Wilson Neate's Blog

The mighty Always Crashing magazine has just published my short piece "Beyond Words." You can read it here

I have a new piece of fiction in the summer issue of The Brussels Review. It’s titled “His Last Picture in the Ashes of the Fire." If you’re averse to representations of sex, violence, psychiatry or vintage aircraft, I’d recommend something by Maeve Binchy or Alexander McCall Smith instead.

My first foray into the world of fiction will be published in May 2025 in the most excellent Faultline Journal of Arts and Letters. Of course, some cynics might contend that all of my non-fiction output until now has been fiction.... The title of the piece is "You and I and Dominoes." It has nothing to do with Syd Barrett or with music! More info. later.

Me on the forthcoming reissues of Colin Newman's A-Z, provisionally entitled the singing fish and Not To.

"One of the best music biographies I’ve read. I loved it. It's both thorough and funny, and really, really well written. I could feel those individuals in the room — it does a fantastic job of capturing their forthrightness." (Ivo Watts-Russell, This Mortal Coil; founder of 4AD Records.)

Very nice to hear that Read & Burn has been named as one of the best books of 2013 in Record Collector 's year-end roundup.

The esteemed Manic Pop Thrills music blog names Read & Burn as one of the best rock books of 2013.

"Essential reading: the definitive story of Wire."

A straggler by Greg Barbrick at Blinded by Sound magazine. You can read it here

An interview about Read & Burn for the Foyles web site. Foyles celebrate their 110th birthday this year — pop into one of their fine stores and buy a book! (Interview by Tom Clayton.)

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How did you go about deciding the level of detail in the book? Was it hard to select which nuggets of information to include? Was there anything you were reluctant to omit?

I wanted to write with a level of detail that would be appropriate for what I see as the book's primary audience: people already reasonably familiar with Wire. I wasn't concerned with converting anyone or making a broad case for the band's greatness. If you're not a fan of Wire's music, it's unlikely that you're going to slog through 182,000 words/430 pages on them; Read & Burn's as long as Jane Eyre.... Actually, I'm underselling it a little — I do think general readers interested in popular music will find this a compelling account of how bands function or malfunction, particularly as they try to balance a commitment to artistic freedom and innovation with a need to pay the bills.

There were a few things that I left out, but not with any great reluctance. For example, I deliberately didn't cover the band members' solo work in the same detail as the Wire work proper. I wanted to keep the focus on Colin Newman, Graham Lewis, Robert Grey and Bruce Gilbert's endeavours together as Wire. Had I given the same amount of space to their extra-curricular activities, Read & Burn would have become a sprawling, uneven monster. That said, while there's no in-depth appraisal of the solo projects themselves, I paid close attention to the unique creative philosophies and approaches that each band member brought to Wire, which were the very same ones that informed their individual ventures. Those often conflicting approaches are in the fabric of everything the band members say in the book — and they impacted, shaped and periodically derailed the Wire project.

Something else I chose to omit was a track-by-track discussion of every album — the kind of thing I did in my Pink Flag book. I didn't want to write that sort of book again. Apart from the fact that I simply didn't have the space, I think it would have been a bit dull and mechanical to follow that pattern chapter after chapter. The only record I approach in that way is 154. I was also keen to avoid dissecting the lyrics. While I'm fascinated by how language works and the processes by which writers construct meaning, I have little interest in asking them to explain what the words of their songs actually mean or in interpreting them myself. Nevertheless, there are some instances in the book where I did deal with the inspiration for the lyrics and how they came about, but that was only in cases where there was something noteworthy or amusing or when the band members were revealing details that aren't widely known — you have to remember that Wire have been interviewed a lot over the years, and most of the "stories behind the songs" are already out there and part of Wire lore.

As for material I'd like to have included but didn't: there are some people connected to Wire who, for various reasons, weren't available for interview and would have definitely added valuable perspectives. I'm thinking of associates like Angela Conway and Annette Green, as well as the band's first manager, Mick Collins.

Also, it was surprising to me that although many high-profile artists frequently name-check Wire and talk up the band as an inspiration or an influence, practically none of those people would agree to be interviewed about Wire's importance to them. That was disappointing. I'm mentioning no names, of course... ahem, Michael Stipe.

It seems as though the various members of Wire were largely cooperative with their answers — was there anything that they were hesitant, or even flat-out unwilling, to discuss with you?

I had extensive access to Wire, and without that, I couldn't have done what I did. I'm massively grateful to them for making that possible and for trusting me. Just about everything I wanted them to discuss was discussed, although as I think is clear in the book, some band members were more forthcoming than others about certain periods, issues, events and so forth.

I should just emphasise that Read & Burn isn't an official Wire book, and it wasn't read or vetted by the group before publication. When I started work on it, I explained to the band members that my account of their creative journey wouldn't be a soft-pedalled hagiography: it would be a work of analysis drawing heavily on their voices, but my own critical voice and opinions would be central to the narrative. I believe I'm ultimately paying a greater compliment to Wire and doing more for their cultural standing and legacy by taking a serious, rigorous look at their art and constructing a framework for understanding and evaluating it; that wouldn't be possible if this were a fawning band biography or just a book of transcribed interviews.

When we began the interview process, I asked the band members not to tell me anything they didn't want to see in print later. Maybe I was just being over-sensitive, but I was shocked by the degree of frankness that surfaced at times during our individual conversations: things came out that I couldn't imagine them saying directly to each other. This was especially striking in Colin's case. Some of it was hilarious; some of it was mildly disturbing... but still funny. I was well aware that Wire-world has never been a particularly harmonious place, and I fully expected their fundamental differences to come across when I talked to them — I can't remember if it was Colin or Graham, but one of them said to me something like: "Bands can be brutal, and Wire are no exception". However, I didn't realise quite how brutal. I didn't conceive of this book as a warts-and-all exposé, and there was never any intention on my part to cast the band in a bad light, but their discussion of their own work was sometimes unflinchingly negative, and their comments about one another did get a bit spicy in places.

I should say, though, that if any readers are surprised at the tone and content of the some of the quoted material, I can assure them I suppressed the worst of it!

You've previously written about Pink Flag for the 33⅓ series; how did you approach writing about the album in the wider context of Read & Burn?

What to do about Pink Flag was an early problem in the writing process. Part of my aim with this book was to shift the focus away from that first album. Yes, it was an important record, it's one of the band's best, and it's Wire's best-known album beyond the hardcore fan constituency — but I think it receives a disproportionate amount of attention these days. It's become a de rigueur critical reference point: not only does it seem that anything written about Wire has to mention Pink Flag but some reviewers still insist on using the record as a yardstick to measure the achievement of each new Wire project, which makes little sense to me after decades of intervening work. Really, is the work of all great, enduring bands judged in relation to their first album? (Just before this book was published a major music magazine asked to run an extract, and I thought, "Sure, as long as it's not about Pink Flag." Naturally, they wanted an excerpt on Pink Flag.)

Anyway, it was impossible to get around the fact that a career-spanning account of Wire's work had to cover Pink Flag, and the task was made harder because I'd already published that 33⅓ book, which I didn't want simply to rewrite in a condensed form. To be honest, I was bored to death just thinking about that album, and I had an overwhelming, energy- and enthusiasm-sapping feeling of "Oh God, not Pink Flag again". Obviously, this wasn't the ideal frame of mind to be in at the start of the project. So, in order to get through the Pink Flag chapter, I had to do something that would make it interesting for me. In the spirit of Wire's own perversity and contrariness, my solution was to take an Eno-esque Oblique Strategies approach that required me to do the opposite of what I might normally have done. My imaginary Oblique Strategies card instructed: "Contradict what you wrote before."

So, basically, I set myself the challenge of writing against the grain of the ideas I expressed in the previous book; I forced myself to adopt a different position on the album. For the 33⅓ book, I probably went a bit overboard, suggesting that Pink Flag was sui generis, ahead of its time, existing in its own reality and so forth. In Read & Burn, I'm less excitable, more measured, and I reject some of those ideas. And in fact, I think the position I take in this book is more accurate and convincing. Pink Flag's not my favourite Wire record. It's a good album but not a great album, and a fair portion of it is firmly rooted in its time — especially in terms of the music and the production. OK, most of the lyrical content is absolutely un-punk (and un-rock for that matter), and it has a singular quality, but musically, apart from a handful of sublime songs such as "Reuters" and the title track, Pink Flag sounds to me like a product of 1977's second wave of punk rock. Granted, it was still head and shoulders above many other records of the period, but, as I think I show in the book, you can make the case that maybe it hasn't travelled quite as well as people like to believe.

Tension seems to follow Wire around; even in the book's final interview the band seem to have unresolved creative issues. Do you think a band like Wire thrive on that kind of unease?

I don't think they thrive on it — if you're suggesting that they've consciously made use of it or actively exploited it as a means to a creative end. It's worth bearing in mind that Chairs Missing — perhaps their finest recording, the one that comes closest to distilling the essence of Wire, capturing their best, most original qualities and characteristics — was made in a climate of relative harmony, with a sense of common purpose. When I talked to Colin, Rob, Graham and Bruce about Chairs Missing, there appeared to be a rare consensus that it was a special record for them. It remains, though, that the interaction of their very different artistic personalities and the resulting creative tension in the recording studio have also given us, the listeners, some remarkable work — 154, for instance. But I think it's safe to say that Wire themselves would prefer to have achieved some of those results without the attendant wear and tear. I mean, Colin found the experience of making The Ideal Copy so unbearable that he quit the group during the sessions, and much of his commentary in the book focuses on how difficult he feels Wire's work has been in the past, precisely because of constant, seemingly intractable creative differences, with each band member pursuing his own individual vision of what Wire should be. While this posed the biggest challenges throughout the 1980s, it seems less of an issue in the current incarnation of the band. Although Colin, Graham and Rob are very different, both as people and as artists, they seem to have become more conscious of the need to make things work and to compromise, if Wire are to continue to function successfully. As they tell it, this attitude has developed since they came back from the brink of extinction in 2005 — a point at which they had to take a hard look at how they'd ended up in such a dire situation, address their problems and find ways to start re-engaging with each other and functioning as a band again.

At times during their career, relationships within the band were impossibly fragile (indeed, fragility is one of the pervading feelings in Read & Burn) — so why do you think Wire have endured whereas others have fallen away?

Well, the classic Wire line-up no longer exists and hasn't done for almost ten years. So that fragility was indeed unsustainable. But in Wire's current configuration, Colin's initiative and drive in both practical and artistic terms have become crucial components of the band's ability to endure: he's made post-2004 Wire possible, by attending to the material considerations necessary to keep the band viable and by fostering the kind of creative environment in which he, Graham, Rob and, increasingly, Matthew Simms can continue to produce compelling work. And this happens in large part because they're doing what Wire have always done: averse to repeating themselves or settling for facile nostalgia, in each new project they look for something that's unfamiliar, stimulating and, just as importantly, fun. That questing impetus is in Wire's DNA. It's what enables them to maintain their unique position as an almost four-decade-old band that is still undeniably contemporary — as the latest album, Change Becomes Us, ably demonstrates.

So the line-up may have changed, and they're not the same Wire — but then again, in the past, they've rarely been the same Wire from project to project. Change becomes them. That's part of the beauty of it. Of course, since the 70s their music may not have been consistently memorable or successful, but as Colin puts it at the end of the book: "We're not always good, but we can be really, really fucking good." And when they're "really, really fucking good", the music is extraordinary. That's the sine qua non of why they've endured.