Modern Rock Tracks No.1s - Public Image Ltd. and "Disappointed"

Johnny Rotten's post-Sex Pistols band explores the ups and downs of friendship while presaging the sound of alt-rock in the '90s with "Disappointed"

Public Image Ltd. - “Disappointed”

Weeks atop the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart: 1 (7/29/89)

Billboard Hot 100 chart toppers during this time:

• Martika - “Toy Soldiers” (7/29/89)

I was late to the party on punk rock. By the time punk music entered into my world, punk had gone mainstream. The Offspring’s seminal album “Smash” was my first introduction to punk, and by then, the genre had gone through multiple iterations. Over time, I came to love bands from all over the spectrum of punk rock: big acts like Green Day, acts less familiar to mainstream audiences like Rancid, and bands who stayed out of the popular spotlight while belting out hits for hardcore fans of the genre like Anti-Flag.

Every one of those groups, regardless of popular success, owes a debt to the godfathers of punk rock: the Sex Pistols. I say this as someone who recognizes the influence of the British punks but really doesn’t dig their particular style. But without Sex Pistols, punk rock and its derivations might have taken longer to evolve, if ever. I could go on for a long while about the legend of this band, but our story today takes place more than a decade after the Pistols played their last show, with band member Johnny Rotten moving forward with a new band: Public Image Ltd. (abbreviated “PiL”). This band would become the latest in a string of ‘70s-era rockers lauded with late-career acclaim in the form of a Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart topper: their hit “Disappointed,” which moved into the top spot late in July 1989.

When I say I discovered punk rock late, I mean I didn’t really dive deep into the genre until many years after I heard The Offspring for the first time. Even then, I only learned about the Sex Pistols tangentially, a band I knew by name and reputation but not by much else. To my surprise, as with a number of other acts I’ve reviewed thus far, the band I’m covering features a member of an even more influential band, and I never knew they existed till now.

Johnny Rotten (also known by his actual name, John Lydon) put together PiL following the end of the Sex Pistols, and the band managed to put together several successful albums in the U.K. Lydon wasted no time distancing himself from his days with the Pistols: the first single released by PiL, “Public Image,” is a scathing rebuke of Lydon’s former bandmates’ treatment of him, chiding them for seeing him as nothing more than “the clothes that I wear” or “the color of my hair.” The single reached #9 on the U.K. charts and cemented the band’s post-punk image in its native country.

The band’s biggest commercial hit in the U.K. was released in 1983, and it was clearly not written about love. “(This Is Not A) Love Song,” despite its repetitive lyrics and wailing verse recitation by Lydon, still struck a chord with new-wave-loving audiences around the world. The song was a top 5 hit in the U.K. and Ireland, and charted in the top 20 in several other countries. “Rise,” off the band’s 1986 album “Album,” was the last major hit for PiL in the U.K. A song Lydon said is about South African and Northern Ireland, and the torture and violence associated with those governments at the time, “Rise” peaked at #11 on the U.K. charts with scattered success around the globe.

The band’s big break in the U.S. didn’t come until the release of their ninth album, “9,” in 1989. But it didn’t take long for the album’s lead single, “Disappointed,” to become a hit with alternative radio listeners; it stalled briefly at #2 behind Love and Rockets before overtaking them for a single week in July 1989.

What struck me about the song was not how much different it was from the Sex Pistols, though if I had known before writing this that PiL was Johnny Rotten’s band, I would have expected it to sound more like “God Save The Queen” than James’s “Laid.” What struck me was the directness of the lyrics, and how the music itself sounded so much like the music I followed passionately in the ‘90s and beyond.

Much like his tone in “Public Image,” Lydon doesn’t waste any time getting to the point. With a song titled “Disappointment” and the subject being friendship, it’s not hard to determine where he’s going with it: friendship can be sad, hurtful and yes, disappointing.

It’s an interesting counterpoint to other songs that espouse the greatness of friendship. Indeed, up to this point in the 1980s, most people in the U.S. turned to Dionne Warwick and a few of her close friends for the definitive view of what friends are for. But much like in “Public Image,” Lydon was referring mostly to the rough experiences he had with members of his own band, spanning more than a decade since the band’s formation.

Talking about his friends “babbling on with useless defenses” and their “friendship rearing its ugly head,” Lydon makes it clear that the people closest to him consistently let him down. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to be in PiL, playing a song about how much they let down their lead singer, but for fans of the band, the song resonated and became a formidable hit on modern rock radio and MTV.

Lydon became a frequent guest on MTV’s alt-rock show “120 Minutes,” and in one appearance around the time “Disappointed” peaked on the MRT chart, he stressed that, while friendship can be disastrous at times, there are benefits to living through those tough times. “Friends will let you down, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't have friends,” Lydon said. “You should enjoy it for the very fact that they are human beings and fallible, that that very fallibility is what you should enjoy about human contact. Otherwise, really what you're asking for is sycophantic robots that merely compliment your ego. And there's no enjoyment in that.”

When I listened to the song, I caught the message pretty clearly, but I couldn’t help but listen and find myself thinking about songs that sounded similar to it. As I wracked my brain, it occurred to me that “Disappointed” sounded a lot like tracks from other popular alt-rock bands that would become prominent in the 1990s. That particular mix of steady drum and bass, driving electric guitar, and a lead singer with a falsetto-adjacent voice reminded me of songs like Jane’s Addiction’s future MRT #1 “Just Because,” Our Lady Peace’s “One Man Army,” and the aforementioned “Laid” by James. If I listen just right, I hear bits of The Verve, Semisonic and Oasis in there as well.

I guess the point of that comparison is that John Lydon didn’t just help pioneer punk rock with the Sex Pistols. By taking risks and expanding into a post-punk genre with PiL, Lydon and the band helped cultivate a sound that would become omnipresent in the 1990s and beyond. And from that perspective, I credit “Disappointed” as a song that helped set the stage for a shift away from the late ‘80s dominance of British-led post-punk/new wave alternative music, and into the grunge and post-grunge era that defined the ‘90s.

PiL had two more minor hits off the album “9”: the MRT #16 hit “Warrior,” and the #15 track “Happy.” Their 1990 compilation album “The Greatest Hits, So Far” yielded a #2 MRT hit with “Don’t Ask Me,” but future tracks only achieved modest success in both the U.S. and U.K.

There’s nothing I can write here that adds to or subtracts from the legacy of John Lydon, and even though I don’t think “Disappointed” is one of my favorites, I can still respect what the song — and the band, by extension — meant to the musicians who came after them. Sometimes the best marker of a musician’s success is not chart rankings, but rather how much their music influences others. In this sense, even though I won’t be writing about them again, there’s nothing rotten about John Lydon and Public Image Ltd.

Rating: 6/10

Chart notes: I managed to find a few tracks that hit their peak during the one week “Disappointed” ruled the charts. Believe it or not, none of them are from Fine Young Cannibals.

• "Waiting For Mary" by Pere Ubu: Another example of “avant-garde post-punk” that was in vogue at the time, Pere Ubu’s lone chart hit got a reasonable amount of video airplay on MTV, which likely boosted its fortunes on the Billboard charts. This odd but satisfying rock song peaked at #6 behind “Disappointed.”

• "King For A Day" by XTC: Former MRT #1 artist XTC followed up their superlative hit “Mayor of Simpleton” with another gem, a pop-rock track digging into the highs and lows of chasing success. It failed to find the same kind of audience as its earlier hit, and peaked at #11 behind “Disappointed.” I continue to be blown away by this band, which so far has been the biggest surprise of this entire project.

• "You Don’t Get Much" by BoDeans: Before they were writing songs that became the theme to mid-’90s primetime soap operas, BoDeans managed to carve out a small niche on alternative radio in the late ‘80s. Listeners with sharp ears and a good memory for movies might recall this track from the 1989 film “The Wizard,” which introduced all of us to “Super Mario Bros. 3” and the Power Glove. This track peaked at #17 behind “Disappointed.”

  Correction: Eagle-eyed subscriber JRH reached out to help me correct a glaring error from my Love and Rockets review. Bela Lugosi was, in fact, not a woman. For whatever reason, my brain didn’t make that connection when I wrote it, and the erroneous gender swap stayed in the version I released initially. It’s since been corrected. My thanks to JRH and to all of you for keeping me on my toes as I do this!