Editing Metal Box (section)

==Recording and music==
According to John Lydon, opener "Albatross'" was recorded live at [[The Manor Studio]] in Oxfordshire, with the singer free-forming his lyrics. Guitarist Keith Levene, bassist Jah Wobble, and drummer David Humphrey made the song up as they went along, and recorded the song in one take.<ref name="ScottMurphy">{{cite web |first=Scott |last=Murphy |title=Fodderstompf - PiL Interviews - John Lydon interview |url=http://www.fodderstompf.com/INTERVIEWS/john2.html |date=January 2004 |access-date=11 March 2016}}</ref><ref name="furious">{{cite web |first=Jason |last=Gross |title=Keith Levene interview - Part 2 of 4 |url=http://www.furious.com/perfect/keithlevene2.html |date=May 2001 |access-date=11 March 2016}}</ref> PiL also recorded at [[Townhouse Studios]] in West London with session drummer [[Richard Dudanski]] and produced the songs "Memories", "No Birds", "Socialist", and "Chant";<ref name="Clinton">[[Clinton Heylin]]: ''"Babylon's Burning – From Punk to Grunge"'', Canongate 2007, page 466</ref> Levene recalls that "Memories" features him playing "this normal Spanish guitar thing that goes dun-da-da-dun da-da-dun... it's one of the first things I learned to play on guitar, very simple. I was very fond of that [...] I just had the guitar going through an [[Flanging|Electric Mistress]]."<ref name="furious"/>

"[[Death Disco]]" – released as a single in late June 1979 – was remixed and retitled "Swan Lake" for ''Metal Box''. "I realised," said Levene, "that this tune that I was bastardising by mistake was '[[Swan Lake]]', so I started playing it on purpose but I was doing it from memory. You can hear that I'm not playing it exactly right. It just worked. [...] There's a few versions of that. The one on ''Metal Box'' is version two, which is very different from the simpler, original 12-inch version."<ref name="furious"/> The lyrics are based on Lydon's mother dying of cancer: "When I had to deal with my mother's death, which upset the fuck out of me, I did it partly through music. I had to watch her die slowly of cancer for a whole year. I wrote 'Death Disco' about that. I played it to her just before she died and she was very happy. That's the Irish in her, nothing drearily sympathetic or weak."<ref name="JackBarron">Jack Barron: ''"I Cry Alone"'', ''[[New Musical Express]]'', printed 10 October 1987</ref> PiL recorded the song at an empty hall in [[Brixton]] to test a three-bass sound system and worked with drummer [[Jim Walker (drummer)|Jim Walker]] but didn't record with him.<ref name="furious"/>

"Poptones" was one of the first songs recorded for the album, according to Levene, who stated that he inadvertently played "[[Starship Trooper (song)|Starship Trooper]]" during the song.<ref name="TheWire">[[Simon Reynolds]]: ''"Albatross Soup"'', printed in ''[[The Wire (magazine)|The Wire]]'', December 2002</ref> According to Lydon, "Poptones" was based on a story "straight out of the ''[[Daily Mirror]]''" about a girl who was kidnapped and "bundled, blindfolded, into the back of a car by a couple of bad men and driven off into a forest, where they eventually dumped her. The men had a cassette machine with an unusual tune on the cassette, which they kept playing over and over. The girl remembered the song, and that, along with her recollection of the car and the men's voices, is how the police identified them. The police eventually stopped the car and found the cassette was still in the machine, with the same distinctive song on the tape."<ref name="PlasticBox">John Lydon's liner notes in [[Public Image Ltd.]]'s ''Plastic Box'' compilation, Virgin Records, 1999)</ref> In his 2009 autobiography ''Memoirs of a Geezer'', Jah Wobble says that Poptones refers to "a journey we took in [[Joe Dever|Joe]] the roadie's Japanese car [..] and Joe had one of his dodgy cassettes playing.". He highlighted the song as "the jewel in the PiL crown. [...] That [bass] line is as symmetrical as a snowflake. [..] We had a drummer with us who was pretty good [...] but the bloke just couldn't get the right feel for 'Poptones'. [...] In the end Levene put the drums down on that track, his drums are a bit loose, but that is actually a good thing."<ref name="Geezer">Jah Wobble: ''Memoirs of a Geezer'' (''[[Serpent's Tail]]'', 2009, pages 108–109)</ref>

Wobble cited "Careering" as his "second-favourite track from ''Metal Box'', and probably my favourite John Lydon vocal performance."<ref name="TotallyWired">[[Simon Reynolds]]: ''"Totally Wired: Postpunk Interviews and Overviews"'', ''Soft Skull Press'', 2009, page 20</ref> Lyrically, the song is "basically about a gunman [in Northern Ireland] who is careering as a professional businessman in London."<ref name="Noble">Peter Noble: ''"Jah Wobble of PIL"'', ''Impulse'' magazine, Toronto, May 1980)</ref> The song was recorded at the Townhouse during a quick nighttime session helmed by Wobble; he told journalist [[Simon Reynolds]] in an interview: "If you listen to the drum rhythm it is very similar to the sort of rhythm a [[Ancient Fife and Drum Corps|drum and fife band]] would create. [...] By now Keith had got hold of a [[Sequential Circuits Prophet-5|Prophet synth]], he used that on 'Careering'."<ref name="TotallyWired"/> Wobble created the drum track and bassline, while Levene played synth. Levene explained his synth playing in the song was an attempt to replicate the sound of ambient machine noise heard from a downstairs toilet, achieved by dropping an item on one of the synth keys to keep it going.<ref name="furious"/>

"No Birds Do Sing" (also listed as just "No Birds") features a line from "[[La Belle Dame sans Merci]]", a poem by [[John Keats]], which Lydon "just borrowed a bit of because it suited this particular rant about suburbia."<ref name="PlasticBox"/> The song was recorded at the Townhouse with drummer Richard Dudanski, whom Keith Levene knew during his tenure with [[The 101ers]]. Wobble said that Dudanski made extensive and imaginative use of the [[tom-tom drums]],<ref name="Clinton"/><ref name="Geezer"/> and Levene told Simon Reynolds that "No Birds" is one of his favourite songs on the album.<ref name="furious"/> "All that it is<!--not a mistake--> is me playing the guitar part and duplicating it, but feeding the second one through this effect I'd set up on the harmoniser. Meanwhile John is lying under the piano and singing that weird feedback voice, while twinkling the keys at the same time, just to be annoying. You can hear the piano on the record," said Levene.<ref name="TheWire"/>

"Graveyard" features a guitar part that was "made up on the spot," according to Levene. "I was in a very [[Clint Eastwood]] mood. I didn't know what I was going to play. Wobble's playing the bassline and drums are playing so I had to do something."<ref name="furious"/> The album version is an instrumental, a version with lyrics and vocals was retitled "Another" and released as the B-side to "Memories" in October 1979.

"The Suit"—described by Lydon as being about "people of low origins trying to be posh"—is one of Levene's least favourite tracks.<ref name="furious4">{{cite web |first=Jason |last=Gross |title=Keith Levene interview - Part 4 of 4 |url=http://www.furious.com/perfect/keithlevene4.html |date=September 2001 |access-date=11 March 2016}}</ref> Levene said, "It was never one of my favourite pieces because of what it was really about. [...] There was this guy that was an old mate of John's who lived in this apartment. At some point John decided he hated his guts. He just wrote this really nasty, finger-pointing, over-exaggerated, ripping parody of what the guy was – 'Society boy.' [...] This guy, [fashion designer] Kenny MacDonald, made his suit and all of ours and it made him look good to have the guys from PiL wearing his stuff. We'd wear it wrong and it looked even better, we didn't want the black leather jacket look like these punk bands. So John just decided to hate this guy, that's what happens and there's nothing you can do. He wouldn't be his lapdog and John thought he was a star and wanted that."<ref name="furious"/> Wobble played and recorded the backing track of drums and piano for "The Suit" at Gooseberry Studios with Mark Lusardi, which started out as a cover of "[[Blueberry Hill (song)|Blueberry Hill]]".<ref name="Geezer"/> He brought the backing track to the band at The Manor, to which Lydon "freaked out when he heard that... He was galvanised into action and within a few hours 'The Suit' existed."<ref name="Geezer"/>

"Bad Baby"—its title a nickname of Levene's<ref name="furious"/>—was recorded at the Townhouse. Wobble (whose playing in the song was inspired by bassist [[Cecil McBee]]) and drummer [[Martin Atkins]] recorded the song together.<ref name="Geezer"/>

Levene recalled that "Socialist" featured cheap synthesizers he had purchased: "Me and Wobble were really having fun fucking around with these things, whilst submerged in the mix was this huge soaring sound, rising upwards from the drum and the bass, like a whale's cry. Later on I dubbed up the cymbals, so you have that spiralling metallic sound. Dubwise!" Wobble told Simon Reynolds, "At the time I was a bit of a [[socialist]]. [...] I hated [[Margaret Thatcher|Thatcher]], I hated everything [[Ronald Reagan|Reagan]] stood for to be quite honest, you know, and at that time I just wanted that old-style, left-wing socialism."<ref name="TotallyWired"/>

Lydon called "Chant" an "old English ditty with a string synthesizer".<ref name="Hilsberg">Alfred Hilsberg: ''"Public Image Ltd. – Wir sind keine Rock 'n' Roll Band!"'', ''Sounds'' magazine, Germany, April 1980</ref> Drummer Richard Dudanski cited it as one of his favourites.

Album closer "Radio 4" was named after the [[BBC]] radio station. "I called it 'Radio 4' because in England, you got [[BBC Radio 1|Radio 1]], [[BBC Radio 2|2]], [[BBC Radio 3|3]]...," said Levene. "Radio 1 played pop tunes. Before that, the BBC was so boring! It took until about 1985 before we had FM radio."<ref name="furious"/> "Radio 4" was recorded and performed by Levene, initially with [[Ken Lockie]] from [[Cowboys International]] on drums, at [[Advision Studios]]. Levene played the bassline "as if it was Wobble playing," and played a [[Yamaha Corporation|Yamaha]] String Ensemble to create the layered synth sounds. "I was using this thing and I start building it up, all I'm doing is taking different sounds from this thing and layering it. When I heard it, I pulled the drums out. I got on the idea of trying to make it sound orchestrated with the long chords played shorter. To get round the other stuff, I just used what was at hand. I played bass like I imagined Wobble would play bass to it, I wanted a Wobble feel to it. But basically, it's all me – that's when I realised I can completely do everything. You just hear the drums at the end. [...] With 'Radio 4', I was just alone in the studio one night, and I was overwhelmed with the sense of space. I just took everything out of the studio, moved the drum kit out and played everything myself, reproducing this sense of cold spaciousness I felt around me."<ref name="furious"/>

"Many people don't understand that [the album] was [[Musical improvisation|improvisation]]," Lydon recalled. "It had to be, because we'd spent most of the money on the container ''[see below]'' – and so what we had to do was quite literally sneak into studios when bands had gone home for the night. And these were pretty rough [[Studio monitor|monitor]] mixes – no actual production."<ref>Fortnam, Ian: "Behind the Public Image"; ''[[Classic Rock (magazine)|Classic Rock]]'' #148, August 2010, p61</ref>