Mark Stewart, who was celebrated for his dizzying and politicised blend of post-punk, dub and funk as frontman of the Pop Group and in a solo career, has died aged 62.
News of his death was confirmed by his label Mute, who wrote: “In honour of this original, fearless, sensitive, artistic and funny man, think for yourself and question everything. The world was changed because of Mark Stewart, it will never be the same without him.” No cause of death has been given.
Stewart was born in 1960 and raised in Bristol, where he formed the Pop Group in 1977 with youth club friends John Waddington and Simon Underwood, soon adding Gareth Sager and Bruce Smith to complete the lineup.
With their somewhat ironic band name – though with a hint of bright pop music nonetheless – they embraced the iconoclasm of the punk movement of the time, and had been inspired by seeing the Clash. Stewart later explained: “There is the arrogance of power and what we got from punk was the power of arrogance.”
But the band deviated from punk’s music, using jazzy, improvisatory arrangements, funk basslines and noisy abstraction. Stewart’s beautifully, starkly expressive vocals, like a highly musical form of ranted speech, helped them stand out all the more, and their 1979 debut album Y – made with dub producer Dennis Bovell – is regarded as a high point in the post-punk movement.
Their divisive 1980 follow-up For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder? was more commercial, with tighter funk rhythms and a presaging of the industrial music of the rest of the decade. It also featured a collaboration with US group the Last Poets, regarded as the forefathers of hip-hop.
After playing a vast CND rally in Trafalgar Square, the Pop Group split up later that year, and Stewart, along with Smith and Waddington, joined New Age Steppers, a dub music collective headed up by Adrian Sherwood that also included other post-punk luminaries such as the Slits’ Ari Up and Viv Albertine and Public Image Ltd’s Keith Levene.
Stewart continued to collaborate with Sherwood on solo releases as Mark Stewart & the Maffia, which advanced his interest in dub. Beginning with the 1985 album As the Veneer of Democracy Starts to Fade, he also continued the connection with US hip-hop by using a backing band with guitarist Skip McDonald, bassist Doug Wimbish and drummer Keith LeBlanc, who had played on Sugar Hill Records releases such as White Lines and The Message.
Backed again by McDonald, Wimbish and LeBlanc and with Sherwood as producer, his self-titled solo album in 1987 also featured contributions from the late Ryuichi Sakamoto and riffed on the music of Erik Satie. He released two more albums with this lineup – Metatron (1990) and Control Data (1996) – and also collaborated with the likes of Daddy G from fellow Bristolians Massive Attack.
The 2005 compilation Kiss the Future chimed with a then-resurgent punk-funk sound and earned him a new audience, ahead of another solo release in 2008, Edit.
The Pop Group reformed in 2010 for live shows, released the compilation We Are Time in 2014 and then a brand new studio album in 2015, Citizen Zombie, helmed by Oscar-winning Adele producer Paul Epworth. A final album came the following year, Honeymoon on Mars.
Stewart also collaborated with artists such as Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie and experimental film-maker Kenneth Anger on his final solo album, 2012’s The Politics of Envy.
He explained his highly cosmopolitan style in an interview that year: “I think I just make sparks and try to push things together that don’t necessarily fit. I’m happy to put a booty bass bassline on top of a Slayer guitar – for me it comes back to cut and paste and doing a punk collage, putting Ronald Reagan’s head on top of a gay cowboy model or something.
“I’ve been messing about doing things like that since I was about six. To a certain extent, people are contained, but for me I can listen to some footwork stuff, some mad Japanese noise or a bubblegum pop song all in the same 10 minutes.”
His music was also avowedly political, castigating injustice, capitalism and authoritarian cruelty while celebrating art as an escape – sometimes within the space of a single song, as with the Pop Group classic We Are All Prostitutes.
“Arguments are good,” he said in 2008. “People are brainwashed to think that these things are out of your control; in the shops round here people say ‘I don’t want to think about politics’ – they are taught, it’s kept behind the curtains.”
Daniel Miller, the head of Mute, paid tribute, saying: “His musical influence has been much greater than is often acknowledged … I can’t imagine you being anything other than restless but I hope you find your very special peace.”
Sherwood called Stewart “the biggest musical influence in my life and our extended family will miss you so so much,” while the Pop Group’s Gareth Sager said: “Mark was the most amazing mind of my generation.”
