Melodrama In Your Eyes

Public Image Ltd : Annalisa

[Purchase]

On December 8, 1978 Public Image Ltd released First Edition, a hard rocking album that reveals singer Johnny Rotten's true musical passions were not the sloppy hard rock of the Sex Pistols but, rather, the sounds of dub reggae, Can and even the out of this world Captain Beefheart. With the spacey bass of  the self taught Jah Wobble and the frenzied guitar of Keith Levene, Rotten --now reclaiming his birth name John Lydon-- tackles gut-wrenching subject matters dear to his heart.

The earlier single "Public Image" was the declaration of independence: "I will not be treated as property". That the album was released in the dead weeks of December still pisses off Lydon.

There were other subject matters. As Lydon writes in his memoir, Anger is an Energy:

All demons come from religion, and the Catholic religion is the most serious demon of them all. "Annalisa" is about a young girl who died when her parents allowed the Catholic Church to perform an exorcism on her in a small town in Germany. That poor girl was fucked by the stupid environment she was in--a small town full of small-minded people--and I believe her problems really were that she was coming of age as a teenager and she was coming to grips with all the things that teenagers go through- that sense of individuality and rebellion and indeed sexuality. Her overtly Catholic parents were trying to stifle that, and , after trying to pursue her in countless ways, they starved her to death.

"Purge the demon".

Some fans looked for commentary about The Sex Pistols and manager Malcolm McLaren. The song "Attack", with the lines :"You who guarded all the loot...you who buried me alive" is indeed about McLaren. 

The silly album closer, "Fodderstompf", with its repeating line "We only wanted to be loved" is one of the decade's most obvious attempts at album filler. PiL needed the nearly eight minute tune to hit the running time Virgin stipulated before they would release the album. Thus, the line : "We only wanted to finish the album with the minimum amount of effort which we are now doing very successfully."