Keith Levene, Public Image Ltd.'s Pioneering Guitarist and Clash Co-Founder, Dies at 65
Keith Levene, the pioneering guitarist who was a co-founder of the Clash and the deeply influential original member of Public Image Ltd., has died in Norfolk, U.K. His death was announced by former bandmates Martin Atkins and Jah Wobble on social media. The Guardian reported that he died of liver cancer; he was 65.
While his career was sidetracked by substance abuse beginning in the early 1980s, Levene’s work with Public Image — the band Sex Pistols singer John Lydon formed after that group broke up early in 1978 — cast a long shadow on the musical landscape of the post-punk era: Both melodic and discordant, sonorous and violent, his jagged, lurching chords and chiming arpeggios set a template that echoed across countless bands over the years, far beyond PiL’s postpunk milieu; this writer can recall hearing the Red Hot Chili Peppers spontaneously break into the riff from PiL’s classic 1979 song “Poptones” during a 1991 concert, and his sound can be heard in the decades-later work of everyone from Franz Ferdinand to LCD Soundsystem.
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Born and raised in London, Levene was a true O.G. of the British punk-rock movement, although he was a fan of progressive rock bands in his teens and was even such a dedicated Yes follower that he briefly roadied for the group in the early 1970s. While he admired the virtuosity of guitarists like Yes’ Steve Howe, as he told Furious.com in 2001, “Once I got good enough to know the rules, I didn’t want to be like any other guitarist. I didn’t go out of my way to be different. I just had an ear for what was wrong. So if I did something that was wrong, i.e. made a mistake or did something that wasn’t in key, I was open-minded enough to listen to it again.”
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He met fellow Clash co-founder Mick Jones in the mid-1970s and formed an early version of that band; he and manager Bernard Rhodes were actually the ones who convinced singer Joe Strummer to join. But Levene was unimpressed with the then-embryonic band’s musical skills and left, after co-writing the song “What’s My Name,” from the group’s galvanizing 1977 debut album. He briefly formed a band with Sid Vicious (who left to join the Sex Pistols) before uniting with Lydon, drummer Jim Walker and bassist Jah Wobble (a.k.a. John Wardle) in Public Image when the Pistols imploded.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/keith-levene-public-image-ltd-182231472.html