People in a room
- About Wire -

In his book ("Wire… Everybody loves a history", S.A.F. Publishing, Wembley, 1991) by Kevin S. Eden I mentioned, you were declaring, at the time of the wir album, that you did not feel like making rock again anymore. What do you think about this sentence now?
Obviously differently!!!

Could you please be a more precise?
I don't know what more to say! It's about the gestalt of the age. I'm sure I've dealt with this in previous answers. Anyway as Malka says and artist can change their mind every day! (I also thought the other answer was more funny!!!)

Could one say that your are wire's Paul McCartney, whereas Bruce & Graham John Lennon?
Only if you wanted me to never speak to you again!

How would you explain the rapidity of your evolution between the first 3 LPs, which is really remarkable?
Boredom, frustration but most of all the feeling that we were totally "on it". WE knew we were the best and we didn't want anyone to catch us!

According to your 3 gigs at the Garage in 2000, "Pink flag", your first album, seems to remain as the most important to you, which can be surprising...
I would say that this is a complete wrong reading of the situation. Historic material is not there for nostalgic reasons or to say any one item was better than any other. The choice of material was much more down to what could be remembered and then subverted. For example could you say the version of "Pink flag" was really like the album version? In fact it only retains enough of the original to be just recognised but it's been heavily edited and if we ever play it again will probably evolve more. Wire are the last group to be able to reproduce their own records (you'd have to get "proper" musicians for that) they have neither the need or the desire. Doing lame versions of classic recordings is a VERY bad idea!!

Forgive me for putting it so bluntly, but had your motivation for playing live with Wire also to do with something else than "making money"?
It's a fair enough question and the answer is quite simply that there was definitely more motivation than the money. The first time Bruce phoned me up about doing something I was actually very excited. One thing I really like about it is that after all these years we have a lot of freedom. Including the freedom to fail.

Why didn't you play any track of "154"? is it due to the tensions that there may have been in the band at this time?
Absolutely not. That material is just too damn hard to play! Wire have always had a non-musician's attitude towards playing, there are no virtuosos in the band. The other point is that as I originated a lot of that material if I can't remember how it goes sure as hell no one else can.

What is your favourite record from Wire's second period? At this time, to what extent were you ready to make compromises?
What you must remember is that as Wire is now an extant item the time for examining what went wrong in the past is over. I don't think I would be breaking any confidences to say a lot of Wire's history has been less than fun. My favourite album is probably "The Drill".. I actually don't like a lot of the mixes on most of the 80's Wire albums although I like some of the material.

Wir's "The First Letter" belongs to my favourite recordings of the 90's…
I've always had the view that we should have had the courage and discipline to mix that album ourselves. Having said that it was a very interesting album to make as it was entirely developed in studio 2 at Mute by just the 3 of us. There are some great tracks. I personally like "Ticking Mouth" and "Take It", the latter of which has a playback made entirely of Wire samples!

Currently, what are your relationships with each of the members of Wire like? Which differences do you see in the way you now play the music of Wire together?
Difficult to answer simply. One of the reasons Wire has never been a continuous project is that it is famously difficult to manage the internal relationships. However I'd say there are certain people in the band for whom I have enormous respect.
It was remarkably easy to put together the "oldies" set considering just how long it had been since we had played them together. Some of the pieces developed really well, some even managing to completely re-invent themselves. The next phase is being approached more cautiously. We definitely want to develop new and contemporary work and are evolving towards a methodology. This is somewhat hampered by the fact that only two members of the band live in the same city.

Which differences do you see in the way you now play the music of Wire together?
Technically I think we are better live now than we ever were (or we were back in June anyhow!!)

Why didn't you play new tracks in your gigs of this year? So far, Wire had always been playing only new/unreleased tracks in their live performances... Are they going to be new Wire works?
I've answered some of this already. The original plan was to play "Pink flag" only! It kind of developed from there. Of course we enjoyed the perversity of doing something to break our own rules. It's not true that we only ever played new or unreleased tracks live previously but it's a nice rumour… We are of course completely aware that we can only play the "oldies" set for a limited time. We'd like to develop new material and replace some of this set. Eventually it'll all be new if it lasts that long!!

Could you imagine working again with one of these musicians for a project?
Of course.

The "headline" perspective
- Three questions about "Send", Wire's new album (to be released on April 28th) -

Among the 11 songs of Wire's new album, 6 of them were already know through the two "Read & Burn" EP's. But even on these tracks there seem to have been quite a few re-recordings - or is it only remixing/remastering?
Interesting, not many people have heard this album yet but you are the 2nd person to say that they think some "R&B" tracks are differently mastered (or even different mixes). Not at all!! It's just the context. The album is much broader in scope so the tracks set each other off in a different way. I know it's more boring from the "headline" perspective but actually in psychoacoustic terms the truth is very revealing to how listening to music is very subjective. Mind you it won't do us any harm to have a rumour going round that some "R&B" tracks are somehow "different" on the album (with the exception of course of "Nice streets above" which is the unedited version).

Were all the tracks played live or did you make a lot of editing on "Send" ? (I was thinking about the recording technique you used with Silo) ?
It's ALL about editing. There are live elements but very little was played as a band. We construct it however to a "band" aesthetic. There are lots of individual performances rather than sequenced sounds. Great care especially has been taken to preserve the played dynamic of Rob's kit. This kind of work (how I imagine the majority of albums are made these days) is really only possible with hard disk recording. We use pro-tools (many do). Its strength is in its presentation of audio not its midi sequencing. In fact no midi, synthesis or conventional sampling was used at all on this record.

Who wrote the lyrics ? And could you please briefly sketch out, for a poor French journalist, what each of them is about ?

"In the Art of Stopping" - Bruce's words, it's kind of self referential, about the song itself (it has "stops"), about Wire, about art & life in general!!

"Mr. Marx Table" - Again Bruce's words, the title refers to an image of "Mr Marx" being shown to his "usual table" in a restaurant "overlooking the revolution" (you can hear that whispered in one section) as to the rest it's a kind of put down. Maybe it's about a person, maybe it's about Mr. Marx & his philosophy.

"Being Watched" - Again Bruce's words (he wrote a lot of words for this version of Wire). The Key line is "you are the audience, you are the star". Modern reality. Andy Warhol's prediction came true. We want our stars to be like us, to actually be us. There are of course seedy sexual connotations but we won't go into that!

"Comet" -Bruce's words. The end of the world etc. "A comet with your name on it" is a genuinely funny line!

"Agfers of Kodack" - Graham's words (and vocal). It think it's about the Taliban and Afghanistan but would not like to presume I know.

"Nice streets (full length)" - Doesn't really have any words, the verse vocal is backwards and the chorus only sounds like "nice streets".

"Spent 4.43" - Myself & Bruce together with a bit of Graham. It's about Britain and the failures of post industrial society amongst other things. There's a lot of association and alliteration bringing in many potential meanings. I hacked together bits from Bruce & Graham to make up some sections.

"Read & Burn" - It was Graham's title for something to which Bruce added 2 lines. It means precisely what it says!

"You Can't Leave Now" - Bruce's words. It's a big putdown, about what or who I wouldn't presume to know.

"Half Eaten" -Bruce's words (and vocal). It's about the obvious really, misuse of the planet. It's done in a deliberately broad brush and quite "matter of fact" kind of way.

"99.9" - Bruce, Graham & me. A combination of misheard lines and the contents of an instruction manual disclaimer. Who knows what it means?