On a clear night in Los Angeles, at a rather large table in the center of a rather small restaurant, no tea was being poured and no biscuits nor scones lay on people’s plates. But it was no matter. This was still very much the scene of a tea party—and a mad one at that.

The affair was hosted by Colin Newman and Graham Lewis, the frontman and bassist of the seminal minimalist outfit Wire, and only those of a certain musical pedigree had been admitted to join the goings-on.

The Clash weren’t invited and there was no room for Muse, R&B divas, pseudo-obscure influences, or emotional indulgence at the table of this Mad Hatter and March Hare. They were running the show, and those around them were an elite group of art school experimentalist dormice and forward-thinking, crafty Cheshire cats with cleverly worded lyrics and a certain disdain for stale trends and tradition in culture.

I sat as an inquisitive Alice across from the peering faces of Hatter and the Hare, my sweaty hands fiddling with my tape recorder as I tried to control my nerves and find my first question. I was out of my element in a strange world, lost in the surrounding sounds of the jovial party guests ordering drinks and settling in to edibles and conversation around the large table.

Shuffling my papers, I spat out my questions and after each one, quickly fell silent, transfixed by the enigmatic duo as they cast out riddles and together spun eccentric stories of rock ‘n’ roll reduction, unruly rule-breaking, and the odd contemporary collision of the past and the present.

This was how, in my mind’s eye anyway, my interview with Newman and Lewis transpired, over a crowded dinner table just before they took the stage at Los Angeles’ Echoplex. Our tea party was cut a little short due to show-time constraints, but Newman (Hatter or Hare, take your guess) kindly finished off our conversation over email.

So, settle in, take a sip of the “drink me” cordial offered below, and feel your musical mindset expand with the addition of Wire’s fervent perspective.

Crawdaddy!: There is a quote from you, Colin, in which you state, “I personally hate bands that do that ‘Let’s form a band from this list of influences’ kind of crap, it’s like writing the press release before you write any songs!” What do you feel Wire was started from or because of, and do you feel that any particular influences or inspirations crept into the creation of the band?

Colin Newman: Well, that remark was very much about how people have done things in the last 10 years. It’s this idea of your list of influences coming from whatever is in your dad’s record collection. And, what people (now) think of as really obscure influences, to anyone who actually remembers it, it’s not that obscure at all. The sort of influence stew approach to making any kind of art is just the wrong way round, in my view. I say start with what it is you want to do and what makes you excited.

Wire started just after the first flush of British punk rock. It was happening around us but we knew by the time that we really got going that if we were to just do the same kind of thing, then we’d be another copycat band. Anyway, [the punk scene] was going to be over. So, we kind of had the sense that, I mean, you don’t really do this consciously, but there was a sense that we could use the energy of the moment and just push forward. It was really about the future. I think the future certainly has been a major influence on us.

Graham Lewis: I think we had simple philosophies. From the very beginning, we thought what was interesting was change. We didn’t want to be doing the same thing everybody else was doing, because that’s pointless. Why repeat what somebody else has already done? I feel that that’s an easy thing to say and a hard thing to actually keep to. But I think our situation was a very fortunate one. We came together as individuals who all had very specific tastes. Not specific as in narrow, but we knew what we liked and knew what we didn’t like. All the things that we didn’t like were obviously things that we weren’t going to do, so there were a lot of things that were easy for us to avoid.

Newman: I decided that I wanted to rewrite rock music; that it needed to be destroyed. See, I don’t like rock ‘n’ roll very much. I don’t like ’50s rock ‘n’ roll. I think it’s depressing.

Lewis: It was coming from a grey country. Rock ‘n’ roll in England was not like American rock ‘n’ roll.

Newman: I don’t think it’s just the atmosphere though. It just didn’t excite me. I think what it was, was that there was formalism to rock music. It had to have certain things in it. It had to have that Diddley bit and all the buzzes and choruses. Why do you need all that stuff? Why don’t you just get rid of all that? So I started with this reductive idea. I wanted to destroy rock ‘n’ roll by taking away the ‘and roll.’

Crawdaddy!: What do you feel are those extraneous things within traditional rock ‘n’ roll music?

Newman: I think the thing is, is that I am a natural minimalist. So is Rob [Robert Grey, Wire’s drummer]. Graham is less minimalistic.

Lewis: What does that make me?

Newman: Well, you’re a bit more baroque in your approach. You tend to like to build on a base and add things, where as I tend to take them away. It’s just a way of approaching things. It is what your natural inclination is. Now [as owner of the Swim~ record label and a producer], when I’m mixing a track, my basic strategy is to take out the things that annoy me. I just work on annoyance. However, something that’s annoying up here [at a higher frequency] can be less annoying down there, so it’s not just about cutting everything out. It’s about finding the focus.

I always try for simplicity as well, I don’t really have enough natural ability to play any instrument and get too complicated. I always say I am a rubbish guitarist. I’m about as good of a guitarist as when I started.