In his early life and career, by his own admission, Wardle was given to occasional bouts of aggression, exacerbated by heavy drinking and drug use. As a result, he ended up living in a squat with John Gray in
West London, while Lydon formed
The Sex Pistols. With admittedly large "builder's hands", he had experimented with the guitar, but found playing bass a more connected and whole body experience, influenced in part by admiring
Bob Marley's and
The Wailers bassist
Aston "Family Man" Barrett on stage in 1975.
Public Image Ltd (PiL) Following the Sex Pistols' break-up, Lydon approached Wobble about forming a band. Both had similarly broad musical tastes, and were avid fans of
reggae and
world music. The band began rehearsing together in May 1978; in July Lydon named the band
Public Image (PiL) (the "Ltd" was added several months later), after the
Muriel Spark novel
The Public Image. Wobble's bass playing drew heavily on
dub, which has remained an important feature of his music. Having experimented with Lydon pre-Sex Pistols break-up, he had written a simple repetitive bassline PiL debuted in October 1978 with "Public Image", which reached number 9 on the UK charts, and also performed well on import in the US. Wobble has stated that the first PiL album was recorded so quickly due in part to the bassist's altercations with a sound engineer and men at a nearby pub. which was released in 1979. He grew increasingly frustrated by the lacklustre creative atmosphere in the band, which he felt stifled his artistic ambitions and PiL's creative potential. Besides differences in artistic vision, further conflicts were brought on in part by heavy drug and alcohol abuse in the band. The Human Condition toured the UK, Europe, and US in 1981, and made two cassette-only releases of their live shows (
Live at the Collegiate Theatre and
Live in Europe). The post-PiL years saw Wobble also collaborating with
Can members
Holger Czukay and
Jaki Liebezeit on Czukay's solo projects (notably
On the Way to the Peak of Normal and
Rome Remains Rome) and
Full Circle (released in 1984). Jah Wobble's Invaders of the Heart was formed in 1982. The original line-up was Ollie Marland (who went on to become
Tina Turner's musical director) on keys,
Annie Whitehead on trombone, Neville Murray on percussion and a musician named only as Cliff, on drums. By 1983 Lee Partis was the drummer. Trumpeter
Harry Beckett and pedal steel player
B. J. Cole regularly performed with the group. By 1985 Jah Wobble's heavy drinking and drunken brawls were having an effect on his life. Halfway through the recording of the album
Psalms (October 1986), Wobble stopped drinking. From then through to the present day he has remained 'clean and sober'. He then did a variety of
day jobs, whilst continuing to perform and record his music in what spare time he had. These jobs included a long stretch with the
London Underground. By 1987, due to the repeated prompting of his friend and former bandmate, percussionist Neville Murray, Wobble reformed The Invaders of the Heart. Armed with a live recording of a concert he had made with a new line-up of musicians during a European tour in 1988, Wobble travelled to New York City's
New Music Seminar in 1989 to get back into the music industry. Wobble was able to secure an eleventh-hour record deal with a small European record label. The live album,
Without Judgement, was recorded in the Netherlands and was released in November 1989. He also performed at the 2008
Rhythm Festival. Jah Wobble and the Chinese Dub Orchestra won the Cross-Cultural Collaboration category, for their album
Chinese Dub, in the inaugural Songlines Music Awards, announced on 1 May 2009, which were the new world music awards organised by the UK based magazine,
Songlines. In September 2009, John Lydon reformed PiL for a series of concerts in late 2009. Despite Lydon's invitation to join, Jah Wobble did not feature in the line-up, since he considered the wages offered insufficient and disagreed with the choice of venues. At an impromptu appearance at the Musicport Festival in
Bridlington Spa on 24 October 2010, where they were joined by vocalist "Johnny Rotter" of the Sex Pistols Experience, Wobble renewed his association with former PiL guitarist
Keith Levene. In 2011, Wobble collaborated with Julie Campbell, alias
Warp Records artist
LoneLady in a project called
Psychic Life. The debut album,
Psychic Life, was inspired by
disco,
post-punk and
psychogeography, and released by
Cherry Red Records on 14 November 2011. Keith Levene contributed to three tracks on the album. A
digital-only EP,
Psychic Life, fronted by the song "Tightrope", was released in October 2011. In early 2012, after some planned Japan gigs were cancelled because of visa problems, Wobble and Levene played various UK clubs as
Metal Box in Dub. The visa issues were resolved and they played Fuji Rock festival in July 2012. This was followed by the release of a four-song, eponymous EP. An album entitled
Yin & Yang was released in November 2012. Wobble has also collaborated with the British ambient group
Marconi Union, the results of which were released as an album called Anomic on 30 Hertz records in June 2013. In October 2013, 30 Hertz Records released
Odds & Sods & Epilogues, an illustrated book/CD of Jah Wobble's poetry. In 2015, Cherry Red Records released Redux, a six-CD box set that spans nearly four decades of Wobble's music. It includes new tracks
Merry Go Round and ''Let's Go Psycho
. In May 2015, Jah Wobble & The Invaders of the Heart embarked on an extensive six-month UK tour. They recorded the album The Usual Suspects'' which was released on 3m Music in 2017. A series of gigs in England from January to May 2017 was announced. == Other activities ==