‘Nobody makes a record like that for the money’: how Gang of Four made Entertainment!
‘There was tension with the National Front and swastikas on walls.So I’m proud the album is an outsider classic – but feel depressed these songs are still relevant’I grew up in a really boring village in Kent, so moving to Leeds as a student was thrilling.It was an A-list place to see gigs.On the other hand, the buildings were as black as soot, the Yorkshire Ripper was around and you could feel the tension between the National Front and the south Asian community.I saw swastikas on walls and on an anti-NF march I was hit with a truncheon by a mounted police officer.
So I gradually came up with the modest ambition to change the world,I had known Andy Gill, our guitarist, since primary school,We were like brothers but also chalk and cheese,Musically, the four of us in the band never let each other off the hook – which sometimes resulted in actual fights,That tension fed the music.
Andy wasn’t a trained guitarist but had this genius way of flicking his fingers and stabbing at the instrument like it was his personal enemy, which would become hugely influential,We’d started as a knock-off Dr Feelgood, but once we came up with Love Like Anthrax we realised we had to dump all the other songs and write more like that,Then Damaged Goods opened the floodgates – we brought funk to punk,The songs on our debut album Entertainment! took a microscope to society,5.
45 – on which I sing, “How can I sit and eat my tea with all that blood flowing from the television?” – was about the evening news,Every household had been sent a “Protect and survive” pamphlet because of the threat of nuclear war: Guns Before Butter tapped into that paranoia,At Home He’s a Tourist came from the Jean-Paul Sartre-type idea that the defining sensation of modern life is to feel uncomfortable,Then our bandmates Dave Allen and Hugo Burnham had the hilarious idea of making it a disco song, because we all loved Chic,It charted at No 58, but because we refused to change the word “rubbers” (or condoms) to “rubbish”, the BBC wouldn’t allow us on Top of the Pops.
Entertainment! was recorded with no effects, so at the playback the record company thought it was a demo,But over the years it has inspired so many musicians, from Kurt Cobain and REM to Run the Jewels and Frank Ocean,Whenever we play the songs now, I’m almost depressed that they’re still relevant, but I’m proud that Entertainment! has become an outsider classic,Nobody makes a record like that for the money,I was an English literature and theatre student playing in the rugby team but I realised I was never going to meet girls standing on tables singing songs with my trousers round my ankles.
I gravitated to university clubs such as the Funk Society and met cooler people like Jon and Andy, who weren’t wearing flares,Dave had moved to Leeds from Cumbria to find a band,He was the only real musician among us,We fought about everything from the music to the price of Mars bars but laughed about everything else,We started off rehearsing in a smelly basement in a Victorian building surrounded by mannequins.
Then Gang of Four, the Mekons and Delta 5 became a collective who shared rehearsal space and drank together in the Fenton pub,Buzzcocks let us support them and took us on tour in Europe, so we became a spectacular performing band, bashing into each other on stage,All the labels were desperate to sign their version of the Clash but we signed to EMI for the least money because they gave us full creative control,We recorded Entertainment! in Workhouse studio in London, where Ian Dury had recorded New Boots and Panties!!, which we’d all loved,Between sessions we lived on a houseboat and would get pissed with a churn of people including Charlie Harper from UK Subs.
I’m still amazed nobody drowned.We recorded without click tracks and didn’t do many overdubs.The studio engineer hated us and every time Dave or I made a mistake, he made us do it all again, but the finished album sounds gritty and raw, simple but funky.We never talked much about the lyrics, but we all agreed it was far more interesting to sing about H-blocks or “the working classes” than cars and girls.A lot of the people who were influenced by us went on to make millions.
I wish I had a penny for every song that sounds like ours.Gang of Four play Entertainment! in full as part of their final UK shows, at Brudenell Social Club, Leeds, on 23 June and O2 Forum Kentish Town, London, on 24 June.Jon King’s memoir To Hell With Poverty! (Little Brown, £25) is out now
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