Gang of Four are one of the most radical, and
radically important, rock groups of the last 30 years. Their music, starting
with 1978’s Damaged Goods EP, offered a danceable solution to the problem of
where four-piece guitar bands could go
next after punk. They also provided the perfect answer to the question: how to
be polemical without being po-faced, ponderous, banal or doctrinaire?
Four
young men in their early twenties who convened in the late ‘70s in Leeds, they
were the first rock group to come up with the idea that using funk rhythms
would be a way forward for rock’n’roll, a way out of punk’s cul-de-sac. Gang of
Four were like Dr. Feelgood jamming with Parliament-Funkadelic produced by Lee
Perry as a Radio 4 newsreader intoned balefully in the background.
More
than anything, Gang of Four are about visceral, high energy, maximum impact
rock’n’roll. They make you dance and they make you sweat, just as they make you
think. That exclamation mark at the end of the title of their 1979 debut album
Entertainment! – incidentally, one of the greatest debut albums ever made; in
fact, one of the greatest long-playing records, period – was no accident or
sleight of design. Nor were they rent-a-gobs or rabble-rousers. They managed to
inveigle complex ideas into powerful songs that were provocative yet simply
thrilling. The music on that debut long-player was born out of a specific time
in history, the result of a series of very specific circumstances and
conditions – social, economic, emotional, political, musical – and yet it
remains as true, as resonant, as relevant, as universally applicable three
decades on as it was the day it was released.
The big bands of the 80s, the Chilli Peppers, INXS,
REM, have all spoken of their debt to Gang of Four but in more recent years,
the band’s influence has become almost universal with the emergence of
post-punk influenced bands such as The Rapture and Radio 4 and then the rise of
Franz Ferdinand and Bloc Party.
Their classic songs have connected with a new generation
of fans, many of whom have discovered the band through finding the source that
has inspired many of the best current guitar outfits. In 2005 Gang of Four re-recorded a selection of their favourite
tunes on Return the Gift, featuring Mark Heaney on drums while Hugo Burnham
played live shows with the band until mid 2006, when he left to focus on his
successful academic career in the USA. Mark then took over as drummer for live
appearances and has played across the world with the band ever since. In April
2008 bassist Dave Allen was replaced by Thomas McNiece.
Gang
Of Four, contends Jon King, are as challenging and questioning now as they were
in 1978. “What I’ve been thrilled by over the last few years is that our music
still seems to make sense to our audiences, whatever age they are, and these
days they’re mostly under 30. They tell us that our music means something, that
it makes them want to go start a band. That amazes me. I would never have
imagined when we started off that we would have this impact after such a long
time. We are a noisy, great rock’n’roll band. And that exclamation mark still
applies: we should call ourselves Gang Of Four!”
More
than anything, Jon is excited by the new material that he and Andy have been
writing. “What we’re trying to do is keep it totally stripped down, where
everyone in the band makes an equally intense contribution: guitar, bass, drums
and vocals.” He’s as energised as ever by his old schoolfriend’s guitar
playing. “I love what Andy does on guitar – it’s completely unique. How many
original guitarists have there ever been, not just now? He’s one of the few
living signature rock guitarists: you can recognise an Andy Gill riff a mile
away and you can recognise who’s been listening to him.”
The
fruit of Jon and Andy’s collaboration is a new album, the first new studio
album in years. "Content."
It will be released in January 2011. As powerful as their early material, as
insightful and more, the album needs neither exclamation nor explanation. Gang of Four is back. Gang of Four is back!
“When Jon and I talked
about the album we were making, we looked back at some of the other records we
had made and thought about how the visual context we created for the music was
integral to each project. Bands usually hand over the artwork, the ‘packaging’,
to other people but for us, it’s an intrinsic part of what we’re communicating.
The record is called Content, in recognition of the way every creative form has
been reduced to just that: content, the obligatory filling for the advertising
sandwich. So we decided to make a box with contents, or rather a metal can. It
reminded us a little of Manzoni’s canning of his own excrement [Artist's Shit
1961]. The box would contain things; things that carry meaning. We are always
using the word history; we are interested in it. It isn’t really the history of
kings and battles (although it could be) but it is a tracing of how we came to
think and act in the way we do. Jon saw a Spanish ceramic table that told, in
rough cartoon-like drawings, the story of the civil war, tile by tile. We
thought we could tell the history of the world, since we were teenagers to the
present day, in a series of 20 montages, involving crude drawing, manipulated
photographs and our own text. The images include a picture of Silvio Berlusconi
ejaculating, also a picture of the terror of Cambodia in the late 70s,also 9 /
11. There is a book of our emotions. Jon and Mark and Thomas and I acted out
what are thought to be irreducible emotions; like happiness, anger and so on,
and we were photographed. The photographs were then rotoscoped, which puts a
distance between the emotion and the viewer. There is a book of smells. Several
smells have been printed onto the pages of a book, and you can turn pages and
put different words with each smell. The word might say ‘sex’ or ‘labour’ or
something else, and you can figure out which is which. Then there are the
lyrics, and the record. We have also included some of our blood, diluted. It is
not intended as a joke, nor is it supposed to shock: it is a play on
authenticity in the digital age of reproduction. In the end, it’s all about
being human. How we see ourselves, and how we see the world we have created for
ourselves!”