Jon King reflects on Gang of Four set release
Post-punk band Gang of Four began in Leeds, England in
1976. During the current pandemic, singer/lyricist Jon King has focused on producing a limited release (3000 copies) boxset titled “Gang of Four ’77 to
’81” (Matador Records) which includes their first two albums, a 100-page book of photos and lyrics, an exclusive singles LP and a double LP, “Live at American Indian Center 1980.” There’s also an old-school C90 cassette tape of 26 never-before-issued outtakes and studio demos from Entertainment! (1979) and Solid Gold (1981).
The boxset’s arrival is bittersweet, as the release marks the one-year anniversary of the death of their remarkable guitarist Andy Gill (Feb. 1, 2020). “Angular” and “percussive” are descriptors commonly-used for his guitar playing, which was influenced early on by Wilko Johnson of Dr. Feelgood. Gill called his guitar style simply “anti-solos.”
The Sentinel recently spoke via Zoom with Gang of Four vocalist Jon King in London about his favorite years of Gang of Four, losing his friend and bandmate Andy Gill and how the band got the rights back to their music after 35 years.
“Could I be happy with something else? I need something to fill my time.” “What We All Want” by Gang of Four (1981)
“I’ve been working on this for a long time. Great labor of love for us,” King said, holding up the boxset. “This is my production copy. It weighs three and a half kilos. You open up and there’s a reveal of the Entertainment! album cover.” Entertainment! was the band’s 1979 debut album and in 2012 Rolling Stone Magazine ranked it No. 483 on its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. They called it “stiff, jerky aggression” and said the band had, “invented a new style.”
King describes the boxset book, “It’s got photographs from the period when we were at our best — 1977 to ’81 — when we were all friends. Me, Dave (Allen), Hugo (Burnham), and
Andy (Gill). Every page you can see that we enjoyed each other’s company. And we’re sort of young and handsome.” The book also has short essays about Gang of Four from writers and filmmakers like Greil Marcus and Sofia Coppola as well as
musicians from Sonic Youth, Joy Division, REM, Mekons, Pylon and other bands.
Greatly influenced by the French Situationists of 1968, Fluxus, Marxist theory and feminism, King’s lyrics often included commentary on issues like women’s rights (“It’s Her Factory”), militarism
(“He’d Send in the Army”), capitalism (“Capital It Fails Us Now”) and prisons and state violence (“Ether”). King recalls, “We were heavily involved in Rock Against Racism, which is very much a parallel to Black Lives Matter.”
Never made a penny
King told the Sentinel that Gang of Four only recently won back the rights to their own music after 35 years. He explained; “This boxset and release of our recordings on Matador Records was made possible by utilizing section 203 of the Copyright Act of 1976, also known as the 35-year law. The U.S. has got the most progressive law in the world about giving musicians the right to get their work back after 35 years. It doesn’t exist anywhere else in the in the world. Because the deals are all in perpetuity. Right? In perpetuity is quite a long time.”
“The “Gang of Four 7781” boxset is only available in the United States,” adds King. “Because for the rest of the world, we’re still signed to the evil EMI Corporation. We’ve never made a penny — ever — from our recordings outside of the U.S. Not one cent from the recorded music.”
Asthma and COVID-19
“Andy (Gill) didn’t inspire the boxset because we were already working on it. It was about third of the way done at the point of his death,” says King. “He was a very ill man. He nearly died of asthma attack when he was a child. I’ve known Andy since we were fifteen and my wife’s known him since he was eleven. He had two very serious chronic lung conditions. So, if there’s a disease that can come along that was the most likely to be bad for him, I’m afraid it was COVID.”
King recalls an early Gang of Four show, “The gig where we first made a big impact in America was when we played the Gehry Temple in San Francisco, 1980. Halfway through the show Andy started wheezing like mad. It was 120 degrees on stage. It’s really, really hot. And he’s wheezing and he realized, “I haven’t got my asthma thing.” And he goes, “Has anyone in the audience got an inhaler?” And a rain of asthma inhalers landed on the stage!
“I think it was a terrible illness (COVID-19) to happen to someone with such impaired lung function. He got very ill and had gone into hospital, and they diagnosed pneumonia. They gave the normal treatments but he didn’t respond and he got very weak and died in three days. There’s no evidence that he died of COVID but it’s highly likely that he did. That was a great tragedy.”
“I was always Andy’s biggest fan,” King says. “Hugo and Dave wrote all of the rhythm parts and Andy would improv around in the rehearsal room and we’d think about how the guitar part should go. If in doubt, I always used to say, ‘Andy! Andy! Can we just have more Andy?’ If in doubt; ‘More of Andy! Go to 11 of that!’”
Deep conflict
King later had a falling out with Gill when the guitarist continued touring and recording as Gang of Four with a new bass player, vocalist and drummer to replace the original three bandmembers of King, Dave Allen and Hugo Burnham. King recalls, “After the album Content (2011) I felt that we had done all that we needed to do, writing new material. Andy and I were in deep conflict about this.”
In recent years Gill recorded two Gang of Four albums — “What Happens Next” (2015) and “Happy Now” (2019) — and toured widely with singer John “Gaoler” Sterry, bass player Thomas McNeice and Tobias Humble on drums.
King continued, “I didn’t approve of him using the name (Gang of Four). He and I fell out very seriously about it in 2012. I said to him, “Why don’t you tour as yourself? You’re a brilliant guitarist in your own right. I don’t want you to use the name.” We were in conflict about that and we ended up not on speaking terms. Lou (Reed) didn’t go out as Velvet Underground. I can’t imagine Johnny Marr going out as The Smiths. It was a great shame because we had been soulmates and buddies. So, the last few years of this stuff to observe has been rather painful.”
Honest Records
“The real Gang of Four was Andy, me, Hugo and Dave,” King stated plainly. “Those songs on Entertainment! and Solid Gold were the best things we did. And it’s also Andy’s best guitar playing, as well as “To Hell with Poverty” which is sort of sensational.”
“One of the things that Andy and I wanted was to make honest records,” recalls King. “I think a lot of musicians want to make honest records and I always reference it to Blues music; Robert Johnson. An honest record. Obviously, all rock music goes back to Robert Johnson. You can’t get more honest than a bloke with one microphone and a guitar in a room.”
King smiles and holds up the hot-off-the-press “Gang of Four 77-81” boxset, “Back when we were doing the important work, there weren’t any distractions. Between ’79 and
’84, that was all me and Andy did. The concentration and distillation of it all was really important.” King adds, “The great thing about the boxset was it reminded me how much fun we all had with each other and how great it was for a long time.”