The Three Johns - L’Inghilterra in tempesta

The World By Storm, a 1986 album, the second in the discography of this Leeds-based band from the heart of the UK, features cover artwork worthy of George Grosz, the German painter known for mocking the wars and dictatorial regimes of the early 20th century through human and animal figures physically distorted and morally prostrate, the better to deride the political contexts that had produced such horrors.

One of the defining traits of our band here will indeed be the way they pair their tangled, bizarre music with striking visual imagery. On The World By Storm, for instance, we find a vintage Ronald Reagan happily embracing the "Three Johnnys" in a wonderfully garish photomontage worthy of the finest sleeve artists of the craft, the Californian Dead Kennedys. Still inside, tucked in a corner of the sleeve holding the vinyl (those were the days!), we find three alien monsters straight out of H.R. Giger, caught in a chaotic scuffle over what looks like a "hammer and sickle," and just above, in the remaining space, two steelworkers at a blast furnace are clearly recognizable, their faces frozen and icy, as if to represent the sheer impossibility of joy, of happiness.

1982 is the year the band's musical activity begins. Jon Langford, already the leader of the Mekons, on guitar, John Hyatt on vocals and John Brennan on bass, plus a virtual fourth John, the drum machine. They decide to found their own independent label for their records. They'll call it Cnt, in memory of the Spanish anarchist union, a pillar of the resistance against Generalissimo Franco's coup back in the 1930s. A statement of intent.

Cnt would churn out three masterpieces in rapid succession. The single "English White Boy Engineer" with "Secret Agent" as the b-side in 1982; another single, "Pink Headed Bug" with "Lucy In The Rain" as the b-side in 1983; and finally the EP A.W.O.L., also from 1983, containing four gems: "Awol," "Rooster Blue," "Image Or An Animal," "Kick The Dog Right Out."

The cover of "English White Boy Engineer" depicts Pieter Botha, the last Afrikaner president of apartheid-era South Africa before Nelson Mandela. A hard face, grotesquely deformed, in the act of eating a flower (the flower of freedom). As for the music... Robert Johnson's guitar, with its Delta blues, overlapping a drum machine marching along with martial rhythm, evoking the repetitiveness of the mechanical movements of the factory machinery that made Leeds such a grey, leaden city. And the lyrics... Right from the evocative title, which reworks for South Africa the American acronym WASP — White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, the demographic that holds the reins of power in the United States. In South Africa, it's precisely the white engineer that the Three Johns mock in thoroughly mirthful fashion, with a shrill refrain repeated to the point of exhaustion.

"Pink Headed Bug" is woozy and off-kilter. A disco/electronic rhythm with a minimal drum machine and a guitar as abrasive as sandpaper. The lyrics are utterly devoid of logic, with Hyatt's voice turning the nonsense into vocalizations.

And so we arrive at A.W.O.L., the EP that would brand the band's entire path with its defining style. The vocals, at times low and guttural, recall Johnny Cash. New wave guitar and bass in equal measure, with the drum machine kept in the background. The lyrics are decidedly committed. There's an interview the band gave after weeks spent in the independent charts' bestseller lists, which sums up their approach to making music perfectly: "We're not a socialist band, we're a group of socialists who happen to be in a band." It's a subtle distinction, but a fundamental one. The opening track, which gives the EP its title, is a textbook example of English new wave, here intertwined with the electronic/hillbilly sound of the early Wall of Voodoo. The following "Rooster Blue" is the Cramps transplanted to English soil, with a pinch of Chuck Berry-style rock'n'roll.

1983 is truly a year of grace. Just before Christmas, the Three Johns release Some History on the independent label Abstract, tied to the post-punk noise merchants Test Department. The opener "Do The Square Thing" has a guitar foundation that weaves through the whole track like an arabesque; the bass is skewed and underpins a similarly off-kilter vocal. "Death Of The European" speaks of nuclear catastrophes and atomic war (that, let's remember, is the year of the massive deployment of Soviet and American missiles across the heart of Europe), set to a dance-rock built on percussive, "steel-mill" rhythms.

Closing things out is "World Of The Workers Is Wild": punk-rock in its purest form. No electronics, no drum machine: just guitar, bass and drums. A breathless minute. Building a song that wouldn't look out of place on the debut album of Los Angeles's X.

Atom Drum Bop from 1984 is a thrilling, tension-laden album. That year is, after all, above all the year of the brutal clash between British miners and the Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher. And this record absorbs all of that harshness, given that our band was among the most active supporters of the 350,000 striking workers. Benefit concerts outside the mines and active participation in Red Wedge (El Lissitzky's "Red Wedge"), the pro-miner organization masterminded by Paul Weller and Tom Robinson.

The opening, entrusted to the title track, is deeply moving. Choruses unlike anything the Three Johns had let us hear before. A lyrical composition, with voice and instruments moving as one, a unity of intent that gives rise to a masterful "post-wave." With guitars as sinuous and sharp as a steel blade, in a constant acceleration.

"Firepits" kicks off with a falsetto voice jolted along by a thoroughly out-of-sync drum machine, while the guitar steps in like a clumsy surgeon. But it's the second track, "Teenage Nightingales To Wax," that makes all the difference. The opening guitar sends shivers down your spine: crisp, blaring like a trumpet, over which Hyatt's lopsided voice comes in as if possessed, a new Screamin' Jay Hawkins with his sickly blues. "The Devil's Music" tells of the homeless across England's endless suburbia and lashes out at the Royal Family. Irish poetry rendered in punk-billy form. Harmonica and electric violin.

Then there's the cover: an enormous sow carrying an electric guitar slung across its chest, on the front. The back featuring barely sketched symbols and drawings, all dedicated to atomic warfare, the "Enola Gay" bomb included.

Two years later it's time for The World By Storm. The incipit is a tribal, funk/hip-hop track titled "Sold Down The River," also marked by a Morricone-esque guitar. "King Car" is, right from the start, one of those futurist poems along the lines of "za ta bump," with that guitar-and-voice attack of "Be Bep," repeated over and over. And then, once again, the voice dragging itself across a soundscape all sharp metallic edges. Next comes "Johnny, The Perfect Son," an electric ballad that at times veers toward introspective pop-rock. Lovely to listen to, even lovelier to hum along to, with its slow, restrained pace.

Closing the record is "The World By Storm" itself, in which "the world under storm," told through streaks of urban funk somewhere between Gang Of Four and James Chance, is that of the defeated working class. Searingly so. Hence the drawing of the three Giger-esque monsters, described at the start, chaotically wrestling over a hammer and sickle. The latter, by this point, useful only — given the epoch-defining defeat of the National Union of Mineworkers — for a game.

The saga of the "three Johns" ends here, at least as far as their musical output goes. The two remaining albums, The Death Of Everything from 1988 and Eat Your Sons from 1990, belong to a separate chapter. They're no longer themselves. Not in the lyrics, whether serious or playful. The music is unrecognizable. The albums themselves are flat in terms of their artistic framing. The End.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google