"Rise" is a song by the English post-punk band Public Image Ltd, released as a single on 20 January 1986 by Virgin Records.[1] It was the first single from Album, their fifth studio album.
The song was written by John Lydon and Bill Laswell about apartheid in South Africa, specifically about Nelson Mandela as Lydon stated in a 2013 Glastonbury interview.[2] Lydon also referred to alleged Royal Ulster Constabulary interrogation techniques, such as electric torture, in an MTV interview in 1987.[3] It was one of the group's biggest commercial hits, peaking at #11 on the UK Singles Chart. The song contains the phrase 'may the road rise with you', which is a direct translation of the old Irish blessing "go n-éirí an bóthar leat" (usually translated as "may the road rise up to meet you"). The phrase "anger is an energy" became the title of Lydon's 2014 autobiography.
Tom Doyle of Sound on Sound said:
"[Sound engineer Jason Cosaro] ...set Williams up at the bottom of The Power Station’s elevator shaft, both close- and distance-miking the kit to create the distinctive drum sound on "Rise" in particular: Shure SM58 on the snare, Sennheiser MD 421s on the toms and Neumann U47 FETs for the ambience." Bill Laswell recalled: “Myself and [guitarist] Nicky [Skopelitis] played in the control room... and everything was a first take. We were using the Fairlight [CMI] computer as a kind of click track, and on the piece that became "Rise", Tony dropped a beat and we went back and dropped in this one beat. Otherwise I thought it was cool to be able to say everything was a first take."[4]
