Jah Wobble: when kids from pokey council flats all over London made music
Jah Wobble is talking to the Guardian. Wobble was John Wardle until a drunken Sid Vicious slurred it:
When my mate John Lydon told me he was joining a band called the Sex Pistols, he might as well have said he was becoming a 747 pilot, because working-class kids like us just didn’t do that. It wasn’t like music now, where well-off kids have three years and a flat in Notting Hill to make a go of it. If you asked for that where I was from, they’d have had you sectioned, but suddenly there were kids from pokey council flats all over London coming together with energy, intelligence and humour. Punk was closer to the Marx Brothers than the situationists, but a window opened. I was already thinking about music, so it was fantastic timing….
I borrowed Sid Vicious’s Fender. He’d say, “You’re shit” and I’d go, “You can’t fucking play. Give it to me …” But the first of my own was a Musicman copy. I was living in a squat and had burned the furniture to keep warm. The others were furious and rightly so – so after a big fight, they just left me there with this bass and no amplifier, propping it against the headboard to get a sound. The first bass line I wrote [heard on the song Public Image] went top 10. Commercially, it’s been a steady decline ever since (chuckles)…
I made a radio documentary called In Search of Sid Vicious about that. [Author] Jon Savage very generously gave me access to his recordings of Sid’s mum – a heroin addict – going, “I fucking told him, ‘I don’t care where you go. Sling yer hook. Fuck off. Sleep on a park bench for all I care.” This when Sid was 15 years of age. So a very damaged boy. When Sid told a shrink that he wanted to kill himself, the shrink told him to bring a friend along to get him interested in life, and that was me. I said, “To be honest, I don’t know if he has got anything worth living for. Suicide is a viable option.” The shrink was horrified – we ran out of there pissing ourselves laughing. But, of course, many a true word said in jest. He was thinking of topping himself.
Read it all…
Posted: 8th, January 2015 | In: Music Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
