Wire’s Colin Newman on the band that had “the biggest effect” on him
1977 was a seminal year for punk and the emergent post-punk genre. Bands such as Sex Pistols, The Clash, Television, The Damned, The Stranglers, The Saints and Wire released their debut albums, signalling that rock music was heading in a new direction.
While some of these bands, like Sex Pistols, were shortlived, fizzling out almost as quickly as they began, others had lasting power, such as Wire. Formed in 1976, the band soon became one of the most important forerunners of post-punk, blending punk’s raw energy and simplicity with unusual lyricism and offbeat song structure. Their debut album, Pink Flag, demonstrates this well, moving between muted repetitive rhythms, short angular outbursts, and rumbling noise rock-esque instrumentals.
According to Mike Watt from Minutemen, Wire profoundly influenced his and many of his contemporaries’ approaches to songwriting. He said: “The way Wire wrote words were artistic without being elitist; some of the slang was trippy, too. All the ‘old’ conventions from all the other ‘old’ bands went out the window after we heard Wire. They were big-time liberating on us.”
Their influence on hardcore, post-punk and noise rock bands that emerged in subsequent decades cemented Wire as one of the most important British bands of the 1970s, although they were slightly overshadowed by many of their contemporaries. Even the riff from their song ‘Three Girl Rhumba’ might be better recognised as the same riff from Elastica’s Britpop hit ‘Connection’, which they lifted without credit.
The band have always expressed experimental tendencies, drawing from a wide variety of genres to achieve their influential sound. But there’s one band that lead singer Colin Newman cites as having the “biggest effect” on him. Talking to Pitchfork, he revealed that King Crimson were a seminal influence on him.
Newman revealed: “Island Records put out these samplers that cost the price of a single that basically had whatever was cool: King Crimson, Nick Drake, Blodwyn Pig, Quintessence, the original Nirvana. There’s a point sometimes when an independent label will just have everything, and you follow everything they do because they have the best stuff. That’s how I learned about King Crimson.”
This led him to discuss the brilliance of their music. He explained: “In the period before I was living in London, I saw King Crimson more than any other band, and they had the biggest effect on me. They were so serious. ’21st Century Schizoid Man’ is just get it out, put it on the table, and deal with that. The combination of heaviness, technical brilliance, and sheer bonkers arrangements was unbelievable. You don’t know whether to be petrified or burst out laughing.”
Revisit ’21st Century Schizoid Man’ below.
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