Gang of Four (Pt. 4)
How would you describe the Gang Of Four live experience?
JK: It’s similar in the stylistic sense to Washington Go-Go music, where they never stop playing. It’s challenging to the band and its performance –there’s a very quick turnaround between songs, it’s really full on the whole time, we don’t really stop. In an ideal world we’d probably never stop playing at all, just go continuously for the entire time.
How does playing in Gang Of Four now compare to back in the day?
HB: At the beginning we were doing Gang Of Four because we wanted to - then it moved into doing Gang Of Four because we had to. It was more than just four people getting together to have fun. There was something there – a very compelling, strange and driving force emotionally. After the second album a whole new thing came in. People were depending on us and our business was depending on us. That really brought a horrible element into it all. It’s part of what destroys a lot of groups, and it certainly destroyed us and our relationships. We’re not relying on each other for our careers now. The way we play, what we play, where we play and how we play is not dependant on ‘well, you need to make this sort of money’ or ‘you need to be able to make sure you get another record deal’. That’s gone. This is entirely fun right now.
Why did you re-record some old songs for ‘Return The Gift’?
JK: Within jazz music and with blues music people endlessly record and re-record their works over and over and over again. I don’t know how many versions of Thelonius Monks ‘Round Midnight’ were made or how many times Miles Davis or Muddy Waters and BB King re-recorded tracks. But in rock music you make an album and that’s the only time you’re allowed to record it - unless you make a live album. We said we wanted to do it like a live studio record – it’s the songs we most love with a sound that represents how we are live. The template for it was actually the recording of ‘To Hell With Poverty’. Back then it was the track that we all thought sounded most like us live.
What has been the main motivation behind the Gang Of Four through the ages?
JK: We are proper artists. We actually make music because we want to make music. So many bands have an invisible fifth member – an accountant. They’ll say ‘Is this chord progression into the next chord progression commercial? Does it sound enough like something that’s already sold?’ you would never write a song like ‘At Home He’s A Tourist’ with a disco-referenced bass line and a disco referenced four-to-the-floor drum beat with a tonal slashing guitar that cuts across the rhythm and then the lyric which has no melody to it. You’d never do that. It’s full of ideas though, it’s packed with ideas. It hasn’t hugely surprised me people enjoy what we’ve done because you can’t move for ideas. Most people say ‘Jesus Christ, you could have sold it on one’.
Words_Jonny Tiernan
This article first appeared in AU 22, November/December 2005
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