ANDY GILL of GANG OF FOUR: Hard Graft & Power Brokers.
An interview by Sarah Kidd.
Formed in Leeds in 1976, Gang of Four were one of the leading bands of the post-punk movement, their debut album Entertainment! ranked as not only one of the greatest punk albums of all time but one of the best albums of the 70’s; their lyrical focus on both the social and political malaise within society creating a bond between themselves and their fans.
Christened by a member of The Mekons – who Andy Gill would later go on to produce – Gang of Four have been named as an influence in the lives of everyone from Michael Stipe of R.E.M to Kurt Cobain of Nirvana.
Over the years the band have undergone not only a brief hiatus during the 80’s but several personnel changes – which according to Gill began in 1981 – but that has never stopped Gill from continuing to write and produce music not only for Gang of Four, but when it comes to producing, for several big names in music including Killing Joke and Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Returning to New Zealand in celebration of the 40th Anniversary of Entertainment! I caught up with Andy Gill to have a chat about his formative years, the tour and his thoughts on the current and somewhat troubling political landscape…
Aucklanders are very excited to share with you in the celebrations of the 40th Anniversary of the Entertainment! Album; are you guys looking forward to being back in New Zealand?
“Oh, absolutely yeah, I mean last time we were there I was amazed at how beautiful everything was, including the towns you know? Quite extraordinary, fantastic place!”
We’re pretty proud of it.
“Yeah, you should be.”
View this post on Instagram
Entertainment! was of course a hugely influential album, Gang of Four themselves cited as one of the most influential post-punk bands of their time. But I’m interested to know, who influenced you in your formative years besides the usual suspects you have cited in previous interviews?
“Well, I was a massive Jimi Hendrix fan, just loved that. The way he made his guitar sound like anything… usually not a guitar! And I was very keen on the record ‘Band of Gypsys’ where it was him and a couple of guys and it was much more funk driven, it was a much more rhythmic thing and I particularly liked that. All of the Motown and the Stax kind of stuff, Steve Cropper as a guitarist, but also The Velvet Underground, massive influence! Reggae from the kind of poppier 60’s up-tempo ska through to the slower spacious kind of dub thing.
So, I think those are the main things… ah, then I’m forgetting about Bob Dylan and The Band because they were kind of a big influence, mainly a lot of it to do with the way they approached lyrics and such like.”
Yes, because when you were a teenager you went to see The Band and you said it was the best experience of your life…
“Yeah!”
Your Bob Marley experience must have come close though, as didn’t you jump the fence into the security pit in front of the stage, start dancing and that’s when Bob leaned down from the stage and took your hand?
“That’s right. He reached down and took my hand and that was all a bit emotional.”
I can imagine!
“I think I was ushered away shortly afterwards… [chuckles] I was probably only about sixteen or so, it was the Live! [1975] album recorded at the Lyceum Theatre [London]. He did Friday night and Saturday night and I was at the one that was recorded.”
That’s amazing, Bob Marley is huge here in New Zealand too, it would be safe to say that his music has influenced many a kiwi artist.
Obviously, this tour is celebrating the 40th anniversary of Entertainment! which is certainly something to be celebrated; however, you once said that you thought your 1995 album ‘Shrinkwrapped’ was a more ‘complete’ album. I found this to be an interesting statement, care to elaborate?
“Ok, I think what I mean is; I suppose my experiences as a producer over the years I could bring that to bear on Shrinkwrapped because some years had gone by and I had worked with a lot of other people. Although the songs are different from each other on Shrinkwrapped, they kind of really hang together, and I think there are some songs on Entertainment! which to me – and probably other people will disagree with this but – they sort of almost, almost, don’t belong on the same record.
My favourite song on Entertainment! is ‘Not Great Men’ which is one of the last songs that was written before we went in the studio and I think I had finally nailed that combination of drum and guitar; spacious and really funky and also really exciting. Then there’s earlier songs like ‘I Found That Essence Rare’ which are a slightly different world. And that is a great song, and a lot of people’s favourite song, but stylistically they almost don’t kind of sit on the same record to me in a way. But as I say, other people would disagree. That’s it really.”
That’s interesting, because as I understand with this tour you don’t always actually play Entertainment! in full…
“Let me think, I think we will be doing all of them… I think. Yeah. You will have to make sure that I do…”
[Laughs]
“Shout out if I miss anything. ‘Oi! What about ‘Anthrax’!? C’mon I want my money’s worth!’”
Oh, I think the entire room might call you out if you don’t play ‘Anthrax’!
“Yeah, that’s right…”
Speaking of producing, you are very well known as a producer, you have worked with some of the greats including Killing Joke, The Stranglers and Red Hot Chili Peppers etc. How did you transition into this branch of the music industry?
“Well I was kind of the producer in Gang of Four, I was the bossy guy who would tell people what to do; ‘No, no stop playing that, it needs to go like this’ etc. and I used to get drumsticks thrown at me by disgruntled drummers, so it was pretty natural to me.
I guess the Red Hot Chilli Peppers was an early big production, although I had done bits and pieces – you know I had produced a track with Delta 5 before that and maybe The Mekons or whatever – so once I had done the Chili Peppers, I think it was basically established that I was a producer and many, many things.
People understood that I did Gang of Four, I mean sometimes we used to promote the idea that we were a committee and that all decisions were taken conjointly which was totally untrue, but for some reason we thought that was a good thing to say, as good socialists. It was kind of nonsense really.”
Well it was just you and Jon [King] really wasn’t it?
“Yeah. I mean musically, he kind of left it to me anyway. But we kind of worked on the lyrics together, he would do most of the lyrics, but everything was discussed between us.”
With the latest album Happy Now however you chose to co-produce with Ben Hillier and Ross Orton…
“I did, yeah.”
This seems like a departure from your character…
“With the previous album What Happens Next, the thought process was ‘Andy, you’re a producer you don’t need to get in anyone else, just do it yourself’ but then I think it takes longer, it slows the process down if you’re the artist and the producer. And also you don’t have that ability to be bouncing ideas off another producer, so I just thought to have someone that in the first place shares the task and in the second place acts as a sounding board, you know a proper, professional sounding board, it’s like you could do it like that or you could do it like this.
Also, it provides discipline, a lot of the times I would be in the studio on my own on previous records, like on What Happens Next for example. But there are always times where you don’t know where you’re going -‘I don’t know what I’m doing with this song’- it’s really difficult, the temptation to go and read the newspaper, or like watch TV for half an hour. But if you’re working with someone [chuckles] you can’t do that, you can’t just like wander off and do something else. And you can’t go and do your email, you’ve got to stick at it and I really like that, and also I’ve learnt – through doing this process with Happy Now – I’ve learnt that if you get things done a bit quicker, it gets momentum and you get the feedback and you’ve achieved something that sounds great and you can see where it’s going and you’re confident, all of those things really help the whole process and you achieve a lot more and quicker. Think it’s not helpful to keep re-working things and keep pondering, I think it’s good to be decisive and get there quite quickly.”
Yes, I can understand that, otherwise you can start to second guess yourself.
“There’s nothing like a deadline to help focus the mind. I was talking to Herbert Grönemeyer about this – probably not very well known in New Zealand, he’s not very well known in Britain! But he’s literally Germany’s biggest music star – he’s an old friend of mine and he sang on What Happens Next on one track called ‘The Dying Rays’ and we did an English version and we did a German version; but I was talking to him about this thing of, how does he work and how does he keep things moving along. And it was a sort of very classic German efficiency answer and he said ‘Andy, to begin with I have a firm release date!’ and I was like ‘Ok…’ ‘Yes, March the 1st will be the release!’ and he said he just works back from that, which is sort of amazing to me that you would pick a date in the future and say ‘That is when it will be released’ and then you plan backwards and you know that you have to have everything finished by that date, or this date or whatever it is.
And I said ‘Yeah, but what do you do if you get stuck? What happens when you work on a lyric and you don’t know where to go with it?’ And he said ‘I’ve got a long table and I’ve a got a song on this part of the table and I’ve got another song on this part of the table and I’ve got another song on this part of the table. If I get stuck on song A, I will move along to song B or C and carry on working on that’, which when you think about it, is kind of logical, but you know you sort of think it’s very much not the kind of romantic idea of the creative writer who’s waiting for the muse to come and visit.”
[chuckles]
“It’s like hard graft and you better get it done by two o’clock or else you are stuffed. I quite like that!”
Now Gang of Four have always been known for having an outlook, an opinion – if you want to put it that way – on social and political issues. And Happy Now definitely has that same outlook, especially your views on Trump, or more specifically Ivanka; how do you view – as a person who has written about the state of affairs for a good forty years – the current status of the world?
“It’s hard not to get desperately pessimistic, I mean the idea of Boris Johnson being the Prime Minister is just terrifying you know, and I never thought it would come to this, that we would have this neo-fascist clown leading this country, it’s not a happy situation. And nobody knows what’s going to happen now. I think the majority of people in this country don’t want Brexit now that they’ve been through the last three years and if there’s a referendum tomorrow I think that will be reflected but Labour have been abject, Jeremy Corbyn he always says that he goes with the wishes of the party, but the wishes of the Labour Party is absolutely for a second referendum, absolutely. He doesn’t want that, he wants to leave, he wants Brexit. But he won’t say it. For a leader of a party to not say what they’re thinking is hypocritical and deceitful and you know that’s why we are in this mess.
If Labour had stood up and had a defined view, things would be quite different, but they haven’t, and we got a big, big problem. Obviously we are going to have a general election at some point quite soon, but what’s gong to happen then is far from clear because the Tories could well form a government with the Brexit party which is of course an even worse nightmare and it’s really down to whether the anti-Brexit or the pro second referendum if you like whether they can get their act together and act in unison to stop this monstrous situation continuing.”
I must say as a New Zealander it makes me immensely proud to have Jacinda Ardern as a Prime Minister, she certainly isn’t perfect, I don’t think any politician can be to be fair. But we are certainly in a better position than many places in the world such as America for example.
“Yes, I totally agree with you, and I think she is a bit of a shining light in the current darkness. But you never know what the world is going to throw at you, and it’s like a blame game with [David] Cameron with creating this mess, and I thinks it’s absolutely fair to blame him, but you know, now we’ve got in this, it’s a time for people to be brave and to find new ways of working together. The whole first past the post system in Britain is not fit for purpose, it’s antiquated and the system of government desperately needs reviewing but the parties that have the most at stake, the Conservatives and the Labour party don’t want to change it because they are the power brokers, they want things to stay as they are, but everybody else just wants things to change you know.
As Gang of Four, I try and avoid current affairs, generally speaking and make more general points about the way things work in the macro level and the personal level; I think ‘Alpha Male’ on the new album, does make a couple of references to Trump himself and in fact does have him speaking on it, but I think the Ivanka thing, she was wheeled out to give the kind face of Trumpism with those bizarre speeches that she made. And I think there was so much irony and hypocrisy wrapped up in that stuff and I couldn’t avoid it. There will be a time fifteen years from now when people will go ‘What? Ivanka, who’s that?’ I hope [chuckles] maybe that is just wishful thinking.”
Wishful thinking that a lot of people would agree with you on most likely. I would like to say that I can’t see it getting any worse, but then I don’t want to have to eat my words…
“No, quite, quite. I think a lot of us have been saying that for some years now and unfortunately, we have had to eat our words.”
‘True, true. Last question for you Andy, will New Zealand audiences get to hear some of the tracks from Happy Now?’
“Yeah, we will definitely do two or three from Happy Now. Apart from Entertainment! we’ll do some tracks from all the albums pretty much I think, even if its just one…”
That will certainly be appreciated by your fans as it will give a great overview of Gang of Four’s amazing musical history!
Gang of Four will perform tonight at The Tuning Fork in Auckland, before hitting Wellington’s San Francisco Bath House for two shows on the 13th and 14th November. Tickets are still available for tonight’s show and the second Wellington show from Ticketmaster, but get in quick as it is looking like it will sell out!
If you enjoyed this content, please consider donating towards the running of Ambient Light, covering expenses and allowing us to expand the coverage you love by clicking the red button below (Desktop) or visiting our PressPatron page (Mobile).