Gang of Four returns to SF during US tour
British post-punk band Gang of Four is currently touring the U.S. for 28 days including a gig at The Independent in San Francisco on Monday. Jon King is singing again after a 20 year hiatus and original drummer Hugo Burnham joins Sara Lee on bass and David Pajo on guitar. They'll be performing mainly songs from their first three albums.
Gang of Four was founded in 1976 after Jon King and Andy Gill traveled to New York and witnessed the emergence of punk rock at CBGBs. Burnham and Dave Allen joined as original drummer and bass player. The band later went through big changes and until recently Gill was the single original member touring as Gang of Four, a decision King disliked.
Gill died at the beginning of the pandemic due to long-term lung issues and COVID-19. The Sentinel recently spoke with lyricist/singer Jon King about touring and the politics of punk rock.
Gang of Four Q: “Tell me about the current band line-up for this Gang of Four tour.”
A: “I hadn't really thought about playing shows again but Dave, Hugo and I get on really well. It turns out that Dave can't do the tour because he's busy, so the obvious choice was Sara Lee. Sara played bass on the albums `Songs of The Free' (1982) and `HARD' (1983) and we toured together. She played on `I Love a Man in a Uniform.' We were very good friends back in the day and then Sara joined the B52s and played on the `Love Shack' album and has had a fantastic career with the Indigo Girls,” King said.
“David Pajo is playing guitar with us. He's played in Zwan and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. He's a remarkable character and it's extraordinary how he's managed to work out Andy's guitar parts. We spent three weeks rehearsing in Massachusetts in January and David focused on playing Andy's parts really, really well,” King continues. “Modern guitarists have the good fortune of having Andy's vocabulary. And I have the great fortune of having David Pajo on this tour with us and he's soaked all that stuff up and adds his own incredible thing.
“It's my view that the albums in our box set released last year (“77-81”) are Andy's best recorded work. I think 99% of music fans would agree that Andy's guitar on `To Hell with Poverty' and `At Home He's A Tourist' is sensational. He had an approach which is not technical and it's now influenced two generations of guitarists,” King explained. “On this tour we're playing songs from our first three albums; Entertainment!, Solid Gold and Songs of the Free. The song `Elevator' is on the cassette inside the box set and we might play that if we get an encore. It's a good punk rock song.”
Las Vegas
Q: “The design of the box set is great and the book is full of great stories and images.”
A: “The albums and the book tell a really interesting narrative about what it was
like to be in the band at that time and be in America. (1980) It's very much about that wonderful experience,” recalls King. “I'm very pleased because I've been nominated for a Grammy for that box set! I'm not going to go to the ceremony, though, because it's going to be in Las Vegas in April. It was going to be in Los Angeles
but COVID made it all go away. I don't like Las Vegas because it means staying in a gambling hotel, eating food in gambling restaurants. It's not an attractive place if you don't like all that kitsch and if you're not into gambling. So, I'm not going.”
Sitting bull Q: “The cover art for the first album Entertainment! depicts the exploitive relationship between cowboys and Indians.
I know Native American culture was important to you and Andy.” A: “I drew those pictures from Karl May, who was the world's biggest selling author of all time in Germany. He wrote Westerns and had never been to America. It was always the story of an idealized relationship between Europeans and Native Americans; we were told that they got on. It's the big lie because that's not the way Europeans actually
behaved. It's entirely possible that there were places where Europeans and Native Americans interacted a bit more like “Dances with Wolves.” But most of it ended up in tragedy,” offered King.
“In the box set, the live album was recorded in San Francisco at the American Indian Center which, of course, is a non-woke name. But at that time, there was the American Indian Movement and it was shortly after they'd occupied Alcatraz. (1969-71) It was a breakthrough show for Gang of Four. (1980)
“Andy (Gill) particularly was obsessed with Plains Indian culture. When we went on the stage at the American Indian Center there was a poster on the wall behind us of Sitting Bull, the great Lakota warchief. Under him it said `Landlord.' I was really thrilled to play in that venue,” King said. “We were paying homage to something we'd appreciated since we were teenagers. Andy and I felt great affinity with Native American culture and it was a wonderful place to play a show. The album cover for the live album is my design, but it's based on the Four Winds flag of the Native American movement.” (the show was recorded by Terry Hammer for KALX)
Abducted and transported Q: “The last couple years there's been significant movements to address systemic racism globally and remove symbols that glorify the genocide of native people and slavery. In Santa Cruz the last of three mission bells were recently removed.”
A: “I live in Bath, which is very near Bristol, where we had a great episode over the statue of Edward Colston,” said King. “In the 18th
century, he was one of the wealthiest men in the world as a slave-trader, responsible for hundreds of thousands of people being abducted and transported. I agree it's not right that people like that should be celebrated. So, the names of streets and buildings have now been changed because it's obscene.”
Rock Against Racism Q: “In the '70s Gang of Four played many concerts for Rock Against Racism and Rock Against Sexism. How important was that for you?”
A: “Very important. And it's sadly relevant still. Eric Clapton's comments supporting a British white supremacist politician in 1976 — Enoch Powell — led to the formation of Rock Against Racism. And now Clapton is doing exactly the same thing again. I would've hoped this would all have become a memory, but it's not,” King told the Sentinel.
“We all revered Black music. We lived in parts of Leeds which had very integrated and mixed community. The most important popular music forms in the world have come from African American culture,” King said. “Jazz music, of course, which is revolutionary and utterly happening, and rock and roll. And then of course, funk leading into hip hop and reggae. My heroes were people like Jimi Hendrix, James Brown and anything that came out of Detroit. We toured years later with Public Enemy and Sisters of Mercy. (1991) It was a really good format; a hip-hop band, a punk band, and then we were called a post-punk band. I'm surprised actually that there hasn't been a political revival in music with Black Lives Matter. But that's coincided with COVID, so maybe that made it not possible.”
Political hip-hop Q: “I'm wondering about that, too. Where are the political voices in music now?”
A: “The political voices in music tend to be in hip-hop. I think it's a phenomenon of rock music, to have separated itself from that narrative. If you think about the '60s, even people like Kenny Rogers could write a song about a Vietnam veteran coming home who was in a wheelchair and unable to have a sexual relationship with his wife, so she goes out — `Ruby.' Elvis Presley had a hit song, `In the Ghetto.' You want people to get excited and dance to your songs. It's meant to be a thrill. And there's nothing more thrilling than saying things that are there in plain sight,” King said.
“For example, on the second album (Solid Gold 1981) there's a song called `In the Ditch' about the absurdity of living under the expectation there would be a nuclear strike between the Soviet Union and NATO forces,” he continued. “Being in Britain, we were about a 20-minute flight time from East Germany. So, there wasn't much time between launch and landing. And every single household in Britain was sent a pamphlet, `You and The Bomb.' In Leeds we got, `Leeds and the Bomb.' I found these helpful pieces of literature really absurd. Remember, you've only got a 20-minute window and the advice was to whitewash the insides of the windows, fill up large plastic bin-liners with clothes, put them on top of a table to absorb radiation and get under the table. It's quite a lot to do in twenty minutes! I mean, I've tried to put shelves up and it's taken me more than twenty minutes to find a screwdriver!” laughs King. “The big joke in Leeds was if a nuclear bomb went off, how could anyone tell the difference before and after?”
Andy Gill Q: “Obviously, it's impossible to replace guitarist Andy Gill, who passed on February 1, 2020.”
A: “He's a wonderful guitarist, but he and I had been very seriously estranged for a long time. I hadn't spoken to him for years. I didn't like him using the band name. We fought out about it and I said, `Johnny Marr wouldn't go out as The Smiths and Noel Gallagher wouldn't go out as Oasis. You don't need to go out as Gang of Four, because you're fantastic.' But he even released records under the name Gang of Four. He was really in a bad place with alcoholism. But I don't want to dis him because we did some fantastic work together,” King remembers.
“Andy dying was very upsetting. He and I was joined at the hip for a long time. It's quite complicated when you lose someone who you've had such a profound relationship with, even if you're estranged from them. It was very, very sad when he died.”
Listen to this interview with Jon King at noon today on “Transformation Highway” with John Malkin on KZSC 88.1 FM / kzsc.org.