About Gang of Four
Gang of Four are an English post-punk band, formed in 1976 in Leeds. The original members were singer Jon King, guitarist Andy Gill, bass guitarist Dave Allen and drummer Hugo Burnham. There have been many different line-ups including, among other notable musicians, Sara Lee, Gail Ann Dorsey, and David Pajo. After a brief lull in the 1980s, different constellations of the band recorded two studio albums in the 1990s. Between 2004 and 2006 the original line-up was reunited; Gill toured using the name between 2012 and his death in 2020. In 2021, the band announced that King, Burnham, and Lee would be reuniting for a US tour in 2022 with David Pajo on guitar and Sara Lee returning to the band. They continue to perform live, including at the Cruel World Festival in Pasadena, California; headlining Luna Fest in Coimbra, Portugal, a UK Tour in October '23, and plan to be in Australia and beyond in 2024.
The band played a stripped-down mix of punk rock, funk and dub, with a lyrical emphasis on the social and political ills of society. Gang of Four are widely considered one of the leading bands of the late 1970s/early 1980s post-punk movement. Their debut album, Entertainment!, was ranked by Rolling Stone as the fifth greatest punk album of all time and at number 483 in their list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. In 2004, the album was listed by Pitchfork Media as the 8th best album of the 1970s and, in 2020, by Pop Matters as "Best Post Punk album ever". Entertainment! continues to be influential, and was voted 49th in Rolling Stones' 2023 poll of "100 Best Debut Albums of All time". Their early 80s albums found them softening some of their more jarring qualities, and drifting towards dance-punk and disco. David Fricke of Rolling Stone described Gang of Four as "probably the best politically motivated band in rock & roll.".
The band initially consisted of vocalist Jon King, guitarist Andy Gill, drummer Hugo Burnham and bass guitarist Dave Wolfson. After two or three gigs, Wolfson was replaced by Dave Allen.
Gang of Four's music brought together an eclectic array of influences, ranging from the Frankfurt School of social criticism to the increasingly clear trans-Atlantic punk consensus. Gang of Four was named by Andy Corrigan, a member of the Mekons, while driving around with Gill and King when he came upon a newspaper billboard on the intra-Party coup against China's "Gang of Four".
The band's debut single, "Damaged Goods" backed with " Anthrax" and "Armalite Rifle", was recorded in June 1978 and released on 10 December 1978, on Edinburgh's Fast Product label. It was a Number 1 indie chart hit and John Peel radio show favourite. "Damaged Goods" was voted one of the 100 Greatest debut singles of all time in 2020's Rolling Stone Poll Two Peel radio sessions followed, which, with their incendiary live performances, propelled the band to international attention and sold-out shows across Europe and North America. They were then signed by EMI Records. The group's debut single with this label, "At Home He's a Tourist", charted in 1979. Invited to appear on top rated BBC music program Top of the Pops, the band walked off the show when the BBC told them to sing "rubbish" in the place of the original lyric "rubbers", as the original line was considered too risqué. The single was then banned by BBC Radio and TV, which lost the band some support at EMI. King's lyrics were always controversial and a later single, "I Love a Man in a Uniform", was banned by the BBC during the Falklands War in 1982.
Critic Stewart Mason has called "Anthrax" not only the group's "most notorious song" but also "one of the most unique and interesting songs of its time". It's also a good example of Gang of Four's social perspective: after a minute-long, droning, feedback-laced guitar intro, the rhythm section sets up a funky, churning beat, and the guitar drops out entirely. In one stereo channel, King sings a "post-punk anti-love song", comparing himself to a beetle trapped on its back and equating love with "a case of anthrax, and that's some thing I don't want to catch." Meanwhile, in the other stereo channel , Gill reads a detailed account of the technical resources used on the song, which on the re-recorded album version is replaced by a deadpan monologue about public perception of love and the prevalence of love songs in popular music: "Love crops up quite a lot as something to sing about 'cause most groups make most of their songs about falling in love, or how happy they are to be in love; and you occasionally wonder why these groups do sing about it all the time." Although the two sets of lyrics tell independent stories they occasionally synchronise for emphasis.
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