In a review of Entertainment!, Rolling Stone”s David Fricke wrote that it was “the best debut album by a British band – punk or otherwise – since the original English release of The Clash in 1977”. For Gill’s widow, journalist and co-founder of the UK Women’s Equality Party, Catherine Mayer – Gill himself passed away in 2020 – Gang of Four rejuvenated the spirits of young people in the late 1970s.
“I use that word: storytelling,” she explains. “Gang of Four were utterly radical and uncompromising with their stories. They made us all feel like we could change the future. As hard-edged as Entertainment! is, and as rooted as it is in the dysfunctional, it has these incredibly energising riffs. You hear it and feel like you can 100% go outside and make the world a better place. It’s campaigning music, for sure.”
Mayer argues that Gill’s murky guitar playing is central to Entertainment!’s enduring brilliance – she says he played like someone who “hated the extended, pretentious solos of prog-rock guitarists”. Gill’s sound is a lesson in deliberate restraint. He plays in small, controlled bursts of rage and just when you expect him to break out into a solo, he withdraws back into himself and holds back. “I used to tease him and call him ‘Mr Angular’, as all the reviews noted how angular his guitar playing was,” she laughs.
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“He just created this feral noise that was completely his own,” Mayer adds “Take away the guitar and I don’t believe it is Gang of Four anymore. The DNA of Andy’s guitar is everywhere today! The reason Andy went on to produce for The Red Hot Chilli Peppers, The Futureheads, Michael Hutchence, and The Stranglers, well, that was because they all wanted that Gang of Four Entertainment! sound.”
On their protest song The Ground Below, rap duo Run The Jewels (El-P and Killer Mike) sampled Gill’s guitar playing from Entertainment’s highlight track, Ether. Meanwhile, Frank Ocean sampled another one of its songs, Love Like Anthrax, on the R&B rule-breaker’s deep-cut Futura Free back in 2016. One of the things that perhaps helped introduce Gang of Four’s music to new generations of artists was Natural’s Not In It appearing prominently in director Sofia Coppolla’s 2006 film, Marie Antoinette, where this song’s blunt lyrics about even love being “purchasable” aligned so perfectly with the movie’s depiction of unabashed materialism.
When I ask King why so many contemporary artists still seem to be so inspired by Entertainment!, he speculates that it’s to do with socio-political parallels. “In 2024, young people have got the bad end of the stick in every conceivable way. The older generation are creaming it, generally, whether that’s owning the best property or having the best pensions. Today young people feel like they’re being held back. Entertainment! speaks to those frustrations. It’s about that cursed transaction we all make, when we think we’re going to get something for nothing, but don’t, and then we’re trapped in this conundrum. There’s so many parallels between 1979 and 2024.”
