Jah Wobble
He may be best known for his post-punk days as the bassist in Public Image Ltd, but he’s also worked with the likes of Jaki Liebezeit, Steve Hillage and Brian Eno, and is a big prog fan himself. So now we have to ask the big question: how prog is Jah Wobble?
Words:
The lead-off single for Jah Wobble’s new album is a distinct echo from the past. First issued in 1978, Public Image was the debut 45 from PiL, the post-punk outfit formed by John Lydon in the wake of the Sex Pistols’ demise. Over its abrasive three minutes, Lydon poured scorn on his former colleagues over Keith Levene’s guitar and a classic rumbling bassline from Wobble.
Nearly 40 years on, Wobble and long-time band The Invaders Of
The Heart have given Public Image a dub-jazz makeover that shifts the song into a whole other spacey dimension.
“I never would’ve thought of doing the old PiL numbers a few years ago,” Wobble says. “I always thought they were sacrosanct or that you couldn’t do them justice. But when it was suggested that we do this one, I said
I’d give it a go. And we ended up doing a sophisticated minor key version. I love it. It sounds just as fresh as the original, but in another way.”
Parent album The Usual Suspects is full of similarly radical reworkings.
Rob Hughes because it’s really developed,” Wobble explains. “We kept interpreting the numbers better and better and there’s a lot of spontaneity there every night.
“Back in the day, you’d put numbers together, go in and record, then go out live. But this is the other way round – we played the stuff for ages, then went into the studio. This band is always very creative. Even during those sessions, we’d be coming to the end of a number and start improvising on something else.”
Wobble’s deep passion for musical exploration has taken him far and wide since he was loaned his first bass by Sid Vicious, whom he met in 1973 at London’s Kingsway College (Vicious, incidentally, also gave him his stage moniker, after slurring Wobble’s real name, John Wardle, when drunk).
He’s recorded with Can’s Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit, plus noted French DJ/producer François Kevorkian, Bill Laswell, Brian Eno, Afro Celt Sound System, Björk, Steve Hillage, The Orb, Pharoah Sanders and countless others – among them his wife, the Chinese guzheng player Zi Lan Liao. In that time he’s released everything from film soundtracks and ambient albums to spoken-word pieces and tributes to William Blake and the Celtic Poets.
Originally inspired by dub reggae, Wobble’s trademark low-end bass first found a home with PiL, investing their music with a depth and range more akin to modal jazz – and, as it transpires, the elasticity of the prog rock that informed his youth.
“I’m naturally not disciplined,” he says. “I’m always looking to go beyond strictures. That’s why I found the whole thing about playing three-chord punk very bourgeois at the time. I was an uptight, ex-Catholic altar boy, and me and hallucinogenics didn’t mix