The year is 1981, and future “Where are they now?” outfit Bow Wow Wow just canceled an appearance at the new Ritz music venue on very short notice. What’s a club owner and promoter to do?
Someone apparently thought, “Hey, doesn’t Johnny Rotten have a new band? Maybe they’ll play.”
Johnny Rotten, known legally as John Lydon, had made a name for himself as the nasty frontman of punk pioneers Sex Pistols. But they’d broken up, and Lydon had moved on, forming Public Image Ltd, or PiL. He traded the abrasive musical trappings of the Sex Pistols for a less abrasive, reggae-influenced sound.
According to a 1997 account of events from video artist Ed Caraballo, PiL guitarist and former Clash member Keith Levene initially declined the offer to play the Ritz, but Caraballo encouraged him to say yes; Caraballo was eager to get access to the venue’s brand new, giant video screen.
The Ritz was a relatively new club aimed at the New Wave scene. It was nicer than grubby dives like CBGB and the Continental. U2 had just made their U.S. debut at the Ritz in March, and it would become an important element within the New Wave scene that grew out of New York.
PiL decided to put on some video performance art rather than a traditional rock show. Caraballo said that he told the club to promote the show as performance art rather than a rock concert … but they didn’t.
He said Levene told the Ritz’s promoters, “Rock and roll is f—ing dead. We’re not a band, we’re a company. We’re here to do performance art. This is going to be a show.”
Levene very recently published his own account of what happened that day on his website. He echoed the notion that the show was billed wrong, claiming the show promoters reached out to the “bridge and tunnel crowd” and promoted the show on the weight of Johnny Rotten and something akin to the Sex Pistols.
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