Public Image: First Issue

Recording began with the single Public Image in July 1978. Engineer John Leckie said it was pretty much a live take with Levene's guitar double-tracked and Lydon's vocal sent through a Space Echo, dub-style. Mixing and overdubs were done at Wessex with Bill Price. The first side was recorded that autumn at Townhouse and The Manor with Mick Glossop, and the last three songs at Gooseberry Sound, a studio used because the band had run out of money. Recording was finished by late September.

It reached number 22 in the UK and later went silver. In 1979 NME reported that a court in Malta halted sales because the lyrics of Religion offended public morals. Warner Bros. made a test pressing in February 1979 for the American market but judged the sound too non-commercial, and PiL recorded new versions of some tracks that spring. The album was not released in the United States until Light in the Attic issued it in 2013, and an alternative 1979 US mix appeared on vinyl for Record Store Day in April 2025.

Sounds gave it two stars on release. Pitchfork's Stuart Berman later called Theme a grueling nine-minute dirge, praised Jim Walker's Bonham-scaled boom, and said the sound has an in-the-room immediacy. Mojo's Andrew Perry called the sound uneven, but said Public Image and Religion remain life-changing.