Wire
Bruce Gilbert – guitar & Robert Gotobed – Drums
Wire was formed in 1976 in Watford and had its basis in Watford Art School. Originally called Overload, the band started gigging in early 1977 and featured on the Top 20 charting Live at The Roxy compilation album. With a minimalist and simple sound, they were inspired by punk not tied to it.
Signed to EMI’s progressive label Harvest (home of Syd Barrett, Third Ear Band, etc.), they were indeed progressive with each of the three albums they made making a major leap forward in conjunction with regular producer Mike Thorne.
From the stripped back 21 song debut Pink Flag to synths and sequencers for Chairs Missing to the moods and textures and experimental noise drones of 154.
None of the above gave them any tangible commercial success but their influence was huge from the Minutemen and Henry Rollins to REM and Brit Pop to Bilk in the 2020’s
The Roxy London WC2
The criteria for inclusion were quite simple. Andy and Barry asked for bands to be involved and those that said ‘yes’ were recorded. Wire were a strange choice in view of their last gig at the Roxy.
Colin Newman (Wire) To cut a long story short Wire, after being initially barred for being too crap, were invited to be at the Roxy’s “Punk Festival” in April ‘77. “Oh and by the way it’s being recorded” was all we knew.
Wire, previously told by Andy to come back when they had learned to play, ended up with two tracks.
Colin Newman (Wire) We saw it as a gig (of which there weren’t many at the time). We opened on both nights we played. OK bands got two tracks, the rest got one. Mike Thorne, who had actually supervised the recordings was also somehow doing A&R for EMI. Meanwhile certain artists from the album were being approached by EMI A&R for a more extended interest. That amounted to Wire and the Buzzcocks. In hindsight this was a pretty big step for us.
Graham Lewis of Wire, speaking to Phil McNeil in the NME managed to simultaneously play down their contribution while getting in a sideswipe about their peers. “Compared to what we can do I don’t like what’s on the record. On the other hand, compared to the others I don’t mind it.” NME ,20.8.77
Colin Newman speaking in 2006 is a little more blunt.
Of course we thought most of the other bands who played the Roxy at that time were rubbish but that’s only to be expected. The already retro Punk bands hated us because we were too weird.
For Wire it was bad enough that someone was trying to walk off with their monitor on stage which is captured on the album. They were also being heckled by Crip one of the Roxy PA guys from their native Watford and friend of their rivals the Bears[1]. In fact he can be seen on the back of the Roxy album cover pointing at Colin the singer. All through the gig he was shouting ‘louder! Faster!’ and doing his party piece as Neil Thompson one of the other PA guys remembers.
Neil Thompson (Roxy Club PA) You can hear Crip swearing on the album heckling Wire. Crip used to do that. One of Crips tricks is really funny. He used to get completely pissed then try and get down the front of the audience at bands gigs. This was so he could attempt to try and take the lead singers dick out. Because if you think about it the lead singer is always in the front of the stage with his legs in front of you more or less. Crip used to find it funny that they would always stop him because they were embarrassed. He would shout ‘What’s the matter with you are you Punk or what get your fucking todger out!’
Wire had two tracks on the album. The slow grooving Lowdown and the up-tempo pogotastic 12XU dedicated to Lou Pannetta.
Colin Newman (Wire) We used to always go to a ‘caff’ in Stockwell near where we rehearsed in the basement of a squat in Thorne Road. It was run by a guy called Lou Pannetta, who quickly clocked we were a band. He offered to manage us and make us “just like the Beatles”. It was a standing joke in the band for years. The dedication was more absurdist humour than anything else. It certainly wasn’t saying to Lou “12XU”!
Mike Thorne then chose what were to him the most successful tracks and got mixing and fixing the tracks. In all from start to finish the album took around two months to complete at Kingsway Studios.
Mike Thorne (Roxy WC2 Album Producer) We had spent hours checking the toilet tapes, and selected many overheards to go between the tracks, placing three at a time (left, center and right), which I’m afraid, in retrospect, makes understanding words fairly confusing although you can pick out the words if you stick your ear in one speaker. General audience noise was plentiful. To get the sense of place, we edited so that the audience was on the run-in groove. As soon as you started playing the LP, you heard sound and were there. After the Adverts’ end of song, I confess to laying in guitar hum as if some technical catastrophe had just taken place. But that and the Unwanted’s slight polishing was the only artifice between those loud weekend nights and your living room.
There was also some serious promotion on this record. The record may have only cost EMI peanuts, but they went to town taking out centre spreads and full-page advertisements in Sounds, NME & Melody Maker. They also trialled an American marketing ploy of asking record dealers to take 25 copies of the record and get their name and record shop address on the advert. Some 209 dealers took up this offer.
Indeed it became the first live album to make the Top 20 since the 1971 ‘Concert For Bangladesh’recording featuring Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton and George Harrison among others.
The album catches all those gritty moments and more. It adds the chatter and crowd ambience as virtual tracks themselves containing future members of even more band wannabees. It’s a fact that bar The Unwanted, every artist featured made at least one album. Three of them, The Adverts, X Ray Spex and Buzzcocks (and so very nearly Wire), made the charts and still influence bands today. If you want to push it further two members of the Unwanted ended up joining the Psychedelic Furs. Later on Ollie Wisdom, the singer, formed the Specimen and ran his own goth version of the Roxy, ‘The Batcave’, before becoming a renowned DJ. Not bad going for supposed dross!
Andy Czezowski (Roxy Club Partner) It encapsulated that moment in time 100%. The ability or lack of ability, the time and period and the movement and the energy is certainly caught. I think it’s magnificent for that. I don’t think I’ve even listened to the album since.
Barry Jones (Roxy Club Partner) It captured the spirit of the place. It’s a shame we rushed it. We should have had it longer so you could have got some real conversations. The best tracks by far on it are the Wire tracks. Always my favourites; the ones that blew me away. I was proud of it and I loved the look of it. Love what it said about a particular time in British pop history. It was accidental. We picked up something rolling by and helped it go somewhere. The timing was perfect.
Mike Thorne (Roxy WC2 Album Producer) Most Punk bands were ramshackle and couldn’t play. End of story. But competence wasn’t the issue – message was all. The album captures the time and place. Don’t forget that much of the Punk ethos was rejecting the smooth, virtuoso pop music of the time, which was often utterly vacuous – all it had going for it was technique, which was supposed to impress you. I’d rather watch a tightrope artist. The finished album reflects my memories because I worked very hard to make it so.
At this distance, part of the pleasure in listening to the unashamed incompetence is hearing people just figuring out which way is up. We could get fancy and say that’s what all high-falutin’ art is about: discovery. I had some studio experience, so was able to catch the spirit of place and the sheer exuberance of it all on vinyl. There was a lot of energy to be bottled. The attitude and content was just right. No need to chase some illusory technical perfection. Also, remember this was a one-off live album, attempting to catch and convey a spirit, a time and a place.
Five singles over two and a half years and each one of them sheer perfection. Pop, punk, post punk, new wave, jangly, harmonies, left field, innovative – all of these epithets apply!
Mannequin / Feeling Called Love / 12 X U
(Harvest November 1977)
And here they come – while it’s all sturm and drang punk-wise with their peers, Wire weigh in with this jangly catchy and almost pleasant harmonies over a vicious put down on arguably vapid models and fashion victims. Of course, it also has the legendary 12XU!
I Am The Fly / Ex Lion Tamer
(Harvest February 1978)
Surprisingly danceable mid tempo ditty. Heavily treated guitars provide the lead in before an almost Cramps like tune. Now that I think of it Blur pretty much sounds like this so add them to the never-ending list of people who owe Wire!
Mike Thorne … the most sonically altered track on the album. Along with its spidery guitars and overdriven, harmonised claps, its main feature was Colin Newman’s rhythm guitar part heavily treated with an MXR Flanger. “It’s all the knobs turned all the way up,” Thorne laughs Sound On Sound
Dot Dash / Options R
(Harvest June 1978)
Weirdly slipped in between the two singles from Chairs Missing was this classic Wire tune that wouldn’t have sounded amiss on Pink Flag. This high-velocity little romp is all about a journey across the fens in fog to an aborted gig and the near-death collision on the run journey!
Outdoor Miner / Practice Makes Perfect
(Harvest January 1979)
As far removed from Punk as you can imagine, but a beautiful song with shades of the first single in terms of pace and harmonies. Its subject matter is …. the lifecycle of the Serpentine leaf miner insect but regardless of that EMI rightly identified it as a potential hit. But at a minute and a half long they thought it too short so the single has an extra verse added and a piano solo by producer Mike Thorne.
Complete with a picture cover, and unusually released on white-coloured vinyl, it made #51 in January 1979. But the British Market Research Bureau suspected foul play when its sales doubled over the next week. That would have been enough to push the single into the Top 30 and Top Of The Pops but the sales were discounted and it dropped. Ironically their place was taken by Donnie and Marie Osmond
A Question Of Degree / Former Airline
(Harvest June 1979)
No mucking about; the song comes steaming in. All the guitars are heavily treated with effects and the middle eight with its ever-increasing dissonance before the release is inspired. Let’s face it though was never going to be a hit, but was a statement of intent about the music that would feature on the album 154 and is typically tuneful and left field. The b side indicated as to where some of the band were going post Wire.
Map Ref 41N 93W / Go Ahead
(Harvest October 1979)
An absolutely fantastic song about traveling and the accompanying sonic palette is just perfection. A wonderful wonderfully crafted song that should have been a hit.
Graham Lewis There’s actually a place called something like Centretown, Iowa. The song is about travelling. I flew from L.A. to New York in 1978 and crossed the mid-west, and it went on and on and on and on. It was just incredible that this grid system was imposed on an enormous stretch of land. The other verse refers to travelling through Holland, by road, seeing all the dykes which is another grid system. ‘Curtains undrawn’ — seeing these blocks of flats, like dolls houses with people sitting in them all day with curtains undrawn. It’s a travelogue. Kevin Eden, Everybody Loves A History
Pink Flag
(Harvest 1977)
Joanne Roberts, Amazon Review September 2023, 4.0 out of 5 stars Distinctive and influential
Although Wire were very much a punk band in terms of sound, and their music contained many aspects of punk, they did what they did in their own distinctive style, creating this debut in such a way that it rose above and beyond punk, and has stood the test of time, being highly influential too.
Wire were very much the masters of short, sharp, punk songs of varying ridiculously short lengths ranging from ‘Field Day For The Sundays’ at 29 seconds, via ‘Start To Move’, ‘Brazil’, ‘It’s So Obvious’, ‘The Commercial’, ‘Straight Line’ and ‘Different To Me’, all of which are under a minute long.
This aspect of Wire would be particularly influential, almost certainly going on to influence a large part of the DC hardcore music scene, particularly Minor Threat, whilst ‘It’s So Obvious’ sounds strangely similar to a Plasmatics track. Speaking of influences, I couldn’t help but think of several tracks from the Arctic Monkeys first album whilst listening to ‘Brazil’ and the aforementioned ‘It’s So Obvious’. Direct or indirect, once you hear it you can’t unhear it. ‘Surgeon’s Girl’ is also distinctly an inspiration for the hardcore scene, whilst “3 girl Rhumba” contains an opening riff which Elastica acknowledged they imitated in their biggest hit “Connection”.
There are more highly influential moments, at least to my ears: title track ‘Pink Flag’ is an absolute highlight and its scuzzy guitars sound eerily similar to the exact sound many grunge bands would be creating approximately a decade later. The same applies to ‘Strange’. Several tracks reminded me of Gang of Four, although both bands were around at roughly the same time.
Meanwhile, there are other styles explored which are closer to that particular time period, for example ‘Mr. Suit’ sounds incredibly similar to ‘White Riot’ by the Clash whilst ‘Feeling Called Love’ had more than a whiff of Television/Richard Hell.
Personal highlights for me included the magnificent hardcore influencing ‘1 2 x U’ which is incredibly energetic and easily one of the best songs on the album, plus ‘Ex Lion Tamer’ which has great guitar riffs and a genuinely decent melody, for a punk band. ‘Strange’ is another highlight, living up to its name, with great, grungey guitars.
To conclude, ‘Pink Flag’ by Wire is not just a great, landmark punk album, but also a perfect precursor to post-punk, hardcore and even Grunge. Influential is the best word to describe this. The overall album is not the most melodic thing I’ve ever heard, but it never fails to be interesting.
The music press at the time was also impressed, giving the album outstanding reviews. Click for larger images of Sounds and NME reviews from November 1977.
Chairs Missing
(Harvest September 1978)
NM1270, Amazon Review April 2006 5.0 out of 5 stars – Dark, disturbing, brilliant.
Chairs Missing, the follow-up to Wire’s adrenalin rush of a debut album ‘Pink Flag’ is a challenging yet rewarding listen. Themes of darkness and despondency are abundant throughout. Indeed, the album title itself is a reference to mental instability and there is no let up in the album’s lyrics or the disturbing jagged and angular music onto which these words are painted. It is at times an extremely unsettling yet brilliant piece of work that reveals itself to the listener with every play.
Issues include S&M – (‘Practice Makes Perfect’), homicide – (‘French Film Blurred’), isolation – (‘marooned’) and drowning – (‘Men 2nd’). The suicide themed ‘Another The Letter’ is typically Wire – 1 minute and 6 seconds in length but without a single second wasted as keyboards swirl, guitars puncture and harmonies build to an abrupt, sudden climax.
The single ‘I Am The Fly’ is the menacing, chugging highlight of the album while ‘Outdoor Miner’ is on the surface an irresistible pop song, scratch the surface however and the lyrics reveal obscurity and darkness to match every other track here. If there is one gripe I have about the album it is the length of ‘Mercy’ – at almost 6 minutes long the track is too long which is uncharacteristic of Wire who tend to keep their songs short and to the point.
Brooding, menacing, dark, unsettling, sometimes vibrant, definitely timeless. ‘Chairs Missing’ is an album that reveals its hidden secrets to the listener over repeated listens, I simply never get bored of listening to this, Wires’ masterpiece.
154
(Harvest September 1979)
And so the last album for Harvest and the last Wire album before they broke up. The backstory is rising tensions within the band becoming split into 2 camps and adding in producer Mike Thorne as well who was an integral part of the band. It was the band’s highest charting album at #39.
It’s an album that has a very different feel and mood. At times oppressive and at times the layers of music and soundscapes seem almost oppressive ( I Should Have Known Better) and at others their usual pop genius (Map Ref).
Mike Thorne is more prominent with his keyboards and synthesizers and he manages to ring some great sounds out for the songs (Question Of Degree)
In fact he would be the first to leave
Mike Thorne “I resigned just because it all seemed to be getting a little bit too personal and intense,” he explains. “I want to have fun in the studio. I don’t need to deal with personal conflicts. So one day during the mixing, when they arrived, I just said, ‘I want to call it quits.’ But, y’know, everybody was on the same page.” Sound On Sound
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