From the videoconference window on my laptop screen, Jon King has the unassuming appearance of some sort of administrator. He wears a dark crewneck sweater over a dark oxford shirt, collar crisp and neat. He’s in the corner of a white room, flanked by a narrow door and shelving filled with three-ring binders in various colors of vinyl, each labeled neatly and uniformly. On the surface, everything about his presence seems orderly. But King, now 66, has been the frontman of Gang of Four since the fundamental post-punk group came together in Leeds, U.K., in 1976. And when he speaks, the spirit of his voice is the same as it was on the band’s 1979 debut album Entertainment! Even through a little laptop speaker, I can hear an avant-garde poet, an angry left-wing revolutionary, a romantic and an egalitarian dreamer.
With their discotheque-punk grooves and anti-capitalist ideals, Gang of Four always reminded me of the famous quote attributed to early-20th-century activist Emma Goldman: “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” The band’s sound and Dadaist aesthetic set a high bar for what radical music could be. Though King may not have the name recognition of many rock celebrities, Gang of Four’s music created a ripple effect that touched an astonishing variety of music that has come since.
“When we were playing in Los Angeles — I think the Reseda Country Club — a naked man jumped out of the audience and grabbed me,” King recalls. “This is back in 1983 or something. … It was Flea! There’s a photograph of a naked Flea hugging me onstage.”
This abrupt meeting, without Flea even extending the courtesy of putting on a tube sock, eventually led to Gang of Four guitarist Andy Gill producing Red Hot Chili Peppers’ debut album. Years later, the funk-punk sound that RHCP was then developing yielded Grammys, platinum records and stadium tours. The Peps are far from the only band to work closely with Gang of Four. In 1981 and ’82, a then-little-known outfit from Georgia called R.E.M. opened several dates on the Gang’s U.S. tours. And the groups that have drawn openly on Gang of Four’s ethos are myriad.
Gill, who died in 2020, perfected a serrated-edged guitar style that you hear echoes of in Fugazi’s Ian Mackaye and Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello. Kurt Cobain cited Gang of Four as a major influence on Nirvana. Funky post-millennium Brooklynites like Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Rapture and Liars all take pages from Gang of Four’s book. Plus, Frank Ocean and Run the Jewels have both sampled tracks from Entertainment!
But like many critical darlings, King & Co.’s street cred never converted into commercial success. Perhaps the lyrics were too esoteric and philosophical — or the sound too confrontational and harsh — for some audiences.
“We’ve always been like The Velvet Underground, I suppose,” says King. “Everyone knows of us, but it’s not like you’re going to get platinum albums out of that kind of thing.”
King and Gill co-wrote and contributed to the production of the aforementioned Entertainment! and its 1981 follow-up Solid Gold. Both were rereleased last year as part of a box set on Matador Records, Gang of Four: 77-81. That Grammy-nominated collection also contains demos, live recordings and a booklet King put together.
To celebrate the release, Gang of Four is touring the U.S. once again. Drummer Hugo Burnham is the other original member alongside King. Bassist Sara Lee, who was in the band circa 1981 to ’85, is also on board. In the wake of Gill’s passing, the current incarnation is rounded out with a new guitarist from a generation of artists deeply impacted by the King/Gill/Burnham sound: David Pajo of legendary Louisville, Ky., post-rockers Slint, who releases solo material as Papa M and has toured with many groups including Interpol and Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
“Andy was my great buddy for such a long time,” King says of his fallen partner. “So we wanted something to pay respect to that.”
Looking through King’s lyrics and the new box’s liner notes, fans get a glimpse of a unique mind. He brings together the cultural criticism of a Marxist revolutionary, the subversive avant-garde tactics of French situationist theorists and the patient sparseness of cinema’s bleakest auteurs.
“On the box set there’s a song called ‘In the Ditch,’ which is on Solid Gold,” King says. “Just before I wrote that song, every single household in the United Kingdom had been sent a book called Protect and Survive.”
The grim book, satirized in the song, was a guide to surviving a nuclear attack and what to expect from the radiation fallout. It offered useless advice, like whitewashing windows and hiding under a table covered in laundry bags.
“I genuinely thought it was, like, a weird gag,” says King, his eyes rolling back. “It’s a crazy thing to think that hiding under bin liners filled with your underwear is really going to be of use when [a bomb] lands.”
Such Vantablack humor is a hallmark of King’s work, but our 45-minute talk reveals a warm character with many loves and interests you might not expect. Without prompting, he walks me through his passion for music, especially storytellers like Robert Johnson, Bob Dylan and Jimmy Webb, who wrote “Wichita Lineman.” King is reverent as he speaks about the masterful tune, made famous by pop and country hero Glen Campbell.
“You didn’t necessarily know what the song was about, but you knew the lineman was telling an authentic story from his heart — the loneliness of his life.”
