![]() Towards the end of the year, Josef K, tuned into the dark, mordant zeitgeist, began workingon self-penned material, their intention being to record a demo tape and secure a deal with a credible indie label like Radar or Rough Trade. ![]() Like Echo & The Bunnymen in Liverpool, Joy Division in Manchester and The Cure in London, Josef K, with their sombre attire and sardonic demeanour, had an almost puritanical loathing for fun and frivolity, which Haig now attributes to the grey, grim mood of the period and the ominous spectre of the Bomb. As Malcolm Ross has said, ‘We didn’t like sexism or laddishness. Encouraged by Vic Godard’s Subway Sect, arguably the only punk band to eschew safety pins and chains, Haig and Co started to wear cheap but smart dark Oxfam suits and ties it was this that enhanced Josef K’s image as somewhat austere. Haig, a self-confessed autodidact who read avidly, changed the band’s name to Josef K after a character in Czech writer Franz Kafka’s The Trial – “We were into the alienation effect”. With Haig on guitar and vocals, the rest of the band was comprised of Firrhill pals Malcolm Ross (guitar), Gary McCormack (bass – soon leaving to join The Exploited and replaced by David Weddell) and Ron Torrance (drums). His first UK punk purchase was The Sex Pistols’ God Save The Queen – and inspired by the more arty, experimental sounds coming out of the States (notably, NYC’s Television and Talking Heads), he formed TV Art in 1978. As Haig puts it, he was ‘saved from Wishbone Ash and bands like that’ by the arrival in 1976-77 of punk. He would become quite famous in the early 80s for his neat, modernist post-punk buzzcut, but a decade earlier there were teenage flirtations with glam and progressive rock (and those movements’ attendant long, lank hair). Like all the future members of Josef K, he attended the Firrhill High School in the south of the city, where his three specialist subjects were ‘English, Art… and girls.’ Although no one in his family was particularly musical, when he was 12 his dad bought him a guitar, which he played constantly and perhaps distracted him from his studies. Born in Edinburgh, 4th September 1960, he grew up in suburban Oxgang, the only child of middle-class parents (his father owned a fibre-glass factory his mother was a typist for a dental practice). They lack the mystery and the darkness of Josef K, but the boys are doing all right!”ĬHANCE MEETING Like his Scottish alt.pop peers Edwyn Collins (Orange Juice), Davey Henderson (Fire Engines), Clare Grogan (Altered Images), Roddy Frame (Aztec Camera) and Billy Mackenzie (Associates), Paul Haig was a late period baby-boomer. We weren’t as commercial or accessible as Franz: even though they’re arty, they’re also quite jolly. ![]() ![]() Would we have been up for that? Probably not. If we’d had that exposure – because at the time there was no MTV, none of those vehicles for promotion – we’d have been quite successful in the mainstream. “If Josef K existed now, we’d probably be like Franz Ferdinand. It’s brought our music to a younger audience. If they hadn’t said the things they’ve said and done the things they’ve done, our album ( Entomology) wouldn’t be coming out on (Franz’s label) Domino. “They’ve said Sorry For Laughing is one of their favourite songs they’ve worn their influences on their sleeve. And he believes that Franz were able to ‘get away with’ their single Take Me Out sounding so much like Josef K’s Sorry For Laughing – one of the sincerest forms of flattery since The Bootleg Beatles – simply by owning up. “If they hadn’t name-checked us, it would have been quite annoying, but they have, so that’s fine,” he says. But is Haig bitter about his brand of angular, abrasive guitardance music being taken into the charts across the globe by a younger generation of cerebral indiefunkateers from north of the border? Surprisingly not. Josef K’s first album sold just 30,000 copies Franz Ferdinand’s own debut sold over three million. Not bad for a group whose recording career lasted only 18 months and whose greatest commercial achievement was to reach No. Normally taciturn, he is amazed that, a quarter-century after their split, they are not only still being talked about but they have proved the single biggest influence on, Arctic Monkeys aside, the most successful British guitar band of the 21st Century so far. IT’S KINDA FUNNY “My manager is in touch with Alex Kapranos and he said, ‘If it wasn’t for Paul Haig and Josef K, Franz Ferdinand wouldn’t have existed’,” says the man himself, Paul Haig, talking about the band he fronted at the turn of the 1980s.
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