Metal Box - Music

Music

The music is characterised by the metallic guitar sound, created by guitarist Keith Levene by using Veleno aluminium guitars, reflected in the albums title and packaging. The bass guitar, played by Jah Wobble, is noticeably inspired by Dub and Reggae music. Some of the songs, such as Albatross and Poptones, are very lengthy and involve elements of drone music, explored on their previous album First Issue.

"Albatross":

• John Lydon (1980/2004): “We almost threw that away.”“Things like 'Albatross' are done live. I'd free-form, I just free-formed, we all did, and that's how it should be when the mood is right.”
• Keith Levene (2001): “We got it off in one take, it happened as you hear it I didn't know John had these words. I made up that tune as I went along, Wobble made up what he did as he went along We all looked at each other, and I said 'We've got this, haven't we? Sounds like The Doors, doesn't it? Let's keep it!'”
• David Humphrey (drummer, 2004): “It was straight down The Manor in Oxfordshire and straight into recording. I remember doing a lot of stuff, stuff from the original PIL album, and also some additional tracks like 'Death Disco' - or 'Swan Lake' as it was known at the time - and 'Albatross'.”

"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.”

"Swan Lake"/"Death Disco":

• John Lydon (1987): “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. Like her you've got to really get to grips with your emotions and attack them, confront them head on. You won't solve things any other way. It works for me, I can't run away from things.”
• 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 version.”

"Poptones":

• John Lydon (1979/99): “It's straight out of the Daily Mirror, so I can't guarantee its authenticity.” “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 (2001/02/04): “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.” “I was playing 'Starship Trooper' the other day and I thought fuck me, that is exactly what I'm doing in 'Poptones'!” “ is totally ripped off from 'Starship Trooper', but I didn't do it on purpose.”
• 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 with us who was pretty good - he played on one of my solo tracks - 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'.”It 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.”

"No Birds"/"No Birds Do Sing":

• John Lydon (1999): “'No Birds Do Sing' is a line from a poem by Keats. I just borrowed a bit of it because it suited this particular rant about suburbia.”
• Keith Levene (2001/02): “One of my favourite tunes on 'Metal Box'.” “All that 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.”
• Richard Dudanski (drummer, 2004/07): “Keith did know me from The 101ers and just rang up and said 'We're recording at the Townhouse, can you get over here?' And in fact the next ten days we recorded like five songs, the tape was just left running I think the first day we did 'No Birds Do Sing' and 'Socialist', then we did 'Chant', 'Memories'.” “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): “ 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): “ 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 .”
• Richard Dudanski (drummer, 2004): “We later used a studio down in Bermondsey, can't remember the name, where we did the bass and drums for 'Another'.”

"The Suit":

• John Lydon (1980): “People of low origins trying to be posh.”
• Keith Levene (2001/04): “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, 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.” “There's certain tunes that I just can't stand. 'The Suit' - I hate it.” “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.”

"Bad Baby":

• Keith Levene (1980/2001/04): “I'm known as 'Bad Baby'.” “I'm 'Bad Baby', that's one of my nicknames.” “The track 'Bad Baby' had an intensity - those lyrics are about me!”
• Martin Atkins (drummer, 2001/02/07): “I went to the Townhouse, I think Genesis and Queen were there during the day, and PIL were recording at night. I spoke to Jeannette for a while, John said hello, probably 'Fuck off, you Northern git', and someone said 'There's the drums over there', and I just went and did 'Bad Baby' then and there We wrote it together, that was my audition.” “Studio A at the Townhouse to someone who was 19 looked big like a basketball court, with a mixing desk at the other end. They said 'Oh, here's that Northener', you know, and then they said 'There's the drum kit, go and do something.' I just sat down and did it, played 'Bad Baby', with Jah Wobble playing along.” “I walked in to comments like 'Here’s that Northern git' and we wrote 'Bad Baby'. Then I went back to my job working for the government as a clerical officer in St Martin’s Place.”
• Jah Wobble (2009): “I love his vocal melody line on that track, Augustus Pablo would have loved that melody. Anyway, Martin Atkins had checked a lot of disco out and that resulted in him having a good hi-hat technique and okay timekeeping. My bass playing on 'Bad Baby' was inspired by the style of a bass player called Cecil McBee.”

"Socialist":

• Keith Levene (2004): “I remember doing 'Socialist' - I'd just bought these cheap synths, so 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!”
• Jah Wobble (2009): “At the time I was a bit of a socialist.” “I'd just thought it to be good to call it '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.”

"Chant":

• John Lydon (1980): “Yes, 'Chant' is great, it's like an old English ditty with a string synthesiser.”
• Richard Dudanski (drummer, 2004): “In the next couple of weeks after my first joining we also recorded 'Chant', 'Memories' and 'Socialist', all recorded at the Townhouse I suppose 'Chant' is my favourite - with volume turned up to the max of course!”

"Radio 4":

• Keith Levene (2001): “ didn't do the bassline in 'Radio 4'. I played it as if it was Wobble playing We ended up in another studio, Advision, and I recorded this track with Ken Lockie from Cowboys International. Originally it had me on drums. Ken laid down the dun-dun-dun on piano, he could play these great chords with his big hands where I used synths to put something across. We didn't like the studio and John didn't like Ken, so that was his brief appearance as a possible PIL candidate. Ken did this one session, with just me there. So I was at another studio and we put this on. I had a Yamaha String Ensemble where you could make it sound like so many things, but it wasn't huge. I was using this thing and I start building it up, all I'm doing is taking different sounds from this thing and layering it. When I heard it, I pulled the drums out. I got on the idea of trying to make it sound orchestrated with the long chords played shorter. To get round the other stuff, I just used what was at hand. I played bass like I imagined Wobble would play bass to it, I wanted a Wobble feel to it. But basically, it's all me - that's when I realised I can completely do everything. You just hear the drums at the end I called it 'Radio 4' because in England, you got Radio One, Two, Three, Radio One played pop tunes. Before that, the BBC was so boring! It took until about 1985 before we had FM radio.” “With 'Radio 4', I was just alone in the studio one night, and I was overwhelmed with the sense of space. I just took everything out of the studio, moved the drum kit out and played everything myself, reproducing this sense of cold spaciousness I felt around me. That was me playing the bass, I played what I thought people would identify as a Wobble bassline. But it was my pattern.”