Jah Wobble

Born John Wardle, Wobble was an old friend of Sex Pistols singer Johnny Rotten. When the Pistols broke up, Rotten formed Public Image Ltd., and Wobble became the bass player. After the group's first few albums, Wobble had a falling out with Rotten (now Lydon) and guitarist Keith Levene and departed for a solo career, also collaborating with artists such as Can members Jaki Liebezeit and Holger Czukay and U2's the Edge. Wobble's solo repertoire ranges from pop to pseudo-reggae to "difficult to listen to" experimentation. In the late '80s, his career took a downward direction, and he had a job sweeping train stations. He began listening to music from places like North Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe and formed Invaders of the Heart with guitarist Justin Adams.

The single "Bomba" brought Wobble back to the public eye in 1990, and he collaborated with Sinéad O'Connor and Primal Scream in addition to releasing the Invaders of the Heart album Rising Above Bedlam in 1991. Three years later, he released Take Me to God, which featured a number of guest appearances from the likes of Gavin Friday. In 1995, he released Psalms, which was followed in 1996 by The Inspiration of William Blake. In 1997 Wobble formed his own label, 30 Hertz, to release Jah Wobble Presents the Light Programme. Umbra Sumus appeared the following year. In 1999, Wobble released Deep Space, which featured appearances from Bill Laswell and Jaki Liebezeit.

In the new century, Wobble became prolific. His first release was Full Moon Over the Shopping Mall, issued in the spring of 2000, followed by Molam Dub that fall. Passage to Hades with Evan Parker appeared in spring 2001. In 2002, Wobble began a series of interconnected -- sometimes short-lived -- collaborative groups to execute specifically minded projects. First, Temple of Sound -- with Natasha Atlas, Nina Miranda, and Shahin Badar -- released Shout at the Devil. That same year, Solaris: Live in Concert reunited Wobble with Laswell and Liebezeit, along with pianist Harold Budd and cornetist Graham Haynes. Reed and woodwind master Clive Bell and trumpeter Harry Beckett assisted Wobble with the nocturnal club jazz that was Fly later in the year.

In 2003, he resurrected another previous group he called Deep Space. This version contained original members Philip Jeck and drummer Mark Sanders with bagpipers Bell and Jean-Pierre Rasle, Beckett, guitarist Chris Cookson, and singer Cat Von Trapp. They released the full-length Five Beats. Bell, Rasle, and Cookson would continue to play with Wobble throughout the decade no matter the band, as evidenced by the ambitious English Roots Music (credited to his Invaders of the Heart project with Liz Carter on vocals). He also cut the soundtrack to the French film Fureur (Fury) for EastWest. Wobble and pedal steel legend B.J. Cole, with Bell, Cookson, and Beckett, cut the nocturnal jazz-dub recording Elevator Music, Vol. 1A in 2004. Later that year, Trojan Records honored Wobble with a career-spanning three-disc retrospective, I Could Have Been a Contender. The dub effort MU was issued by Trojan in 2005.

In 2006 there were two Wobble offerings: the completely solo Alpha-One Three (titled for his taxi driver handle), which appeared in July, and Jah Wobble & the English Roots Band in November. The latter is interesting because after English Roots Music, these musicians became a band apart from Invaders of the Heart. This latter album was recorded live in one take in the studio to reflect the fearsome live energy of their concert performances. Trojan Records issued another of Wobble's wild takes on dub with Heart & Soul in 2007. This recording also brought Gregorian plainsong, Appalachian folk, and gospel into the mix, creating a past-future effect.

The wildest was yet to come, however, as he brought dub to the East by employing Cookson, Sanders, and Bell alongside a group of Chinese traditional musicians to create the inimitable and provocative Chinese Dub in 2008. Car Ad Music, with Cookson, Bell, Beckett, and percussionist Neville Murray, was issued in 2009, and the (mostly) solo Welcome to My World arrived in 2010. Also in 2010, Wobble moved his dub fusion toward Japan with The Japanese Dub, recorded with the Nippon Dub Ensemble (Joji Hirota and Keiko Kitamura) with Bell and Robin Thompson guesting.

Wobble was no less prolific in 2011, recording a pair of albums that are, as has become his wont, radically different from one another. The first, 7, issued on Pressure Sounds, was recorded by his Modern Jazz Ensemble as a tribute to his some of his jazz heroes -- Miles Davis, Donald Byrd, Weather Report, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, etc. The personnel include Cookson and Bell but also Marc Layton-Bennett (drums), George King (keyboards), Sean Corby (trumpet & flügelhorn), and Shri Sriram (tablas and bowed bass). The second offering of the year was a collaboration with guitarist, vocalist, songwriter, and celebrated post-punk revivalist Julie Campbell called Psychic Life, which was issued on Cherry Red in November.

from Wikipedia:

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.

Early life

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.

Musical career

Public Image Ltd (PiL)

Wobble started his musical career with John Lydon's post-Sex Pistols group Public Image Ltd (PiL). His bass playing drew heavily on dub, which has remained an important feature of his music. In his early life and career, by his own admission, Wardle was given to occasional bouts of aggression, brought on in part by a strict upbringing in London's East End and exacerbated by heavy drinking. He has stated that the first Public Image Ltd. album was recorded so quickly due in part to the bassist's altercations with a sound engineer and men at a nearby pub. He has, however, dismissed claims accusing him of extreme malice, such as setting fire to the former drummer for The Fall, Karl Burns, while Burns was session drumming for PiL.

Wobble co-wrote and contributed bass and drums to PiL's second album Metal Box, which was released in 1979. However, he grew increasingly frustrated by the lacklustre creative atmosphere in the band, which he felt stifled his artistic ambitions and PiL's creative potential. Besides differences in artistic vision, further conflicts were brought on in part by heavy drug and alcohol abuse in the band. Wobble then went on to recording and releasing his debut album The Legend Lives on - Jah Wobble in Betrayal, and found himself accused by other PiL members of having made unauthorised use of material from Metal Box for the making of Betrayal. Wobble then left PiL in late 1980.

Early post-PiL years

Soon after leaving PiL, Wobble started his solo career by forming The Human Condition with guitarist Dave "Animal" Maltby and PiL's original drummer, Jim Walker. The Human Condition toured the UK, Europe, and US in 1981, and made two cassette-only releases of their live shows (Live at the Collegiate Theatre and Live in Europe). The post-PiL years saw Wobble also collaborating with Can members Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit on Czukay's solo projects (notably On the Way to the Peak of Normal and Rome Remains Rome) and Full Circle (released in 1984).

In 1983, Wobble formed the Invaders of the Heart, a group with a fluid line-up that included pedal steel guitarist B.J. Cole and percussionist Neville Murray. Wardle also appeared on the LP Snake Charmer billed as a co-leader alongside guitarist The Edge of U2, Czukay, Liebezeit, and producer François Kevorkian.

His critical stance towards the commercialisation of the music industry, compounded by heavy drinking and drunken brawls, led to his abandoning music for a short period in the mid 1980s. He then did a variety of day jobs, whilst continuing to perform and record his music in what spare time he had. These jobs included a long stretch with the London Underground. In an oft-quoted tale it is related that he once, at Tower Hill Underground Station via the public address system, regaled commuters with the deadpan announcement, "I used to be somebody. I repeat, I used to be somebody."

By 1986, Wobble was clean and sober, and due to the repeated prompting of his friend and former bandmate, percussionist Neville Murray, Wobble returned to music professionally. Armed with a live recording of a concert he had made with a new line up of musicians during a European tour in 1988, Wobble travelled to New York City's New Music Seminar in 1989 to get back into the music industry. Wobble was able to secure an eleventh-hour record deal with a small European record label. The live album, Without Judgement, recorded in the Netherlands was released in November 1989 and successfully revived Wobble's career.

Early 1990s to present

Following on from the success of Without Judgement in 1990 and Rising Above Bedlam in 1991, Wobble has since collaborated with a wide variety of musicians. His explorations into world music predated much of the genre's popularity. Jah Wobble's 1994 album Take Me To God was influenced by world music genres and contributions from a variety of artists of diverse cultural backgrounds, including Baaba Maal, Dolores O'Riordan, and Chaka Demus, and was a critical and commercial success. His music has spanned a number of genres, including ambient music and dance music, and in 2003, reworkings of traditional English folk songs. Though he has released recordings since the early 1980s, Wobble has been quite prolific from the mid 1990s to the present. He now runs his own label, 30 Hertz Records, and tours regularly throughout the UK and Europe with his current band, Jah Wobble & The English Roots Band.

A collaboration with his wife, the Chinese-born guzheng player Zi Lan Liao, was entitled Chinese Dub. He also performed at the 2008 Rhythm Festival.

Besides his work as a musician and composer, Jah Wobble also writes occasional book reviews for The Independent. His autobiography, entitled Memoirs of a Geezer: Music, Life, Mayhem (Serpent's Tail books, London), was released in September 2009.

Jah Wobble and the Chinese Dub Orchestra won the 'Cross-Cultural Collaboration' category, for their album Chinese Dub, in the inaugural Songlines Music Awards, announced on 1 May 2009, which were the new 'world music' awards organised by the UK based magazine, Songlines.

In September 2009, John Lydon reformed PiL for a series of concerts in late 2009. Despite Lydon's invitation to join, Jah Wobble did not feature in the line-up, since he considered the wages offered insufficient and disagreed with the choice of venues.

In 2011, Wobble collaborated with Julie Campbell, alias Warp Records artist LoneLady in a project called Psychic Life. The eponymous debut album Psychic Life was inspired by disco, post-punk and psychogeography, and released by Cherry Red Records on 14 November 2011. The project also reunited Wobble with fellow ex-PiL guitarist Keith Levene. A digital-only EP, Psychic Life, fronted by the song "Tightrope", was released in October 2011.

After an impromptu appearance at the Musicport Festival in Bridlington Spa on 24 October 2010, where they were joined by vocalist Johnny Rotter of the Sex Pistols Experience, in February 2012 Wobble and Levene are set to play three nights in Tokyo, Japan, as Metal Box in Dub.

List of collaborators

Footnotes