Wire (band) - Influence

Influence

Wire's influence has outshone their comparatively modest record sales. In the 1980s and 1990s, The Urinals, Manic Street Preachers, The Minutemen, Sonic Youth, and R.E.M., expressed a fondness for the group. R.E.M. covered "Strange" on their album Document, while their song "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" (from 1994's Monster) emulates Wire's song "Feeling Called Love". Since their 2008 reunion, The Feelies have regularly covered "Outdoor Miner" during its live sets and Lush (band) also covered the track. Robert Smith has described how, though not a Wire fan, seeing the group live influenced The Cure's sound after their first album.

Guided By Voices' Robert Pollard claimed that Wire was his favourite band, and that the fact that GBV's albums had so many songs was directly influenced by Wire's albums. One of My Bloody Valentine's last releases was a cover of "Map Ref 41°N 93°W" for a Wire tribute entitled Whore. The song was selected as a favourite cover by Flak Magazine.

More recently, Fischerspooner (who covered "The 15th" on their album #1), britpop bands like Elastica and Menswe@r and post-punk revival bands like Bloc Party, Futureheads, Blacklist, and Franz Ferdinand have cited Wire as an influence. Blur's work, along with many more minor Britpop bands, have been cited as particularly reminiscent of 1970s Wire at various points, with Graham Coxon and Damon Albarn both speaking of the band's influence on Blur.

Wire were influential on hardcore punk. Fans included Ian MacKaye of the hardcore punk band Minor Threat and Henry Rollins, formerly of Black Flag. Minor Threat covered "1 2 X U" for the Dischord Records compilation Flex Your Head, as well as Boss Hog on their "I Dig You" EP. Henry Rollins, as Henrietta Collins & The Wife-Beating Childhaters, covered "Ex Lion Tamer" on the EP Drive by Shooting. Michael Azerrad reported, in the book Our Band Could Be Your Life, that at Minor Threat's second gig, each of the seven bands on the roster performed its version of a Wire song. Big Black covered Wire's "Heartbeat" twice, once as a studio version which was released as a single (also included on The Rich Man's Eight Track Tape compilation), and also as a live version, featuring Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis, that was included on the VHS version of its live album Pigpile. The slowcore band Low included an early, previously unreleased cover of "Heartbeat" on their career-spanning boxset in 2007. Ampere recorded a cover of "Mr. Suit" for its 2006 split with Das Oath. New Bomb Turks also recorded a cover of "Mr. Suit" on its 1993 album !!Destroy-Oh-Boy!!. The chorus of Ministry's "Thieves" was influencedd by "Mr. Suit" as well.

A plagiarism case between Wire's music publisher and Elastica, over the similarity between Wire's 1977 song "Three Girl Rhumba" and Elastica's 1995 hit "Connection", resulted in an out-of-court settlement.

Olivier Assayas's 2010 film Carlos uses four of the band's songs on the soundtrack to increase tension: "Drill", "Dot Dash", "The 15th", and "Ahead".