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Bitter PiL to swallow
From the darkest depths of punk and heroin to world music and sobriety, Jah Wobble talks to Rachael Clegg about life and work
TWENTY EIGHT years ago John Wardle – aka Jah Wobble, was a very different person to now.
He was the bassist of notorious post punk band Public Image Ltd (PiL), playing alongside Sex Pistols' singer John Lydon and Clash member Kieth Levene. But while PiL opened up the doors to a life in music, it also took him down a dark path marred by drugs, drink and musical frustration.
PiL, and notably Wardle, quickly acquired a notorious reputation with tales including setting fire to the aptly-named session drummer Karl Burns.
"There was lots of speed and coke and we were playing Space Invaders – we put him on a four-poster bed, got an old Kellogs box and approached him like an (invader]. The crew tried to create smoke to add to the effect and it set on fire. It was mental."
Musically PiL was bold, experimental and a world away from the screeching anthems of the Sex Pistols. Their second album, Metal Box, became one of post punk's most seminal works, fusing dub rolling bass and Fall-like cryptic lyrics. And it did what it said on the tin – the record came in a round 12in metal box.
Despite PiL's musical experimentation and sonic breadth Wardle found PiL musically frustrating: "I felt like (John Lydon] just couldn't give a shit and he didn't run (PiL] properly, there were people really taking the piss and being smack heads and pissing the money away – well, they were putting it up their arm as much as anywhere else. It was very dark and very frustrating."
Wardle walked out on PiL. "I think we only did like 20-odd shows in two years - we should have been doing 20 shows a month. And I was a young bloke – I wanted to be out on the road. It was really boring and I thought well 'fuck it'. People think it was a hard choice but it wasn't for me."
Now he's a resolute world musician. Chatting as he's "loading congas into a van" Wardle is rehearsing for his UK Chinese Dub tour, playing Sheffield's Boardwalk next week. He's contented, polite and extremely articulate. For 22 years he has been clean and sober.
Wardle's Chinese Dub combines Chinese harp (played by his wife, Zi Lan Liao), rumbling dub bass, spacious guitar, the bamboo flute, Tibetan singing and reggae style-drumming. It's a vast, multi-layered soundscape.
Performed live, the songs are intertwined with mystical art performances such as the Mask Change – a 300-year-old tradition regarded as one of the most sacred, precious folk art forms in China.
But while Chinese harp hardly chimes with East London post-punk, there are, according to Wardle, "more similarities than meets the eye between world music and PiL".
"I'm still doing the same as what I started off doing – making two-bar bass lines fundamentally, the bass code around which a lot of the stuff is built around. You can fit into different world music - you can fit into Chinese music, you can fit into English folk music, as well as post punk music built around guitar chords."
But Wardle's career as a professional world musician didn't come easily. After leaving PiL the East End-born Wardle was at his lowest point, with cocaine, speed, powders and drinking problems.
"There was a very close fucking darkness coming. It was a case of stop and be miserable or stop and fucking get on with it. I matured once I'd stopped drinking – alcohol is like an emotional arrest. The drugs and alcohol made me become a fucking idiot.
"I was too much of a hedonist. I was really irresponsible so I had to stop, which I did 22 years ago."
Wardle got a straight job. "It was the best thing I ever did – I needed to have a job. I did some courier work as well. I just wanted an ordinary life.
"I hate the fucking music business but I've managed to insulate myself from it. I don't buy into that game any more – it brings out the worst in people."
Now Wardle's settled in Stockport with his wife, whose family live in the area.
Wardle says he has grown into his own skin. "That's the feeling I've had and around about the mid-90s I felt comfortable being called an artist – I felt I wasn't worthy of that title until then. I built it up – I was maturing."
Wardle, raised in the East End's Clichy Estate, attributes his discomfort with calling himself an 'artist' to class.
"It's much related to that. I was fairly class conscious as a young bloke. As I got older I realised that public school boys ruled the world. They're a social elite. It's quite mind-blowing.
"And the older I get the more I notice it. It's said that we're all middle class and that we live in a classless society but I notice more inequality now."
As for his past, Wardle confesses: "I was a very rough boy."
Wardle's social observations, tales and music are being brought together in his book I Could Have Been a Contender, which will be published soon.
You can catch Jah Wobble on his Chinese Dub Tour at the Boardwalk on Sunday (July 7).
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Tuesday 07 February 2012
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