Jah Wobble on covering the Beatles, London buses and why punk went wrong: ‘Being kind is seen as square’

Sometimes, on the top deck of a London bus, pension-age punks will politely disturb the concentration of a man on his iPad. They will ask if he’s working on anything. I’m doing it right now.’” In the 2020s, the 68-year-old bassist and bandleader has been revisiting the city of his birth and youth, composing and producing albums including the cosmic dub of The Bus Routes of South London, or the celestial electronica of Thames Symphony, while traversing London on public transport.

Having a public bus as a studio is standard offbeat practice for Wobble. As a teenager, he masterminded Public Image Ltd with John Lydon, his transcendently thuggish bass kickstarting the post-punk era with some of the most powerful – and influential – experimental rock music ever recorded. Quitting the band at the peak of their powers, he fell into addiction, then worked for Transport for London as a station staff member before an unlikely major label deal spurred his 1990s renaissance.

He has collaborated with Sinéad O’Connor, Brian Eno and Pharoah Sanders, is a committed Buddhist and is the embodiment of a defiantly working-class polymath, having worked variously as a Goldsmiths university lecturer, broadsheet book critic, exhibited painter and non-league football commentator. Quite apart from his bus recordings, this month Wobble is releasing a Beatles covers album. Gurus, smoking dope, Yoko Ono’s on board.

I heard Strawberry Fields Forever and it just melted me.” But for all his creativity and spiritual questing, his reputation is as forbidding as his basslines. Wobble’s 2009 autobiography Memoirs of a Geezer is merciless about the music industry and those who crossed him, even detailing a 1990s incident in which he punched the late comedian Sean Hughes backstage at the BBC. Everyone loves playing with him.

His playing is kind of machine-like while being very human. He’s clearly been on a massive journey.” A lifelong city walker, Wobble’s own favoured journey along the Thames, from Chelsea to Putney, brings on the “spaced-out, beautiful and profound” state of mind to create music on the bus ride home. We’re doing one of those walks later today.

I meet him at a gently bohemian Chelsea members’ club. He gives the impression – despite his untrendy shorts and T-shirt – that he owns the place. One minute he’s slapping a waiter on the back, joshing about Tottenham FC, the next consoling a diner whose mother recently died.