Wire
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Buzzcocks/X-Ray Spex/Wire etc.: Running with the Ratpack
Live Review by Jon Savage, Sounds, 16 April 1977
ROXY RATPACK, Saturday nite. Find a friend and stick close: sink or swim. Tony and Julie were right: a club full of 'Wild Boys' outtakes ...
Audio interviews
Interview by Martin Aston, Rock's Backpages audio, March 1987
The proto-postpunks go through their history: Graham Lewis, Colin Newman and Bruce Gilbert on making debut album Pink Flag; on their development over the subsequent Chairs Missing and 154; on touring with the Tubes and Roxy Music; on their difficulties with EMI; and on re-emerging with new album The Ideal Copy. Graham Lewis (left) answers first, followed by Colin Newman (in shades) and finally Bruce Gilbert (second from left)…
File format: mp3; file size: 44mb, interview length: 45' 47" sound quality: ***
List of articles in the library
Various artists: The Roxy, London, W.C.2 (Harvest SHSP 4069)
Review by Ira Robbins, Trouser Press, September 1977
BACK IN nineteen-sixty-something, when an earlier new wave was proudly unfurling, several Live at the Star Club LPs appeared, scooping up some of the bands ...
Interview by Ian Birch, Melody Maker, 10 December 1977
HAVE YOU noticed how a new category is being synthesised in the press? It had to happen, now that disillusion with new wave/punk mark one ...
Interview by Kris Needs, ZigZag, March 1978
WHEN WIRE came out of the Punk No-man's-land with their strikingly different debut album Pink Flag they seemed one of the hottest hopes for lifting ...
XTC, Wire, the Secret: Lyceum, London
Live Review by Geoff Barton, Sounds, 4 March 1978
Shock as Soundsman writes non-metallic rave ...
Review by Ira Robbins, Trouser Press, April 1978
AS THE FALLOUT from new wave continues to turn up on plastic, a few gangs of rockers have chosen (wisely I suppose) to see how ...
Wire: Pink Flag (Harvest ST-11757)
Review by Gary Lucas, Crawdaddy!, May 1978
"If you are a 'romantic,' you have not lived if you have not been present at a battle... The likelihood that you will get your ...
Live Review by Andy Gill, New Musical Express, 13 May 1978
TO USE an alimentary analogy, punk can be seen as a kind of musical laxative, clearing away all that stodgy stuff that was blocking the ...
Interview by Jim Green, Trouser Press, July 1978
YOU CAN: tie up your plastic garbage bag with a wire, send a message on a wire, connect broken bones with a wire, strangle your ...
Interview by Richard Grabel, New York Rocker, July 1978
WIRE. THE name denotes something tight, something along which electricity buzzes and communication passes. In an English music scene full of brash, jokey band names (Sex ...
Interview by Andy Gill, New Musical Express, 16 September 1978
"Well it's alright just listenCan't wait for 78God those r.p.m.Can't wait for themDon't just watchHours happenGet in there kidAnd snap them."– Wire, 'It's So Obvious' ...
Live Review by Giovanni Dadomo, Sounds, 25 November 1978
I LIKE Wire a lot and sometimes I dislike them. ...
Interview by Harry Doherty, Melody Maker, 9 December 1978
"We don't need nude tarts to sell records. Thus spake Wire, the most ruggedly uncompromising band HARRY DOHERTY has met for, oh, at least a ...
Wire: Chairs Missing (Harvest SHSP 4093)
Review by Jim Green, Trouser Press, January 1979
WIRE ARE disconcerting, laconic yet eloquent in fragmented visions, jarring even at their most accessible. They disdain cliché, pushing out the limits of rock; the ...
Reluctant Rock Stars: A Nation In Crisis
Interview by Paul Rambali, New Musical Express, 7 July 1979
PAUL RAMBALI looks at the young people the Social Services have failed. The kids who must face the ever-present threat of Fame, the horror of ...
Review by Hugh Fielder, Sounds, 22 September 1979
And keeping it there ...
Review by Nick Kent, New Musical Express, 22 September 1979
WIRE WERE from the very outset a conceptually intriguing collective, even though they bristled with a potential that was all too often offset by niggling ...
Review by Jon Savage, Melody Maker, 29 September 1979
WRAPPED IN an abstract minimal geo-deco sleeve (all straight lines and waves, pastel shades), with its own label and a "free" 45, the third Wire ...
Interview by Chris Bohn, Melody Maker, 13 October 1979
Wire don't sit comfortably in the publicity man's gullet. They're not easily categorised, seemingly spurning the hype-market. But they do conform in one way; they ...
Wire: Jeanetta Cochrane Theatre, London
Live Review by Dave McCullough, Sounds, 24 November 1979
Serious scientific self-indulgence ...
Interview by J.D. Considine, New York Rocker, March 1980
TELEPHONE INTERVIEWS are not my favorite means of communication, but in the case of Wire (to be specific, bassist Graham Lewis), it's either that or ...
Interview by Jim Green, Trouser Press, June 1981
"YOU CAN'T forcibly solve contradictions; you've got to allow them to work themselves out," says Colin Newman. What's a Colin Newman? Good question; he himself ...
Wire: Document And Eyewitness At Notre Dame Hall And The Electric Ballroom (Rough Trade)
Review by Chris Bohn, New Musical Express, 1 August 1981
OUT OF SHEER perversity, it would seem, Wire stopped functioning 18 months ago. Going by their chronology of events we shouldn't have been surprised, as ...
Wire, James: Bloomsbury Theatre, London
Live Review by Don Watson, New Musical Express, 3 August 1985
SPARKLY JAMES HARVEST ...
Review by Simon Reynolds, Melody Maker, 2 May 1987
WIRE are pure luxury. Here are a bunch of superior sound technicians with an immaculate grasp of the sculptural and architectural possibilities of rock, who ...
Review by The Legend!, New Musical Express, 2 May 1987
THE QUESTION is: should there really be a question at all? Many people hold no truck with reformations; more often than not they tarnish precious ...
Interview by Jack Barron, Sounds, 6 June 1987
Or timeless as ever? Only time will tell, say WIRE, back with An Ideal Copy and not a hint of retrogression anywhere. Seconds clocked by ...
Wire: State-of-the-Art Return to Action
Profile and Interview by Howard Wuelfing, Musician, July 1987
WIRE IS back. After a "sabbatical" of some seven years, the British group released a four-song EP of new material titled Snakedrill, and The Ideal ...
Siouxsie And The Banshees/The Fall/Wire: Finsbury Park, London
Live Review by Len Brown, New Musical Express, 1 August 1987
AND DARKNESS fell over all the earth. Well, only a teensyweensy bit of it actually, but it turned into the arse-end of Pandemonium. A plethora ...
Interview by Richard Grabel, Creem, September 1987
COLIN NEWMAN and Graham Lewis, of the nearly living legendary beat combo Wire, are amiable, approachable guys who nonetheless make no attempt to hide their ...
Wire: A Stitch in Time… Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Interview by Robin Gibson, Sounds, 4 June 1988
In the oddball world of unlikely pop stars WIRE — where vital organs are won playing bingo — social comment and absurdity walk hand in ...
Depeche Mode, Wire, Thomas Dolby, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark: Rose Bowl, Pasadena CA
Live Review by Paul Mathur, Melody Maker, 16 July 1988
WIRE HAVE probably not played to 100,000 people in total as they've skimmed their precious stones across the edges of a strange pop history. And ...
Review by Dave Simpson, Melody Maker, 12 May 1990
THE FLIES in the ointment return. Formed at the onset of punk, Wire's art school background was far removed from the council estate mentalities of ...
Interview by Mark Sinker, The Wire, November 1991
Wire's reputation — as the foremost quartet of art-formalists to have come out of punk — has shrouded them in enigma. Now a three-piece, with ...
Review by Simon Reynolds, Melody Maker, 1994
Pink Flag (Harvest/EMI)Chairs Missing (Harvest/EMI)154 (Harvest/EMI) ...
Interview by Ian Penman, The Wire, March 2000
23 years after their art attack first outpaced punk audiences, Wire have sprung back into action. Ian Penman meets the group in rehearsal and finds ...
Invisible Jukebox: Colin Newman
Interview by Mike Barnes, The Wire, April 2003
Every month we play a musician a series of records which they're asked to identify and comment on — with no prior knowledge of what ...
Simon Reynolds: Rip It Up and Start Again – Post-Punk 1978-84 (Faber)
Book Review by Andy Beckett, London Review of Books, September 2005
IN JANUARY 1978, the Sex Pistols, then and now the most famous punk band in the world, split up. Johnny Rotten, the band's singer, most ...
Wire: Tense, Nervous, Headache
Retrospective and Interview by Keith Cameron, MOJO, April 2006
Combining art school sensibilities and musical inability, Wire rejected punk's pub-rock posturings for driving minimalism, fewer chords and no guitar solos. With the reissue of ...
Retrospective and Interview by Fred Mills, Harp, June 2006
APRIL 1, 1977, LONDON: Onstage at punk venue the Roxy is a young quartet nearing the end of its 17-song set – which, in a ...
Retrospective by Fred Mills, Harp, July 2006
IT'S SOMETIME in late '77 or early '78 and yours truly is toiling away at the distribution center for North Carolina record store chain the ...
Live Review by Dave Simpson, The Guardian, 9 May 2008
BANDS GENERALLY BREAK UP then reform some years later to trot out the hits to fill up their pension funds, but Wire have never played ...
Wire: The Making Of 'I Am The Fly'
Interview by Nick Hasted, Uncut, February 2011
1978's deathlessly spiteful singalong, from a quartet of art-punk outsiders "desperate to get on Tiswas"... ...
Review by Ned Raggett, Pitchfork, 21 April 2015
FOLLOWING 2013'S Change Becomes Us, which re-worked early 1980s song sketches into full songs, Wire feels at first almost strangely normal. ...
Wire: Pink Flag / Chairs Missing / 154
Review by Kris Needs, Prog, May 2018
Down to the Wire with lavish expansions. ...
see also Colin Newman
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