Public Image Ltd: Memories
(Virgin Records, 1979)
"Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of pain."
I.
Looking back, one of the admirable things about 22-year-old John Lydon, after he left the Sex Pistols in 1978, is he had no time for rosy retrospection.
Indeed, if anything, he viewed his own punk past and Rotten persona negatively - as something to be abandoned or overcome, rather than desperately clung to or fondly remembered:
I'm not the same as when I began ... This person's had enough of useless memories ... [1]
II.
However we attempt to configure it, the nature of one's relationship to one's own past remains an interesting question ...
Is it best, for example, to simplify one's own history and, in the process of simplifying it, also give it a positive gloss; are good memories (and reshaped lies) vital in maintaining self-esteem and happiness?
Or is it best (if possible) to never look back; to regard nostalgia as a dangerous disease; to tie innocence and becoming to forgetfulness and/or an active denial of the past?
It was, after all, because of Lydon's refusal to rest on his laurels or bullshit about his
experience as a Sex Pistol, that he was able - in collaboration with Keith Levene and Jah Wobble - to deliver unto the world his Metal Box [2].
Arguably, with this album Lydon proved himself to be a genuinely creative artist (or a true star as he once signed himself to me) and not merely a derivative talent or copycat; i.e., one who uses memory to mimic ability and as a resource to plunder.
As Nietzsche says, original artists and great poets seek to counter the deadening effects of an all-too-faithful memory (i.e., a mere recording capability that is of no value creatively speaking).
Sadly, however, Lydon never quite succeeded in getting rid of the albatross and he became a monster of passive memory, increasingly consumed by ressentiment.
Now, his entire being revolves around having the last word, settling old scores, slagging off everyone he's ever known or worked with; a grotesque (and bloated) parody of his former self, it should be clear by now that he's the one who makes us feel ashamed ...
We let him stay too long.
And he's old.
Notes
[1] Lines from the singles 'Public Image' (Virgin Records, 1978) and 'Memories' (Virgin Records, 1979), by Public Image Limited.
Cf. Lydon's attitude to the past (and the importance of memory) in the single 'Hawaii' - taken from the album End of World (PiL Official, 2023) - in which he remembers all the good times shared with his wife, Nora Forster. For a discussion of this song, click here.
[2] Metal Box, was PiL's second studio album released by Virgin Records in November 1979. The album is a million miles away from Never Mind the Bollocks (1977) and, indeed, a significant departure from PiL's debut album released eleven months earlier; the band moving in an increasingly avant-garde direction. Metal Box is widely regarded as a landmark of post-punk. An alternative mix of 'Memories' appears on the album - click here to play the 2009 remastered version.
For an earlier post in which I discuss Johnny Rotten as an artist in decline, click here.
