Jah Wobble returns to his Cork roots
Jah Wobble is on tour, recreating his 2021 album Metal Box - Rebuilt in Dub. Picture: Alex Hurst
Speaking with Jah Wobble ahead of his series of gigs in Ireland, where he will recreate his 2021 album I am reminded of the various conversational avenues that can be ventured down. As the appointed interview time on Sunday approached I wondered if the passing on Friday of pre-punk icon Wayne Kramer of the incendiary MC5 would be worth a comment from the man whose name was bestowed upon him by the notorious Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious. On Saturday, we lost Aston ‘Family Man’ Barrett’. Bob Marley’s bass player was admired by the man born John Joseph Wardle.
A singular bass player himself, Wobble has collaborated with a number of genius musicians, many of whom have sadly departed, such as Kevin Geordie Walker, whose distinctive guitar sound with Killing Joke was as emblematic of the post-punk sound as Wobble’s former Public Image Limited bandmate Keith Levene, and, of course, Sinéad O’Connor, who graced Wobble’s biggest hit with his band Invaders of the Heart, ‘Visions of You.’
We avoid morbid reminiscences. I find John in genial form. His only betrayal of disgruntlement stems from his beloved Tottenham Hotspur FC managing only a draw the day before. Chatting before the Arsenal v Liverpool match he declares that he’ll be in Liverpool’s corner.
“Obviously being a Spurs fan I can’t stand Arsenal,” he points out. Oh, well!
John is someone who will talk, and talk, at incredible length. He is a proper conversationalist full of natural curiosity.
“I’m talking and talking,” he says apologetically at one point. “I’m not letting you ask any questions.”
Nevermind that he intends to do some rehearsal for his Irish shows.
“I’ll get the bass out because I got to look at ,” he says in passing. “I got to refresh myself for the gigs coming up. We haven’t played the set since December, which doesn’t seem that long ago, but you can forget little parts of the set very easily. So I’ve obviously got to remember it. I said to all the boys that they run through the set in your heads. Everyone’s itineraries make it impossible to meet up this week to rehearse. We will rehearse, but you can’t ever be complacent. So we’ll have a run through in Cork at rehearsal.
“What about you, Don. Having a good Sunday?” he suddenly asks. I tell him we’re having a holiday weekend to celebrate St, Brigid’s Day. Wardle is interested. “I was brought up a strict Catholic, but I don’t remember St. Brigid’s Day.”
And so begins another of many unexpected tangents.
Wardle is third generation Irish. His parents were strict Catholics. John acquired Irish citizenship thanks to his grandparents, who hail respectively from Schull and Durrus in West Cork. His father’s brother was named Terry after Terence MacSwiney.
“There was a deep sense of Irishness growing up,” he shares, “from music to religious processions. It had become a bit like the Welsh in Patagonia. It had its own deep resonance. It’s very difficult to explain to younger people what that means.
He has cousins who attended school with Tory government nemesis and trade unionist Mick Lynch
“They’re all bright, trouble-making Catholic boys,” he says proudly. “They will speak up.”
I wondered if his interest in Jamaican dub music was something that spoke to him musically, resonating, perhaps, with the rhythms and drones of Irish music, or was it the stories of displacement and defiance of their immigrant experience?
“Everything. Everything,” he exclaims. “It was the vibe. The vibe with dub was so visceral it was like from another universe. That was deeply spiritual, beyond identity or whatever. It was very powerful. Truly revolutionary.
“But yeah, with the actual music, ‘3 O’Clock Roadblock,’” he says, quoting the Bob Marley song. 'Rebel Music.’
Dub plays a part in Wobble’s musical sensibility, but his bass playing on Public Image Limited pushed beyond that, into some fractured post industrial space. Drawing from Krautrock, dub and avant jazz, their second album, , is both a physically — courtesy of its metal packaging — and aurally monolithic presence on the modern musical landscape, a sui generis tablet from the mountain of boundary breaking music. But while the 21st century’s understanding of the post-punk sound is articulated in a way that draws from bands like Gang Of Four, Wire and Joy Division, , while offering infinite inspiration, appears to have defied mere copying.
He offers an eloquent, entertaining and loquacious assessment of the album’s stature that takes in the abstract expressionist movement, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce’s Ulysses, and his understanding of the essence of the Holy Spirit, before finally settling on the title of the recent four-CD anthology of his 21st century recordings, .
“There’s a dark luminosity to that presence,” he decides. “It’s coming from deep. It’s a heavy record. You couldn’t recreate it.”
By that stage he was fed up with his bandmates, John Lydon and Levene, for a multitude of reasons, so he just upped and left.
He refused to look back, preferring to begin an exploration into world music, at a time when it was still a new concept, while also taking sideways forays into industrial, folk and ambient music. A rekindling of his relationship with Levene in 2011 saw the pair play tracks and record an album. Wobble says he became properly fascinated by his basslines on in 2016. In collaboration with former Banshees guitarist Jon Klein he set about rebuilding the record in Dub.
“You come to realise it’s perfect because it was just a one-off,” he says, reflecting on the original. “Time and circumstances dictated this incredible, one-off record. This strange f**king record.
“I’m so fortunate for that to happen.”
- Jah Wobble’s will be performed at Live at St. Luke's on Thursday, February 8. Doors 7.30pm.
