The story of Wire is a cult band archetype. Critically acclaimed but never a great money spinner; lauded as an inspiration by many successful artists like REM, Blur, and the Pixies but never close to having a big hit for themselves.

Colin Newman and cohorts (Graham Lewis, Bruce Gilbert and Robert Gotobed) sprang out of the UK punk explosion of the late 70s and attacked their music with passion, intelligence and a sense of art. But they refused to subscribe to the cartoon image that punk was soon boiled down to. They wrote spiky pop songs but showed they weren't afraid to stretch and experiment.

Indeed, for many, Wire represents how pop music should be in a perfect world. Between 1977 and 1979 they released three essential records - Pink Flag, Chairs Missing and 154. True to the punk ideal they burned brightly and broke up. But, despite having their epitaphs written for them, they reformed in the mid-80s for a couple of less essential records before being declared 'missing in action' for most of the 90s.

However, the last couple of years have seen Wire return with a vengeance. The latest release is Send - an LP that pulls together both new tracks and ones previously released across a series of EPs put out at the turn of the millennium. Now, on the back of its success, Wire is set to tour Australia for the first time.

How many times, in your mind, has Wire made a comeback?
Zero. I think it’s a project that is kind of continuous but has periods where it’s not really doing anything. It was the first artistic venture that any of us were really seriously involved in and it’s very hard to escape being in it. Is there any article on Paul McCartney article where it doesn’t say ‘Beatle’ in it somewhere? I’m always going to be that bloke out of Wire whether Wire are doing anything or not doing anything.

So there’s no escape from Wire?
It’s not like we did some records in the 70s, had a bit of a laugh, got drunk a lot and then went away and got proper jobs. We made an artistic statement in the 70s the ramifications of which we’ve spent years dealing with - people coming up to us and saying what you did then inspired me to do this, this and this. And when you’ve made effective artistic statements there’s no going back. You can’t just say ‘oh, I wasn’t being serious, I’m really a plumber’. It changes you in a way you could never really described to a person who hasn’t undergone that experience but there’s a lot of dealing with that because then you think ‘is it me? Am I really that clever, I’m a genius?’

So is the band too clever for its own good?
Of course it is but, to me, it got smarter in the way of learning how to subvert it’s own cleverness. The other thing about each incarnation of Wire is that it’s fundamentally different. The version of Wire that exists now, it’s the same people but it’s like it’s a new band. Conceptually there’s a lot things that are very, very different to how it was if you go back to the 70s and the 80s. The big difference now is the self-actuation. The stuff is made in my studio, it’s released on our label and we are in the position of saying ‘this is the music that we want to release’.

With every new record you have to contend with your own history and people’s perception that it doesn’t matter what you do but the first, second or third record are the highwater marks - how do you feel about that?
That’s not been the reaction in the last year. There are still people that think that but we have an awful lot of people that think that Send is either up there with the 70s stuff or surpasses it.

So what do you see as the marked differences between Wire in 2003 as opposed to 1978 or 1985?
The big, big difference now is the whole approach - I mean there is no conventional recording. The studio is a garage so we can take a more interesting, more organic approach. Conventional recording with Wire has always been problematic, there’s always been a lot of fighting in the studio – just too many cooks and this method is much more relaxed, much more kind of continuous. Only two of us live in London and when we work on Wire we work together and then the others get involved when we need them to get involved. It seems to have developed as the working method and we seem to get results out of it.

Wire in the 80s is often seen as a mistake.
80s Wire by common consent within the band was not the most stellar period – we had some great ideas, and on occasion some good results, but it was not a happy band. In the 70s obviously there was a level of innocence and naivety, which you can never go back too. But I like the idea of approaching music and art from a point of view of not really knowing what you are doing. Also inn the 70s we had a manager who was fantastic at getting attention and not very good on the money side which is why it all went a bit pants. In the 80s we had precisely the opposite - we had a manager who was fantastic with money, runs to this day a hugely successful business, but didn’t really understand that you need to have a more dynamic relationship with the band.

How did you feel about Elastica ripping off ‘Three Girl Rhumba’ for their 1995 Brit-Pop hit ‘Connection’?
There’s more than one answer to that. First anyone’s allowed to quote anything they like in popular music as long as they pay for it. The sticking point was the paying. The company that published the original Wire title did not support us to the extent they should’ve done. They didn’t protect the copyrights and we ended up getting a worse deal than what we should’ve got on it. Secondly there was the slightly embarrassing situation that Elastica was mainstream pop in ’95 and I wasn’t interested in Brit-Pop at all. I was much more into drum ‘n’ bass, which was absolutely massive at that point, and the only music that anyone really wanted to listen to. So it was a bit like ‘what are they going on about and why do they think I’ve got something to do with them?’ So I had to kind of distance myself from the whole thing. Fundamentally anybody is allowed to do it. Blimey, I’ve sampled off others people’s records.

What’s your favourite cover of a Wire track?
There have been some good ones. I do like the Fischerspooner cover of ‘The 15th’, which is probably the most recent one that’s got any attention. Lush have done two covers of Wire tracks that I really like the girliness of. A band called Laica did a cover of ‘German Shepherds’, which is absolutely breathtaking. My Bloody Valentine did a cover of ‘Map Ref 41N 93W’ and just the mere fact that My Bloody Valentine did a Wire cover is just hugely, hugely flattering. They were an incredibly important band for their time. Certainly there are also plenty of absolutely awful, really terrible dire ones but we won’t go into those.

Please regale us with some of the ones you haven’t enjoyed.
Henry Rollins. He did a cover that was so average. REM did an average cover of ‘Strange’ – just kind of turned it into light country rock. There was a band called the New Bomb Turks that did an amazing version of ‘Mr. Suit’. Soup. That sounded like the Beastie Boys. I mainly remember the good ones and the bad ones you just think ‘why did a bunch of people that you’ve kind of heard of do almost either exactly the same or the same but way more weedy versions of those songs?’ One day someone is going to have a big hit with a Wire song.

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