To help John Lydon celebrate the fortieth birthday of Public Image Ltd (PIL), there’s nothing better than a good old treasure chest filled with singles, rarities and concert extracts. On 5 CDs, The Public Image Is Rotten (Songs From The Heart) gathers 74 titles: every PIL single released between 1978 and 2015 (CD 1), all the B-sides, some rarities and extracts of radio sessions at John Peel’s in 1979 and Mak Goodier’s in 1992 (CD 2), some Maxi and dance remixes (CD 3), brand new mixes and titles (CD 4) and a brand new concert at the Ritz in New York on July 16, 1989 (CD 5)… Created barely a year before the end of the Sex Pistols by a Johnny Rotten that had become once again John Lydon, PIL is a post-punk oddity that will first poach on his previous band’s turf (the crazy single Public Image launched his legacy into the future) before becoming more experimental as soon as the second album, Metal Box. With aptly-named this metal box, the guitar sound barrier of the Sex Pistols seems rather far… Johnny Rotten, who had become once again John Lydon, invents here the long, painful and all wound up soundtrack of a martial New Wave whose groove is surprisingly cold. Controlled by Jah Wobble’s bass and slashed by Keith Levene’s guitar riffs, this second revolutionary opus from Public Image Limited invents the post-punk dub, the cold funk and the (f)rigid rock. Throughout the PIL saga, the former Pistol shouts like a soulful muezzin and trepans even more the ears than on Never Mind The Bollocks. He thus follows the steps of Neu’s and Can’s German krautrock, and above all proves to be the forerunner disc of a punk funk that will resound for many years. After the departures of Wobble (1981) and Levene (1984), PIL will take a less avant-garde direction, but will not be any more civilized. Those are different eras that perfectly reflects this box that is essential for the fans and useful for the newcomers. © Marc Zisman/Qobuz