Wire’s ‘The First Letter’ turns 35 on 14 October
Wire’s “The First Letter” turns 35 on 14 October. The band released the 1991 album as Wir through Mute Records, produced by Paul Kendall.
Cover art for "The First Letter," released by Wire as Wir (Mute Records, 1991). Via Cover Art Archive.
Wire’s “The First Letter” turns 35 this year. The English post-punk band released the album on 14 October 1991 through Mute Records, crediting it to Wir, a one-word rendering of the band’s name adopted after drummer Robert Gotobed left the group the previous year.
Colin Newman, Graham Lewis and Bruce Gilbert, the trio recording as Wire under the Wir name, recorded “The First Letter” at Worldwide International and Swanyard Recording Studios in London. Paul Kendall produced the album with Wir and handled engineering and mixing; Pascal Gabriel added production and mixed the “So and Slow It Grows” single version, with George Holt engineering that mix. Mute Records issued the album on CD, cassette and vinyl LP, with the “So and Slow It Grows” single mix added as a bonus track on the CD and cassette editions.
Most of the album’s eleven songs are credited to Gilbert, Newman and Lewis together, with “Naked, Whooping and Such-Like (Extended On and On)” written by Lewis alone and featuring a spoken-word reading by Claude Bessey. The tracklist runs “Take It (For Greedy),” “So and Slow It Grows,” “A Bargain at 3 and 20 Yeah!,” “Footsi – Footsi,” “Ticking Mouth,” “It Continues,” “Looking at Me (Stop!) Stop!,” “Naked, Whooping and Such-Like (Extended On and On),” “Tailor Made,” “No Cows on the Ice” and “A Big Glue Canal.” Wire released a second, more abrasive set of recordings from the same period, “The Drill,” the same year under its own name.
About Wire
Wire formed in London, England, in October 1976 with Colin Newman on vocals and guitar, Graham Lewis on bass and vocals, Bruce Gilbert on guitar, George Gill on lead guitar and Robert Gotobed on drums. Gill left in February 1977 after a leg injury left him unable to perform, and the remaining four-piece became the band’s lasting line-up for over a decade. Wire signed to Harvest/EMI and released three albums in quick succession: “Pink Flag” (1977), “Chairs Missing” (1978) and “154” (1979). EMI’s discomfort with the band’s unconventional promotion of “154” led to a falling out; the label cancelled studio time for a planned fourth album and dropped Wire’s option, and the band issued the live recording “Document and Eyewitness” in 1981 before falling largely silent for several years.
Wire resurfaced on Mute Records in the mid-1980s, releasing “The Ideal Copy” (1987), “A Bell Is a Cup… Until It Is Struck” (1988) and “IBTABA” (1989), followed by “Manscape” in 1990. Gotobed left the band after “Manscape,” and Newman, Lewis and Gilbert continued as a trio under the one-letter-shorter name Wir, releasing “The First Letter” and the companion album “The Drill” in 1991. Wire’s members then spent most of the 1990s on separate projects: Newman founded the swim~ label and formed Githead with his wife, Malka Spigel, while Wire itself remained only an occasional, part-time concern.
The band reconvened as a full-time act in 1999, with Gotobed returning under his birth name, Robert Grey, and went on to release “Send” (2003), “Object 47” (2008), “Red Barked Tree” (2011), “Change Becomes Us” (2013), a self-titled album (2015), “Nocturnal Koreans” (2016) and “Silver/Lead” (2017), among later records, with guitarist Matthew Simms joining the line-up in 2010. Wire marked Record Store Day 2025 with two exclusive releases. “The First Letter” remains the only album the band released under the Wir name, a marker of the lineup change that preceded its return as a full-time group.
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