O show do PiL no Ritz que acabou em confusão

No dia 15 de maio de 1981, o Public Image Ltd, grupo que o vocalista John Lydon montou após o fim dos Sex Pistols, fez uma apresentação em Nova Iorque que acabou em quebra-quebra. Na ocasião, o PIL tocou atrás de uma grande tela, no qual era projetado imagens pré-gravadas. A plateia não entendeu muito bem o conceito e após 25 minutos de apresentação o caos tomou conta. No trecho abaixo de “Anger Is an Energy: My Life Uncensored”, Lydon conta sobre o episódio.

The months before I left London for New York almost felt like a holiday. I was trying to gather my thoughts and work out my next move. To that end, I hooked up with Rambo and was going to stay at his place. He’d said, “Gunter Grove is killing you. My parents are away and I’m staying at their house, come over and can get your head together.” He was going to sort me out, because he was aware of the pressure I was under, so we were going to have a laugh together. We had been to Margate on a coach trip with a few of the lads that day. On the way home we’d bought crates of booze and were going to party until the following week. First night, a phone call comes in. I still don’t know how they got Rambo’s number and I don’t know who transferred the call – it must have been someone at Gunter. It’s Keith, all bouncy on the line: “Come to New York, we’ve got a chance to do a live camera display at the Ritz.” I went, “I’m round at Rambo’s, I can’t book a ticket.” “Don’t worry, it’s waiting for you at the airport.” So I let John down, because we were gonna have a hoot together, but off I went the next morning.

We still couldn’t get gigs anywhere, remember, but the people at this place the Ritz were going to put us on for two nights, as some kind of live music-slash-video production. The idea was to project multiple camera shots live onto one big screen. It was an interesting concept that I thought had heaps of potential, particularly bearing in mind that Jeannette used to carry a camera around in a violin case, and how we were thinking, “Film, film, film!” We realized how important filming was to the Pistols, and yet how little footage there was of the actual events. We wanted everything to be catalogued, but also to think outside the box when it came to live performance with the band – not just us playing in the standard format, but creating other kinds of situations. It could be many other things going on at the same time. Open-mindedness really, and…Bingo! A riot started. Or it didn’t. It wasn’t a riot, it was a fiasco, but a enjoyable one.

The idea was that we’d stand behind the screens with a record playing. We’d make a few noises over the top, with some live drums to bolster the sound. We got a drummer from a music store, a very old fella called Sam Ulano, who had a jazzy sensibility. His kind of music was Frank Sinatra. We could have picked any record to put on that turntable but I was insistent on it being Flowers Of Romance. I knew that would annoy Keith no end, because of his dismissive and withdrawn attitude during its actual recording. “You get what you deserve in this band, mate. What – you don’t know the guitar parts? That’s because there aren’t any – you weren’t there, you were upstairs playing Space Invaders. Here it is now, deal with it”.

So the album’s on the turntable, and Keith’s there with his guitar, going, “Brrr twang band,” deliberately being awkward and the old fella’s playing drums to it, and it’s fitting in quite nicely, and everybody’s got a camera and they’re moving around the place, and all this is being projected on a screen in front of us. We’re on the stage, so people are seeing the screen rather than us – a screen of loads of different images of each of us simultaneously, split-screen, multiscreen, every combination of cameras you could imagine.

The control boards of the cameras were being manipulated by a very fun American chap called Ed Caraballo. He was converting all these images live for the screen, with flashes of audience and/or whatever. Because I was behind the screen and seeing it all in reverse and up close – and my eyesight is not good – it all looked to me like a Tangerine Dream album cover.

Then – oh dear! – the record skips, because the people leaning on the front of the stage are pulling the canvas mat that we’re standing on, jogging the turntable. A front row of elbows is a powerful force – it’s almost like water bursting over the dam. And by that pulling, the record goes, “Skip! Skip!” And suddenly: Boooooooo! It’s not a live gig! Fraud!”

It seemed I’d no sooner got off the plane than I was practically doing the gig – I had no concept that this had been advertised as a proper live show over the radio. That wasn’t what I’d agreed to. I wouldn’t have turned up if I’d thought it was going to be some unrehearsed nonsense masquerading as a gig. I thought it was just a yee-haw, for a crate of lager and a laugh. But for a moment there, it ended up like we were going to get killed. People were chucking bottles, the usual mêlée.

It was absolutely nothing I wasn’t used to. I may have goaded the audience a little – I’m Johnny, it’s my business. “Silly fucking audience!” I told them. That was the point where it got to the real boos and the hisses. That’s an instinctive response. If they felt cheated, then I felt cheated with them. And then oddly enough we’re back to “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” – the last Sex Pistols gig in San Francisco.

You’ve got to take control at that point and explain through an aggressive stance that this is not what you’ve been misled into believing. But at the same time, “Come on, it is entertaining – it’s worth the money. It is different!” It’s an experiment into the future, and now if you look at every single one of the modern pop bands, they have these enormous screen projections going on behind them, not to mention the turntables. That’s the idea we were initiating. I’m not saying we invented screen projections, but we invented the cut-up thing of it.

Security just fucked off, and people started invading the dressing room. The only person who buggered of very quickly was Keith. He just basically abandoned it, the very situation he was so proud of, and suddenly it was all smiles again. Jeannette was great fun that night, she hung about. People were saying, “That’s the nicest riot we’ve ever been in!”

I suppose the casual way I approached it all was helpful. “Why don’t you all come out to the bar and drink with us?” They went, “That’s a very good idea,” and did. Then the staff tried to close the nightclub early because they said they didn’t want a repeat performance of the earlier catastrophe. They closed the bar about twelve-thirty, one. And then canceled the following night’s show because of the so-called riot.

So this alleged fracas was actually pretty hilarious. There was virtually no damage whatsoever to the screens of the cameras. The police were laughing, they even sat down and had a beer with Johnny Rotten. They were just “Hey, are you that guy John, man? You’re wild and crazy, that must be really disappointing, that was only a pussy riot!” Maybe I was the precursor of that all-female band from Russia, after all.