Metal Box is the second studio album by Public Image Ltd, released by Virgin Records on 23 November 1979. The album takes its name from the round metal canister which contained the initial pressings of the record. It was later reissued in standard LP packaging as Second Edition in February 1980 by Virgin Records in the United Kingdom, and by Warner Bros. Records and Island Records in the United States.
The album was a departure from PiL's 1978 debut First Issue, with the band moving into a more avant-garde sound characterised by John Lydon's cryptic lyrics, propulsive dub-inspired rhythms led by bassist Jah Wobble, and an abrasive, "metallic" guitar sound developed by guitarist Keith Levene.
Metal Box is widely regarded as a landmark release in the history of post-punk. In 2012, the album was ranked number 461 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
Background The first studio album recorded following the departure of founding member, drummer Jim Walker, Metal Box was recorded in several discreet sessions with several drummers, none of whom were credited on the original release. "Albatross" and "Swan Lake"/"Death Disco" were recorded with new drummer David Humphrey at The Manor Studio in Shipton-on-Cherwell. "Poptones" was recorded with Levene on drums. During this time, additional tracks were recorded at The Town House Studios in London, namely "Beat the Drum for Me" (which later turned up on Wobble's first solo album), and a new version of "Fodderstompf" (which became the B-side of PiL's "Death Disco" 12-inch single). Humphrey left the band around mid-May 1979. "Memories", "No Birds", "Socialist" and "Chant" were recorded with new drummer, Richard Dudanski, previously of Joe Strummer's R&B pub rock outfit, The 101ers, at Townhouse Studios in London. The instrumental "Graveyard" was recorded with Dudanski on drums. Dudanski left the band around mid-September 1979. "The Suit" was recorded as a solo track by Jah Wobble at Gooseberry Sound Studios in London. Vocals and some overdubs were added at The Manor. "Careering" was recorded at Town House Studios with Wobble on drums. "Bad Baby" was recorded with new drummer Martin Atkins at Town House Studios. Except for a brief period during 1980, Atkins remained with the band until 1985. "Radio 4" was recorded as a solo piece by Keith Levene at Advision Studios and an unknown second studio. According to Levene, this was the last recorded track. Levene utilised aluminium Veleno guitars throughout the recording sessions to achieve a distinctively sharp and metallic guitar sound.Keith Levene: His Metal Box, By Paul Barrel, 2013-11-04, Innocent Words
Recording and music According to John Lydon, "Many people don't understand that it was improvisation [...] It had to be, because we'd spent most of the money on the container – and so what we had to do was quite literally sneak into studios when bands had gone home for the night. And these were pretty rough monitor mixes – no actual production."Fortnam, Ian: "Behind the Public Image"; Classic Rock #148, August 2010, p61 "Albatross'" was recorded live at The Manor Studio in Oxfordshire, with Lydon free-forming his lyrics. Guitarist Keith Levene, bassist Jah Wobble, and drummer David Humphrey made the song up as they went along, and recorded the song in one take. PiL also recorded at Townhouse Studios in West London with session drummer Richard Dudanski and produced the songs "Memories", "No Birds", "Socialist", and "Chant";Clinton Heylin: "Babylon's Burning – From Punk to Grunge", Canongate 2007, page 466 Levene recalls that "Memories" features him playing "this normal Spanish guitar thing that goes dun-da-da-dun da-da-dun... it's one of the first things I learned to play on guitar, very simple. I was very fond of that [...] I just had the guitar going through an Electric Mistress."
"Death Disco", which had been released as a single in late June 1979, was remixed and retitled "Swan Lake" for Metal Box. "I realised," said Levene, "that this tune that I was bastardising by mistake was 'Swan Lake', so I started playing it on purpose but I was doing it from memory. You can hear that I'm not playing it exactly right. It just worked. [...] There's a few versions of that. The one on Metal Box is version two, which is very different from the simpler, original 12-inch version." Lydon wrote the lyrics in abstract response to his mother succumbing to cancer: "When I had to deal with my mother's death, which upset the fuck out of me, I did it partly through music. I had to watch her die slowly of cancer for a whole year. I wrote 'Death Disco' about that. I played it to her just before she died and she was very happy. That's the Irish in her, nothing drearily sympathetic or weak."Jack Barron: "I Cry Alone", New Musical Express, printed 10 October 1987 PiL recorded the song at an empty hall in Brixton to test a three-bass sound system and worked with drummer Jim Walker but did not record with him.
"Poptones" was one of the first songs recorded for the album, according to Levene, who stated that he inadvertently played Yes' "Starship Trooper" during the song.Simon Reynolds: "Albatross Soup", printed in The Wire, December 2002 According to Lydon, "Poptones" was based on a story "straight out of the Daily Mirror" about a girl who was kidnapped and "bundled, blindfolded, into the back of a car by a couple of bad men and driven off into a forest, where they eventually dumped her. The men had a cassette machine with an unusual tune on the cassette, which they kept playing over and over. The girl remembered the song, and that, along with her recollection of the car and the men's voices, is how the police identified them. The police eventually stopped the car and found the cassette was still in the machine, with the same distinctive song on the tape."John Lydon's liner notes in Public Image Ltd.'s Plastic Box compilation, Virgin Records, 1999) In his 2009 autobiography Memoirs of a Geezer, Jah Wobble says that Poptones refers to "a journey we took in Joe the roadie's Japanese car [..] and Joe had one of his dodgy cassettes playing.". He highlighted the song as "the jewel in the PiL crown. [...] That [bass] line is as symmetrical as a snowflake. [..] We had a drummer with us who was pretty good [...] but the bloke just couldn't get the right feel for 'Poptones'. [...] In the end Levene put the drums down on that track, his drums are a bit loose, but that is actually a good thing."Jah Wobble: Memoirs of a Geezer (Serpent's Tail, 2009, pages 108–109)
Wobble cited "Careering" as his "second-favourite track from Metal Box, and probably my favourite John Lydon vocal performance."Simon Reynolds: "Totally Wired: Postpunk Interviews and Overviews", Soft Skull Press, 2009, page 20 Lyrically, the song is "basically about a gunman [in Northern Ireland] who is careering as a professional businessman in London."Peter Noble: "Jah Wobble of PIL", Impulse magazine, Toronto, May 1980) The song was recorded at the Townhouse during a quick nighttime session led by Wobble; he told journalist Simon Reynolds in an interview: "If you listen to the drum rhythm it is very similar to the sort of rhythm a drum and fife band would create. [...] By now Keith had got hold of a Prophet synth, he used that on 'Careering'." Wobble created the drum track and bassline, while Levene played synthesiser. Levene claimed that his performance in the song was an attempt to replicate the sound of ambient machine noises heard from a downstairs toilet, which he achieved by leaving an item on the keyboard while he modulated the synthesiser.
"No Birds Do Sing" (also listed as "No Birds") features a line from the English Romantic poet John Keats' "La Belle Dame sans Merci", which Lydon "just borrowed a bit of because it suited this particular rant about suburbia." The song was recorded at the Townhouse with drummer Richard Dudanski, who Keith Levene knew during his tenure with The 101ers. Wobble said that Dudanski made extensive and imaginative use of the tom-tom drums, and Levene told Simon Reynolds that "No Birds" is one of his favourite songs on the album. "All that it is is me playing the guitar part and duplicating it, but feeding the second one through this effect I'd set up on the harmoniser. Meanwhile John is lying under the piano and singing that weird feedback voice, while twinkling the keys at the same time, just to be annoying. You can hear the piano on the record," said Levene.
"Graveyard" features a guitar part that was "made up on the spot," according to Levene. "I was in a very Clint Eastwood mood. I didn't know what I was going to play. Wobble's playing the bassline and drums are playing so I had to do something." The album version is an instrumental; a version with lyrics and vocals was retitled "Another" and released as the B-side to "Memories" in October 1979.
"The Suit"—described by Lydon as being about "people of low origins trying to be posh"—is one of Levene's least favourite tracks. Levene said, "It was never one of my favourite pieces because of what it was really about. [...] There was this guy that was an old mate of John's who lived in this apartment. At some point John decided he hated his guts. He just wrote this really nasty, finger-pointing, over-exaggerated, ripping parody of what the guy was – 'Society boy.' [...] This guy, [fashion designer] Kenny MacDonald, made his suit and all of ours and it made him look good to have the guys from PiL wearing his stuff. We'd wear it wrong and it looked even better, we didn't want the black leather jacket look like these punk bands. So John just decided to hate this guy, that's what happens and there's nothing you can do. He wouldn't be his lapdog and John thought he was a star and wanted that." Wobble played and recorded the backing track of drums and piano for "The Suit" at Gooseberry Studios with Mark Lusardi, which started out as a cover of "Blueberry Hill". He brought the backing track to the band at The Manor, to which Lydon "freaked out when he heard that... He was galvanised into action and within a few hours 'The Suit' existed."
"Bad Baby"—its title a nickname of Levene's—was recorded at the Townhouse. Wobble (whose playing in the song was inspired by bassist Cecil McBee) and drummer Martin Atkins recorded the song together.
Levene recalled that "Socialist" featured cheap synthesizers he had purchased: "Me and Wobble were really having fun fucking around with these things, whilst submerged in the mix was this huge soaring sound, rising upwards from the drum and the bass, like a whale's cry. Later on I dubbed up the cymbals, so you have that spiralling metallic sound. Dubwise!" Wobble told Simon Reynolds, "At the time I was a bit of a socialist. [...] I hated Thatcher, I hated everything Reagan stood for to be quite honest, you know, and at that time I just wanted that old-style, left-wing socialism."
Lydon called "Chant" an "old English ditty with a string synthesizer".Alfred Hilsberg: "Public Image Ltd. – Wir sind keine Rock 'n' Roll Band!", Sounds magazine, Germany, April 1980 Drummer Richard Dudanski cited it as one of his favourites.