Andy Gill
- jamesgeraghty
- 10 minutes ago
- 7 min read
It’s been a while since we did one of our Six Degrees of Kevin Shields episodes, so to honour the new year, we are looking at musicians born on New Year’s Day to start proceedings.
There are a few potential starters for this honour; Joe McDonald, the ‘Country’ one in Country Joe & the Fish; Morgan Fisher, keyboard player with Mott The Hoople; Ari Up (John Lydon’s stepdaughter) of The Slits; Brody Dalle (Bree Robinson), the Australian born singer with punk band The Distillers (and for aficionados of British comedy, half sister of Morgana Robinson), and of course Joseph Saddler, better known as Grandmaster Flash!
But we are going to start proceedings off with one of my favourite guitarists, the sadly departed Andy Gill, pioneering punk-funk player with Gang Of Four, who was one of the first casualties of the Covid pandemic, dying aged 64. He is one of my favourite guitarists and one I never sadly got to see play - although Ted Leo did an admirable stand-in job for him on the 'final' Gang of Four tour last year.
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Born in Manchester (1 January 1956), Andy Gill was one of the co-founders of Gang of Four, in Leeds in 1976 - with Jon King, Hugo Burnham and Dave Allen (who replaced Dave Wolfson). Their mix of angular funk and punk, mixed up with intense socio-political lyrics, set them apart from others on the late 1970s scene. The band, and especially Gill, were noted for their influence by the blues pub-rock of Dr. Feelgood, with Gill taking much from that band’s Wilko Johnson.
As well as playing with the band on and off across the decades, he also built a name for himself as a producer - working on the Red Hot Chili Peppers debut, self-titled LP in 1984, and also on records by The Futureheads, Killing Joke, The Jesus Lizard and Therapy?
Gang Of Four: Damaged Goods (Live on Rockpalast, 1983)
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I could have swung my first link directly from Andy Gill, through his UK punk scene connections, towards Mr Shields; but instead, I am taking a tangential sidestep to another New Years Day child, Milo Aukerman (1 January 1963), another punk, but this one is the singer with U.S. west coast punks, Descendents.
The band was formed out of friends at Mira Costa High School in Manhattan Beach, California, in the late 70s; although Aukerman didn’t join until after their first single (Ride The Wild). His first recording was on the Fat EP in 1981, when he was still only 18. Debut album, Milo Goes To College, followed in 1982, named after Aukerman’s decision to quit the band in favour of attending university after recording the record.
He had decided to quit the music scene to study biochemistry at UC San Diego (there is probably something for our interesting stories articles in this one), although he would occasionally rejoin the band to record albums and do some tours. He finally called time in 1987 after the tour for All. He did this on-off music / biochemistry dance again from 1995, until 2016, when his decision went fully back to the beginning and saw him quit his scientific career and make Descendents his full-time job.
Descendents: Hope (audio only)
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That first Descendents record, Milo Goes To College, was produced by Glenn Michael Lockett, who was best known on the west coast scene as Spot. He became the house engineer and producer for the hugely influential Long Beach punk label, SST Records (founded by Black Flag’s Greg Ginn). In this role, he produced or mixed pretty much every record put out by SST from 1979 to 1986, including by such luminaries as Black Flag, Minutemen, Meat Puppets, Husker Du and Misfits.
He led an interesting life; the son of a Jewish mother and African-American father who had fought in WWII in the legendary 100th Fighter Squadron (making him a Tuskegee airman). Lockett had been a bassist for local band, Panic, worked at a vegetarian restaurant and did some freelance record reviewing for Long Beach’s Easy Reader (which is where the Spot pseudonym came from). Once he met Ginn, his career path changed, and all those legendary west coast punk albums came to life.
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I never mind swinging the narrative around to Minutemen - and Spot / Lockett produced most of their early EPs and their second album, What Makes a Man Start Fires? (1983). This was the one where they moved (to some extent) past the two minute song format, with songwriting credit split evenly between the trio (Mike Watt, D. Boon and George Hurley), although most of the music came from Watt, meaning many of the songs were quite bass-centric.
Basic tracks were put down in just one night, but two more late night sessions were necessary for the various guitar and vocal overdubs - making it the most time they had spent, to date, on recording a record.
Opening track, Bob Dylan Wrote Propaganda Songs, was not as may be assumed, an anti-Dylan track, but more a tongue in cheek parody of his early lyrical styling - Watt was actually a huge fan of his work.
Minutemen: The Anchor / Bob Dylan Wrote Propaganda Songs (both audio only)
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Bob Dylan (born Robert Zimmerman, but now legally Robert Dylan) is one of America’s most renowned songwriters, although while many revere him, there are some who are happier when others are singing his great songs! He famously (or infamously) veered from pure folk into a more electric sound, but always with lyrics full of political, social and philosophical content.
His legacy is secured; he regularly appears on most influential lists, like Time 100: The Most Important People of the [20th] Century, with fellow icon Paul Simon noting that his early work meant he pretty much took over the whole folk genre - his “early songs were very rich… with strong melodies… He so enlarged himself through the folk background that he incorporated it for a while. He defined the genre for a while.”
And while he has worked with, and had his songs covered by, pretty much everyone in the business - he has occasionally worked some more surprising associations. There was the time he appeared and sang in a 2004 advert for Victoria’s Secret (not very counterculture), a co-write on the script for Renaldo and Clara, with Sam Shepard, and his taking part in the USA for Africa We Are The World charity single. But there is also the time he worked with Michael Bolton on the song Steel Bars, or his harmonica playing on Harry Belafonte’s 1962 Midnight Special album.
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One of the other slightly unusual collaborations saw Bob Dylan work with Slash, who provided guitar on the track Wiggle Wiggle on Dylan’s 1990 LP, Under The Red Sky. Dylan co-produced the record with Don Was under the unoriginal pseudonym Jack Frost. It wasn’t particularly well received, especially in the wake of its much more critically acclaimed predecessor, Oh Mercy.
The album was knee deep in celebrity appearances though; not just Slash - but also Elton John, George Harrison, David Crosby, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Bruce Hornsby. Of all the criticism levelled at the album, most seems to have been reserved for that opening track with Slash. Even Dylan critic and biographer Patrick Humphries put this one amongst the worst songs he ever wrote; “Wiggle Wiggle was the one the critics jumped on, particularly the line, ‘Wiggle wiggle wiggle like a bow of soup’, which was taken as proof positive that Dylan had lost it, definitely, permanently, irrevocably.” Fifteen years later, Q magazine backed this up, by adding Wiggle Wiggle into its Ten Terrible Records by Great Artists list. So of course we have to add it here for you to listen too!
Bob Dylan: Wiggle Wiggle (audio only - not so bad... until he sings)
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You may think that the last link in this Six Degrees chain might be a challenge and that I might have to jump through plenty more hoops to get from Slash to Kevin Shields, but I have one obscure middle-man in mind to help….
Slash (Saul Hudson) was actually born in England - in London in 1965, but raised until the age of six in Stoke-on-Trent - but moved to the more exotic Los Angeles. His English father was an artist and African American mother a fashion designer. But the link is not there.
Allow me to take you on a slight detour to pull this together.
Steve Ludwin was another hellraiser, front man for rock bands like Little Hell and Carrie. The American musician had set out for London in 1987 in search of a life in music. His first lead on arriving was to respond to an advert for a vocalist in the pages of the Melody Maker. That was to be quite the experience - the audition was around the corner from Euston station, but you had to enter the rehearsal space through a weird sex shop.
It was always going to be a disaster; Ludwin, complete with mullet and backwards baseball caps, and thoughts of being in a band like The Cult or Beastie Boys, was confronted with three people all in black with 60s style haircuts. They didn't look impressed, but he gamely sang some words over the ear splitting, apocalyptic guitar sounds to honour the audition - a week later, he got a polite call from their bassist Debbie Googe telling him he had not been successful.
Now, let’s go forward to the mid-90’s and Ludwin is still in London and is now living in Islington, next door to two members of that same band he never made it into - they all got on well now it seems. But a few years on again and Ludwin gets a call out of the blue from Slash. Once he had realised it wasn’t someone pulling his chain, he realised he was being offered an opportunity to audition for Slash’s new band of the time, Velvet Revolver - a bit of a supergroup, also including other Guns n Roses members, Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum. He flew out to L.A., bonded with Slash over a shared love of reptiles, ended up in a VH1 documentary, and had a blast trying out for the band.
Steve Ludwin with Velvet Revolver (2-minute clip from the VH1 documentary on his unsuccessful audition)
He didn’t make the cut for that one either (Scott Weiland would eventually land that part).
So to the link - Velvet Revolver gives you the Slash part, and that first late 80s audition? Well that was with a formative My Bloody Valentine - and those neighbours he went on to have? MBV’s Bilinda Butcher and KEVIN SHIELDS.
MBV: You Made Me Realise (official music video)
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