Metal Box

The title refers to the album's original packaging, which consists of a metal 16mm film canister embossed with the band's logo and containing three 12" 45rpm records. The album was reissued in 1980 as a double album titled Second Edition.

A radical departure from PiL's relatively conventional debut, the avant garde, abstract Metal Box was characterised by singer John Lydon's cryptic vocals, Jah Wobble's propulsive dub reggae-inspired basslines, and a unique, "metallic" guitar sound (guitarist Keith Levene played Veleno guitars which are made entirely of aluminium). Metal Box is widely regarded as a landmark of post punk and experimental rock: In 2002, Pitchfork Media ranked Metal Box at #19 on their "Top 100 Albums of the 1980s", while In 2003, the album was ranked number 469 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

Recording sessions

*March–May 1979: "Albatross" and "Death Disco" were recorded with new drummer David Humphrey at The Manor Studio in Shipton-on-Cherwell. "Poptones" was recorded too, with Levene on drums. During this time, additional tracks were recorded at Townhouse 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" single). Humphrey left the band around mid-May 1979.

Packaging

The original metal canister idea caught on a few years later during the compact disc era. By the late 1980s a number of CDs were packaged in metal canisters, including Prince's special edition of the Batman soundtrack. In 1990 the concept came full circle, with the compact disc release of Metal Box employing a smaller version of the original metal canister, containing a single disc and a small paper insert.

The Second Edition sleeve art consists of distorted photographs of the band members, achieving a funhouse mirror effect. (The front cover is a photo of Keith Levene.) The lyrics are provided on the rear cover; these were originally printed in a magazine advertisement and not included with Metal Box. The band initially wanted the album released with a lyric sheet but no track titles; the United Kingdom version of Second Edition appears as the band intended, with lyrics on the back cover, but no titles, and "PiL" logo labels on all four sides of the vinyl. The American edition of Second Edition has track titles both on the back cover and the labels.

A unique anomaly exists on the American vinyl LP of Second Edition. Although PiL were signed to Warner Bros. Records in the US, the album was released with the Island Records logo on the sleeve and labels, albeit with a Warner Bros. catalogue number (2WX 3288). The American 8-track tape and cassette versions of Second Edition carry only the Warner Bros. logo, with no mention of Island.

Noise rock band Big Black would later release some copies of their Bulldozer (EP) in metal boxes, as a tribute to this album.

Personnel

A paper insert lists PiL's members as "John Lydon – Keith Levene – Wobble – Jeanette Lee – Dave Crowe", though the last two individuals were the band's videographer and accountant, respectively. Lydon also talked about Public Image Ltd as a company in interviews.

PiL did not have a permanent drummer at the time of recording, so the drummers are uncredited. Later interviews with the people involved have established the drummers as David Humphrey (tracks 1 and 3), Richard Dudanski (2, 6, 7, 10, 11), Keith Levene (4, 12), Jah Wobble (5, 8), and Martin Atkins (9).

Levene played all instruments on "Radio 4".

Track by track commentary by the band

"Memories": Keith Levene (2001): “There's this normal Spanish guitar thing that goes dun-da-da-dun da-da-dun. That's what I'm playing, it's one of the first things I learned to play on guitar, very simple. I was very fond of that. I totally knew what the fuck John was singing about [...] All I'm doing when I'm playing those notes over the top: I just had the guitar going through an Electric Mistress.”
Keith Levene (2001): “We booked a place in Brixton which was just an empty hall just to test this three-bass sound system, that was a turbo rig that I wanted to use at the Rainbow. Because we were in sound system situations, we were making up new tunes - that's when 'Death Disco' was emerging [...] One tune we definitely had was 'Death Disco', cause we worked that with Jim but we didn't record him [...] I didn't know what he was singing about at the time [...] I realised 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.” “This was another newspaper story which fascinated me. A girl 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.”
Keith Levene (2001/04): “I think 'Poptones' was one of the first things we recorded [...] That's our second attempt at that [...] Basically, for me, the track goes on too fucking long.”
Jah Wobble (2004/09): “I still see that tune as the jewel in the PIL crown [...] That line is as symmetrical as a snowflake. To give him his due Levene went mental for it. We were at The Manor. We had a drummer [David Humphrey] with us who was pretty good - he played on one of my solo tracks ['Beat the Drum For Me'] - 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 [...] I think the lyrics to 'Poptones', in part at least, refer to a journey we took in Joe the roadie's Japanese car out around the country lanes of Oxfordshire [...] Joe had one of his dodgy cassettes playing.” “I don't know if John is aware that the geezer driving the Nissan in question went on to do well in the computer games lark.”

"Careering": Jah Wobble (1980/2009): “'Careering' is basically about Northern Ireland, a gunman who is careering as a professional businessman in London.” “It was at Townhouse that we did 'Careering', which is my second favourite track from 'Metal Box' and probably my favourite John Lydon vocal performance [...] 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'.” “'Careering' was a session where I really took control. I've done the drum track and I'm laying the bassline down, and Keith has his synth and is making textures, and John was really up for it that night. That was a quick night.”
Keith Levene (2001): ''“When you went to the toilet, you went downstairs and there was this noise from a machine like nrrrrrrrrr, like you hear on the song [...] That noise was always there. I had to see if I could make the noise on the synth. I pretty much got it off, I dropped something on the key to keep it going.” “From that first session - we crawled out of the studio twelve hours later - we put down 'No Birds Do Sing' and started working on other rhythm tracks.”
Jah Wobble (2009): “[Richard Dudanski] made extensive and imaginative use of the toms, which really suited compositions like 'No Birds' and 'Socialist'.”

"Graveyard"/"Another": Jah Wobble (1980): “It's a perfect rhythm. You can put anything over it and mix it in so many different ways.”
Keith Levene (2001): “[The guitar part] was made up on the spot. 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 way it worked was, there wasn't a vocal on it at first. The version on 'Metal Box' doesn't have vocals but there's a version of it that does and called something else ['Another'].” where we did the bass and drums for 'Another'.” “On 'The Suit', whilst it fades out you can hear John fucking around on the piano. Could he play piano? No, of course not - he used to do it to annoy us, but the fact that he couldn't play didn't matter.”
Jah Wobble (2009): “I did the drums and piano.” “I gave PIL my backing tracks, like 'The Suit' for instance. That started out as 'Blueberry Hill'. I recorded it at Gooseberry and took it up to The Manor.” “I had worked on that track at Gooseberry with Mark Lusardi. I had put the lyrics to 'Blueberry Hill' over that, however, I thought that it was also a must for PIL [...] John freaked out when he heard that [...] He was galvanised into action and within a few hours 'The Suit' existed.”