Jah Wobble

One of the infamous gang which hung around Vivienne Westwood's SEX boutique and kick-started the birth of the British punk scene, John Wardle teamed up with old mate John Lydon to form the influential, post punk outfit Public Image Ltd after the Sex Pistols split in 1978. The East End Londoner became Jah Wobble when Sid Vicious drunkenly mispronounced his name, and played a key part in PiL's ground-breaking sound with his dubby bass lines and surly attitude. He soon fell out with Lydon, though, and turned solo with debut album The Legend Lives On.Jah Wobble In Betrayal (1980), a typically experimental collection of ambient rhythms and abrasive noise. Falling out of the music industry, he took a job sweeping up rubbish on the London Underground where he could be heard trying to cheer up commuters by announcing over the tannoy "I used to be somebody. I repeat. I used to be somebody." His ingrained love of music, however, led to him discover sounds from China, India and Africa and he went on to create a unique brand of dub, punk, dance and world music on stand-out albums Rising Above Bedlam (1991), Molam Dub (2000) and Shout At The Devil (2002). He also worked with artists as diverse as Senegalese legend Baaba Maal, Irish folk singer Ronnie Drew, reggae star Chaka Demus and his wife Chinese classical guzheng player Liao Zilan. These incredible musical explorations have influenced Primal Scream, Massive Attack, Bjork and The Orb and made Wobble an esteemed producer and musical pioneer. In 2009 he published his autobiography, Memoirs Of A Geezer.

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