In Scottish writer Muriel Spark’s 1968 novel, The Public Image, actress Annabel Christopher is obsessed with her appearance. She pleases obsessed fans and paparazzi with a made-up persona, and everyone is a casualty for the sake of her image, even her husband, Frederick, who she uses as part of the ruse to keep up with appearances.
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Post Pistols
The story fascinated John Lydon, not so much for Spark’s ill-fated protagonist, but because of its title.
Shortly after his departure from The Sex Pistols, and the band’s ultimate demise in January 1978, Lydon (Johnny Rotten) had formed a new band, rounded out with former Clash guitarist Keith Levene, bassist Jah Wobble, and drummer Jim Walker by May of that year.
The band still needed a name, and Lydon reverted to Sparks’ story. In the July 22, 1978 issue of NME, Lydon officially revealed the band’s name as Public Image Ltd. (PiL) and added that they would manage themselves under their deal with Virgin Records.
“I got the name Public Image from a book by that Scottish woman, Muriel Spark, who wrote Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” said Lydon in his 2008 aural history of punk, Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs. “When I was in Italy, somebody introduced her writings to me. I checked out some of her other books when I got home. One of them was called ‘The Public Image.’ It was all about this actress who was unbearably egotistical.”
Lydon added on the “Ltd” to the end of Public Image, citing a drawing back from the combustible nature of his time in The Sex Pistols.
“I thought, ‘Ha! The Public Image. Limited,” said Lydon. “Not as a company, but to be limited, not being as out there as I was with the Sex Pistols.”
‘First Issue’
PiL released its debut, Public Image: First Issue, in late ’78, and its title track—Lydon’s narrative on feeling exploited while in The Sex Pistols—hit the top 10 on the UK charts.
The band followed up with The Metal Box in 1979 and The Flowers of Romance in 1981, the album title referencing an early Sex Pistols song and the punk band founded by the Pistols’ Steve Jones and Paul Cook’s girlfriends, which featured Levene, along with former Pistols bassist Sid Vicious and The Slits’ Viv Albertine and Palmolive.
This Is What You Want… This Is What You Get followed in 1984 with the band’s unsentimental “This Is Not a Love Song” and its follow-up, Album, featuring PiL’s biggest hit “Rise.” Public Image Ltd released three more albums through This What Is Not in 1992 before taking a 20-year hiatus, and eventually releasing This Is PiL in 2012 and What the World Needs Now… in 2015.
Eurovision and ‘End of World’
Though Public Image Ltd has had a revolving door of band members throughout the past 40-plus years, Lydon has remained PiL’s constant.
Along with guitarist Lu Edmonds, bassist Scott Firth, and drummer Bruce Smith, the band’s 2023 album, End of World, features the closing track “Hawaii,” which was performed by PiL during the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest with the band representing Ireland.
The song is a love letter to Lydon’s wife of nearly 45 years, Nora Forster, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2018 and died in April of 2023.
Photo by Andres Poveda Photography / Prime PR Group
