If Wire wanted to compel audiences to rethink what they were seeing, they only half-succeeded with some: “I didn’t get Wire, to be honest,” says New Order’s Peter Hook, “although when they had 15 guitarists it was pretty funny!”
The Ex-Lion Tamers were the best readymade we ever had.
Graham Lewis
These performances might have seemed to manipulate the frame as much as was possible, but on their 1987 US tour Wire went further, with a conceptually brilliant, simple manoeuvre. They brought along a support band called the Ex-Lion Tamers. Featuring Jim DeRogatis on drums, they weren’t just a Wire-influenced group, as their name might imply: they had formed solely to play Pink Flag in toto. The singer even said “Side Two” before “The Commercial.” DeRogatis had interviewed Lewis and Newman earlier in 1987 and mentioned his band. Realising this was an entertaining way to wind up those expecting older material, they enlisted the Ex-Lion Tamers for the tour—in support of the aptly named album The Ideal Copy. This was Wire in classic Dadaist mode. The Ex-Lion Tamers’ appropriation of Wire’s work was Duchampian—their Pink Flag was a musical equivalent of Fountain. For Wire, the Ex-Lion Tamers were the perfect readymade, appropriated by them and incorporated into their own larger project.
All these examples dramatise Wire’s relentless interrogation of the work of art—constantly asking what it is, when it is, where it begins and ends and making audiences ask themselves the same questions. Wire engage in an ongoing negotiation of the frame, obliging listeners and viewers to be aware of an unsettling of boundaries, to view all facets of the band’s work not as discrete items, but as ingredients in the “living sculpture.”
5
Plans Were Laid: Making Pink Flag
When we heard what we actually sounded like, it was a bit shaky and even a bit slow.
Bruce Gilbert
A series of studio recordings from spring and summer 1977 chronicles the run-up to Pink Flag. The strength of the Roxy tracks, with Thorne’s enthusiastic backing, piqued EMI’s interest, and on May 4, Wire entered the label’s Manchester Square demo studio to record “The Commercial,” “Mr Suit” and “Pink Flag.” Hearing their work captured professionally made an impression. “It was such an expansion of the world,” says Grey. For Gilbert, the tapes emphasised how much more work lay ahead. “Although we aspired to being very fast, accurate and minimal, it was all a bit clanky.” He also remembers that these recordings highlighted the change in Wire since Gill’s departure and, despite their weaknesses, underscored the potential of the band’s sound. These tracks showed “what was possible when we actually played properly. We could be very, very tight and very, very sharp. It made it more abstract, trying to do it that sharply, with clean lines like a hard-edged painting: there were no unnecessary painterly gestures, no unnecessary musical gestures.”
Two more sessions on May 25 and August 12 at Riverside Studio in Chiswick chart Wire’s evolution. The August 12 performances are tighter, the band displaying confidence and proficiency gained from intensive practice. These two sets of recordings document an additional ten tracks: “Reuters,” “Different to Me,” “Ex-Lion Tamer,” “Mannequin,” “Champs,” “Start to Move,” “106 Beats That,” “Fragile,” “Surgeon’s Girl” and “Field Day for the Sundays.” So by early August, Pink Flag’s 21 songs existed and were being honed—the last of Gill’s numbers and some of the others’ earliest efforts having been retired.
Although these demos attest to a growing competence, the songs often sound slow compared to the Pink Flag versions. If the Ramones had prompted Wire to accelerate and the Buzzcocks egged them on, the Riverside tapes reveal that they weren’t quite up to speed yet. Wire’s leap in acceleration on Pink Flag is due to the improvement of the rhythm section. Given the foundational nature of Lewis’s and Grey’s roles early on, they had been under particular pressure. Predictably, their initial limitations led to frustration and strained relations. “We did have the odd disagreement,” remarks Grey. “If Graham said my timing was wrong, I’d blame him or his bass-playing—you had to say something. When there’s a bit of pressure, people can get upset about things going wrong and criticism becomes somewhat intense.”
Lewis recalls matters becoming heated: “The second time we were making a racket, he got so frustrated—as much with himself as with me—and he turned around and threw this drumstick, which stuck in the wall by my head and, pointing at me, went, ‘I can’t play with that.’ I thought, ‘Oh, this is going to be fun.’ Such are the circumstances when everybody’s got a low skill level.” Although Lewis also lacked ability, he drew on analogous experiences: “Rob didn’t quite have the skills or approaches to being in a situation where you don’t know what the fuck’s going on and you don’t know what to do, which I’d got quite used to in art school.”
Grey, however, questions Lewis’s memory: “Graham must’ve imagined that. Jack Bruce threw his double bass at Ginger Baker when they were in the Graham Bond Organisation. And the Kinks had punch-ups onstage. We were pretty mild. We haven’t had a fight onstage. So, a drumstick sticking in the wall? I don’t think so. You’d be hard-pressed to get a drumstick to stick in the wall.”
In addition to an improved rhythm section, simply not wanting to be rock contributed to Wire’s speed. Newman heard through EMI’s grapevine “that the Sex Pistols had been asked to play slower when they came to record, so the sound had more balls. The thing that was exciting about punk rock was that it went fast; slowing it down to make it more acceptably ‘rock’ was definitely not something we were going to do.” For Gilbert there was also a conceptual dimension: “It was almost sport to try and play as fast as possible: what’s the fastest one can play and what would happen to something, what would it be like, if it was insanely fast? It becomes an almost abstract thing.”
It’s got to be 21 tracks like Wire. That’s the guideline. If I put out a record that’s only got 16 or 17 songs, I feel bad.
Robert Pollard
EMI initially wanted Wire to focus on singles. Gilbert had reservations: “I said, Well, what happens after that? You’re never going to be taken seriously again.’ If you give music up for a while they’ll say, ‘Oh, play that single that was so good.’ We’d seen what happened to other people—being stuck forever with their single and that was it, the blueprint for the rest of their lives. It’s like a coffin of your own making. We were keen to make the relationship work with EMI without actually engaging too much with the corporate rock ’n’ roll aspect.” More importantly, Gilbert saw Wire’s work as a collection of pieces to be presented together: “We knew we had a body of work which ought to be heard in full context.” Newman agrees: “The whole point was that we wanted to make an album. We didn’t see ourselves as a singles band.”
As the recording sessions drew close, the group began showing signs of restlessness. They’d been playing much of what would become Pink Flag for nearly six months. “We were starting to get a bit fidgety with the Pink Flag material,” recalls Gilbert. “We knew there were other things to come.” They were already generating new numbers, which were moving in a different direction; to Lewis, this was a very fertile period: “By the time we came to record Pink Flag, things like ‘I Feel Mysterious Today’ had appeared in rehearsal, and we were getting rather excited about it and the other things that led from that. There were even more songs which we jettisoned. We had a house rule that if two of us said, ‘I don’t think this is any good anymore,’ it got dropped because there was always something better to bring in.” Consequently, there was a need for haste: Thorne had to commit the songs to vinyl before Wire lost interest in them. As Newman maintains, “We were already beyond Pink Flag when we made it.”
Prior to going into the studio, Thorne met with the band to establish the record’s contents. Lewis remembers the producer advising them to hold back their newest work “We had a list of 30-odd titles, and Mike said, ‘Whoa, slow down here, guys. That’s great, but you’re starting to go somewhere else. The m
aterial you’ve already got is really good. It holds together and would make a fantastic record, and you’re going to get 21 tracks on it.’”
At the same time, Thorne was determined that quantity wouldn’t become a mere novelty. He recognised that track order would be key if the material’s true strength were to come across. “We spent a creative afternoon in my flat getting the running order together,” he recalls. “We went around the houses a few times, but, eventually, we had it: all 21 songs strung together.” Also critical was Thorne’s awareness that pre-determining each track’s placement would have a bearing on how it should be performed and recorded. And whereas part of the trick of sequencing was grouping tracks that complemented one another, Thorne considered it equally important to establish contrasts. As Lewis comments, “Another strength of Mike’s was to separate things with similar chord progressions and similar characters.”
I didn’t learn the song titles or decipher the lyrics. I listened to it as one long suite of songs—I didn’t always know when one started and one ended.
Robert Poss
In spite of its brevity (35 minutes) and seeming fragmentation—an impression accentuated by the abundance of miniature, hyper-speed songs—Pink Flag is surprisingly multidimensional. The running order and range of dynamics imbue it with an unlikely feeling of space and measured pacing. “Although there are 21 tracks, it’s remarkable how unhurried the whole thing feels,” reflects Lewis. “It feels so inevitable and so well-paced. Mike’s sequencing is extremely good. Now, one can’t imagine the songs being put together any other way.”
The album became greater than the sum of its parts: early appraisals of the band’s work often noted its overall unity. Covering a December 1977 gig for Sounds, Jane Suck reported: “They do a 24-song set (cough) but it’s more like ‘Sister Ray’ with gaps in it.” In the NME, Phil McNeill called Pink Flag “a 21-track set which delivers a staggeringly coherent picture.” Christgau described it as “a punk suite comprising parts so singular that you can hardly imagine them in some other order.” Numerous interviewees for this book emphasised that they didn’t listen to the album as a series of individual tracks but as a broader, unified work. Even some of those involved in making Pink Flag considered it an extended piece: “The whole thing was just one big song,” observes assistant engineer Ken Thomas. Mission of Burma’s Peter Prescott agrees: “It’s 21 songs, but in a way it’s one. It feels so unified that I’d always listen to it all the way through.” Richard Jobson also appreciates the overarching unity. “It’s not a concept album—I find that term abhorrent—but the beauty of that album is that it takes you on a journey. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. Pink Flag was the first album I’d heard since Lou Reed’s Berlin that had that completeness.”
Although not a concept album in the progressive rock sense of there being a greater thematic unity, Pink Flag is an album that’s conceptual in nature, its unity deriving from Wire’s conceptual principles: the sustained minimalist, reductionist aesthetic across all areas of their work, coupled with their attitude towards it as an object to be contemplated and finessed. This relationship between the band and its work has consistently and persuasively been articulated by Gilbert: “I liked the idea of Wire being a non-group. It’s not a band. It’s a sort of art project: four people who make this noise which sounds like songs.” As he told the NME in 1978: “Making albums is exactly the same as making a painting, really. A number of processes are very similar: the stepping back…wanting to get it finished before you get bored with an idea…the economy of effort, to write a statement which is the essence of what you’re trying to do.”
I don’t think we met any other musicians at Advision because I don’t think there would have been musicians who frequented studios who would have wanted to meet us.
Robert Grey
Having signed with EMI on September 9, Wire embarked on Pink Flag at Advision Studios. Advision was established in the ’60s for commercials and voice-overs but emerged as a premier rock recording venue. For the sessions, Thorne’s engineer was Paul Hardiman, who had worked on albums by the Groundhogs, Slade, Mott the Hoople and Rick Wakeman, among others. He’d also been a mixing engineer on Eno’s Here Come the Warm Jets. Starting out at Trident Studios working on Bowie and Queen sessions, assistant Ken Thomas graduated to Rush and Gentle Giant recordings before embracing punk, engineering Snatch’s “All I Want” and working with Martin Rushent.
Studio layout during the making of Pink Flag. Courtesy Mike Thorne.
Wire used their own instruments and gear provided by Thorne. Lewis played his own Fender Jazz Bass through an Ampeg combo, occasionally coloured with an MXR flanger. Bruce Gilbert mostly used a Gibson Les Paul Pro, sundry pedals and a Music Man 212 amp, all supplied by Thorne. For his few guitar parts, Newman played his iconic white Ovation Breadwinner, purchased with EMI’s advance. Grey had invested in a secondhand Ludwig Classic kit. (“I didn’t know anything about kits. I bought Ludwig because that’s what Ginger Baker played.”) Rather than have Grey play in a booth, Thorne placed him in the room itself, to use the studio’s ambience. This would prove crucial to Pink Flag’s drum sound: “The kit was close-miked—we even had a mike under the snare,” remembers Grey, “but we also had a mike for the ambient sound. It gives depth. When you add in the room, the listener is conscious of space.” Newman was the only person separated, listening in from a vocal booth, and Thorne had Gilbert, Lewis and Grey wear open-ear headphones so they could hear one another and the sounds in the studio; that way they’d interact more naturally, rather than each being sealed off.
That Wire had been fine-tuning their work for months suited Thorne. In his experience, it was vital that the songs be ready: “It seemed to me that music, ideally, would be better if written before the band went into the studio, to give a chance for it to settle and be seen in perspective. Getting songs rehearsed and coherent before recording time is very important. Also, if you go into the studio and write, generally getting it together, it dilutes the excitement of being in that intense environment. Recording should be a big event. You only do it once for the Preservation Society, and the adrenalin should be flowing.”
There was some trepidation. “Anybody is anxious when they first go to a studio,” says Lewis, “and this was definitely one of London’s top-line studios. We were very nervous about it all.” Gilbert agrees: “I was certainly a bit in awe when I walked into the studio. It was incredibly large and full of strange things. In one corner—with a barrier around it—there were about 100 guitars from the band working in there previously. Every type of electric guitar known to man—owned by one person!” Grey was uneasy because he felt the band wasn’t ready: “I was deeply anxious about making mistakes. I wanted to record Pink Flag when we could play it better, but that idea wasn’t accepted.” Newman was unfazed: “I didn’t feel intimidated. It just seemed it was part of what you do. I thought some of it was tedious. I started to become more interested in what was going on on the other side of the glass than what was going on where I was.”
Aware that this would be a big step, Thorne broke the band in slowly. First, he had them play the material in sequence, several times. To facilitate matters, he brought along a jar of his special homegrown: “We squandered the first day in the interests of getting them comfortable with their new environment—as in stoned—but also running through the whole album, just getting everything working, getting the headphones feeling comfortable.” Refreshments notwithstanding, Grey retains a clear memory. “There was some smoking going on. We didn’t do any recording. We were just acclimatising ourselves, making a noise to get the feel of the studio.” According to Grey, some indulged more than others: “By the end of the day, Bruce was convinced that we’d finished the recording and could go home. He thought it had all been done.” In fairness, Gilbert’s belief that the process was complete had as much to do with his studio inexperience: “We just played and played nonstop. It felt like two days, and I was totally convinced that we’d
finished the album. I said, ‘You must have got it,’ but no…because obviously I was unfamiliar with studio protocols and techniques. It seemed like we’d done it We were never going to play that well again!”
I always saw myself as being on the studio side of the glass, with the engineer handling the control room, whereas most producers settled themselves in the control room.
Mike Thorne
Despite Thorne’s experience with traditional rock acts, he was in sync with punk’s revolutionary spirit. If punk ostensibly aimed at overthrowing musical orthodoxy, Thorne was also rebelling. His bête noire was the received wisdom of record production in Britain, passed down by fossilised individuals espousing a monolithic model of music-making, to which young upstarts like him were expected to adhere. Punk’s DIY message spoke to Thorne, who saw how he could bring it to bear on production, rejecting standardisation: “I’ve always thought that the production environment should defer to the music, rather than the other way around. I had a certain amount of musical and technical knowledge, but I was always careful not to hand that down like stone tablets, as many contemporary production priests in their white robes seemed to be doing. I just went in trying for a completely open mind, with a view to guiding as far as I was able.”
Thorne also felt it imperative to get out of the control room: “Many producers just sat there twiddling knobs, but I was out there getting sounds, stringing effects units together and waving the arms around. I thought that, as a producer, I had to be more American-style, much more a musical guide, rather than a sonic translator.” Gilbert appreciated this: “He knew what the studio was capable of, and he knew so many techniques that he made it very, very interesting.”
Wire's Pink Flag Page 8