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 corporaterock ’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
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 corporaterock ’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
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