Angry and funny. Noisy and catchy. Aggressive and tuneful. Tight and terse, or sprawling and cloying. Razorwire guitars and dancefloor synths. Rough edges and smoothed-out surfaces. Visceral passion and calculated distance. Thundering percussion and clicking drum machines. Music to drink to, to dance to, to think to.
These were all Gang Of Four. Because Gang Of Four was many things, sometimes all at once, sometimes in rapid succession. Their legacy is complex and contradictory, marked by a commitment to risk-taking, and a prioritization of immediacy over self-consciousness. Their history was full of conflicting impulses and sharp left turns, lineup shifts and radical reinventions. But throughout, Andy Gill stood center-stage with his guitar. He was a solid presence in the midst of disco icestorms and punk shakedowns, the sole constant in all the different groups that played and recorded under the Gang Of Four title.
The first, original line-up was, to many, the definitive one – Gill, drummer Hugo Burnham, bassist Dave Allen, and vocalist Jon King. But that quartet only lasted for three years and two albums (plus a brief reformation, 20+ years later), and there were many other iterations: the early ’80s group that featured Sara Lee on bass and brought the band their greatest commercial success, the ’90s duo-with-special guests assembly, and the most recent industrial/punk incarnation, and each had their fans and detractors.
Through it all, the one unchanging element was Andy Gill’s vision and tone – a single-minded pursuit of whatever it was he was pursuing at any given moment, punctuated by jagged guitar figures. Across five decades, the myriad Gangs created music that encompassed immaculately crafted political broadsides, ham-fisted cultural commentaries, and acute psychological studies. Emotions, relations, politics, celebrity, and chemicals were all observed, obsessed over, and dismissed with equal style and finesse. The music was often great, sometimes uninspired, and ever-so-occasionally awful, but it was always there, striving and trying and working, pushing forward with a sly nod and an incisive riff.
So while the band I loved most were far removed from the most recent line-up, the group I fell for lived on in my heart and on my stereo. My copies of the first three albums (and two EPs) have remained in regular through my entire adult life. The re-recorded “Return The Gift” version of I Love A Man In A Uniform has anchored countless DJ gigs across the past 15 years. The original line-up reformed and toured in 2005, and I saw them play three times in 24 hours. I haven’t cared for all of their recent releases, but the sound and feel and effect of Gang Of Four are ingrained in my heart and my head and my gut, and I was always happy to see something new under the name. Andy Gill kept on to the end, never stopping, never conforming, never giving in, wringing notes of broken glass from his amplifier, issuing proclamations and calls to action for over forty years.
It’s a lot to consider: 1977 to 2019. So much ground to cover, revolutions and slow dissolves, fresh ideas and well-worn tropes, new generations making old mistakes. Times were bad, and better, and worse than ever. Everything changed, and kept changing. And it was good to know that through everything, there was a Gang Of Four making noise, and Andy Gill was there in the middle of it.