A change of Image
PUBLIC Image Ltd musician Jah Wobble gave up drink and drugs in the
mid-eighties, so it was in a tea house at a world music festival in Finland that
he met Zi-Lan, a Chinese-born harpist who became his wife.
They have two sons, John and Charlie, aged four and three, on whom Wobble
clearly dotes.
Four years ago, they opted to move out of inner city London, and chose instead a
leafy suburb of Stockport. "It's a sad thing. The pie and mash shops were still
clinging on but my culture had gone. As Bob Hoskins said, the Cockneys are like
the Navajo - they're all on reservations in Essex.
"I said why not move to the north west, because my wife's family is up here, and
I am mates with loads of Mancs, always have been. I am a walker."
After his long disillusion with the music business culminated in an Adolf Hitler
signature, Wobble set up his own record label 30 Hertz to release his eclectic
music.
He is easily drawn into a discussion about spirituality, but is anxious not to
be portrayed as the "mystic of Bramhall".
He will still go into a church to light a candle to Our Lady, and even bemoans
the passing of the Latin Mass. As for the old ethos of punk, Wobble now says
there was too much negativity about it.
"There is nothing worse than meeting some of the old punk generation who have
not moved on - sad people all dressed in black, still trying to keep that old
nihilist thing going," he says. But he does not count old friend John Lydon
among those.
"You know your mates. Time has moved on, but there is a connection there. I am
sure we would not want to go to Tenerife on holiday together for two weeks, but
I have got no axe to grind. I haven't had for a while."