Andy
Gill – guitarist, producer
Born
January 1, 1956; died February 1, 2020
Andy
Gill, who has died aged 64, was one of the most influential and inventive
guitarists of his generation. As co-founder of Gang of Four, his abrasive and metallic
guitar shards captured the urgency of the punk era, yet retained a skewed
funkiness that suggested dance music as an incendiary and oppositionist force.
Offset by the serious intent of songs such as At Home He’s A Tourist and To Hell
with Poverty, Gang of Four gave the anything-goes eclecticism that punk opened
up an extra edge. The band’s debut release, the Damaged Goods EP, released on
Edinburgh’s Fast Product label in October 1978, was one of the earliest records
now regarded as post-punk.
The
original Gang of Four’s mould-breaking sound forged by Gill with singer Jon
King, bass player Dave Allen and drummer Hugo Burnham eventually gave rise to a
new wave of bands such as The Rapture. This in part inspired the quartet to
reconvene in 2004 after a decade away.
“Everyone
was used to the fact that our generation or the generation just after us had
borrowed elements from Gang of Four,” Gill told the Herald in 2006, “but this
new crop seemed much more blatant. It’s weird hearing it all over the place,
but I like a lot of it. The thing that’s different about it is you’re never
sure what they’re going on about. With Gang of Four, I think it was always
pretty easy to tell.”
Andrew
James Dalrymple Gill was born in Manchester, where his parents Stanley and
Sylvia met as students before the family moved south, first to Bexley, then to
Sevenoaks, Kent. Gill’s parents separated when he was eleven, and he was
brought up by his mother. The roots of Gang of Four stem from Gill meeting King
at Sevenoaks School. Both fell under the influence of art teacher Bob White, as
did other classroom contemporaries including film-makers Paul Greengrass and
Adam Curtis, plus three future members of the Mekons.
Gill and
King formed their first band, the Bourgeois Brothers, aged sixteen. As a
portent of provocations to come, the pair played a reggae version of Jerusalem
at school assembly. Gill turned down a place at Cambridge in order to join King
at Leeds University’s Fine Art department. Both won travel grants to study, and
visited New York, where they hung out at CBGB’s and observed the nascent punk
scene first hand.
In
Gill’s words, he and King had been “sitting about, playing chess, drinking gin
and writing songs” since 1975, so “by the time punk came along, we’d already
written most of our first album, Entertainment. We were writing about the
interesting things that happen to you when you’re trying to live your life, and
the invisible forces that affect you. We were trying to look at what you can
expect from culture, art, relationships, and which vested interests served us.”
Such
high concept deconstructions of the personal and the political married to an austere
metal-funk chimed with the times. Gang of Four’s name was co-opted from the
Chinese quartet of deposed Communist Party leaders, and the band drew ideas from
situationism and structuralism.
“People
often thought we were more political than we were,” King told the Herald. “I’m
not saying we weren’t, but we didn’t have a line or a set of answers…Sometimes
we wondered if were on the right track; when we started, no-one was touching on
the things we were. We were having fun, but we weren’t sure if we were getting
through. Punk reaffirmed that we were on the right track.”
This fitted
perfectly with the aesthetic of Fast Product, founded by Edinburgh College of
Art students Bob Last and Hilary Morrison. According to Gill, “Bob Last had his
finger very much on the pulse. I remember that he asked The Mekons, who were
our mates, and who we hung out with in Leeds, if they wanted to do a record,
and we thought that was ridiculous. We went to Bob and said, listen, you’ve got
the wrong band.”
Damaged
Goods topped the independent charts, and led to a deal with EMI, who released
Entertainment (1979). A mooted Top of the Pops appearance to perform single, At
Home He’s A Tourist, was cancelled after the band refused to cut a lyric that
mentioned condoms. Three more albums, Solid Gold (1981), Songs of the Free
(1982) and Hard (1983) followed, before the band split. Gill co-produced them
all, and went on to produce records by Red Hot Chilli Peppers, the Jesus
Lizard, Michael Hutchence and Killing Joke. Gill also produced Glasgow band
Bis’s 1999 album, Social Dancing.
Gill and
King reconvened in 1995 for the Mall (1991) and Shrinkwrapped (1995) albums. The
reconvened original quartet re-recorded old material for Return the Gift (2005).
Allen and Burnham had gone by the time of Content (2011), before King too
departed, leaving Gill the sole founder member on What Happens Next (2015) and
Happy Now (2019). Gill’s Gang of Four continued to tour, and a new album had
recently been completed. Whatever the result, Gill’s guitar will undoubtedly ring
out its defiant and coruscating chimes to the last.
Gill is
survived by his wife Catherine Mayer and his brother Martin.
The Herald, February 14th 2020
ends
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