To Hell With Poverty By Jon King – Book Review

To Hell With Poverty by Jon King

Published by: Constable

Release date: 3rd April 2025

This memoir from the Gang of Four’s singer is the story of a band and the story of a friendship. It’s also about the damage that a band and a friendship can do to each other. 

The book is subtitled A Class Act: Inside the Gang of Four, and class consciousness is a big part of the story. The first part of the book is autobiographical, covering King’s family background and childhood memories, and it shows the “posh Southern boys” label that the Gang of Four were given in Leeds wasn’t quite accurate.

King grew up in a household where money worries were normal, and his place at the private school where he met future Gang of Four guitarist Andy Gill was funded by the council. That’s what happened in his Kent village to working-class boys who passed the 11-plus. This means that he was the only one in the Gang of Four – who made their name as a “political” band – whose political instincts were based on what we’d call these days “lived experience”.

The posh school, though, set the course of King’s life because it gave him a love of art and ideas, along with aspirations. Like many of our generation, he was the first in his family to go to university. Signing up for a fine art degree at Leeds University, he aimed to become an artist, not a musician.

The band seemed to happen by accident, built on the nucleus of Gill and King and their “chalk and cheese” friendship. The music was inspired by their love of Dr Feelgood and a formative visit to New York in the heyday of CBGB and early punk. The inspiration for King’s lyrics came from the social and political landscape of the late 70s and early 80s, skilfully evoked in the book: unemployment, fascism, the nuclear threat, corrupt police, the Yorkshire Ripper…

The ups and downs of band life follow: touring with Buzzcocks, rocking against racism and sexism, headlining in America, critical acclaim, wild audiences… and disastrous business decisions, and dodgy management, and an “argumentative band dynamic” that eventually proved to be terminal. It’s a fast paced and exciting story, recalled in dramatic detail, with an inevitable and all too common unhappy ending.

Despite the difficulties, this is an entertaining read. King’s prose writing voice has the kind of bolshy energy you associate with his band, propelling the story through a series of great anecdotes. A cautionary tale, maybe, but a very enjoyable one too.

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To Hell With Poverty is available at all good bookstores. 

Words by Penny Kiley. You can read her Louder than War reviews at her author profile, and her archive music journalism on Substack.