by Alex; Ogg
Yet are not managers and agents the legitimate advocates of a band’s interests? “I think that’s true,” says Rimbaud, “but then, if those were their interests, they weren’t ours, in our defence. We weren’t in the least bit interested in anything commercial.” In recent years, Southern has not been without its detractors. “When we worked with Southern,” notes Chumbawamba’s Boff Whalley, “most of the people there were lovely, lovely folk who worked their arses off for the bands. But we learnt to our dismay that the publishing deal we signed with Southern was about three times as bad as any publishing deal anywhere else; a total con. Took us ages to get out of it, made no money on it, and regretted not getting advice about it beforehand. In the cold light of experience, I find it incredibly sad that the members of Crass have sold untold hundreds of thousands of albums and CDs but aren’t getting money from it. Despite the low cover price, they should be getting publishing money, enough to allow them to do what they want to do creatively and artistically and politically. But that’s my personal gripe about Southern, it was a part of it that we found rotten.”
Rimbaud counters that “John was good at playing with money, and created an empire out of Southern, which I never resented. While we were floundering and trying to survive after the band, John was running a very successful business. But that was fair enough, because it was part of the deal. He remained very honest throughout. How he did that and be such a successful businessman is anyone’s guess. He was just brilliant with money. He didn’t use any of it – that was the funny thing. He still drove around in a rotten old van, lived in a crappy place in Wood Green, and never thought of making the studio nicer – it just didn’t occur to him, any of that. So it was the game of money he liked, I don’t think he cared a fuck about having money. And he was always hugely generous with projects that he knew would make no money whatsoever. Either with us or anyone else. He was always willing to put his oar into anything. I used to see people getting annoyed with him if something wasn’t happening as fast as it might, whatever, and sometimes John might have appeared to be devious. But he was juggling so much, particularly with money, that everything was on a see-saw. I could see that, and some people couldn’t, and they were a bit badmouthed towards him.”
“John was so totally at ease yet in control of any situation,” remembers Dick Lucas of The Subhumans, “never got flustered, never forgot who people were, and had the knack of convincing through his conviction. He really liked Subhumans to a degree that he apparently reserved for Crass and Rudimentary Peni. He didn’t like either [Lucas’s subsequent bands] Culture Shock or Citizen Fish half as much – just to show I’m not wearing rosy glasses! He was younger than our parents, but old enough to seem semi-parental, something that would explain the degree of loss felt when he died. He was definitely a one-off, and we were lucky to know him.”
Among the bands Loder picked up, that Crass had passed on, were UK Decay, who had featured on the first volume of Bullshit Detector. “I didn’t really like them,” admits Rimbaud. “I didn’t dislike them as people, they were a really nice bunch of guys. He liked what they were doing, and that was fine. Or someone like Fugazi, that John picked up on.” The latter band had grown out of Minor Threat and Washington DC’s Dischord Records stable, whose DIY approach, hard-headed rejection of commercial compromise, commitment to all-ages shows and community action, mirrors the early goals of Crass Records. “Because he was seen as Mr Crass,” Rimbaud continues, “people tended to gravitate towards John, and in America he picked up a lot of contacts through his reputation as a member of the band – and that was good, a really comfortable set up. In retrospect, I regret we weren’t a little bit more sensible with the capital that was floating about. The studio would have been here [Dial House], but in those days, there was a big radio station on this land, so we couldn’t set up a studio here. If it had have been, we would have now owned it. We, effectively, having had thousands, possibly up to a million pounds, floating around at one point, never bought or invested in anything. In retrospect it was bloody stupid. We are still hopelessly in debt over this house, almost bust. I don’t resent it, but I regret not having been a little bit more sensible with the capital that we had, because we could have paid for this instead of having the constant headache.”
That was effectively the story of the Crass label until the early 90s. “Then I was talking to John,” Rimbaud recalls, “and saying, this is probably a bit daft, we’re not actually producing anything any more. You’re working for us at far below what you could be or should be making in manufacture and distribution. So we then, effectively, realigned it all. Although the label exists still, and we own it and have complete artistic control, the financial administration is all through Southern, and we simply get royalties. It’s no longer a share-out, and we pay them just as any other band would pay their manufacturer and distributor. The label itself is sacrosanct, in the sense that nothing can go in or out. I’ve been remastering it recently, trying to make the final statement on it, making sure the artwork is properly done and writing little essays to accompany each album. It’s not very nice having that sort of heritage to carry – especially if it’s grubby. And it was beginning to get grubby. So we’re trying to make it into something beautiful, something that will have the value and hold it.”
Crass the band ceased to exist in 1984; just as they had promised. “We became seen as po-faced, hardened anarchists, but there was deep humour,” insists Rimbaud. “The irony to us was never far from the surface, the fact that we could laugh absurdly at it, while people were taking it so seriously. The one time the shell actually cracked was a gig down in Exeter. We suddenly realised how fucking stupid it was. It was the only rock ‘n’ roll performance we ever did, and everyone was into posing like Pete Townshend and fucking about. And of course, it went down really, really well! And it was a complete self piss-take. We were barely able to play because we were laughing so much at ourselves.”
As well as Loder personally engineering records for Björk, Fugazi, the Jesus and Mary Chain and others, he started a network of labels operating out of Southern, in partnership with his wife and artist, Sue. As Crass Records closed with the dissolution of the band in 1984, Southern took up the slack, offering a home for maverick bands and artists, while retaining the original ideals with which they were founded. There were no concessions to bigger businesses when they expressed an interest (which they did on several occasions). Loder remained a reclusive figure, declining requests for interviews, until his death in August 2005, at which time Rimbaud composed the following obituary for The Guardian. “He displayed a reticence which extended even to his closest friends. For that reason, very few people were aware that during the last 18 months he had been battling with a brain tumour, which finally killed him. But just as John’s studio has become legendary, so has his insistence that quality of product should come before quantity: his angle, small is beautiful, was the big idea.”
You can make a good case for Crass being the most influential punk band of them all. Certainly they probably had a more profound impact on the way people live their lives – from the protest movement, through a new consciousness about environmental impact to vegetarianism, than anything that is, as Rimbaud suggests, as transitory as ‘rock ‘n’ roll. He thinks that’s due, in large part, to the ‘real nature’ of what they accomplished. “I do believe that it was only through our actions – and I don’t mean in choosing to be a rock ‘n ‘roll band – but the way in which we act within whichever theatre we choose to live our lives. It’s the authenticity of the experience that we bring to something that generates that effect. I think we were absolutely extraordinary as a group of people. There was anything up to a dozen of us on the road together. We had absolute commitment to each other, firstly, and then to the situation, and absolute honesty within that. Which isn’t to say there weren’t big problems outside of that – but within the theatre we’d chosen to enact, we were absolutely 100% – unfailingly. At our own cost. When we came out
of that, we realised the cost in terms of our relationships, with ourselves and with each other. But as a human experiment of absolute belief, it worked. Everywhere I go I’ll meet people in every walk of life who have been deeply affected by what we did. And that’s because we were genuine. I’m not saying we were genuine people, but we were genuine within that situation. Having to put aside doubt, which is always corruptive. We couldn’t operate if we were going to doubt it. These were common agreements that created a force. I’m quite sure that was the power of the Nazi regime. I’m not advocating that, obviously, but the power of it came through the cadre of people who had no doubt. Or look at Thatcher’s fucking outfit. Blair failed against Thatcher, because Thatcher had no doubt. Blair did, and that made him weak. And detestable. One has to, somehow or another, admire Thatcher for that, although I loathed what she did.”
That does not mean, however, that Rimbaud has any great sentimental attachment for some of the ‘anarcho punk’ groups who followed; particularly those who merely xeroxed (often literally) Crass’s arguments, and followed their lead uncritically. That early sequence of Crass releases still comprises an exceptional body of work, but thereafter there was a good deal of the unthinkingly repetitious – as if a new orthodoxy had been established. Several of these releases aped the surface monochromatic artwork of Crass without ever equalling their aesthetic dynamism, or contesting the assumptions behind them. “The anarcho punk movement was an anathema to me,” Rimbaud concludes. “I wasn’t interested in it. I didn’t like it. I think it was very divisive in any case. It was a very convenient way for the business to put us outside the business – us and everything we were related to. I don’t think we isolated ourselves, we were isolated by the industry, who couldn’t contain us. It was only very late on that we realised we were completely separate, and that wasn’t a separateness that we sought. We refused to do commercial gigs etc, but that wasn’t to make ourselves separate, it was to ensure punters got a decent, fair deal.” There was a pragmatism to some of those aspects of ‘not playing the game’, too, rather than necessarily ideology. For example, the reason songs were credited to the group as a whole arose directly as a means of preventing individuals from being picked off by the DPP or other agents of the law.
“All of those things were directed towards the people who wanted to buy our records or come to the gigs,” Rimbaud insists, “to give them the fairest deal. We weren’t trying to put ourselves out of the framework; we wanted to be in the framework. [Garry] Bushell criticised us for not being in the belly of the beast. That’s actually where we wanted to be, and in fact, we were. Even now, most punk history books don’t really incorporate us – they just harp on about the rock ‘n’ roll aspect. Fair enough. But it’s not honest. Something else happened that was one of the most powerful youth movements that existed in the 20th century, and it has parallels to the Dada movements and existential movements in its cultural effect.”
By the time the band had ended, they’d done their best to disrupt assumptions about what they represented, especially musically. “We went into almost auto destruct mode to circumvent all of that,” Rimbaud acknowledges. “Which is what our last output was, from the extreme jazz of Yes Sir I Will (1983) to the European avant garde of Ten Notes On A Summer’s Day (1986). They were both attempts to completely smash the mirror. And it sort of worked, it did break the mirror. Which is why I really resented Steve’s thing at the Shepherds Bush Empire [vocalist Steve Ignorant would perform Feeding Of The 5,000 in its entirety featuring guest musicians in 2008]. To my mind, whatever the intention was, that was an attempt to put back the pieces of the mirror. You can’t do that. We had very effectively smashed the mirror. In a way there’s a freedom in that. It’s quite possible, I hadn’t thought about it before, but maybe it’s Steve doing that gig that inspired me to go back and do what I’ve been doing recently, which is remastering everything and redesigning [the back catalogue]. Basically because that just seems dirty. So, in a way, I want to recreate something that’s honest and good and has something of the energetic of what we did 30 years ago. I just get a profound tiredness from something like that Shepherds Bush thing, the faux quality of it, the ersatz experience, which I so hate. It’s so the direct opposite of authenticity.”
“A little while after the band had folded,” Rimbaud remembers, “I was in Battersea Park, and there was the Jesus Army, with a bloody big tent there, trying to convert people. I was with Eve [Libertine], and we strolled in and we were immediately accosted. They had a team at the entrance, and they had different sorts of people within the team – some slightly tweedy, some slightly alternative. They knew how to target – so we got the slightly grunge Jesus Army member come and talk to us. What I found appalling about it was that they were using all the same things that you could have accused us of using as tactics – the free hand-outs, the warmth, the generosity. Exactly the same things, exactly the same sort of audience. Mostly younger, disillusioned kids, who are always on the lookout for some meaning in their life. They were exploiting all the same obvious needs that I’d like to think we weren’t exploiting. One shouldn’t really assume that the Jesus Army weren’t being equally altruistic. The Jesus Army believed in what they were doing. I don’t happen to believe in it, but that isn’t to discredit their systems of belief. But I found that quite disturbing, really. However honest and genuine or whatever – you can’t destroy the myth-making within situations, however hard one tries. I tried like the devil within Crass with Yes Sir and Ten Notes, both of which were almost exclusively my creative input. Other people did it, but they did it with resistance in both cases. I was trying to subvert the whole thing, to break the myth. But you can’t do it. It’s impossible. Once you’ve been mythologised, the myth simply continues. It’s like a kangaroo pocket, everything will fall into it.”
Among the least conditioned and musically stereotyped bands to emerge from Bullshit Detector (they contributed ‘Three Years Later’ to the second volume) were Chumbawamba, who started out with something akin to anarchist vaudeville. “We’d been making tapes of stuff for a while,” notes band member Boff Whalley, “odd, Frank Zappa-inspired things. It never seemed like it was in the ‘Crass’ vein. But we were identifying ourselves as anarchists, while being wary of the ‘mohican’ end of things. We weren’t being snotty or snobbish, just aware that we didn’t want to get sucked into some cult thing. We were still really into pop stuff like the Monochrome Set and Wire; still really into belligerent northern stuff like The Fall; and all the while reading Malatesta and Black Flag and all that. We sent a cassette of stuff to Crass – it was a Zappa-inspired 20-minute ‘concept’ piece, lots of different things linked up musically – without ever having heard of the Bullshit Detector thing. The first we knew about Bullshit Detector was when we got a letter from Crass months and months later saying they’d decided to use part of what we sent. They snipped a bit from the 20-minute piece and stuck it on there.”
“We didn’t know Penny then, or later, or now,” Boff continues. “I love Penny, he’s a big part of my growing up – even now, I love to read and hear what he says. I think I’ve maybe had thirty seconds conversation with him. He’s such a clever bloke. Always has been. But I’ve had such disagreements with what he’s said, too. We also did a fanzine, which we called The Obligatory Crass Interview, the joke being that there wasn’t a Crass interview in it [at a time when nearly ever fanzine seemed to carry such a feature as a pre-condition of its existence]. Basically, our connection to the Crass people/band/label was because we loved Feeding Of The 5,000, loved them live and partly, through them, started to learn about anarchism/radicalism/revolutionary politics etc. We loved that whole DIY scene – thought it was something huge and exciting and important. They were the bee’s knees – but we certainly weren‘t going to try to play like them, or sound like them. We still loved Orange Juice and the Marine Girls, and we had this idea that Crass were a southern thing, that it somehow didn’t quite translate into the football-loving hear
tlands.”
And yet, Boff concedes, Crass were ‘instrumental’ in ‘us becoming what we were’. “They kept us eager and questioning and interested. They were a part of the music scene that nobody had encountered before. We fed off their ideas so much. Our problem was that we took them at face value and believed that biting the hand that fed us was part of the process. The two most influential people in my political/cultural education were Penny Rimbaud and Johnny Rotten. Neither of these would be happy to hear that, I think. We were definitely privileged to have been part of that, early on. When we got the track on Bullshit Detector 2, we sat around and made a definite plan of action. How to take this further. Crass had made a statement about wanting to encourage bands to do things on their own, so we took it as a nudge in the right direction.”
Several bands similarly took that option. The origins of Flux Of Pink Indians’ Spiderleg imprint originate in The Epileptics, a previous incarnation of the band, based in nearby Bishops Stortford. “What the hell Crass ever saw in The Epileptics, at first, we have absolutely no idea!” recalls Kevin Hunter. “The Epileptics were doing songs like ‘I Wanna Give You A ‘69’. Crass obviously couldn’t have heard the lyrics, but maybe they liked the attitude.” Nevertheless the alliance served the band well, as Flux of Pink Indians became part of the wider Crass movement and discourse.
Conflict would establish Mortarhate, under whose flag sailed several unremarkable anarcho groups, the best of which were Icons Of Filth, The Lost Cherrees, Hagar The Womb and Potential Threat. Chumbawamba themselves set up Agit Prop and, after releasing debut single ‘Revolution’, set about planning a full album, Pictures Of Starving Children Sell Records was unarguably among the most persuasive records to emerge from the anarcho punk movement. “We had definite studio days booked in to record an album,” recalls Boff, “and we had a set of songs to record. And then the Live Aid thing began to creep into popular culture. This big thing that was going to happen, and why, and what it meant, etc. Of course, we had concrete objections to the whole charade. With about two weeks to go before we had our first day in the studio (and that was a big day in those times, proper studio days and proper studio costs), we had a meeting. It was suggested that we scrap all the lyrics we had and re-write the whole thing so it was about Live Aid. Everyone agreed, some reluctantly. We had frantic rehearsals and writing sessions and came up with a whole new album, written to the tunes of the proposed album.”
