Wire's Pink Flag (17 page)

Lewis believes that Wire’s negative principles (“We don’t do this, we don’t do that”) were vital to the song’s development. The band was occasionally willing to invert its rules, letting them become part of the process rather than ends in themselves: “Once you set up some rules, you can modify them and use them in a different way. ‘106 Beats That’ is an interesting piece because one of the rules was that Wire didn’t change key—key changing was for
the others
—and with ’106,’ Colin had come up with the idea ‘in this song we’re going to change key all the time.’ It took so long to be able to play it.” Gilbert recalls its almost aleatory structure with exasperation: “Oh, it was a nightmare. There’s no pattern, there’s no repetition in it. It’s a serial piece. I suppose there was a time in my life when I could play it, but I don’t think I’ve ever played it perfectly.”

In spite of its experimental design, “106 Beats That” has a traditional lyrical core: Lewis describes it as “basically autobiographical.” Of course, that doesn’t guarantee a transparent, confessional narrative. The words suggest a dashed-off list, a series of mental and physical attributes recorded by an anonymous observer, pertaining to an unnamed subject. Although it’s very self-conscious, the mode is detached. The words call to mind an analyst’s jotted observations while his/her subject talks, revealing traits and preferences. The topics range from the observer’s physical impression of the subject (“build slight”) to characteristics related by the subject or interpreted by the observer (“head for figures”). This last comment, in particular, underlines the autobiographical dimension, another reference to Lewis’s interest in things numerical. The parentheses in the printed version of the lyrics reinforce the notion that these words are being written as someone else speaks, reading as note-like interjections reminding the observer to pursue certain points and ideas: “no time for bickerers, (or so he says), prefers the company of a woman. Finds it more physical (that’s an important word).”

The parentheses emphasise Lewis’s sense of his words as distinct from
lyrics
. Parentheses in song titles were nothing new in 1977, but they were (and are) rarely incorporated into lyrics. How the singer should convey the parentheses was not obvious: Newman dealt with this by modifying his tone slightly and singing the parenthetical phrases almost as an aside, as the “(or so he says)” shows.

“Mr Suit” is one of the very best punk
fuck you
songs
.

Jon Savage

The Newman-penned “Mr Suit” is among the album’s more conventionally structured numbers, with verses and choruses, albeit highly condensed. Newman’s at his belligerent best, and there’s definitely something in his delivery presaging US hardcore’s vocal style. “Mr Suit” is Wire’s “White Riot.” Like the Clash song, it’s a rather moronic shout-along; unlike the Clash song, it’s funny.

Unusually for
Pink Flag’s
tracks, the word “I” is prominent, starting three of the opening verse’s four phrases: “I’m tired of being told what to think, I’m tired of being told what to do, I’m tired of f[uckin]g phonies, that’s right I’m tired of you.” By the second verse, although apoplectic, Newman still manages one of punk’s funnier rhymes: “You can take your f[uckin]g money, and shove it up your arse, ’cos you think you understand, well it’s a f[uckin]g farce.”

The song has many elements popularly ascribed to punk: it’s angry, alienated, energetic and confrontational and, within its own parameters, rejects societal norms and materialistic definitions of success. It stresses boredom—the singer’s “tired of” his well-dressed antagonist. The denunciation of this “phony” ties in with punk’s paradoxical demand for authenticity, and the
song reduces everything to binary terms, to a stereotypically punk conflict between
us
and
them
. With the possible exception of the “arse”/“farce” couplet, “Mr Suit” could have been by any of Wire’s comic-strip contemporaries. It’s also the only
Pink Flag
track prefaced with a standard
one-two-three-four
count. (The Manchester Square demo is even more straightforwardly punk. Delivered at a relative trudge, almost like a football-terrace sing-along, it’s introduced by Newman’s barked, thinly disguised count-in,
MIS-TER-SUIT-YEAH!
)

Surely “Mr Suit” was Wire in comedy mode, mocking the ’77 zeitgeist? Apparently not. “It was the most punk of the tracks,” says Lewis. “It has an obviousness to it.” It might then seem strange that “Mr Suit” made it onto
Pink Flag
. Wire shunned anything with the odour of familiarity and, above all, were adept at avoiding clichés, especially those emerging from punk. After Gill’s departure, they’d periodically expunged material no longer deemed appropriate to their mission, but “Mr Suit” survived. Newman regards it with both embarrassment and amusement: “It’s not the strongest track on the album,” he ventures euphemistically. “I wasn’t 100% sure why we needed to have it on the record. I think Mike wanted it on because he had this idea of the stereo chorus with ping-pong vocals.” Whether or not Thorne instigated its inclusion, he’s fond of that aspect: “The backing vocals—the ‘no-no-no-no-no-no Mr Suit’—were quite entertaining to get together. You had to try singing on the off-beat.” Ultimately, while Newman concedes, “It’s a bit rubbish, really,” Lewis begs to differ: “I thought the rhythm section were rather good!”

In 1977, several critics dismissed the track precisely because it rehashed what had already become cartoon punk. ‘“Mr Suit’ is an irritatingly conventional punk rant,” moaned
Melody Maker’s
Chris Brazier, who had no sense of humour.
Record Mirror’s
Barry Cain complained, “Christ, surely we ain’t endured the summer of ’77 to suffer such shit lyrics.” Still, the humour wasn’t lost on Wire.
Gilbert comments: “Sometimes songs would emerge that made us laugh because they were so absurd. They might be verging on punk orthodoxy, but they amused us.” Grey, too, saw the funny side: “I just liked playing ‘Mr Suit,’ but it was a bit of a joke.” The track works best when taken in that spirit.

Lewis explains the song’s staying-power, compared with similarly inclined tunes from ’77 that we now laugh
at
, not
with
. “I don’t know that Colin
meant
to parody anything, but I think it became parodic.” Perhaps Wire’s in-built detachment gives the song a parodic edge, although Newman had nothing of the sort in mind. His subject was an individual who’d incurred his wrath: “It was about someone Wire ended up working with later on. The reason I was pissed off was because girl #1 in ‘Three Girl Rhumba’ was impressed by him, and I felt, ‘How can you be so impressed with someone just because they’ve got a suit on?’ So it’s actually a love song in reverse.”

Another comedic element, in hindsight, is EMI’s censoring of
Pink Flag’s
original inner sleeve: the word “fucking” is written as “f*****g,” to protect the sensitive punk record buyer. (The “fuck” in “Field Day for the Sundays” met the same fate. The “arse,” though, went untouched.) This seems almost quaint now, and, as a document, the printed lyrics enhance the parodic air—as if the band had deliberately suppressed the words, coyly drawing attention to the song’s
shocking
nature. Parody or not, the track bestowed on Thorne a badge of punk honour: “The album was released in Australia with a
Not Suitable for Children
sticker. The line ‘You can take your fucking money and shove it up your arse’ provoked disapprobation in Australia of all places. I was very pleased.”

The track remains one of Jon Savage’s favourites: “Except for the wonderful ‘Mr Suit,’ Wire didn’t really do
fuck you
songs. It’s very entertaining; it still makes me laugh. You could easily take ‘Mr Suit’ as a very angry song, but it’s howlingly funny.”

Despite its simplistic, superficial quality, “Mr Suit” features a vocal part that both encapsulates the song’s identity and mocks it: after the second chorus, there’s some imbecilic mumbling, as if mimicking the song’s brainlessness. “It was Mike, Graham and myself,” remembers Newman. “Mike was into us making our own sound effects (hence the ‘radio’ on ‘Reuters’). The stupid voices on ‘Mr Suit’ end up being just another layer subverting any seriousness it might have had once.”

Like several
Pink Flag
tracks, “Mr Suit” enjoys a warped relationship with musical forebears: Newman calls it “a charming folk ditty,” joking that it has roots in a compressed and accelerated skiffle rhythm. His unlikely model is Lonnie Donegan’s “Cumberland Gap.” Lewis, however, reckons it owes more to the Skiffle King’s version of “Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour (On the Bedpost Over Night).”

One was keen for the music to have a menacing aspect to fit pretty literally to the words
.

Bruce Gilbert

Somewhere between “Roadrunner” at walking pace and “Sister Ray,” “Strange” originated with Bruce Gilbert, who generated the words and riff. This track foregrounds his gravitation towards the uncanny and his desire to push material to the point where it becomes transformed beyond recognition.

According to Gilbert, “Strange” is a song about “paranoia.” It builds incrementally, out of an almost halting, faltering riff, to showcase his characteristically dense major-chord style, its heavy, brutal tone rendered all the more potent by the layering of guitar tracks. Written at home on an acoustic guitar, “the first and only time,” Gilbert recalls, “the riff was something I had floating
about. It happened very quickly. Obviously, its origins lay somewhere in the Velvet Underground.”

Part of the track’s charm for Thorne was the feel of things coalescing naturally: “There are double-tracked guitars all the way. There are a lot of rough edges, and very deliberately so: the way we are. Just the way it picks up at the start—
thunk, thunk
—that was the live guitar that Bruce laid down before Robert picked up; then Bruce, for the second—overdubbed—guitar, just joined in and felt his way. You get the sense of two people picking their way towards a confluence rather than just precisely-produced heavy-metal guitar. When you get that sort of coincidence, starting apart yet coming together, it becomes very exciting. It’s the tension. It’s perfect in ‘Strange.’”

Thorne outlines the technical side of Gilbert’s performance: “This was more difficult to play than it sounds. The guitars were overdriven, probably as much as any I’ve ever recorded. To get distortion you raise the preamp gain (and take down the output level) so that you overdrive the input to the second stage.” Inevitably, this increased the possibility of error, something Thorne embraced: “At these settings it’s very hard to control, because if you lose your grip on a chord, other noises will be amplified massively. There are a few little squeaks in there: the sound of the string escaping from the finger. That’s the price you pay for that big, creamy sound, although such a lapse from perfection is agreeably human. It’s so turgid. It’s lovely.”

The track is fleshed out with some of the record’s most unusual textures. An unnerving high-pitched tone comes in at 1’30”, initially repeating until 2’00”. This again highlights Thorne’s eagerness to incorporate “errors” originating beyond the frame of the conscious creative process. He demystifies the sound: “It’s just a
ping
on the guitar. Originally, it sounded a little bland and ordinary, so I thought, ‘Why don’t we make a really long tape-delay loop?’ which ended up being several feet long. It
was stretched between two tape machines and wound around a number of other things, including a door handle. The wobble in it was because of its length—it kept snagging, and would go
doiinnng
. That was quite charming.”

The weirdness is heightened by a flute section beginning at 2’33”. “I was very suspicious when Mike suggested having a flute,” remembers Gilbert, reservations shared by Lewis, who felt rock flute was a crime “we could get burned for,” belonging in “the land of Jethro Tull.” To Gilbert, though, “It became clear that Mike was familiar with avant-garde stuff and that he was interested in using it quite differently. I thought that was great.”

Thorne explains: “It was for, I think, 12 alto flute lines played flutter-tongue and scored a semitone apart. It’s known as a tone cluster. Kate Lukas—my flute teacher—came and played. As well as being a professor at the Guildhall, she was playing in new music ensembles around London at the time: edgy art music. The challenge for her was getting it to sound like a cluster, maintaining the same tone and strength consistently through all 12 lines so that it comes out just sounding like one big coherent blob. It’s a tribute to her skill that it comes out sounding solid as one sound, as opposed to a bunch of flutes—which is what it would have been if I’d played it.”

Lukas’s flute and the renewed eerie looping tone combine at 2’50”, joined at around 3’25” by a cascade of tapping as Gilbert’s guitar decays. This outro is one of the more eccentric framing devices, originating on the
margins
of the studio. Thorne was the instigator: “The banging at the end is my hammering on the fire escape with drumsticks. It was at the end of a long day of very intense recording. I went and banged on the fire escape’s wood frame, having found some sonorous places to hit, and then we took, I think, three ‘performances.’ I played all the way through to the end of the 24-track master, which had been cut to leader tape. The very last hit is where the leader tape closed down recording.
It was the perfect accident, that closing rhythm. They told me afterwards that they thought I’d really lost it. I think I had some justification at the time that’s remembered less well than the gesture itself. Somebody trying to get out, maybe.” Listening to the recording, Wire’s percussion expert Grey notes, “The last hit is on a fire extinguisher.”

This willingness to accommodate ludic components thrown up by the recording environment underscores Wire’s affinity with Eno’s working methods. As Russell Mills observes, “A link between Eno and Wire is using the studio as an instrument—just playing with stuff, seeing what happens. That goes back to art school and Dada, taking one thing and putting it next to a disparate thing and seeing a third narrative appear. They did that instinctively.”