Public Image Ltd

How punk and reggae united and went "outernational" to rule the world

This past March 5, the French punk label Guerilla Asso quietly slipped a genius album into the marketplace: Rocket To Kingston, credited to Bobby Ramone. The melding of the isolated vocal tracks from nine of Bob Marley’s most deathless classics to edited Ramones backing tracks, it sounds like a joke on paper. The cover even […]

10 punk vocalists from the ’70s who upended mainstream rock standards

Nashville songwriting great Harlan Howard once defined country music as “three chords and the truth.” Many have said that definition could also be applied to punk rock. Therefore, it stands to reason that the figure writhing behind the mic stand might be the most essential member of any punk band. After all, it isn’t the […]

15 essential post-punk bands who represent the evolution of the genre

Post-punk had to happen. Punk rock opened all this space for people to make exactly the kind of art or culture that the disenfranchised had been imagining in their heads, and maybe had limited means or skills by which to make it. But what if you didn’t want to crank out recharged three-chord rock ’n’ […]

10 times punk rockers stole the show on American TV in the ’70s and ’80s

You would think television (the medium, as opposed to Television, the band) and punk rock were a match made in heaven. After all, the music and culture are sharp, edgy and visually arresting. This should have made punk flawless televisual fodder, right? Truthfully, punk and TV collisions have more often resulted in mutual incomprehension and […]

QUIZ: How much ’70s punk trivia do you really know?

For many, first-wave punk was the sound of liberation. Chainsaw guitars, locomotive drums and screaming singers delivered brutal street poetry about the times. It saved us from a lifetime of dull progressive rock, snooze-worthy singer-songwriters and six-string heavy metal. For certain die-hards, ’70s punk is the only punk. For them, both the music and the […]

Green Day called out by Sex Pistols' Johnny Rotten

Cantankerous Sex Pistols and Public Image Ltd frontman Johnny Rotten challenges Green Day‘s lasting impact on punk rock in a new interview with The New York Times, the 62-year-old musician saying it’s “embarrassing” that punk bands inspired by the popular East Bay trio are still rocking “spiky haircuts” and “trying to keep 1978 alive.” Read […]

Johnny Rotten scattered a fan’s ashes onstage during Public Image Ltd. show

Johnny Rotten, aka John Lydon, honored a late fan in an unconventional way while performing with Public Image Ltd. Read more:  Check out this metal cover of a Britney Spears classic The Sex Pistols former lead singer scattered a fan’s ashes onstage at a gig in Frome, England. Lydon announced that a fan named Stuart had […]