Jah Wobble

Jah Wobble was the friend of bandmate Johnny Rotten. He was also the rather excellent bass player in Public Image Limited and was influenced to pick up the bass several years after seeing Bob Marley’s bassist Family Man Barrett play in 1975 and found that the instrument and person mutually chose each other.

Jah Wobble, aka John Wardle, got his name courtesy of Sid Vicious

John Wardle was renamed Jah Wobble by Sid Vicious after he struggled to pronounce his name. An early version of reggae (bluebeat) and ska would have a potent influence on his style and identity.

“The Jah part was perfect of course because I was such a big reggae aficionado,” says Wobble. Richard Purden, The Irish Examiner, January 2024

Never seeing himself as a ‘rock’ bassist, his individual style was allowed to develop in PIL. The first bass line he wrote was on their first single which went top 10 and is instantly recognisable.

So all the more strange that he has a solo career signed to Virgin on the go at the same time and it kicks off just days before Public Image Limited’s first single is issued. Here’s a rundown of his solo/PIL parallel career.

The first single Dreadlock Don’t Deal In Wedlock was released in October 1978 and is a pretty dull affair to be honest; it’s pretty much ruined by the vocals and you’d have to wonder why Virgin released it. Wobble doesn’t play on this… it’s him err toasting over the top of a backing track.

The second single from February 1979, post Public Image Limited’s first album, is an altogether different affair. This time Wobble ropes in Don Letts, Keith Levene and Wobble’s mate Vince Bracken.

A tribute to those dub albums like King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown, Steel Leg Vs the Electric Dread, this is a set of surprisingly good reggae songs. Stratetime & The Wildman is the pick full of clattering drums, sonics whooshes and whistles and pulverising bass but Haile Unlikely with Letts on vocals is arguably just as good.

Stratetime Keith aka Keith Levene does both guitar and amazingly the reggae-style drums too.

00:00 Steel Leg
03:14 Stratetime And The Wide Man
06:37 Haile Unlikely By The Electric Dread
11:06 Unlikely Pub

The letdown is the track sung by Vince in the style of Sid Vicious/ Shane and sounding like a cross between an outtake from Public Image’s first album and Basement 5’s Last White Christmas.

It’s easy listening to it to see it as the step between the first album and Metal Box. For a while, it was rumoured that the man in the mask was old Johnny Rotten himself but its haile likely (sic) that it’s Vince Bracken.

One more single sneaks into our time period and again it’s very Metal Box dub stylee and very good, though why Wobble would choose a picture of himself Sieg Heiling for the back cover is mystifying! This single is called Dan MacArthur and again goes one better than the previous single but seems to have an understated release to the point of nothing.

By the time of this release, Wobble had had enough of PIL and the various internal troubles and strife in the band and was on the verge of leaving which he duly did and never returned.



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