Public Image Ltd. will follow up this month’s Record Store Day reissue of debut 7-inch “Public Image” later this year with the band’s first-ever U.S. release of debut album First Issue, which will be released in expanded 2CD and single-LP vinyl editions with “various bonus material” including a nearly hour-long audio interview recorded in 1978.
The John Lydon-fronted band announced on its website that the new reissue is due out “later in the year,” but no further details or tracklist have been revealed.
PiL released First Issue in December 1978 in the U.K., and a planned U.S. release in early 1979 reportedly was scrapped out of concerns the music was too uncommercial — even after the band recorded an entirely new, as-yet-unreleased version of the album for the American market.
UPDATE: PiL today announced that the First Issue reissue will be released June 18 by Light in the Attic Records, and offered the following details on the release:
* LP includes 180-gram LP housed in gatefold, tip-on jacket with an archive replica fold-out poster, two stickers, and archive replica newsprint adverts and lyrics insert. Plus, Download Card for full album, non-album single B-side: “The Cowboy Song” and an unedited October 1978 BBC audio interview with John Lydon
* Double-CD release features the album, non-album single B-side: “The Cowboy Song” and an unedited October 1978 BBC audio interview with John Lydon, plus two stickers – all housed in a mini LP replica tip-on gatefold jacket
* LP & CD Deluxe Versions available at www.LightInTheAttic.net include all of the above per format, plus archive replica PiL patch and set of 6 buttons
Tracklist: Public Image Ltd., First Issue 2CD reissue
CD 1
1. “Theme”
2. “Religion I”
3. “Religion II”
4. “Annalisa”
5. “Public Image”
6. “Low Life”
7. “Attack”
8. “Fodderstompf”
CD 2
1. “The Cowboy Song”
2. Interview With John Lydon – BBC Radio 1, Rock On, Oct. 28, 1978
PREVIOUSLY ON SLICING UP EYEBALLS
- Public Image Ltd. records 3-song live session at Minnesota’s The Current (audio + video)
- Public Image Ltd. cancels tonight’s U.S. tour opener in Orlando over visa problems
- Public Image Ltd. to release double A-sided single with live tracks recorded in NYC
Excellent. I can’t wait. An amazing album!
Used to have the import then sold it like a fool.
Disappointing bonus tracks – the US re-recorded version
still lies in the vaults, with the exception of “Public Image”
which cropped up on a compilation somewhere, and The Cowboy Song
has been released in the past. Good package though, and Light in
the Attic always does a great job.
I read somewhere that there was going to be a box set of all the PIL albums released?
Can’t seem to find any info now…
3 great albums + Keith Levine’s “Commercial Zone” were ground breaking and truly awesome. What awful and embarrassing crap they have been since then. JR needs to get back together with Levine and Wobble and see if it’s even possible for them to make something halfway decent again, otherwise, what a suckfest they currently are. Putrid.