Dave Chamberlain

"Wire is only good when it's culturally relevant. When it loses touch, when it doesn't relate with what's going on in the culture, it's less good."

So explains Colin Newman, guitarist and founding member of Wire, speaking from his home studio in London. As a part of one of the most influential art-rock bands in rock history, Newman--along with Wire--could teach a seminar about cultural relevance. Wire's career began in the now-distant seventies, alongside--but not part of--the exploding punk scene that produced the Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks, Jam, et al. The band's 1977 debut, "The Pink Flag," practically set the stage for the future of garage rock and hardcore: twenty-one songs, many less than one-minute long, terse and tension-filled, more dynamic than the lot of its contemporaries. Instead of beating a sound to death, Wire followed up with "Chair's Missing," a borderline psychedelic record that laid bare the band's future, namely, its refusal to follow trends, become a cartoon of itself, or ride the past.

Though Wire often goes dormant for extended periods, it wakes up when the occasion warrants. During the eighties, Wire's music infiltrated the burgeoning industrial sound that Killing Joke would later trademark. In the early nineties, as electronic music was blowing up in Britain, Wire was again at the forefront, deconstructing its old sound with the new. Wire appeared defunct toward the end of the nineties, but the band was inspired to forge on when they were invited to play the Royal Festival Hall in London, an extremely prestigious honor usually bestowed exclusively on classical musicians. "Basically," remarks Newman, "it's not the kind of thing you turn down, even if you're not at that point able to do it."

But in order to play the Royal Festival Hall, Wire had to do an uncharacteristic about-face. "We decided to do something we've never done before," Newman explains, "which was take the historic material and work through it, see what we could make." And out of those sessions, something new arose. "What was interesting is we started to develop [the new] material almost from day one. And the kind of things that could've been twisted into something else began to be twisted into something different, more powerful. Really we worked to make it tougher, heavier, bigger, less bombastic, more direct."

After a short American tour and a spot headlining All Tomorrow's Parties in 2000, Newman observed the telltale signs of a coming trend. "That year was curated by Mogwai, and most of the stuff was very slow, post-rock kind of stuff. And we were coming on and suddenly coming very fast. And the thing about the audience, they were young, but not kids--more an indie, very discerning audience. And they were interested in us."

Having been around music, especially underground, art-influenced music, for thirty years, Newman smelled a change. "It came to me that fast rock was the coming aesthetic. I've been around all kinds of music, and in these kinds of scenes. Eventually you just get a way of sensing what's coming. And in a way, it was the least likely thing. I mean everybody knew that after the wave of drum 'n' bass, people here went more into different kinds of rock, especially post-rock, and that there was probably some kind of new rock that was going to get invented. But the last thing you'd have mentioned would be kind of arty-fast rock.

"Then it suddenly started happening, but it wasn't Wire, it was the Strokes. They hit very big here, and it was a complete cultural change. The underground had only been dance music for at least ten years. As each style was coming up, it was all dance music. Suddenly, the only styles coming up were all rock. Then that indication, that feeling, told us well, here we are: What we need to do is write some fast new material."

That new material, after extensive studio time, became "Read and Burn 01," a crunching, manic six-song EP that most closely resembles the "Pink Flag"-era Wire. "We started working on [it] last fall, but we realized that what we were making was a real spread of material. So we said, 'lets not do an album, lets put out six tracks. But not the first six songs we make, lets put out six tracks that relate to each other.' " The record was released last spring, and what followed surprised even Newman. "What has happened is that it sold well more copies than anybody imagined, even though it's only really available in four territories: France, Italy, the UK and America."

Although the success of Wire's latest incarnation surprised Newman, he is unfazed by the return of rock's popularity. "It's just a matter of people getting bored, really. My reading of it was, in '95-'96 there was really no other music to hear in London apart from drum 'n' bass. Everything else was totally irrelevant at that point. So, of course, it got leapt on hard by the mainstream, the money people. And from there, it was all kind of downhill.

"In '97," he continues, "suddenly Tortoise was everywhere. Tortoise was a cultural phenomenon. I don't think people in America understood the effect that Tortoise had in Europe--it's the most influential band of the last ten years. Every country, every town had a Tortoise. There were so many people who started picking up guitars and playing slow, jazzy rock because of Tortoise--most of whom won't probably admit to it now. The people who were buying it weren't the indie kids--they were all into the Britpop thing--but the exact same people who were buying drum 'n' bass."

Even then, Newman could see that the following generation would be different. "I can remember going to this Christmas party at the end of 2000, it was the parents of some friends of our son, and all the kids were upstairs--well, by kids I mean like fourteen-fifteen-sixteen--and all the grown-up music downstairs was really quite dreadful. All this seventies shit. I went upstairs and said, 'hey I have the Hives, anyone want to hear it?' And there was a fucking riot! They couldn't get it on quick enough. They were jumping on their beds, screaming." And even that represented a major shift in focus.

"Before that all those kids were into nu-metal, which I can see, since in this country there'd been all that kind of skateboarding-rock thing--very generational. Nu-metal has elements of hip-hop and elements of heavy rock. But then you get to something like the Hives, and that's just pure rock. There's no hip-hop or rapping of any kind."

Newman pauses for a moment before finishing. "Which, you know, thankfully saves us from fucking Fred Durst."

Wire plays September 14 at the Metro, 3730 North Clark, (773)549-0203.

(2002-09-11)

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