His Gang days are behind him
BROOKLINE -- A few hours after recovering his car and sense of humor, Hugo Burnham is able to appreciate the irony of his earlier predicament: The New England Institute of Art instructor arrived late for a morning time-management lecture.
"I was towed off the [highway] by the state troopers," he tells his freshman survey class later that afternoon. "I didn't do anything wrong, honest. I just ran out of gas."
Some of the 30 students offer slim smiles; others slump in their seats or try to vanish beneath baseball caps. Burnham ignores their indifference and launches the 2 1/2-hour session with a rapid-fire test. ("This class is about learning to be a grown-up in 15 weeks," he says afterward.)
There are questions about the Brookline school's zip code, library hours, office numbers, and true/false statements such as "
Twenty minutes later, it is pencils down and heads up. The teacher, arms clasped behind his back, circles the classroom to prod participation. His voice easily bests the rip-roar of a jackhammer outside as he weaves in a re- curring course theme: "Look beyond the headline. Go beyond what looksgood. See who's saying it and why." Burnham, whose navy blue pullover covers a generous stomach and a shoulder tattoo of the Rolling Stones' tongue logo, used to deliver the same message from behind a drum kit instead of from the front of a classroom. From 1977 to 1983, as a member of the pioneering British band Gang of Four, he helped stir a scalding stew of punk, funk, sex, and left-angled politics. They earned more acclaim than money but proved it was possible to be loud and literate. Others, like Rage Against the Machine in the 1990s, took notes.
"Gang of Four was probably the most important of the second wave of punk rock bands," former Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello says by phone from Los Angeles after a rehearsal with his current group, Audioslave. "They had one foot in the personal politics of blue-collar Britain, but they were also readers. You could tell their libraries were full of [Noam] Chomsky and they had read Lenin's `The State and Revolution' more than once."
And they listened to Mick Jagger. Burnham, 47, grew up in the Kent countryside, about 40 miles southeast of London, the oldest of five children in a working-class family. "My parents weren't particularly musical, but we watched `Top of the Pops' [on the BBC] together," he says. "One Saturday morning the old man said, `Now listen, I've bought myself a present, but you can go and see it.' We tore into the drawing room, and there was a record player with the 7-inch of [the Rolling Stones'] `Honky Tonk Woman' on it."
At age 14, Burnham paid 81 pounds for a set of used Olympic drums and moved them -- along with the record player -- into a backyard shed where he kept time to the Stones, the Who, Free, and Creedence Clearwater Revival. He enrolled as an English major at the University of Leeds in 1975, fell in with the "fine arts crowd," he says, and in April 1977 started Gang of Four with "drinking mates" Andy Gill on guitar, singer Jon King, and a bass player called Wolfman ("an English boy studying Chinese, with a lot of hair on his face"). Dave Allen soon replaced Wolfman, and the lineup was set. From the first performances, Burnham says, they were embraced by artists, punks, and "semi-National Front skinheads. Whether it was because we were vaguely militaristic or our short hair or my Dr. Martens, I don't know."
The name came from the radical Chinese Cultural Revolution quartet led by Mao Zedong's fourth wife. But the British Gang of Four spelled its politics with "a small `p,' " Burnham says. "Anyone could see we were left of center, but we weren't espousing particular political ideas. We wanted people to interrogate ideas and opinions. Taking responsibility for your own life, that is a political act."
In Gang of Four songs, governments were treated like lovers gone astray, love was a shred of truth between lines of propaganda, and disillusion trumped resolution.
"Politics with a small 'p'? Personally, I hate that expression," Gill says by phone from his London recording studio. "I used to smack [Hugo] around the head when he said that. If you don't go down the normal formulaic pop routes, if you start observing what people's ordinary lives are like, then you are political by default."
Allen remembers the band riding a wave of desperation that flooded England during the late 1970s economic recession. "Most people felt cowed under [Prime Minister Margaret] Thatcher," he says from Portland, Ore., where he operates OEbase.com, an online music store. "Revolution is too big a word, but it felt as though young people had power in their hands through punk rock to make a difference."
For Gill, revolution sounded about right. "I said to our manager something like, `What we're doing here, it's a bit like what Picasso did in the '20s: We are rewriting the rules.' He just guffawed in my face, as he should have."
Snubbing the BBC
Idealism quickly collided with commercial reality. A 1979 single, "At Home He's a Tourist," was "bubbling under the top 40 [in England] and climbing fast," Burnham says, and the band was invited to perform it on "Top of the Pops." The influential show had been a family favorite a decade earlier but was "sort of not cool," Burnham says, to a 23-year-old musician who fancied himself a socialist. "It was one of those decisions you didn't want to confront."
Eventually they agreed to appear, but a producer decided one line -- "the rubbers you hide in your top left pocket" -- was not suitable for its audience. "Packets" was offered as a replacement for "rubbers"; the BBC insisted on "rubbish.""So we walked," says Burnham, "which was unbelievably brave and stupid. We lost [the support of] half our record company. As a wiser old man [Monday] morning quarterbacking, I think we should have done that [show]."
"Entertainment," Gang of Four's austere debut album, was released in 1979 to adoring notices. ("If you got paid for good reviews, I'd be lying on a beach in Hawaii," Burnham says.) It was born of brawn and brains, and a quarter century later it is often cited as a landmark. Rolling Stone magazine last year named it one of the "500 greatest albums of all-time," and in the Feb. 13 issue of Entertainment Weekly, director Sofia Coppola listed it as one of her 12 essential CDs. Songs such as "Not Great Men," "Natural's Not in It," and "Damaged Goods" provoked more than they preached. It helped that they were danceable, too."They presented sort of critical theory and post-Marxist views in tiny shards," says Mission of Burma's Clint Conley, who met Burnham in August 1979 when both groups played at The Rat in Kenmore Square. "Very few of their songs told stories or had beginnings, middles, and ends."
Burnham says he likes the "sparsity and dryness" of "Entertainment," but it "did not do justice to what we were -- barely contained ferocity." Conley agrees. "It didn't capture the fury and sweat of the band live," he says. "And make no mistake -- Hugo was driving it."
"Entertainment" became a college-radio staple, and when the band came with the Buzzcocks to the United States in the summer of 1979, it was an event on the urban club scene. Mark Kates, CEO of Fenway Recordings in Boston and manager of the revived Mission of Burma, attended George Washington University that year and was dazzled by a Gang of Four performance in Georgetown. "It was the first time I ever saw slam dancing," he says. "I went to every gig of theirs that I could after that."
In Boston, the band always played to devoted, sweat-stained crowds, including shows at the Paradise, the Bradford Hotel, and the Channel. But a brutal touring schedule did not translate into the increased record sales anticipated for 1981's "Solid Gold" album. With the "Top of the Pops" decision still casting its shadow, more strategic missteps began to cloud the future.
"If you're managed badly and do nothing about it, it's your own fault," Burnham says. "It was our fault."
A North American tour aimed at gaining the band wider exposure "was just so badly put together," Allen says. "Visas were either wrong or people were working without them. The road crew got deported from Montreal." By New York, with the schedule stalled and drug consumption escalating, Allen quit (and went on to form the band Shriekback). "I knew the fires had burned brightly and it was time to go someplace else," he says. Burnham calls his departure "devastating."
Sara Lee eventually was hired to replace Allen and played bass on 1982's "Songs of the Free," which featured more production polish, and the gay dance club hit "I Love a Man in a Uniform." Burnham had assumed management duties out of frustration, separating him from Gill and King, who lived in "an ivory tower of creativity," Burnham says. But he was not prepared for his firing in April 1983 after a European tour, when the band became a gang of two -- Gill and King. "Jon [King] didn't deal with conflict very well," Burnham says, "and our star had waned somewhat."
The dismissal "was probably a mistake," Gill admits. "Jon and Hugo seemed to be able to wind each other up. I think we were trying to figure out where we were going." A fourth album, "Hard," was a spongy mess of strings and background singers. It did not sell well, and in 1984 the band dissolved. (Gill and King regrouped two times with minimal success for "Mall" in 1991 and "Shrinkwrapped" in 1995). WBCN radio's Oedipus assesses the post-Burnham era this way: "After Hugo left, they never had an important song."
Finally, 'Top of the Pops'
Burnham auditioned for other bands, but says "they were never within sight of what I had," so he became a musical mercenary. He finally appeared on "Top of the Pops" -- in separate appearances with Public Image Ltd., ABC, and Samantha Fox -- and started a management company with his brother, Jolyon, before leaving London for New York in 1988 to work in the A&R department at Island Records ("the first regular salary I had in my life"). In 1991, he married Carol Earle, a dancer and publicist at Island. They ended up going to Los Angeles, where Carol worked at Virgin and Paisley Park records with artists such as Smashing Pumpkins, Iggy Pop, Mavis
Seven years later, they "didn't have the heart for the business anymore," Burnham says, and moved to Massachusetts because Carol's family spent summers in Gloucester. The couple bought a home in Amesbury and now live in Gloucester with their 4-year-old daughter, TS, named after John Irving's T.S. Garp (and pronounced "Tess"). Carol is a Pilates instructor and director of the Windhover Dance Company in Rockport. Hugo earned $15 an hour as a contractor's assistant before being recommended by a friend to teach a music-industry survey class at the New England Institute of Art in 2000. He has been a full-time faculty member since 2002 and plans on staying. "I'm not an `ex' anything anymore," he says with a grin. "I'm a teacher."
Allen says the transition "seemed to be a natural event in Hugo's life. He brings something to the table that other teachers can't."
On a recent afternoon, Burnham hurries across the school's windblown plaza to class. The mammoth Brookline Village fortress makes Boston City Hall seem quaint by comparison, but being here "feels just right," he says. The drummer has found a new rhythm, and he greets each school day as if it is a song to learn. Sometimes he even starts with a full tank of gas.
Mark Pothier can be reached at mpothier@globe.com.
