Public Image Ltd (PiL) are an English post-punk band formed by vocalist John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten), guitarist Keith Levene and bassist Jah Wobble, with frequent subsequent personnel changes. Lydon is the sole constant member of the band.
Lydon emerged after the break-up of the Sex Pistols with PiL's Public Image: First Issue (1978). His new band had a more experimental sound: Wobble's "droning, slow-tempo, bass-heavy noise rock, overlaid by Lydon's distinctive, vituperative rant". Their early work is often regarded as some of the most challenging and innovative music of the post-punk era. Their 1979 album Metal Box was ranked number 469 on Rolling Stone magazine's 2003 list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. The NME described PiL as "arguably the first post-rock group".
Read more about Public Image Ltd: Metal Box in Dub
Famous quotes containing the words public and/or image:
“Utah is the only State that gives condemned men a choice between death by hanging or before a firing squad. Most prisoners prefer the firing squad, but one obstinate convict in 1912 elected to be hanged because “hanging is more expensive to the state.””
—State of Utah, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“The light of memory, or rather the light that memory lends to things, is the palest light of all.... I am not quite sure whether I am dreaming or remembering, whether I have lived my life or dreamed it. Just as dreams do, memory makes me profoundly aware of the unreality, the evanescence of the world, a fleeting image in the moving water.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)