Memoirs Of A Geezer
by Jah Wobble

Dub be good to me

There’s plenty to talk about with John Wardle. His work with the initial line-up (and limited company of) Public Image Ltd is first off dealt with fairly swiftly but, typically, without pulling any punches. Later, the bassist’s alcoholism is laid out very nakedly on the page, so what emerges is an out-of-control and occasionally insufferable drunk whose life and music was infinitely and irrevocably altered by his predilection to alcohol.

This honesty and forthrightness is the book’s greatest strength in an uneven narrative that occasionally veers into some surprising rants that encompass his regularly-stated East End roots via snatches of Eastern philosophy and relationship with a peripheralvision god. Chronologically, we get a decent amount about Wobble’s time on the trains and his sober 90s creative rebirth; yet last year’s absolutely cracking Chinese Dub project is limited to only a few pages at the end. It would have been great to get more insight into how that project and its musicians came together, and the biography ends on an unsatisfying note as a result. Wobble is an engaging narrator but the feeling is that there’s much more waiting to be discovered.

3 stars 3 stars 3 stars

ISBN 9781846687129, 331 pages

Reviewed by Joe Shooman
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