Gang of Four was formed in Leeds in 1976 by bassist Dave Allen, drummer Hugo Burnham, guitarist Andy Gill, and singer Jon King. The band pioneered a style of music that inverted punk's blunt and explosive energies — favoring tense rhythms, percussive guitars, and lyrics that traded in Marxist theory and situationism. They put every element of the traditional "rock band" format to question, from notions of harmony and rhythm to presentation and performance.
With this original lineup, the band released their first two hugely influential albums, Entertainment (1979) and Solid Gold (1981). Dave Allen departed the band, and Sara Lee joined to record their third album, Songs of the Free (1982), where her added vocals no doubt helped propel them to a different level. The album includes "Call Me Up," which is a live favorite, and their biggest "hit" – "I Love a Man in a Uniform" which climbed the UK charts until the BBC decided to ban it during the Falklands War, presumably because it might be considered critical to the military. In the US, the song received a lot of airplay, particularly from stations that saw it as a pro-military dance song. The dancefloors saw some action too…
Following Songs of the Free, Burnham departed the band. Andy Gill and Jon King continued on to release Hard in 1983 before disbanding in 1984. Andy and Jon reunited to release Mall in 1991 and Shrinkwapped in 1995. In 2004, the original quartet reformed for tour dates and released Return the Gift (2005). Gill's untimely death in February 2020 was cause for many to once again re-examine the group's catalog and the legacy of these early releases was widely cited. Not only did Gang of Four's music speak to the generation of musicians, activists, writers, and visual artists that emerged in the group's immediate wake, but the generation after that. And the generation after that, even.
