Gang Of Four.

Aw. I was always bummed he kept the band going as the only member, and was further bummed by that recent interview where he threw all his old bandmates under the bus and took credit for every single element of Go4. But that band was incredible. I got to see the original lineup at Coachella, back when festivals inspired such things.

Lovely post from his wife, and I've seen numerous posts from others who said he was a charming and engaging fellow.

This pain is the price of extraordinary joy, almost three decades with the best man in the world. https://t.co/otsiVqxK36

— Catherine Mayer (@catherine_mayer) February 1, 2020

But yeah, that split between him and the rest, that was fierce. I saw Jon and Hugo -- with Dave in the audience -- do a presentation at PopCon the other year which was great and also left it clear exactly *why* Andy wasn't in the room. People are tangled, relationships just as much if not more so.

rip

They wowed me and my then fellow age 20 pals when we first saw them in DC in 81 (I had somehow missed an earlier appearance with the Buzzcocks). What an innovative and powerful guitar sound at the time. Pretty sure Guy of Fugazi was listening to those records. Alas others were as well. It's funny seeing on twitter those quotes from Anthony Keidis'memoir how Andy Gill got irritated with the Red Hot Chili Peppers when he produced them in 1984. Gill became their enemy because he didn't like their sound.

over and over:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRjjVFC-oG4

I saw them in 1982 at an outdoor show and "To Hell with Poverty" at stunning volume in the shadows of oaks and high-rise dormitories was a high point of my undergraduate education

My brother has just texted me, "Respiratory illness after touring Asia". I think I'd hold fire on that one.

Gill's performance on "Natural's Not in It" has never lost its power to enthral me. He remains almost unique in the electric guitarist fraternity in his preference for solid-state amplifiers, which provided him with the clean, trebly attack that was his calling card. RIP.

RIP

A statement from Jon King, Hugo Burnham, Dave Allen – Gang of Four. pic.twitter.com/9fRqDT12CH

— Gang Of Four 77-81 (@gangoffour77_81) February 1, 2020

I love putative sellout "Is This Love"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYXZQLaU_ig

Is It Love obv

“To Hell With Poverty “ is great. Before that here they are in Zagreb in 1981. Wow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUSw_2jkDjM

What a great find, that's awesome.

Jon Langford: "Just wandered round a Jamaican town looking for some WiFi and found out Andy Gill of the Gang of Four has died - such a giant force in my life over the last 43 years even when I didn’t see him or talk to him - totally stunned."

https://www.talkhouse.com/andy-gill-gang-of-four-talks-with-jon-langford-the-mekons-for-the-talkhouse-music-podcast/?fbclid=IwAR1ol0GNQvMNAIui0H4hKhTe40ZrNSEvhHa05hnqTOo6WebuDG1I4j898KU

1st 3 Gang of 4 albums were removed from Spotify US last year

There's some incredible perspective in that interview I just posted. At one point Langford asks Gill if he saw the Sex Pistols when they played Leeds, and he says no, and Langford says "me neither!" They both claim they never even bought the Pistols record, they sort of got the gist of it just from reading about it. But Langford brought up a good point, something I'd never thought about before, how the closest thing he could find to what he liked was glam, but by the later '70s Bowie had gone to America, Roxy Music had broken up, there was a void. He and Gill cite (like many others) Dr. Feelgood as one of the few groups there to fill the void. In fact, Langford says he heard the Go4 first described as "the Velvet Underground meets Dr. Feelgood."

Gill for his part cites seeing Beefheart, The Band and Bob Marley as more influential to him than the British punk rock scene; he and Jon King had apparently gone to NY in 1976 and met the usual suspects, and realized that these less flamboyant, intellectual US "punk" people like Patti Smith or Television showed there was a way forward for their own ideas.

Anyway, it's a great listen.

XP There are still several classic-era tracks up on their "This Is" playlist--they're just all sourced from a bunch of rando genre playlists.

Was also at the reformed Go4 Coachella show. They completely justified any nostalgic reverence, still vital and original, compared to some more current bands caught that weekend. Went three years in a row, caught a lot of great music.

I saw them in 1982 at an outdoor show and "To Hell with Poverty" at stunning volume in the shadows of oaks and high-rise dormitories was a high point of my undergraduate education

I saw them 23 years later at the 930 Club in DC. I've seen many great shows over the years but the single greatest *momemt* I've experienced at a live show was when Go4 played "To Hell with Poverty" there. An ecstatic surge went through the crowd unlike anything I've ever experienced. What a moment, what a song. RIP Andy.

Wow @ that Zagreb footage - shot for TV?

He and Gill cite (like many others) Dr. Feelgood as one of the few groups there to fill the void.

Andy Gill always acknowledged Dr. Feelgood as an influence, Wilko primarily, I mean just look at how he holds his guitar and moves on stage, not to mention his guitar technique.

1st 3 Gang of 4 albums were removed from Spotify US last year

That will explain why, when I attempted to download Solid Gold and Songs of the Free to listen to during my commutes this week I could only download a few tracks from each, whereas I was able to download the whole of Hard.

Anyway, I find it very difficult to cry (the last time I did was on Christmas) but I wept when I found out. Gang of Four are #3 on my list of favorite musical artists of all time and the last time any of the band members from my personal Top Five died was when Mick Karn died in January 2011, and I'm still reeling from that years and years on from that event. I also got a chance to "friend" Andy on FB and he gave me a very succinct but still heartfelt greeting on my birthday last year, which was way too kind of him to do. RIP. I'll mourn him forever.

"But yeah, that split between him and the rest, that was fierce. I saw Jon and Hugo -- with Dave in the audience -- do a presentation at PopCon the other year which was great and also left it clear exactly *why* Andy wasn't in the room. People are tangled, relationships just as much if not more so."\

care to expand on this, Msieu Raggett? or does anyone else know exactly what the problems were? cuz King and Gill did the band without Burnham and Allen for quite some time…

This is the interview I was thinking of:

https://www.loudersound.com/features/im-a-bit-of-an-awkward-bastard-an-interview-with-gang-of-fours-andy-gill

Basically dismisses Hugo and Dave as creative entities, and takes credit for writing 90% of the band's music and lyrics, which ... who knows.

Anyway, here's Andy Gill looking like ... Chris Evans?

https://www.billboard.com/files/media/andy-gill-1989-portrait-billboard-1548.jpg

Which Chris Evans?

not that one

I could have asked which Andy Gill too, of course.

The one who was friends with Mick Jones, I think.

Which Mick Jones?

The one who was a fan of Steve Martin.

LOL. Any child inheriting surnames like Evans or Jones should be named Octavius or Zebedee, etc.

huge RIP. by far the best post punk band

Andy Gill always acknowledged Dr. Feelgood as an influence, Wilko primarily, I mean just look at how he holds his guitar and moves on stage, not to mention his guitar technique

Alexis P made this point rather well in the Guardian, I thought:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/feb/02/andy-gill-gang-of-four-genius-guitarist-who-burned-a-route-out-of-punk

I like the notion that Gang of Four took influences from pre-punk stuff (the Feelgoods, funk) and made out of them music that was a route out of punk for those bored by it. Almost as if they leapfrogged punk entirely. I've seen ppl on twitter trying to claim Gill for punk but I think he was much smarter than that.

in the loudersound interview* that josh links, it's interesting to me that gill cites the visual and physical aspects of wilko's performance -- wilko's someone i think has been quite shortchanged in the recording (which is a little bit why he's dropped down the ranks in our sense of who matters) and gill seems to have found a way to transfer something like this full audiovisual sensibility purely into the sound**: plus he found a way to persuade his bandmates to organise their lines so as to intensify the value of the guitar even at its most minimalist (which is actually not a very "funk" thing to do but that's a different discussion)

*which incidentally took me abt 20 mins longer than necessary to read, it was extremely fkn glitchy to scroll through >:(
**not that gill didn't have a visual dimension onstage also but it's the least interesting part of it his work and certainly not needed as a focus for the requisite qualities

I wouldn't be surprised if Gill was downplaying the influence of punk, it's what people have been doing since about 1978 after all. Apart from Green Gartside, he always fesses up to it.

I was looking at some Go4 live YouTubes and there was one song in particular that was just blatant Dr. Feelgood but I'm not good on their song titles.

he found a way to persuade his bandmates to organise their lines so as to intensify the value of the guitar even at its most minimalist (which is actually not a very "funk" thing to do but that's a different discussion)

this is otm, and I think a relevant point to make about Prince circa 1979-1981.

iincludes digression on farting) (Tom D.) at 7:30 3 Feb 20

I wouldn't be surprised if Gill was downplaying the influence of punk, it's what people have been doing since about 1978 after all. Apart from Green Gartside, he always fesses up to it.

I was looking at some Go4 live YouTubes and there was one song in particular that was just blatant Dr. Feelgood but I'm not good on their song titles.

yeah I definitely get a bullshitty vibe from a lot of guys from that era who seem to want to discount punk

also don't discount the New York bands influence, Gill and Jon King went there in 76

also as far as his guitar style I'd wager reggae and Nile Rogers figure in too

I thought I mentioned that specifically re: the conversation I posted between Gill and Jon Langford. Both of them say a lot of UK punk didn't really interest them - Langford and Gill both claim to have not even bought the Pistols record or seen them when they played Leeds because the music was too macho or heavy metal; Langford says he and his friends played a lot of the first Clash album, but he thought it all sounded a bit "weedy" - but they were still massively influenced by the *idea* of punk. (They mention a pal whose picture ended up on the front of the paper with a tampon earring or something dangling from his ear, described in the caption as "punk," but their friend had never heard the term before.) And Gill does specifically cites his trip to NY as formative, because the people he met there were a lot less macho and aggressive and flamboyant than the gob-target UK crew; I recall a story of the Voidoids playing their first shows in the UK, and Robert Quine being surprised than pissed off that people kept spitting on his guitar.

Anyway, this is perhaps the very gist of post punk as a concept. That is, music that would not necessarily been likely *pre*-punk but which punk allowed or encouraged, whether or not the band itself sounded "punk." Gang of Four, Wire, Joy Division ... these groups were driven by ideas and concepts that punk allowed them to explore, even if none consistently sounded like what one might play someone who wanted to know what "punk" sounded like.

When I was first listening to this stuff in 1979, to my roommates "punk" was anything with less-than-virtuoso musical skill and compositional ability. Sex Pistols and Gang of Four and Wire were not Led Zep or Todd Rundgren or Genesis, therefore they were punk. I think B-52s may have been one of the first records I subjected them to that was so unusual that they thought of it as "new wave" or something other than punk.

What did they think, if anything, of stuff like Roxy Music?

without getting too het up abt two of my bugbears (ancient: "stop saying influence and use better words please", less ancient: "no one called it post-punk at the time and its use now is distorting") the move in the UK to move BEYOND PUNK was strongly afoot as early as 1977, when sounds ran their themed double issue called new musick (also a bad name lol but way better than "post-punk" sorry if this offends), featuring (from memory) kraftwerk, devo, the residents, throbbing gristle, siouxsie and the banshees, plus essays on dub and disco (possibly also pere ubu and cabaret voltaire?)*

i think the notion of a split within punk is just utterly basic to its sense of identity: it was always about forcing splits within a movement, not just the counterculture at large as a movement, but within punk as a movement -- and in some ways within ourselves. identify the contradiction and make it the hook! so it's less a "bullshitty vibe" really than a basic element in the make-up of many of those drawn to it -- we were always drawing paradoxical lines and insisting on impossible definitions, it was our thing! i wish the loudersound interview had called gill out on that a bit -- half his statements seem to me to be screaming "call me out on this! it'll be fun! open for a surprise!"

*with the exception of the banshees all these folks pre-existed punk, this is one (small) reason why i dislike "post-punk"

And I feel like Siouxsie is "of punk," yet not punk.

The roommates liked Bowie, so Roxy circa Siren was okay by them. Although I don't think they liked Ferry and Co. nearly as much. xp

Not punk but of punk is a good distinction. Pre-Pistols, but post-Ramones - say, 1974-1975 - were there any acts in the UK that fit the loose definition of "punk," or is that where pub rock (a la Feelgood, Brinsley Schwarz, Chilli Willi et al.) fit in?

sounds ran their themed double issue called new musick (also a bad name lol but way better than "post-punk" sorry if this offends), featuring (from memory) kraftwerk, devo, the residents, throbbing gristle, siouxsie and the banshees, plus essays on dub and disco (possibly also pere ubu and cabaret voltaire?)*

it seems important that literally everything listed here with the exception of souixsie predates uk punk

feelgood if you amp up wilko's bug-eyed oddness maybe, the rest of the pub rock was raucous 12-bar pop and country

doctors of madness for sure, a bit earlier the groundhogs, the edgar broughton band, the pink fairies

tbh ums there may have been others included that were more recent, i haven't set eyes on the relevant pages for 43 years -- but the people who argued for the issue and wrote and edited them were jon savage and jane suck, two of the key punk writers at the paper, so it wasn't *just* a retrogression (and was not at ALL presented as one rhetorically)

mark otm on influence + post punk. People describing "Pink Flag" as post punk always makes me chortle.