PiL News: This Is Not The Last Tour Continues

Public Image Ltd have spent the last few months doing what they have always done best: turning up, playing loud, and refusing to play the heritage-act game. While half the industry is flogging "final" tours, John Lydon and co. slapped a deliberately contrary banner on the current run — This Is Not The Last Tour — and headed back to North America for the first proper stretch in eight years.

The trek kicked off in early September in California (Pioneertown, Santa Cruz, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco) and has been grinding east ever since. By late September they had hit Riot Fest in Chicago, Milwaukee’s Turner Hall, Detroit, a sold-out Toronto date, Webster Hall in New York (Lydon cheekily noting it was "good to be back at The Ritz"), and Pittsburgh’s Roxian Theatre — their first visit there in more than a decade. As of 1 October they were due at Washington’s 9:30 Club, with Philadelphia, Boston, Richmond, Raleigh, Atlanta and Nashville still to come before this leg wraps. A second North American run is already booked for early 2027, plus dates in Australia and New Zealand. 

The current lineup is a working unit rather than a revolving door: Lydon out front, long-serving guitarist Lu Edmonds, bassist Scott Firth, and drummer Mark Roberts. Lydon has called them “a gaggle of mates.” Reviews from Boise, Milwaukee and Pittsburgh have been consistent: the band sounds tight, the setlist jumps decades without apology, and Lydon, now 70, has not mellowed into a cabaret turn. Expect “Home,” “This Is Not A Love Song,” “Poptones,” “Death Disco,” “Public Image,” and a stretched-out “Rise” that often swallows part of “Religion.” Newer material from 2023’s End of World gets an airing too. Purists who only want Metal Box night after night are out of luck. “We don’t perform to satisfy purists or posers,” Lydon has said. 

The tour almost didn’t happen. After the deaths of his wife Nora Forster and longtime manager John "Rambo" Stevens in 2023, Lydon considered packing it in. Fan demand and the existing band chemistry pulled him back. "I couldn’t just stay on my sofa," he admitted. That same period produced the live album Alive, recorded on the 2025 European dates and issued in 2026 — notably kept off the usual streaming treadmill. Studio work on a new album has already begun, with a 2027 release targeted. 

None of this is a victory lap. PiL still treat the stage as a laboratory rather than a museum. The rooms have not always been packed — a mid-sized crowd in Boise was noted — but the ones who show up get a band that still sounds like it has something to prove. Lydon still gets nervous before he walks on. That, more than any slogan, is why this is not the last tour.

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