakamoto did great today!' John grew wary, restive, even aggravated. Howard Thompson, in charge for Elektra, was even more importunate, I remember at one point physically barring him from getting into the elevator. We recorded a few days of Vai at Electric Lady, and then moved over to RPM for three days of vocals. John, I think, got a cassette the evening before. The idea was to get him on the initial take, and if it didn't work, keep the tapes, which was Bill's music anyway. Well, John's declamations were eloquent ones and no less aggressive or irritating than the music. Everyone was pleased, and though I remember John's presence in the anteroom during the mix, what I mostly remember is an all-night Korean restaurant, where we would start drinking at three, four, or five in the morning.”^[26]

"Round":

• John Lydon (1986): “The nuclear holocaust is imminent [...] These bastards are going to kill us all off, and of course I bloody worry about it!”^[27]

"Bags":

• John Lydon (1986): “That's about my fear of height [...] The end result when somebody falls off a cliff or building, and the black rubber bag is what they take you away in.”^[21]

"Ease":

• John Lydon (1986): “Susan and Norman, you dreary couple with the Ford Cortina and your names on the windscreen. There's actually a Susan and Norman out there right now, driving around in a blue Ford Cortina feeling well proud of themselves for being utterly dull.”^[17]

Related tracks

"World Destruction" (John Lydon solo single with Afrika Bambaataa):^[28]

• John Lydon (1984/85/86/90): [first meeting Bill Laswell] “So, you're the E.T. of the music business!”^[29] “I got in touch with Laswell to the 'Album' album from the Bambaataa project.”^[30] “I'm gonna be doing more work with Bill Laswell, the man who produced it, because he's going to be working on my new album. No, of course [PIL] is not finished! Damn cheek!”^[31] “Well, we had a few lyrics. We went in, put a drum beat down on the machine and did the whole thing in about 4 1/2 hours. It was very, very quick. They say you can't rush talent, but you can.”^[12]
• Afrika Bambaataa (1984/96): “The fact that he seems not to care while I'm trying to warn the people, I like that. Makes the record more scary.”^[29] “I was in Paris and I was just sitting in the hotel room watching CNN, which played a big role to me, and a movie that was called The Man Who Saw Tomorrow about the predictions of Nostradamus, with Orson Welles in it. So when I saw that, this thing just hit me to write something based on what Nostradamus was talking about, so that became the idea for 'World Destruction'. Then I was talking to Bill Laswell saying I need somebody who’s really crazy, man, and he thought of John Lydon. I knew he was perfect because I’d seen this movie that he’d made. I knew about all the Sex Pistols and Public Image stuff, so we got together and we did a smashing crazy version - and a version where he cussed the Queen something terrible, which was never released.”^[32]
• Bill Laswell (2005/09): “Bambaataa called me and said he wanted to do a song with the lead singer for Def Leppard. I told him I didn’t know the singer for Def Leppard, but I knew John Lydon. So the request to do it actually came from Bambaataa.”^[33] “It seemed like a very natural thing at the time. It wasn’t really my idea, I got a call from Afrika Bambaataa who wanted to incorporate what he does with metal to make 'World Destruction'. And he said to me 'Do you know Def Leppard?' And I said 'No, I don’t know Def Leppard.' At that time I didn’t know many metal people, I would later on but not then. So I told him that I had just got to know John Lydon. I told him that he was Johnny Rotten who had been in this band the Sex Pistols, saying 'It’s not really metal, but you might think it is,' and he said 'Yeah, that sounds good.' So we went and did this thing very quickly and it seemed very natural to me [...] I really liked 'Never Mind the Bollocks', I thought that was a great record, I liked the guitar and production. It was a really great album, intense and believable. And then when I heard PIL I liked that a lot as well because I was already interested in dub and Jah Wobble already had that low end sound. I liked them quite a lot – or the first few albums at least.”^[34]

"The Animal Speaks" (John Lydon collaboration with The Golden Palominos):^[35]

• Anton Fier (Golden Palominos drummer, 1986): “Oh it was sort of boring, a really elaborate session, much like a tooth extraction. Three days before recording I gave him a tape to listen to, which of course he didn't. The result is okay but the proceedings were quite difficult. I like the guy but he's really paranoid, and I know why – because over the years all sort of people have tried to take advantage of him. It just took a while until I had persuaded him that I wouldn't do that. Somehow it's a bit difficult to communicate with him until he trusts you.”^[36]

Personnel

• John Lydon – vocals
• Tony Williams – drums on 1 2 6
• Ginger Baker – drums on 3 4 5 7
• Bernard Fowler – backing vocals
• Ryuichi Sakamoto – Fairlight CMI on 2 3 5 7
• Nicky Skopelitis – guitar on 1 2 3 4 6
• Steve Vai – guitar
• Jonas Hellborg – bass

Additional personnel

• Shankar – electric violin on 2 4
• Bernie Worrell – organ on 1 4 6, Yamaha DX7 on 3
• Malachi Favors – acoustic bass on 3 5
• Steve Turre – didjeridu on 7
• Aïyb Dieng – chatan pot drums on 4

Charts

UK

• “Album” entered the UK Album Charts, where it stayed for 6 weeks and reached #14 on 15 February 1986.^[37]
• The single “Rise” entered the UK Top 75, where it stayed for 8 weeks and reached #11 on 1 February 1986.^[37]
• The single “Home” briefly entered the UK Top 75, where it stayed for 1 week at #75 on 3 May 1986.^[37]
• The single “World Destruction” by Time Zone entered the UK Top 75, where it stayed for 9 weeks and reached #44 on 19 January 1985.^[37]

USA

• “Album” entered the Billboard 200 album charts, where it stayed for 16 weeks and reached #115 on 12 April 1986.^[38]
• The single “Rise” did not chart.

Other countries

• In Canada, “Album” entered the Canadian Albums Chart, where it stayed for 5 weeks and reached #95 on 5 April 1986.^[39]
• In New Zealand, “Album” entered the Top 50 Albums Chart, where it stayed for 2 weeks and reached #34 on 27 April 1986. The single “Rise” entered the Top 50, where it stayed for 4 weeks and reached #29 on 30 March 1986. The single “World Destruction” by Time Zone entered the Top 50, where it stayed for 5 weeks and reached #12 on 21 April 1985.^[40]

References