Gang of Four Interview February 2011 [Part 2]
By: Andrew Misuraca
RF: So, going back a little bit, you mentioned how you grew up with reggae, one thing that I always thought to be interesting was… you formed in ‘79, was it?
AG: We did our first gig in ‘77…
RF: Even earlier then, so around the time The Clash started… I mean you guys both came from a similar place insofar as influences and motivation…
JK: Yeah…
RF: …but there’s a world of difference between the two of you, I mean The Clash are seen as one of the biggest political bands to come out of that period in music along with yourselves but you’ve always swam in the undercurrent whilst The Clash became this colossus of the punk movement… what interests me is how could two bands with ostensibly the same agenda take such different paths? Is that something you’ve ever given thought to?
JK: Well, the thing is… (he pauses for thought) we’ve had the luxury of not being commercially successful, which is not to say we would have liked to be and I think that what… I really like The Clash but I think that they play more familiar music and I think that when you start being in a band – when Andy and I started writing, everybody does it, it doesn’t matter what you do, whether you’re a journalist or painter or film maker or musician - you write genre stuff, you make things like things you see, and so first of all you do versions of stuff. You do cover versions or you’re learning your licks or you’re learning how to play ‘Stairway to Heaven’ or whatever, and then you try to take on the music you most like, so if you’re Laura Marling you must endlessly sit there; she must have endlessly sat there worrying about Joni Mitchell, because you’ve got this Everest, you know. If you’re a female singer songwriter, you’ve got to take Joni on some time or another, you can’t ignore her, and it doesn’t necessarily mean you take her on by copying, you have to do your own thing. I think Laura Marling’s done pretty well, you know, but you somehow or other have to challenge the stuff that is at the Everest, but sometimes you could be doing a ZZ Top, just doing fantastic versions of 12 bars, and I think The Clash were hugely popular because they had that element of familiarity about them. I’m such a big fan of theirs but, if you end up doing a song like we’ve done, say ‘Damaged Goods’, which I think is a commercial… well I dunno if it’s a commercial song… it’s a song, but it doesn’t have a chorus and it hasn’t got a bridge and it hasn’t got a key change and in fact, there’s nothing at all in it that characterizes, say, ‘Should I Stay Or Should I Go’ or ‘Janie Jones’, nothing at all. I mean ‘To Hell With Poverty’ hasn’t even got any chords in it. There are, is it three notes or four notes?
AG: There’s um…
Jon starts to sing the notes, Andy looks up pensively.
JK: Dah-nah…
AG:…six.
JK: Six notes!? Andy… that is disgraceful.
AG: A bit excessive, isn’t it…
Jon sings the notes again.
JK: Well anyways, so… really, I think that for me, the Everest is someone like Robert Johnson [original delta blues messiah], the man all music comes from, 1928, ‘29, ‘30… well, he was killed in some bar, he did everything you want to do as a musician. He was immensely sexy, he didn’t conform to anything, he got killed in a fight, he got drunk the whole time and he traded his soul with the devil in exchange for being a brilliant musician, but if you think he recorded about 25 songs in total and you listen to that and you think, ‘that is the thing, that’s the Everest’ that you have to come to terms with.
AG: I’m not sure that there’s that much similarity between Gang of Four and The Clash because they were thought of as being political but I think their version of that was to hit on topics like Sandinista, it’s kind of a buzz word that means liberal left thinking and supporting the struggle in central South America and I think Gang of Four was really a bit more descriptive… the thing about The Clash, and I mean I haven’t seen them, but a lot of it is more of a rock rebel pose, one foot on the monitors slash barricades [sic]… you know that painting by Delacroix called ‘Liberty Leading the People’; it’s a woman with breasts exposed holding the Tricolor and she’s leading the people in the riots in the streets in the revolution and The Clash sort of remind me of a cartoon version of that.
(It comes across as an insult but I think it quite fitting, given that Joe Strummer was a cartoonist and drew politically inspired satirical vignettes such as can be seen on the inside of the Sandinista! album.)
AG: But what we go on about is a more kind of descriptive look at how music works as a cultural thing and how it works in the idea that ideology is a human construct and music encourages parts of that and it all works together, stuff that’s quite interesting… and it’s slightly different agendas.
JK: I think a song like, a couple of our songs were banned, one was our perfect pop song ‘I Love A Man in Uniform’ [banned due to the Falklands war going on at the time]. Amazingly, in the last 8 years, how bands haven’t produced another ‘…Man in Uniform’ style song about the Iraq war, I don’t understand why no one takes that on as a subject. The other one is ‘At Home He’s a Tourist’ and I think that that sort of sense, which a lot of people share, it’s not really about politics trying to say to someone you know, this is a way to cast your vote but when you walk into your house and think “I don’t feel quite right anymore”… I think when Talking Heads did a version of it [Jon sings a line from ‘Once in a Lifetime’] with whatever that song was called, I thought that was like a version of ‘At Home…’ and, we did a gig in New York and David Byrne used to come along to our shows and someone would shout “David Byrne is taking notes!” (he says giggling); he’d come along and write little notes in his book as he’s watching but, I think that’s a different kind of approach, whereas if we had written songs like ‘Margaret Thatcher’s Taking Milk Away From School Children’ say, or whatever it was, it would not be very interesting. You know the band Stiff Little Fingers, for example, who I’ve never liked but they would write songs about Northern Ireland and it was so specific you could almost date the song by the events they describe in it, which is not very interesting, is it?
RF: And I think that’s one of the things that’s worked for you by not referencing so specifically, whereas I see both you and The Clash as more socio-political, you’ve escaped dating by writing through characters, for example your new song ‘Sleeper’…
JK; It’s funny, you know, ‘Sleeper’, I think, living in London or anywhere you go into a McDonalds or a Starbucks and you get these sort of bright shiny people doing their gap year courses and they’re all graduate students from Italy or wherever and you see scurrying around in the back are the brown people and the black people that they don’t allow to come near us nice shiny white people, and you wonder about the story there and why they’re not allowed to be up front, and that amazing racist hostility that lots of people feel towards people that are just trying to make a life for themselves, you know. And I think that ‘Sleeper’ is a track that tries to get a grasp of that knee jerk suspicion of anyone who is non-white, middle class, bourgeois, London, you know, that sort of ‘someone like us.... and then you’ve got people who are just trying to make a life and you think the worst of them…
AG: Well, and because now in America and Europe everybody’s frightened of Muslims…
JK: It’s very interesting, people assume that they’re ‘sleepers’. In fact we saw on the news yesterday, that Russian assistant to a Lib Dem MP is going to be flown out of the country. She’s a researcher and the security services say that she’s got to go because she’s a Russian sleeper and it’s fantastic because… in fact she looks exactly like you [he says to PR lady Ellie who has just entered to tell us time is running out], sort of your age and blonde...
AG: Are you a Russian spy?
JK: Have you been picking up information about-
Ellie: Yeah, I am actually, sorry guys, been sending it all back to Russia-
AG: It’s a good cover-
JK: It’s a great cover, but that’s the thing, you have to be suspicious all the time of these things, as if you’re trying to protect something, just like old people are trying to protect their way of life at the expense of young people, you know? It’s exactly what is happening now, they’re trying to crush young people.
AG: The old people should be rounded up, basically, and put in pens.
JK: Yeah, and just be made to pay for their crimes, Andy.
AG: Well, put them in pens and make them pay for their crimes. Electrified fences. Poke them with sticks.
We end with another brief chat about Content. The guys tell me about the box set which contains a bonus track, book of smells, book of emotions, book of photos and small vials of each member’s blood. But for any of you hoping to clone your own Gang of Four à la House of Cosbys, there’s not enough actual blood in said vials, it’s watered down. I know, I was looking forward to that too.
Artists in this article: Gang Of Four