While the post-punk era was filled with influential bassists few have had quite the career as Jah Wobble. While mainly known for his brief but influential two year stint with Public Image Limited where he played bass on their acclaimed self titled debut and beloved experimental rock masterpiece Metal Box, Jah's multi-decade career expands far beyond those albums into a wide array of genres and collaborators. Now in the middle of a tour and hot off the heels of his new album A Brief History of Now, Music Editor Devin Birse got a chance to chat to Jah about both the past and the present.
Devin: Right off the bat as of this interview you're in the middle of a UK tour so I wanted to ask how is the tour going?
Jah: Well, I've just got up. So, I'm a typical musician I don't get up too early. I've got my dressing gown on; I just got the email off Ian saying urgent did you get the zoom. I'm sixty five so I'm an old man, we do a two hour sometimes three hours set so I get really tired. So, tours going great but y'know I slept till midday, I'm not gigging today so psychologically I've let go. So, I've got an espresso with me and the tours going great, really happy great band, great people to hang out with, great to do the thing you want to do in life y'know. So very happy.
Devin: Moving onto your latest record A Brief History Of Now, this feels like your most direct and classically punk effort of the last few years, was that something you aimed to do with this record or did that come naturally?
Jah: We did think about it and its very simple. I'm working with a guy called John Klein and he used to be the guitarist in Siouxsie and The Banshees and was in the bat cave for years. We run a community project in south London together so I'm friends with John. We've been working together doing the community thing for the last few years and he's a real post-punk guy. Y'know he's a post-punk guitarist so it's crazy for me not to use John's talents. His forte is proper hard post-punk guitar, so I then get back into that mindset. It's nice to make music with a little bit of an edge y'know.
It's nice to make music with a little bit of an edge y'know.
Devin: Does John play on the album?
Jah: Oh, johns all over it, all those guitars are all John check out on YouTube put Jah Wobble 'Monitor'. We did a version of 'Monitor' and that's probably better than anything on the album, it's really good y'know.
Devin: Oh, nice I'll give it a listen after the interview. One aspect of the album I picked up on is how your voice takes on this distorted synthy texture, so I wanted to know what the reasoning behind that was?
Jah: I've always liked using effects very early on cause I wasn't a trained singer or anything, and so I always wanted to use bits of phase, I've always liked to manipulate the music over the years. Not too much but I wanted to warp reality make things trippier y'know.
Devin: It does give the album an almost haunted feel at points.
Jah: Well, it all comes from dub and the dub producers of the seventies y'know.
Devin: Whilst were on the album I wanted to mention there's an excellent cover of Wire's 'I am The Fly', so I wanted to ask if there's a particular reason you chose that track?
Jah: John Kline again. We were talking about punk and post-punk, and he suggested doing it. and I enjoyed it because it's a really tricky bassline. Collin Newman of Wire loves it we met, Collin for lunch afterwards.
Devin: Going on to your wider career, you've played around with a variety of genres from jazz to dub to krautrock, when working on a song do you try and meld these genres together?
Jah: No, I'm very relaxed with it. If I was to make music now on this iPad, I'd make ambient kind of music. But if I'm working with my eldest son, he's got something of the Jackie Liebezeit about him as a genre, so we'll probably go into the krautrock kind of area especially if john is playing on it. And me younger boy Charlie he plays Chinese violin and has something of a Michael Karoli vibe and when they play together, I'd say the thing that naturally comes out is a krautrock vibe. They're both trained to play traditional Chinese music as well as hearing me play and john was playing Dave Brubeck numbers and jazz stuff early on, but you put them together its krautrock. So, if I'm working on my own its gonna be more ambient, more dub but if I'm working with other people it'll take me into other areas, especially if I'm working with a guitarist which I don't doo that much. My bands got a guitarist Martin Chung who's excellent but I'm probably a bit prejudiced against guitarists to be honest, I prefer keyboardists.
I'm probably a bit prejudiced against guitarists to be honest, I prefer keyboardists.
Devin: I'd be remiss not to touch on the sheer number of artists you've collaborated with, so are there any collaborations you look back on particularly fondly and any newer artists you'd like to collaborate with?
Jah: I loved working with Bill Laswell. I think the stuff I did with Natacha Atlas years back really stands out for me. Obviously working with Sinead O'Connor had a huge impact on my life because she was so warm, so generous. There's been so many but those immediately come to mind. In terms of the future, it's really whatever comes up, I've been working with a guy Richard Russell who runs XL Records doing really left field stuff and through him I'm playing with a lot of younger musicians. We've got this record autumn equinox that's just come out and there's like fourteen different musicians on it. It was a really lovely experience y'know.
Devin: There's been an explosion of new post-punk artists in the UK specifically out of The Windmill and a lot of them seem to be heavily inspired by your work on those first two Public Image Limited records. So, I wanted to ask is that something you've been noticing and how do you feel about that?
Jah: Its nice to feel useful in life most people want to feel kinda useful to some extent. I was this guy who used to do what I've just done today get up really late. The period before PIL I was round the squats y'know your drinking, drugging you've got no sense of purpose. I reached the point in a couple of years where you're not really working, you're struggling to keep any sort of job down, and you're waking up at lunchtime basically, really not good. Ended up having to leave the squat, went back home and under pressure then to get a job cause my old man's attitude was you either give me twenty quid a week or you sling your hook. And that's when I got into PIL.
I must say in those times when I was in those squats I was listening to a lot of music, going for walks listening to music a lot of weird electronic music like Stockhausen and that stuff. I had some weird abstract idea about how music could and should be played. It was very much to do with textures and shapes and patterns. It was a contradiction that all though I felt lost I was playing. I got hold of a bass and id play it against the headboard of the bed in the squat, where id driven everybody else with my bad behaviours, which takes some doing, and I'm playing this bass against the headboard of the bed and all the other furniture had gone. I never thought it would go anywhere it was just a bit of an obsession of a thing. I didn't have a job and id be drinking too much and drugging and blah blah blah, but I would be playing this music. I was actually laying the foundations as a musician without really knowing it.
I got hold of a book, so you want to play bass. We didn't have bass tabs then, so it was just notes so I had to learn musical notation. The first part in the book was American patrol by glen miller and I thought I know what I want to do. I felt like a guy in front of the canvas like a painter. I wanted to make some strong expressionist painting, but something very ordered at the same time. So, I made geometrical shapes from the dots and a lot of open strings, and it made a very simple sound that you heard from the get-go with the song 'Public Image'. Which is the first song of those two albums, and it's a very simple, dunn dunn dunn, bunn bunn bunn. It's all about lowness y'know. There was a naivety too it.
I felt like a guy in front of the canvas like a painter. I wanted to make some strong expressionist painting, but something very ordered at the same time.
I was very lucky that I got into PIL, and I got really fed up eventually with Johnny Rotten and Keith Levene as you can do. Quite early on they really annoyed me, I'm sure I was annoying too. But the great thing about them was that they let me be me. I can't ever remember Keith ever saying to me you should change a note on that and make it like this or make it that. So even though I was completely an amateur they allowed me to lead the charge and lay basslines down. It moved very quickly over those two years. Two years in one sense is a very short time but in another way it's a lot of time. It was very intense. We quickly moved from doing a song like 'Public Image' which is quite structured to stuff that is more extreme. It went from should we doing the second album like this or this or should we go straight to goal. So that how you ended up with stuff like 'Poptones' or 'Careering', the heavier tracks on Metal Box.
It really resonated with people. I'm glad you mentioned the first album because everyone talks about metal box, but you can't separate the first album from Metal Box. They meld together for me they're part of the same thing. It was a very fresh brave approach, there wasn't a manager and we happened to be on a record label that was never trying to guide us. They knew the best thing was to let us to get on with it. I love the fact that people talking about those albums a lot. I've gone back to those albums now because there's a certain basic thing there, the DNA of it all. So, I'm delighted.
Devin: I'm glad to hear you're proud of them, they really are fantastic albums, as were on the topic of those first two albums, are there any tracks on them you're particularly proud of?
Jah: It's changing all the time because we started doing the metal box rebuilt tour for the first time last week there's still a couple of tracks we haven't done. My favourite track from those two albums is 'Poptones', the bassline I still have to tell myself right you better stop playing it now cause I'll play it all night. The one I'm really loving is 'No Birds Do Sing', y'know that drumbeat it really lifts the crowd. But for me the flagship tracks on Metal Box are 'Poptones', 'Careering', 'Albatross', and 'Swan Lake'.
But the first album I think 'Analisa' is fantastic. The basslines are these chromatic lines which are very much to do with playing fender bass. A few years ago, I went to play shows in America and make a record with Bill Laswell. I couldn't be bothered to take the big heavy magnum bass, so I said to them to just get me a fender precision which they did. I hadn't played the fender P for years and I fell in love with it again. It was like meeting a childhood sweetheart or something. When you've got the round wound strings as well it really makes you play very chromatically. It just makes for inventive bass lines. That's why I mention 'Analisa' you've got these little chromatic lines. Obviously 'Public Image' is fun, love 'Fodderstompf' cause it's such a great groove.
When you've got the round wound strings as well it really makes you play very chromatically. It just makes for inventive bass lines.
I think for me the three tracks I'd probably pick out from public image are to do with what I think Keith Levene's best guitar parts are so that'd be 'Theme', 'Public Image' and 'Poptones'. But there's not really a track I don't like from those first two albums.
Devin: You're right about the Fender P and that chromatic sound.
Jah: Especially with the round wound strings. Are you a bass player?
Devin: Yeah, I'm a bass player.
Jah: That's why you'll find guitarists annoying. The thing with guitarists so often is they were the precocious kid who wanted to be able to get off with girls and wore their coats over their shoulders. This is a sort of horrible condemning thing to say but they'll learn three chords and then just blag it from then on in life. its just my thing with guitarists, the two guys I've got now are lovely, but guitarists do annoy me a bit. They're just a little bit blagging it and fiddling around with effects pedals a lot and you just think get on with it already.
Devin: I wanted to ask as a final question what are some of the best and worst gigs you've played?
Jah: I've done tons of gigs and I love it. the big thing for me is I stopped drinking and drugging thirty seven years ago so most of my life I've been clean and sober. So, I'm able to function quite effectively which is a really important thing. There's one show that's very interesting we did a big show on the continent, in door festival big art thing. We took a very pure kind of cocaine before the show. So, we went on and played a long set. I felt I'd played the most fantastic set I'd ever played. I thought it was wonderful, that it was incredibly nuanced and detailed. Then I listened back two days later because wow that was the bet show I'd ever done. So, I listened to it, and it was f*cking dogsh*t, the tricks that the mind and drugs can play on you. because it wasn't even mad drug sh*t it was just boring. Like someone on coke droning on and on. I think of that as one of the many reasons why it's good not to take drugs y'know.
But there's been so many highs its just unbelievable. Last week at the end of the night the whole band came to the front of the stage and the crowd was going mad cause we'd really done something. What was great last week was that we've got everything prepared, but the highlights are when you relax and your spontaneous. There's been so many left field shows over the year but last week it was like f*ck there's something going on.
there's been so many highs its just unbelievable.
I've seen bands, especially when they're a bit older and grumpy and you think you don't even want to f*cking be there. They're not a joy to engage in conversation with, they don't even wanna be here, but I still love it. I'm charged up this week the coffees working, that's the only drug I take now, I'm awake and I know I'm gonna be looking forward to tomorrow.
