A delightful conversation with GANG OF FOUR front man ANDY GILL

Posted on Feb 6, 2011 / Posted by Lily Howell /

I truly enjoy chatting with veteran rockers and GANG OF FOUR’S Andy Gill, was no exception. In the lead up to the most amazing, most awesome and most anticipated festival to ever grace Australia’s capital cities, Andy and I took a trip down memory lane, or as far as our memories allowed and waxed nostalgic, not to mention lyrical over a long-distance phone line.

GANG OF FOUR long ago personalised and cemented themselves into the hearts, minds and ears of more than one generation of fans and continue to deliver an exciting brand of music today. I hope you enjoy this reading this, as much as I enjoyed chatting to Andy.

ON HOW G.O.F. WAS CONCEIVED AND THE MEANING BEHIND THE BAND’S NAME:

ANDY: Yeah, well we started up at the late 70s and I remember exactly when this happened.  We were driving around in a car in Leeds, which is pretty unusual actually because most of us didn’t have cars, but I think one of our friends had a car, and we driving around the middle of Leeds for some reason and we saw a newspaper hoarding and it said, gang of four on trial, and of course it was the time of original – the original gang of four was the Chinese – Chairman Mao’s wife and three others and they were on trial for their part in the cultural revolution.

In that sort of pop art way, in that kind of situationist way of taking something and using it in a totally different context in the kind of way which is surprising and funny.  We felt that for four young English guys in Leeds to name themselves after these four incredibly important politicians on the world stage just seemed kind of slightly outrageous in a very cool way.  So that was a lot to do with it, and they were considered – you know, they were talked about as cultural revolutionaries and at that time.  And although it was early days and we hadn’t kind of got our whole thing together, we were kind of working out where we were going and what we were doing, we did sort of like the idea that we were going to turn things around and be our own little cultural revolutionaries, you know.

KR: Yeah, a lot of youth do like to feel that they could change the world. Now you were a young lad when Gang of Four first started.  Did you have strong political views then?

ANDY: I mean, I think one of the idea that GANG OF FOUR is a “political band” is always a bit of a double edged sword for us because, one thing that we’ve never been, is kind of proselytising for the left or, you know, cheerleading for the left if you like, banging the drums of socialism, waving the red flag.  That has never been of any interest to us whatsoever and in fact I think we consider that kind of thing to be inherently reactionary really because it closes down questions rather than opens them up.

I mean I think we’re first and foremost musicians and artists, and it’s our responsibility to try and describe the world as we see it and to try and be truthful about what we describe.  A lot of what we describe is the fact that in certain ways we’re complicit in these things.  You know, it’s – I’ll give you a small example.  It’s very popular these days to kind of point the finger at bankers and say, aren’t they awful people, but then how many of us have got bank accounts, you know?  In many different ways we are part of systems that we criticise.

LILY: I know, we’re very quick to judge so many things.

ANDY: But people do get off on it don’t they?  There’s people who love to kind of point the finger and say they’re wrong, you know, they’re the guilty – and it’s funny, but in this country at the moment and I’m sure it’s – well it’s not quite the same in Australia because weirdly, Australia seems to have bypassed a lot of these economic problems which has been quite interesting to watch.

ON THE SOCIAL PROS AND CONS OF TODAY AND THE YOUNGER GENERATION

LILY: There seems to be so little-to-no social conscience with a lot of the youth today.  You know, they seem more preoccupied with material objects and money and less on social and global issues, from political to environmental.  Then you’ve got these career-making reality TV celebrities, like the Kardashians and Paris Hilton. What are your thoughts on that?

ANDY: I think sometimes…*ponders* I know lots of people who love to watch the most awful TV, you know? Shows like X Factor and stuff, you know, just like really lame and dumb.  It’s so anti-creative, kind of anti-thought sort of programmes, but people do a lot of this stuff just to relax and just to kind of switch off their brain, you know?  People are more complicated than we sometimes give them credit for.  I think people sometimes need to have that kind of brain switch off time, you know.

 

LILY: Yeah, and I also think  that when we were talking about criticism just before – criticising – I think sometimes I think that on  an individual level people are a bit insecure and if you can have a laugh at someone else,  it can sometimes – not at a conscious level – make you feel better about yourself. I don’t know if we’re all like that, but I think, yeah, we’re insecure – a lot of us are insecure.

ANDY: Yeah, oh yeah.  Absolutely.

ON GANG OF FOUR’S MUSICAL INFLUENCES

ANDY: Well quite a lot of people [influenced GANG OF FOUR].  I think that… just quickly, when I was really young, when I was like 13, 14, I was obsessed with JIMI HENDRIX.  I lived, breathed Jimi and kind of knew every record note by note.  I also loved the [Rolling] Stones for those amazing guitar riffs and reggae was a very big thing for me and John.  You know, the early reggae, the kind of ska-reggae, that really rough but cool early reggae which kind of – as we were – you know, during the mid-70s as dub kind of started to emerge – dub reggae.  We were kind of right there being amazed by how wonderful dub sounded, and that became an influence on us, the sound of dub. You know, the bass dropping out, the drums dropping out, the guitar dropping out and then eight bars or 16 bars of space and then it comes back in again in that rush when it comes back in again.

You know, that was a big thing for us, and I don’t know, lots of stuff, VELVET UNDERGROUND, BOB DYLAN, FUNKADELIC, BIG THING, JAMES BROWN, Stacks Records, Motown,  anything with a groove.

GANG OF FOUR’S mission when we kicked off – not that we ever said this – but kind of looking back I can see that what I was doing was trying to fit the guitar around the drums and around the bass, all on the same level, all locked together, all working and doing different versions of the same thing to make a monster groove and an unstoppable groove.  You know, you could dance to it but you didn’t have to.  You could dance to it in your head, but also have it with a twist on it so the beats weren’t falling in exactly the places you’d expect them to. It kind of makes it fresh and like something you haven’t heard before, which you kind of hadn’t because we sort of inventing stuff from scratch.

ON THE EVOLUTION OF THE MUSIC BIZ AND THE PIRACY PROBLEM OF TODAY:

ANDY: The thing that’s difficult now is we’ve got into the situation where a lot of recorded music is just simply not paid for and the music industry itself has got a lot to answer for.  It should have done so many things differently.  Education would be something that I would encourage but they’ve never bothered to – there’s been very little attempt to educate the public about how and where the money goes.

I think a lot of people who are into file sharing and not paying for music probably think,  ‘Oh well, these guys have got plenty of money.  They don’t need another 10 cents from me…’ or whatever.  Because it’s not like that, you know.  Of all the recording musicians and bands in the world, maybe one percent of them earn what we would think of as being pretty good money, and the people that earn a lot of money, like the ‘Bonos‘ of this world or the ‘Madonnas’, they’re like 0.001 per cent of the world – of musicians in the world.

You know, there’s a tiny, tiny bit and so people have a kind of twisted view of what sort of money people in bands get and  it’s difficult not getting paid for what you do.  So you have to kind of be imaginative about where or how you go about things and that makes it difficult too.  I think a lot of young bands, I don’t know how they manage to survive.  I like working with young bands as I do. It’s all  you know, all sleeping on the floor, six to a room kind of thing.  It aint great, you know?

LILY: I know.  I don’t understand the mentality of downloading.  I never do it.  To me it’s just outright stealing and I just won’t do it.  I think it’s  fundamentally wrong and it’s depriving people of an income.

ANDY: Exactly, exactly and it’s not just the musicians and the songwriters that are being deprived of an income, it’s also all the other things. Like the people that work in the music business in all the other areas like press and radio and, the whole thing shrinks because of it.  People just get kicked out of jobs.  It’s pretty simple, you know.  If you’re a baked bean manufacturer and nobody pays for baked beans then the baked bean industry goes bust, you know?

ON FESTIVAL TOURS

ANDY: You know what, it’s quite nice not having responsibility for being ‘the act’ in capital letters.  It’s quite nice being part of a bunch of different acts and  you’re one of a bunch of people and that’s kind of fun because you can have more fun! It’s not, you know – when you’re headlining your own shows and stuff, you know, you’ve got to be really on it and you’ve got to play for a lot longer and it’s more serious, but at festivals you can relax a little bit more.

 

LILY: Andy, thank you so much for talking to me and we really look forward to catching you guys at Soundwave. It’s been a pleasure.

Catch Andy and the Gang at Soundwave Festival, later this month. Go to Soundwave’s website for dates and information by clicking the pic.

-Lily

Tags: bob dylan, gang of four, interview, james brown, punk, reggae, ska, soundwave festival, velvet underground