{"id":975083,"date":"2020-02-14T07:25:47","date_gmt":"2020-02-14T14:25:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=952536"},"modified":"2020-02-14T07:25:47","modified_gmt":"2020-02-14T14:25:47","slug":"gang-of-four-honor-andy-gills-legacy-with-reworked-the-dying-rays-from-new-ep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/music-news\/gang-of-four-honor-andy-gills-legacy-with-reworked-the-dying-rays-from-new-ep\/","title":{"rendered":"Gang of Four Honor Andy Gill\u2019s Legacy With Reworked \u2018The Dying Rays\u2019 From New EP"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Just prior to Gang of Four<\/a> guitarist Andy Gill\u2019s death on February 1st<\/a>, the post-punk pioneer okayed the final mixes \u2013 from his hospital bed \u2013 on a trio of rerecorded Gang of Four tracks that the band\u2019s latest incarnation had been working on in recent months. <\/span>Three weeks later, Gill\u2019s widow Catherine, along with the remaining members of Gang of Four\u2019s current lineup, will pay tribute to the late guitarist with a three-song EP showcasing the final pieces of music he completed before his \u201cshocking\u201d death.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe had the full faith that [Gill] would recover and get to see this come out, so that was part of the reason we decided we needed to do this,\u201d Gang of Four vocalist John Sterry tells Rolling Stone<\/em>.  <\/span>\u201cIt\u2019s been a crappy couple of weeks, but at least we have some stuff to focus on, which is good; it\u2019s been a welcome distraction. But it\u2019s sad. We weren\u2019t expecting it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt would be wrong to speak of Andy\u2019s dying wishes because he didn\u2019t know he was dying, but his wishes were clear,\u201d Catherine Gill said in a statement. \u201cFrom his hospital bed, he continued to plan future tours and to give final notes on mixes of music that he looked forward to releasing. Since his death, I have been working with the band to honor his wishes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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With a studio engineer by his bedside, Gill signed off on the final mixes of the reworked Gang of Four tracks that feature on This Heaven Gives Me Migraine<\/em> EP; the three-song collection takes its title from \u201cNatural\u2019s Not In It<\/a>,\u201d a revered track off the band\u2019s 1979 masterpiece Entertainment!<\/em>, as well as one of the songs rerecorded by the new lineup for the new EP. <\/span><\/p>\n

The other tracks are a fresh take on \u201cToreador\u201d off 2019\u2019s Happy Now<\/em> that captures the song\u2019s live spirit, and a new version of \u201cThe Dying Rays,\u201d which Rolling Stone<\/em> is premiering ahead of This Heaven Gives Me Migraine<\/em>\u2019s February 23rd release. On the remixed version of the song, Sterry handles vocals in place of German crooner Herbert Gr\u00f6nemeyer, who sang on the version that initially appeared on 2015\u2019s What Happens Next<\/em><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI loved the song from the moment I heard it,\u201d Sterry says. \u201cI think the subject matter, maybe at the time, suited an older voice, and I think that\u2019s what Andy wanted. He wanted to get Herbert on there because it\u2019s such a random, Gang of Four thing to do; to get an old crooner to sing a song, no one would expect that. We tried it a few times and I really enjoyed singing it. I felt that I was bringing something completely different to it. Not necessarily better, but a different angle. In the way I sing it, it changes the song somewhat, maybe even changes the meaning a little bit.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Sterry adds, \u201cAfter what happened with Andy, it seemed even more poignant and pertinent than ever before.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere have been so many tributes to Andy as a creator and as a breaker\u2014of rules, new ground, guitars,\u201d Catherine Gill says of the new rendition. \u201c\u2018The Dying Rays<\/a>\u2018 \u2026 shows the fuller picture of a man who also thought and felt deeply and whose loss is not just to music but to all of us who loved him.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As for \u201cNatural\u2019s Not In It,\u201d Sterry \u2013 who joined Gang of Four in 2011 \u2013 said he didn\u2019t feel pressure taking on one of the more storied songs from the band\u2019s catalog. <\/span>\u201cWe\u2019ve played that song so many times over the last few years, we did the Entertainment!<\/em> anniversary shows in America and Australia, and that song\u2019s always in the set, so it kind of felt like it was mine \u2014 not mine, but I felt like I knew the song so well that it didn\u2019t feel like it was somebody else\u2019s song,\u201d Sterry says. <\/span>\u201cI\u2019m very much aware of how the original sounded, but I\u2019ve never tried to replicate what [original vocalist] Jon King did; there\u2019s no point in that, I\u2019m not Jon King. I sing it the way I sing it, and over time, I know that song so well it\u2019s changed into something that\u2019s close to me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Gill died at a London hospital February 1st following a bout with pneumonia, his manager would later confirm. Gang of Four had recently returned from holiday following a tour of Asia in late-November when Gill\u2019s health suddenly \u201cwent downhill.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was pretty shocking, to be honest,\u201d Sterry said, noting that Gill didn\u2019t discuss any health issues with him in the months prior to his death. \u201cI had inklings but I didn\u2019t really know how serious it was, and by the time I realized that it was almost too late to really say goodbye. But I was there in the hospital for the last few days. It was incredibly sad and incredibly quick.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

While This Heaven Gives Me Migraine<\/em> marks Gill\u2019s final recordings and the end of this iteration of Gang of Four \u2014 the guitarist was the lone founding member still involved in the band \u2014 Sterry said there have been talks about a possible tribute concert. As Red Hot Chili Peppers\u2019 Flea hinted in his Instagram encomium for Gill<\/a>, a Gang of Four tribute album was also in the works.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c[Gill] was listening to mixes and also planning tours,\u201d Sterry said of Gill\u2019s final days. \u201cWhether he knew [the severity of his illness] or not, I think he thought, \u2018What\u2019s the point of dwelling on it? Let\u2019s just work.\u2019 For someone who was quite ill, he was so productive. He did more in the last few months than most people do in a decade.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just prior to Gang of Four guitarist Andy Gill\u2019s death on February 1st, the post-punk pioneer okayed the final mixes \u2013 from his hospital bed \u2013 on a trio of rerecorded Gang of Four tracks that the band\u2019s latest incarnation had been working on in recent months. Three weeks later, Gill\u2019s widow Catherine, along with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-975083","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-04 18:27:24","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KFMU Solar Powered Radio","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=975083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975083\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=975083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=975083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=975083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}