Wire: Pink Flag

I am getting old. I don’t really get Instagram, have not clue about Snapchat. Or Discord. Or TikTok or anything that’s happened like that in the last fifteen years. I go to bed earlier and earlier and still wake up aching and it’s a painful stretch to put my socks on.

I don’t want to be older. But sometimes, I wish I was.

Pink Flag was released in November 1977, the month after ‘Never Mind The Bollocks’ and seven months after ‘The Clash’. In November 1977, I was heading towards my ninth birthday. Listening to Pink flag, I wish it was my nineteenth.

If I had been born in 1958, this record would have defined my musical appreciation and ambitions for….probably forever. If I had heard this as an impressionable and quite probably, angst-ridden teenager I would have learned three chords and formed a band. And I would have wanted to be Wire.

Putting this up against ‘Never Mind The Bollocks’ is an exercise in comparing apples and oranges. Lydon/Rotten wrote some extraordinary lyrics – an Iconic Punk Classic, no doubt, but it’s rock ‘n’ roll in dayglo and safety-pins – just listen to to the second solo of ‘Anarchy In The UK’ to see what I mean. Pink Flag is art.

Read the track-listing of ‘The Clash’. ‘Janie Jones’, ‘White Riot’, ‘Career Opportunities’ and ‘Garageland’, to name just four – the mind instantly pictures film clips from those innumerable documentaries, Strummer being earnest and, while desperately flattening his vowels, offering a genuine political / sociological angle, one of hope and youthful uprising – onde to counter the ‘No Future’ vibe from the other lot.

The idea that ‘without The Pistols, we would never had ‘X, Y, Z’ has been done to death. Of course The Clash are a legendarily inspirational entity.

Without Pink Flag….Would London Calling sounded like it does? Would PiL have been PiL? Just a thought….

If I had been nineteen in 1977, I would have bought all three. I’d like to think that as the year came to a close, I would have been able to see that the Pistols/Punk bubble was bursting and the whole bondage trousers and spiky hair was becoming commoditised, mainstream and cartoonesque.

I would like to think that on ‘Pink Flag’ I would have heard enough that was familiar (Shouty, thrashy, indecipherable and angry) but plenty that was….different. Angular, sparse – minimalistic and sometimes deeply, genuinely disturbing. Say it again…Pink Flag is art.

‘London Calling’ was released in December 1979 and I’d be willing to bet that during the preceding two years, Pink Flag was on heavy rotation on the stereo chez Strummer.

‘Public Image: First Issue’ was released in December 1978. Lydon’s openness to, and knowledge of a range of styles and genres is well-documented, but again, I’d stake good money that he listened to Pink Flag, looked at the enigmatic artwork and thought – ‘I can do that’.

Why? Because Pink Flag is ART. Pink Flag is progress. Pink Flag is Punk that has reached adulthood started to think. Pink Flag is angry. Pink Flag is as mysterious as it is splenetic. Pink Flag scary. Pink Flag has stripped-back, simple but instantly memorable and infectious guitar-lines that are poised, yet accessible – just like…’The Guns of Brixton’ and ‘Public Image’ – and they came after Pink Flag.

Listen to the album on Spotify – and what tracks does the algorithm choose to follow it? Gang of Four’s ‘Damaged Goods’ and Magazine’s ‘Shot By Both Sides’ . Guess when they came out…

Dial House, Epping, Essex, 1977. Members of an anti-authoritarian / hippy / anarchist / pacifist commune decide to form a band. Crass is born and the following year, they release ‘The Feeding of The 5000’ EP.

Listen to ‘Mr Suit’ and ‘Surgeon’s Girl’ and imagine Steve Ignorant, Penny Rimbaud et all and a clear link seems immediately apparent. Personally, I found Crass more interesting as an art collective, an idea than producers of music. With these two tracks, it’s equally easy to imagine how such primitive stylings could have appealed to those surely listening in Essex and shown them that they could make similar sound with limited ability and resources – and how it could be….that word again….art.

The Sex Pistols gig at Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall (June 4, 1976) is often cited as the gig that at which every audience member went out and formed a band. The White Riot tour (from May 1977) is similarly quoted as the impetus, a catalyst for so many to get up and have a go themselves.

As Pink Flag plays through, you can hear The Buzzcocks (‘Field Day for the Sundays’, The Fall (‘Start to Move’). If you can imagine a guitar-driven version of Underworld, listen to ‘Lowdown’ and think Karl Hyde and ‘Start to Move’ has The Fall’s DNA across it . Those of a certain age already know that Elastica took the riff from ‘Three Girl Rhumba’ for ‘Connection’ but ‘Feeling Called Love’ could actually be an Elastica track in its entirety. And the Britpop thing doesn’t stop there. Damon Albarn claimed to have no records growing up – but I reckon there’s a fair chance he did have a listen to ‘Ex-Lion Tamer’ and ‘Mannequin’ as he got older. REM liked ‘Strange’ so much, that they recorded a version for the 1987 album ‘Document’.

So, like the Lesser Free Trade Hall and the White Riot tour, Pink Flag is an influential icon. It’s a key-moment between the cross-over from Punk to Power-op and the New Wave and as the Pistols just got their key contribution in just before the genre went mainstream, Wire can be similarly credited with giving the world Pink Flag before the New Wave gave rise to a slew of the eminently forgettable or the memorably one-hit-wonder-y.

And that scary stuff mentioned earlier; the downright disturbing. The opening track, ‘Reuters’ is the stand-out moment. It’s the most musically sophisticated of the album and the lyrics are anything but indecipherable, and that’s why it’s so terrifying.

Telling the story of a journalist trying to document a society in collapse, the haunting imagery of violence, despair and destruction seems to reflect parts of today’s world with a chilling accuracy. It is a dark masterpiece. I’d put it alongside ‘Final Day’ from Young Marble Giants as a tune to accompany the apocalypse. This came in 1980. Just saying…

So – If you know Pink Flag, you’ll have your own opinions. Maybe some of the above will trigger some agreement, maybe snorts of derision. Either way – what’s important is you know it.

If you don’t know this album, you should – for ‘Reuters’ if nothing else, just don’t blame me if it keeps you awake at night.

This album is important. This album is art – art in every way imaginable.

My copy of Pink Flag. My CD copy. Of course it’s a CD – I was 8, remember?