- published: 02 Sep 2015
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Jah Wobble (born John Joseph Wardle, 11 August 1958 in Stepney, London) is an English bass guitarist, singer, poet and composer. He became known to a wider audience as the original bass player in Public Image Ltd (PiL) in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but left the band after two albums. Following his departure from PiL, he went on to a successful solo career, continuing to the present. Jah Wobble has four children; two daughters, actress Hayley Angel Wardle and Natalie Wardle from his first marriage, and two sons with his second wife, the Chinese-born guzheng player and harpist Zi Lan Liao. In 2009, he published his autobiography, Memoirs of a Geezer.
His father, Harry Eugene Wardle, was a tea clerk with the East India Company and worked later in life as a postman, while his mother, Kathleen Bridget (née Fitzgibbon), was a school and County Hall secretary. Wobble grew up with his family in Whitechapel's Clichy Estate in London’s East End, and is a long-time friend of John Lydon (Johnny Rotten) whom he had met in the 1970s along with John Simon Ritchie (later known as Sid Vicious) at London's Kingsway College (now Westminster Kingsway College). Along with John Gray they were known as "The Four Johns". Jah Wobble acquired his stage name through the drunken, mumbled version of Wardle's name by Sid Vicious, which Wobble kept because "people would never forget it". According to Rotten's autobiography, Wobble was once on the short list of replacements for original Pistols bassist Glen Matlock.
I'm not numb that anymore
Not longer feel the heat and pain
No longer tranched in shame
I'm not numb that anymore
Now I own the key to the door
The kingdom of heaven lies inside
Makes a cirlce if they're turning tide
Now the circle is complete
And the heart of mine they need
The kingdom of heaven lies inside
I love visions of you endlessly
I love visions of you endless
It's a vision for me and for you
Hell can be a circle too