We delved into our archives again and Ivan Thunders found encounter with Colin Newman from post-punk legends Wire, one sunny April in 2017. What with having seen Wire early this year (remember gigs) we though we’d give this one another showing.
It was a hot, sunny day in April 2017, when I travelled to Leeds to meet Colin Newman from Wire. I was working for Eastwood Guitars, and had agreed to meet him at the Brudenell Social Club, to bring him a guitar case he wanted and, to make the most out of the opportunity, interview him for a blog article.
I met him outside the Brudenell, where we sat at a table drinking a pint each and chatting. As far as (post) punk rock legends go, Colin was charming and unassuming... a all-round nice guy who still sounds jovial, which in fact translates to Wire's current music and live performances: listening to their album Silver/Lead back then, and seeing them live at the Brudenell, it struck me how fresh the band sounded - not like old veterans, but with the vitality of a young band. Not dinosaurs at all, by any stretch of the imagination... which is more than could be said of many bands who've been active half as long as Wire.
Coming from the same London that spawned The Clash and the Sex Pistols, Wire always sounded radically different than what we think of as "punk", even though they were lumped into that scene. Not surprisingly, Colin told me he never considered Wire remotely punk, and told me the British punk scene of the Seventies was just a "big empty box" that generated few truly great albums (including Wire's "Pink Flag" of course).
Wire had always more in common with the New York, CBGB's scene of Television, Talking Heads, Patti Smith and Richard Hell. According to Colin, "punk" in Britain meant, most of the times, simply playing amped-up 60's rock music. Hence his assessment of how Wire fitted in the punk scene: "Wire really never were a punk band... we happened to be there at the same time. You could list the Ramones as one of our influences, but we were never interested in just doing that genre."
Wire's sound was their own - from the beginning, they were intent on always looking ahead. "Genres are only interesting at the point where they get invented, and at the point where they get destroyed" said Colin, "Everything else is just noise in-between."
I told Colin how, the first time I heard Wire's 2013 single 'Love Bends', I didn't know who it was from at first, and was surprised to find out it was a song from a 1970's band, because it sounded quite fresh. Maybe it sounded like a backhanded compliment, but Colin, ever the gentleman, didn't mind. He agreed that many older bands eventually get tired or bored of music, but that he didn't necessarily think that a band would only make their best music when they're young. In Wire's case, Colin said, they were all still interested in new music, and it translated to their work.
Not by coincidence, that day back in 2013 Wire were not just playing a gig at the Brudenell, it was actually a mini festival called DRILL - curated by the band and celebrating "40 years of not looking back".
You mentioned Wire had more affinity with the New York scene than the British scene. Why?
"Well, the Ramones laid out the blueprint for what punk rock should sound like. They didn't look like a British punk group, but they had the sound and the attitude. They were the main group that made you think 'yeah you can do something with that'.
"But you need to take that somewhere else, it can't be the same thing... it was still only three-chord trick rock'n'roll. The idea of taking it further seemed more interesting. A lot about British punk was very backward-looking. "
"When you think of British punk rock as a genre, it was a big empty box with virtually nothing in it... there was very little you could say was really good and lasting. It's a bit depressing."
British punk seemed to just be following a new rule: you need to sound like this, look like that...
"I think the Americans tend to feel the British thing was style over content. I'm perfectly cool with the idea about something being about fashion. But the way Wire started, it was actually somebody else's band, and the four who ended being Wire basically kicked the founder member out of the band, and re-invented the band. We were playing his songs, and that's why Graham [bassist & occasional singer] and I started writing songs together, because we needed material - we didn't have any material!
"So it was a very unusual process - it was not like someone playing in their bedroom for years then finding a band to play their songs."
How long did it take between you guys writing those first songs and then playing them live and recording that first album?
"No time at all. I think we sacked the former member in January or February '77 and had our first gig as a four piece in April. That set you can hear on our double album Live At The Roxy / Live at CBGB's - half the set we played at The Roxy ended up on Pink Flag! That'd been written in a month and a half, then the rest of it got written between then and September when we recorded Pink Flag. By the time Pink Flag was released in December, we were already playing a set which mainly consisted of material which came out after Pink Flag."
"I think we are quite lucky to be existing in a period when the kind of music we do is considered influential. Music could have gone on an entirely different direction, you know... we're lucky."
How was the reaction of the audiences like back then? Because in a way you were as punk as it gets, but on the other you didn't do the whole Sex Pistols thing...
"At the beginning the audiences didn't like us very much. But there's basically two views of Wire: you either think we were not a punk band, or that we were the best punk band ever because we broke every single rule of punk."
Some people point out influences like Syd Barrett, even.
"Yeah, I always wondered about that, because I never listened to Syd Barrett much before the mid '70s. So I was already doing songs which people thought sounded like Syd Barrett before I knew Syd Barrett records. So maybe it was a bit of strange synchronicity.
"I find "influencing" very strange as a concept. Because many bands when they say they were "influenced by" they just mean "sound just like". I think you can be influenced by something and not sound like it at all, but be influenced by it because of the attitude, or the way of doing it or because people maybe just inspired you to do something, made you feel it was possible."
Did you ever feel like an outsider in the music scene?
"Yes... pretty much always! I feel like we've never really fit with anything, we've always done our own agenda. And if you do your own agenda, it means if you fail it's all your own fault, you can't blame anyone else. Fortune favours the brave, I think."
A few years ago, we were listening to the radio and a song came out, we thought it was a new band... but it was 'Love Bends', by Wire! That pretty much sums up that '40 years of not looking back' slogan.
"I think the whole point has always been, as a band, to be interested in new things rather than old things, and not really not much interested in worrying about the past. I'm a strong believer in the concept of taking something which already exists and use it as a means to flame something new, so he concept of "not looking back", of being a forward-looking group has always been inherent in the band, but we never expressed it... now we do, it's like our "USP" (Unique Selling Point)!
"What's different about Wire is that we are an older band who doesn't sound like an older band, doesn't have the attitude of an older band."
Why do you think some older bands willingly put themselves in a corner? Can talent just fade away?
"I don't understand why it has to be true... it shouldn't be true. Maybe people get lazy. When you're in your twenties, you have this amazing self-belief, that you can conquer the world, and as you get older you realise your own fragility. "But that doesn't mean you can't be good! I mean... it seems very strange that with painters, sculptors, choreographers, people who work in other arts, nobody says they're too old to be doing that. Get over thirty, and you're in a band, and it's like "yeah, you must've done your best work in the past." I will personally try to challenge this notion, always."
Do you think this somehow led to DRILL festival, perhaps as a way to connect with new audiences, too? How did it come about?
"Yes, of course. We launched DRILL festival in 2013, in London, to launch Change Become Us. When we did the previous album, Red Barked Tree, in 2011, there was a big plan on the back of that: we launched the album, did a load of dates, it was a textbook album launch - a whole year. And I was convinced that we were on a 3-year cycle, and that it would be two years until we could do another album. Then I had this idea for Wire to revisit the fourth album that never got released, the material from 1980 which would've ended up on the fourth Wire album.
"And it was like: what if we were able to take that and work on it like we'd work on material now, treat them like new songs and make an album like that? It could be interesting... I doubted whether anyone else would be that interested but we'd do it anyway, sell a few copies and cover the costs, and it'd be alright. Almost like a side project. But by the time the album was finished, just a few months before it was released, the label liaison at our distributor pointed out that most people would just think it was a new Wire album, but I thought it was too early to release a Wire album, so we had not organised a string of dates or anything like that!
"I thought... what can we do? Why not do a festival? It was a bonkers idea, we thought everyone would think that was stupid, but we wrote to a couple of people, said "why don't we do an indoor festival, in a few different venues". I expected to get replies like "yeah, if you want to lose loads of money", but the replies were "yeah, who should we have on?" and I was like - my God, what did I let myself in! Graham came up with the name DRILL and then it was born!"
Do you always do the festival around a new album?
"Not necessarily, but it tend to be more frequent around a new album, it's logical. Doing LA with Silver/Lead just seemed obvious to me: how do we celebrate 40 years of existence in Wire style? New album, headlining a festival on the other side of the world! That makes sense to me, you know..."
It was a really great chat with Colin. But as a child of the Britpop generation, I had to talk about one more thing: Elastica. What did he think of them ripping Wire's music off? Colin, as ever, was polite and philosophical enough:
"I think we are quite lucky to be existing in a period when the kind of music we do is considered influential. Music could have gone on an entirely different direction, you know... we're lucky."
And with that, we finished our drinks and parted our ways. The whole day was great, and Wire's gig finale was sensational, one of the best I've ever seen: they invited the guitarists of all the other bands who played that day to get onstage, and join them making some mighty noise, to rival any My Bloody Valentine. Simply brilliant.
I left the venue happy for having seen a legendary band who were (still!) at the peak of their powers. I was tired and drunk and it didn't even cross my mind to say by to the band, who were busy tidying their own gear (no roadies after all those years...) but the next day Colin messaged me to say "hey, a pity you didn't come to say bye!"
I felt a bit bad about it... but it was nice to see there are veterans who still care about other people, about the fans, about new bands and about making music.
Words Ivan Thunders, Photos RBY
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