Singer Jon King on keeping Gang of Four going after death of guitarist Andy Gill

Singer Jon King knows the simple fact that the influential English post-punk-funk band Gang of Four is touring the United States this month is a small miracle.

The original four members splintered and regrouped several times over the decades since Gang of Four formed in Leeds in 1976.

King had stopped talking with his boyhood friend guitarist Andy Gill over a decade ago when Gill, against King’s wishes, continued touring as Gang of Four though he was the only original member left.

When Gill died in early 2020, that might have been that. But the music still felt as fresh and relevant as ever it had, King says.

“I was involved in producing the box set,” King says of the 2021 release “77-81,” which garnered him a Grammy nomination for its art design. “It was a labor of love, and it was something that I was very keen to make as good as I could for our fans.

“Of course, part of that process involved doing something which a lot of musicians, including me, don’t often do, which is listen to our own music,” he says. “And it seemed that the music deserved an outing.”

King, drummer Hugo Burnham, and bassist Dave Allen were still on good terms, and at the time, Gill was still alive. The arrival of the box set in March 2021 rekindled the idea of touring if a replacement for Gill, whose jagged, angular guitar riffs were distinctly his own, could be found.

“We wondered who’d be able to do it and someone suggested David Pajo, who’s just a godlike guitarist, who really reveres Andy’s work,” King says of the American guitarist who has played with bands such as Slint, Interpol and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. “He immediately set about showing that he would respect the work and add his own frills to it.”

As the pandemic lockdowns lifted, King, Burnham, Pajo and bassist Sara Lee, a former member of the group, embarked on a U.S. tour that brings the band to the Roxy in Los Angeles on Saturday, March 19.

“I was a bit anxious beforehand about how it might be,” King says. “I wondered how well it would work, and actually, the audience was just really hungry for the live experience.

“I think that hunger came through, and they knew the material and they wanted it to work.”

Early days

King, whose lyrics typically focused on such non-traditional rock fare as politics, economics, social ills, and war, wondered whether the music would still resonate with audiences.

“Sadly, I think the music is really relevant,” King says.

When King and Gill first started writing songs together, working with an acoustic guitar and a cassette recorder, they were fans of the English band Dr. Feelgood, the punk scenes in New York City and London, and reggae and funk music, too.

Like most young musicians, they initially wrote songs reflective of the lyrics and music of the popular genres of the time, he says.

“It’s pretty easy as a musician to learn to play 12 bars, things like that,” he says. “One of the original demos (included in the box set) is ‘Elevator,’ which is emblematic of the early stuff, and it’s verse-chorus-verse-chorus. It’s written like ‘Sweet Jane.’”

Quickly, though, Gill and King headed into unfamiliar, original territory.

“I wanted to write songs that were more like watching a movie,” King says. “With ‘Anthrax,’ we plotted out the song without actually playing a note. I’d written the lyrics. (Andy) said, ‘Well, I’ll slap on feedback and Hugo and Dave will come up with a heavy beat.’

“It was quite a revelation to do that sort of thing,” he says.

Bad blood

When Gang of Four reunited with its original lineup in 2005 for Coachella, it marked the first time since 1981 the four founders had played a show in Southern California. And the band stayed together, too, until 2011 when the creative differences rose again.

“Obviously, it’s not unknown for singers and guitarists to sort of fall out with each other,” King says with a laugh.

But this time the split was no laughing matter. Gill planned to tour as Gang of Four; King was adamant that he not.

“We had a very catastrophic falling out about it,” King says. “I thought, Why don’t you just tour as Andy Gill, the Andy Gill Experience? You’re a wonderful player but Noel Gallagher wouldn’t have gone out as Oasis, Jimmy Page wouldn’t have gone out as Led Zeppelin, or Johnny Marr wouldn’t have gone out as the Smiths.

“So I was very unhappy about that, because, of course, I wrote all the words, and I didn’t think it was the right thing to do,” he says.

“We were great friends. We’re brothers. I’ve known him since I was in my mid-teens, and my wife had known him since she was 11. Our lives were totally interwoven with each other.”

He thought in time they might mend their relationship. Then Gill died in February 2020, officially of pneumonia and organ failure, though in an interview his wife said she suspected it might have been an early case of COVID-19, the Gill-led band having toured in China in late 2019.

“I had hoped that we would have a reconciliation,” King says. “But that was not to be.”

Moving forward

The tour so far has been wonderful, King says, with fans embracing Pajo’s playing as a worthy substitute for the irreplaceable Gill.

“Halfway into the first song, everyone realized that he was playing with complete integrity,” King says. “The first night was just awesome, and I think the audience was thrilled by it as well.”

The songs are also connecting with the fans.

“I didn’t write songs like current events,” King says. “But there are songs in there like ‘Ditch,’ for example, which was a response to the threat of nuclear war, which is just horribly now fresh.”

In its original form, the group was active in organizations such as Rock Against Racism and other causes.

“Now we have Black Lives Matter,” he says, referencing the flags the band hangs on stage each night, which include that organization’s as well as the U.S., British and LGBTQ flags. (A Ukrainian flag was ordered but has not yet arrived.) “And we’ll be in Texas in a few days where they’re out there doing incredible things to restrict women’s rights.”

King ticks off songs from the tour setlist and how they connect more than four decades later to contemporary issues.

“You have ‘Not Great Men,’ which concerns people like Putin,” he says. “And then ‘He’d Send In The Army.’ They have, unfortunately, a tragic relevance.

“I didn’t write about the precise issues of the day, which would make it very dated,” King says. “It’s a shame, actually that these issues still continue to drive people’s emotions.

“But it’s great to dance and have a loud guitar. All of those things are important.”