Wire's Pink Flag (9 page)

Record sleeves express rock’s ideology more graphically than band names, and British punk’s artwork abounded in none-too-subtle
signifiers of youth, rebellion and alienation. Wire’s artwork didn’t construct a rock image. Their early single and album sleeves displayed no connections to popular music or youth culture; in fact, they abandoned realism altogether. Whereas punk sleeves were all about disposable materiality, Wire’s first three album covers were timeless objects in themselves. Mysterious, clean, austere and spacious, giving little indication they were the jackets of rock records, they have more in common with fine art than with conventional album art.
Pink Flag
and
Chairs Missing
evoked abstract proscenia, while
154
suggested Modernist canvases by Kandinsky, Malevich or Mondrian.

Unsurprisingly, the bandmembers were absent from the front covers, featuring only in a limited, idiosyncratic fashion. On the back of
Pink Flag
, for instance, the individual black-and-white photos were a compromise with EMI, who insisted the band appear on the sleeve. In the captions, Wire subversively reduced all biographical information to names, roles and a single,
generic
physical characteristic identifying each individual: height (Grey), weight (Lewis), eye colour (Gilbert), hair colour (Newman). That these traits weren’t discernible in the photos—except perhaps for Grey’s lanky frame—further undermined rock’s cult of personality.

Given that Wire were concept-oriented, it’s maybe logical that the idea for
Pink Flag’s
cover image came first. Equally typically, its genesis was unusual: Gilbert and Lewis had each independently chanced upon the same idea. “Before we recorded,” recounts Lewis, “I met Bruce one day. I opened my notebook and I had a very simple drawing: a stick with a flag on it. Bruce opened his notebook and he had a stick with a flag on it, and we both went, ‘That looks like a good idea!’” The pair often played with each other’s ideas, especially when writing lyrics, as Gilbert recalls: “Graham and I got into a process of alternating lines of a song or a piece or a
text
as Graham would call it. It was almost like a game of ‘Consequences,’ sitting in the pub with a notebook going backwards and forwards.”

The band stumbled on the real counterpart to that doodled manifestation of the collective unconscious. “We’d played in Plymouth and went up to the Hoe and saw this flagpole,” says Gilbert. “That was it. It was obvious. So we made a trip back a couple of days later and had it photographed by Annette Green.” (Green—Newman’s future first wife—taught at Watford and had studied at the Royal College of Art, coinciding with Zandra Rhodes and David Hockney. In the ’60s, she’d photographed the likes of John Lennon, her work appearing in
Vogue
and other high-profile venues.) For the album cover, EMI’s David Dragon painted in the flag and airbrushed the sky pale blue: “Bruce and Graham came with a clear, precise idea of how they wanted the sleeve art to be. The way they gave thought to the effect of
Pink Flag
as a whole, not just as a collection of individual songs, came from a sensibility, an awareness, that went beyond the music. We talked in great detail about how the flag should appear as flat colour with no pretence of looking photo-realistic, about the addition of colour in the sky and the black border, which was to resemble the frame around a photo negative. The title wasn’t to appear on the cover, just the band name. The cover is stark and enigmatic. It doesn’t scream and shout,
‘PUNK.’
It doesn’t try too hard. It sidesteps the crowd and says ‘WIRE—we’re different.’”

Beyond the minimalism of Wire’s music and artwork, the overarching impetus towards subtraction extended to the band’s structure as, over time, they eliminated components: in 1990, Grey temporarily withdrew when Wire moved into a new electronic environment. Then they shrank the name, eliminating a letter to become WIR. This dynamic even manifests itself in the way bandmembers discuss their relationship with the group. Characterising his 2004 decision to leave Wire, Gilbert doesn’t employ rock’s standard terminology of
quitting the band;
rather, he emphasises, “I removed myself.”

George did this song called “It’s a Bitch” that was basically a rant. It was entirely formless and chugged around on two chords.

Colin Newman

Long before Grey’s departure ended one phase of Wire and Gilbert’s self-subtraction concluded another, the band had to subtract one member in order to become Wire. In removing George Gill, they discovered their unique sound and approach.

Wire’s earliest incarnation provided fertile ground for Gilbert, Grey, Lewis and Newman to enact their natural minimalism. Co-founder Gill embodied the rock excess they most despised, offering a musical paradigm to subvert. As Newman says, “A lot of early Wire was about reacting to the George version of the band, because George was much more rockist, much more chaotic; it was a lot of noise, shouting and attitude around a very traditional rock core.” His dismissal in March 1977 is the primal scene of the band’s subtractive tendency.

Gill was Keith Richards played by a Yorkshireman, a blunt, acerbic blues-rock purist, with no time for what Newman calls “soft Southern bastards” (himself included): “George came with this
I’m from Sheffield, I’m hard
sort of thing, and I was the archetypal trendy, soft Southern bastard.” To Gilbert, “George was a fantastic character. A sort of troubadour figure, a heavy rock drinker. He was very chaotic at times.” Unfortunately, booze didn’t bring out his best side, as flatmate Slim Smith remembers: “Colin and I were both a bit scared of George. He was the college’s main rabble-rouser, always causing trouble in class and drinking heavily, which occasionally resulted in getting into fights.” Gilbert goes further, commenting that Gill often “looked like he was about to break into a fight with himself.” Grey notes, diplomatically, “He was a rather strange boy.”

Excepting a few covers and some novice efforts by the other bandmembers (“TV” and “Feeling Called Love,” for instance), Gill wrote much of the material. Often so generic that the songs could have been covers, the titles alone indicate Gill’s proclivities: “Outside the Law,” “Gimme Your Love,” “Midnight Train.” Others were more noteworthy: “It’s a Bitch,” according to Newman, “was mainly George shouting, ‘it’s a bitch’ and then losing it”; “Bad Night at the Lion” was inspired by a pub band who’d earned Gill’s scorn by being so crap and “Mary Is a Dyke” was a somewhat tactless number concerning Gill’s apparently lesbian aunt. Newman sheepishly admits some involvement in writing the music, adding, “I’m in no rush to claim it.” Gilbert offers a generous view of Gill’s songwriting: “From time to time, he had a way with words.”

There weren’t any short, snappy songs like we had later. They wouldn’t have been allowed by George because he couldn’t have done them
.

Robert Grey

In addition to writing most of the songs, Gill dominated their performance, leaving little room for the others. Lewis remembers, “He played a Telecaster, and there were what one would call ‘solos,’ which ran through everything.” Gilbert derived a perverse pleasure from the overkill: “It was a wall of noise. Three rhythm guitars churning away, with exactly the same solo for every song.” Nick Garvey paints the most evocative picture of the Gill-centric sound: “It was scruffy, messy and clangy; a bit of a thrash. They’d do a song very fast and loud, and George just shouted,
‘FUCK
over the top of it, for the duration.” In August 1976 Garvey made the band’s first significant recordings at his Stockwell house, using a Teac 4-track: “What I remember most is that none of them seemed to know what they were doing. I’m sure they did know; I
just didn’t recognise it.”

Two early covers were “Roadrunner” and an amphetamine-paced version of J.J. Cale’s “After Midnight.” Newman saw the latter as a jab at Gill and an omen of his demise: “George actually did like J.J. Cale. In 1976, to say you liked J.J. Cale was close to admitting you were responsible for Auschwitz. It was the most heinous crime possible. A horrible, polite funkiness was what we wanted to do away with, in whatever way we could—and actually doing ‘After Midnight’ was a way of taking the piss out of George, a way of saying, ‘How could you
possibly
imagine that was any good?’”

Predictably, Gill had little truck with the music that interested his bandmates. “Roadrunner” aside, Newman remembers him finding the Modern Lovers “too weird”; Patti Smith, he conceded, was “okay for a girl.” Desmond Simmons recalls Gill even dismissing the Ramones because they were “using distortion” (of all things) and “weren’t pure enough.” And despite the others’ initial excitement at British punk, Gill was unmoved, assuring Slim Smith it was a fad: “George just wasn’t getting it—at some point during 1976 he told me that punk would be over by Christmas.”

What Gill lacked in historical foresight, he made up for in spirited performances. Grey describes Wire’s first-ever gig at the Nashville Rooms, distinguished by Gill’s theatrics and his strained relationship with the audience: “George became very animated. He shouted at someone sitting near the stage, ‘What are you looking at? Go back to your beer.’ George had this aggressive approach. At one point he threw his guitar back into the dressing room, off the stage. I can’t imagine anyone doing such a strange thing now.” Lewis adds, “I remember some guy going, ‘You’re fucking crap!’ and George said, ‘You get back in your beer,
cunt
.’ That was something George was superb at. And then he proceeded to thrash all the strings off his guitar.”

Gill’s increasingly tenuous position found expression at gigs,
where he was often more offstage than on. At Carey Place, Watford, in February 1977, the writing was on the wall: “Wire were playing, and George was evidently not happy with the way things were going,” recalls Slim Smith. “He got angry during one song, took his guitar off, threw it across the stage and stormed off. This was
his
band, they should have fallen apart without him, but they didn’t They played on, the sound becoming more stripped-down and spare without George’s guitar—and they sounded good.”

A way forward was revealed when Gill was briefly hospitalised (having broken his leg whilst allegedly trying to purloin some musical equipment). Just as Gill’s original presence was oddly vital, offering Wire a model of what they didn’t want to be, his absence was inspirational. With his tireless soloing removed, the others started to hear themselves, to recognise the possibilities. They found their way out of what Gilbert calls the frenetic, overcrowded “safari park for rhythm guitarists” and onto cleaner, clearer sonic terrain, with hints of abstraction. “We found that his absence made us sound much better,” says Gilbert. “A neater approach, more accurate in terms of arrangements. A very stripped-down sound.” Although they were still playing Gill’s songs, Newman noticed a dramatic change: “Suddenly there was a focus because we had to organise the material in a way that we could do it—and without George screaming and playing solos all the way through, it all got shorter and sharper.”

With the arrangements streamlined, Gill no longer had a role. “Suddenly there was no space for him,” Newman remembers. “I think that was why he was ending up not onstage—because he realised there was no place for him.” During Gill’s temporary absence, therefore, it became evident that for Wire to explore the newer territory they had glimpsed, Gill would have to leave. According to Gilbert, “Making it progress was very difficult with the main generator of ideas playing in a very traditional way.”
Still, Gill
was
the chief songwriter, as Gilbert points out. If they dumped him, they’d have to create their own material.

A breakthrough came when Lewis showed Newman some lyrics he’d written and Newman began working on a tune. This would become “Lowdown.” Also during Gill’s layoff, “12XU,” ‘Three Girl Rhumba” and others had arrived and were rehearsed alongside the reconfigured Gill numbers. Lewis recalls Gill, leg in plaster, struggling manfully through rehearsals: “There were many new pieces and George found this difficult and pressurising, labouring to work out where his playing could fit in and how to learn the detailed and disciplined arrangements.” His last stand was at the Roxy on February 24, 1977, leg still in a cast.

Wire has always made the most of limited means
.

Colin Newman

Now a four-piece, Wire began a series of purges in the lead-up to
Pink Flag
, jettisoning Gill’s songs and writing more material to rebuild their live set. Several numbers received a stay of execution: “Mary Is a Dyke” and the cover of “After Midnight,” along with early non-Gill compositions “TV” and “Feeling Called Love.” A tape made in March at the band’s Stockwell rehearsal space featured these tracks (except “TV”) and new numbers: “Too True,” “The Commercial,” “Just Don’t Care,” “Strange,” “Brazil,” “It’s So Obvious,” “Three Girl Rhumba,” “Lowdown,” “12XU” and “Mr Suit.” Altogether, this became essentially Wire’s Roxy set for April 1 and 2, which included ten tracks that would appear on
Pink Flag
(“The Commercial,” “Strange,” “Brazil,” “It’s So Obvious,” “Three Girl Rhumba,” “Straight Line,” “Lowdown,” “Feeling Called Love,” “12XU” and “Mr Suit”).

Wire’s sound underwent a transformation due to three factors: their innate minimalism, meagre abilities and a desire to play as well as possible notwithstanding those abilities. This
intersection of accident and design was key to Wire’s uniqueness on the punk landscape. Critics would talk about
Pink Flag’s
knowing deconstruction of rock, but that’s not the whole story, as Desmond Simmons observes: “Wire weren’t deliberately deconstructing music, just doing what they could.” Although Newman has frequently described his songwriting on the album as a conscious effort to take rock apart, he also notes, “The level of skill was pretty much shared, and it was a matter of making the most of what you had. That’s a classic Wire characteristic.”

The difference was phenomenal, for them to lose that instrument and gain a direction
.