TAPE Me Back To The Future — MADE For Tape # 27: Public Image Ltd, “Cassette” (1986)

An occasional series here that celebrates the cassette-tape format in all its glory. Wobbles and all…

Public Image, Cassette (1986)

I’m reminding myself with this post — and you — that the aim of these cassette tape posts is to largely celebrate the format, and the albums that deserve to be preserved on that format, that feel like they specifically come from/were made for the “cassette tape era”. Which might be different for different people, I recognise. For me, it was, broadly the 1980s (and early 1990s).

But this is a must-include by virtue of its title. You see, Album by PiL, is the band’s 1986 release, but that superficially refers to the album as a concept, and specifically refers to the ‘record’ artefact. The vinyl. If you bought the same album on CD it would be called Compact Disc. And, see here, it’s name on tape:

And though I very first knew this as a CD, and then on vinyl also — (so Compact Disc and Album) — I’m glad to now have it on tape (Cassette). My introduction to Public Image was the greatest hits compilation (on cassette tape). I bought it because I wanted to find out what Johnny Rotten did after the Sex Pistols. I loved the Pistols when I was the age to be loving the Pistols. The Sex Pistols, The Doors, The Sisters of Mercy, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Pixies, Violent Femmes, The Clash, Bauhaus, The Cure, and a few others — not all of them instantly belong together, but they’re all rite-of-passage choices. And, actually, they do kinda largely (mostly) go together. They’re all acts I still like now, to varying degrees (I have to work hard to really accept The Clash into my life). And my care factor around the Sex Pistols is barely there. It very quickly was surpassed by the Public Image actually. What a band. Like some sort of dirty flip of the coin from Roxy Music eh — conceptualists and practitioners, but the punk/post-punk version, rather than the aesthete/designer version.

Um, anyway, I also love Cassette for who plays on it. And what it does.

Steve Vai is all over the album — meaning when I interviewed him I got to ask about that, and someone’s just been in touch with me to ask if they can quote from that for a bio they’re writing of Vai (of course they can! And, also, exciting — about the book I mean!)

Um, yeah, so Vai is there, and Ginger Baker plays drums on some of it. Which is wild. But maybe wilder, is jazz drumming legend Tony Williams is on there. What?!

Bernie Worrell is on there — you know from Parliament-Funkadelic, and the Stop Making Sense-era big-band Talking Heads. Bernard Fowler is on there, backing singer for the Rolling Stones for the last 30 years. And the late legend, Ryuichi Sakamoto, film composer and former member of Yellow Magic Orchestra, is on there. (R.I.P.) I mean, if you’re at all like me, and sincere apologies if that’s the case, you’d want to hear this album just for that personnel alone, right? Add in of course John Lyndon, the voice. The vision. And helping with that vision, producer (and bassist) Bill Laswell. Just a super-stacked deck.

So perhaps all I’d heard when I came to this album was Rise — which is a masterpiece of strange, beautiful mood. A song I’ll carry with me through life. I just adore it, and barely understand it. But it comes with such a bunch of slogans, and not just the titular ritual of “may the road rise with you” but especially, “your time has come/your second skin”, which I have obsessed over as a line for 35 years now. And even more so, for vibes, “anger is an energy”. Yes, yes.

But damn there are some songs on this fucking Cassette:

I’m hugely vibing on Bags since having Album on Cassette. And not just because of this:

But that definitely has something to do with it. For sure.

Anyway, what an album this is. What a glorious set of songs, and recordings, and performances. All of it. All of them. Every person earning their place and slipping into the communal sound of “PiL”, even if it’s not the same players that were on the albums previous. Every album by the band has magic, and obviously I adore the debut, and the albums that arrived before Album. And most of the ones that turned up after. But this one has long felt like a special album in my collection.

Made more special now but having the versions that exist on and are named after each format.