…has been mentioned before here as it was watching a performance art show by her that inspired me to return to the creative arts. This clip is a simple magc show really and as such, quite a lot shorter and lighter than the show I saw, but Marisa Carnesky can do no wrong in my eyes. Here she is:

Early Steroids graffitti inthe Wapping Anarchy Centre toilets, including Stinks symbol and ‘Stink the Bog’

PRODUCT / RECUPERATION / SEDITION – ONLY CONNECT…

The news that Steve Ignorant from Crass is to perform for two nights at the Shepherds Bush Empire, rekindling The Feeding Of The 5000 has been greeted with an astonishing amount of debate as to whether or not this is right / wrong / healthy / unhealthy etc. Seldom has the simple act of playing two concerts sparked such a debate about whether fun is more important than the old Situationist concept of recuperation. Frankly, it’s been a wanker magnet.

Against this background, I have, recently, been sent a couple of new products which could also get entangled in this swirling existentential confusion of the virtues of subversion and the status quo: the new McDermott’s Two Hours album and a book by punk77.co.uk head honcho, Paul Marko, recalling the complete history of London punk club The Roxy.

Apart from an air of seditious mischief masquerading as fun, what unites and unties these two products is the sense of connection you get with both. All art of every persuasion is essentially an attempt to express some kind of connection with the experience of living, and the best art speaks to you about such in ways that make your hair stand on end.

Punk Rock took that quite literally, of course and Marko’s book is a 500-page vox-pop from all the foot soldiers and band members that were caught in the eye of the (Weimar) storm and its troops. From a 30-years-later point of view, in a culture that has eradicated storms almost completely, it’s fascinating to examine the ebbs and flows of a time when freedom waived the rules. The punk explosion connected with disaffected youth everywhere, and has been the subject of a plethora of books (mine included), reissues and websites to unpick its every angle. Some regurgitate as useless recycled product whilst others offer something genuinely new. This book is the latter: some things matter.

McDermott’s Two Hours also tell stories of disaffection and connect with pretty much the same mindset. At their beginning in the late eighties in (“London by the sea”) Brighton, they mixed a spiky wild concoction of punk rock and Celtic folk that inspired the tail-end of the counter-culture to party like it’s, well, the late eighties. Lyricist and singer Nick Burbridge tells moving stories that connect you to his characters, because they’re archetypes we (as in ‘we’) all know — people who dance to the beat of a different drum; sometimes inspiringly, sometimes tragically. Almost twenty years later, their new album is lighter on the staccato attack of punk, and heavier on the folk rock. But what the more mature sound loses from the urgency of its youth, it regains through the gravitas of deeper introspection. When Burbridge sings “Move on again Molloy…”, you can just see the Irish traveller sitting on the doorstep of his caravan and reflecting on his life. The connection of reflection. The outside view.

So, a book where we can look back on anger and an album that invites the outsider inside in a culture that desperately needs deviant influences like these to be acted upon. When Steve Ignorant takes to the stage in a few weeks, it will surely be a better thing for him to do than going down the pub, won’t it?

In a vacuum where we sorely need a new Sex Pistols or Crass to shake things up — much more than we did back then incidentally — any attempt at connection is to be applauded, far outweighing the fun-hating armchair sancti-moaners who offer no fun (my babe…) themselves.

It’s coming out in Germany now as well:

Bosworth, GERMANY

Agenzia X, ITALY

Kawade Shobo, JAPAN

The song that most sprang to mind was Lennon’s ‘The Dream Is Over’.

Like him, I’d known it in my heart for some while, initially denied it then finally had to admit it to myself.

Rock n Roll had been my special friend for a quarter of a century, seeing me through the worst times and acting as a parentally-repellent loud soundtrack to the best.

Now, all of a sudden, I realised it was over between us. It wasn’t down to any fault of the Levellers at all, though I suppose the familiar territory made the tenability of the situation all the more clear.

As a child, my parents would ask – well, if so-and-so told you to put your hand I the fire, you wouldn’t do it would you? – it would have the desired effect of making me say no, but probably wouldn’t have the desired effect of stopping me admiring ‘bad’ influences.

I grew up with rock n roll as my standard-bearer, even since I first heard John Lennon utter the existential heresy that was ‘Imagine’ on a tinny transistor radio. An adult was daring to dream childrens dreams, and from that moment on, my parents answer ‘because life isn’t fair’ never quite cut the mustard.

And so through punk, festivals, gigs and demonstrations, the sense of a different possible future from the grey-nobody-life, became a workable alternative in my mind. If enough of us were prepared to work for it to happen, it could happen. And even if not, at least we had each other and we could have a bit of innocent fun before we died.

At that point, growing older seemed like a living death anyway. But rock n roll has been roasting my heart, with my habitual compliance, for some years now, turning the heat up every year. There came a time to stop listening to those voices, and acknowledge that the liberator, without apparently changing in character, had become the oppressor.

The chemical reaction had changed. Too many times have I watched from the sidelines as people singularly failed, through their own habit, to notice the colours fading to grey. Too many times has talk of love and peace rotted into action involving merely casual absorption of flesh and conscience-numbing drugs �and now I find myself dodging through semantic minefields, and pre-empting self-invented charges of defeat and cynicism.

Semantics – who gave me these crosses to bear?

We arrived at the Isle of Wight mid-afternoon on the Friday – perhaps seventy of us crammed into a double-decker coach. The occasion was a Levellers weekend – three gigs, a cabaret by Howard Marks and a fan convention spread from Friday night through to Sunday afternoon- a veritable treat for the fans and one pretty much only the Levellers would bother doing.

London Calling Music had also gone to a lot of trouble to organize holiday camp stays for some, campsite stays for others and travel for all. On the way down, we’d been treated to videos of Eddie Izzard live and a Levellers special – ‘Part-Time Punks’.

The Levellers fans remain the friendliest and most unaffected of any ‘tribe’ I’ve met so far, perhaps the ultimate expression of non-fashion, and certainly the most widely varied in terms of age and background. You certainly couldn’t hang the term ‘crusty’ on them, though more than once I sense that some of the straighter fans are vicariously thrilled that they might get associated with something others would perceive as dangerous or disgusting. Mostly, however, it’s just a disparate group of people with a shared interest who’ve followed the bands vibe of friendliness and unpretentiousness.

The sun is shining, weather is sweet, and plenty are waiting to put on their dancing feet. Me I’m already knackered, on account of having to get out of bed at 7-30 in the morning – a habit I still have no intention of picking up on a regular basis.

Come the moment, come the first gig. Beforehand, people mill around being important the way they always do before rock gigs. Only one moment stands out, when tour manager Jason is talking to the security.

It’s sincerely impressing listening to him explain to them, with an authority you can only earn and not impose, that they don’t (as they’d assumed) need to search the crowd. The way he puts it, with the supreme patience of neither slave nor master, seems to make them realise they’re here to help rather than hinder the punters. The Levellers attitude continues to be infectious after all these years.

But what of my attitude? To ask more. To ask more of self, more of others, to ask more of life. To realise this is no dress rehearsal – to ask more of love as a force, to ask more of life as an experience.

But more years wasted, blotted out, numbed to the pain we cause ourselves and others, is not asking more, it’s asking less. It’s the last tool of the reactionary, the last weapon of the state, and it’s the one that would seem to be the most effective. If you can’t silence the visionary by argument, feed them the drugs to do it for themselves�.give ‘em enough dope� I fell for that one.

But like when you’re dreaming, you can always wake up before you hit the ground. Then you realise that it’s not you that’s been falling, it’s a mutated you, fucked up by too many times out of control on substances to ease the pain of not really existing. The paradox can kill, and often does.

Who gave me these crosses to bear? I was 13 in 1977, there’s a clue. The initial liberator of my mind turned into the oppressor of my soul. Both me, of course.

The venue is usually an ice-rink, and as such, body-sweat mingles with dryish ice to produce an atmosphere the Batcave would be proud of. The Levellers play a blinder and the whole crowd is wet with satiation.

Afterwards, Howard Marks is giving a cabaret performance in the Ryde Theatre – another example of how the Levellers have pushed the boat out and ensured a fun-filled weekend. He does his normal stand up routine and people walk to the stage with lit joints for him and naughty schoolboy grins on their faces. He’s charming but it’s the wrong moment, and really, is there a right one to hear some old stoner becoming an alternative Des O’Connor? Clearly, as far as these folk are concerned, there is. The shallow end. And I drift further away.

The Levellers are storming once more on Saturday night, and the crowd lap it up. But the crowd are in conditions that even footie fans have declared illegally unsafe, so who’s giving what to who?

I know the Levellers give more than most (most bands don’t in fact give an inch), and it’s clear that this is as good as it gets, but I don’t care. All of a sudden it’s not good enough for me.

And then I start wondering why� I watch the gig from backstage – a first for me despite seeing the band a number of times I couldn’t even guess at. This time I’m watching the crowd too, searching for signs that there is still something there beyond the rock n roll ritual that has been separating the bored and lonely from their cash ever since Colonel Tom Parker.

And there probably is, but this time, for the first time – I can’t see it. I see the best lighting going, hear some of my favourite ever songs, but feel none of the solidarity.

Because its not there – I don’t feel solidarity with anyone anymore. And this, I feel, is the path to a truer freedom than the one I have right now.

How can you know yourself by jumping up and down in a crowd singing another man’s words? That’s not yourself is it? One or two lines might be, but before you know it, you’re singing along with the third line, whether you agree with it or not. And your self is starting to dissolve into the group mind. The CIA sussed this out long ago – maybe it’s time we did.

That said, any other band would have been far more indicative of that. The press used to slag the idea of thousands of people singing along to the line “there’s only one way of life, and that’s your own”.

Daughters and sons, it’s time to sing your own songs – you’ve got your own songs to sing. Only one way – your own – it’s still about the best line anybody could sing along with, isn’t it? Otherwise you’re just left with instrumentals, where no one even tries to express themselves through language, and I’m certainly not that old.

Tonight though, I wonder. I wonder about the notion of anyone wanting to join such a big crowd in order to feel some kind of necessarily plastic solidarity. I note that its cruel to be at a Levellers gig wondering this, when just about every other band ever deserves the thought more, but perhaps this is the very place to be thinking it because the paradox seems clearer, to me at least

And then I find myself backstage. At one awful moment, Levellers agent Charlie Myatt asks me what I thought of the gig.

“Nothing, Charlie, I felt absolutely nothing – didn’t even tap my foot – just stared at the crowd and reflected on the Nuremberg rally and how easily people are led. In fact, I wrote as much about the Springsteen crowd when he came over last year, but back then I put it down to the fact that they all had mortgages and cars and kids and he was just a pseudo-romantic part of a very ruthless machine�� But honestly, that says more about me than the band. Honest.”

No, I didn’t say that. You don’t, you see.

“Great Charlie – they still got it!”

Yes, I tap his shoulder and say that instead. The music business gives you two choices – be social or fuck off. I wasn’t inclined to the bullshit of the first, and hence a lot of people I met in ‘the biz’ didn’t take long before they wished I was doing the second. And there’s only so much you can take before you give in or fuck off. And so the grand social circus trundles on.

I refrain from telling the whole truth about my feelings several more times over the weekend, mainly to fans, because this is their riot, and I don’t want to deny them that. But deep down I know it’s not mine anymore. My war is over, if I want it. And I do.

I chat with various members of the band, which seems a lot more fulfilling in that they remain as charming as they ever were – I look round at the friends, the hangers on, the industry bods and the beautiful women and �I don’t feel a thing.

Elsewhere backstage people are performing the normal rituals – true to every band that’s ever had a backstage – chat to everyone, talk to no-one, keep on moving, keep networking. Play dressed up as work or work dressed up as play – maybe we’ve forgotten what play really is.

And maybe it’s time to remember.

Blood sweat and tears really don’t matter? Just the things we do in this garden��.? Fine, but the rock n roll circus looks less like a garden to me every time, and more like a machine that uses the blood and sweat of the self-same folk who’s tears pay them their living. Maybe I shouldn’t have even warmed my hands near the fire my parents so warned me against.

So it’s not the Levellers that have changed – it’s me. Time to check out and see what the outside world looks like – apparently there’s quite a lot of it to see.

Reports of the death of the rock n roll have, of course, been greatly exaggerated ever since Elvis joined the army, but it’s never been in a coma this long before. And if I have to eat those words at some point, I’d be delighted to – but not at the same table as anyone who migh

t make me.

THE SQUADRON PUB 12am-2am

After we escape backstage, there’s another do on back at a pub that has christened itself the official meeting point for the fans for the weekend. Inside, it’s like a sauna but a group of about ten people are dancing in the middle of the floor to Levellers tapes, all singing their hearts out and generally sharing their good feelings.

And it’s better than the gig because it’s inclusive – they don’t seek glances or glory or focus on any direction. And it strikes me that maybe rock n roll is dead, because though they probably would abhor the thought, this is club culture they’re enacting. It was ultimately about them and their shared vision, even if it was still another man’s mouthpiece.

So there you go. This wasn’t about the Levellers, but what review is ever about the band? Indeed, what opinion can ever be anything more than one distorted-lens mutation of the agreement generally agreed as reality?

So goodbye rock n roll and hello God knows what. I’ll find new Everests to climb, new Pacific’s to dive, new Greasy Joe’s to eat in. If all this has been a long-winded way of saying I’m too old, then fair enough – it was a long and glorious affair with all the drama, love and heartbreak of an old Hollywood blockbuster, so the least I could do was give it a tribute.

In many ways, I gave it that tribute with eight lines I wrote at the start of chapter one of (the as yet unpublished) ‘Horse-Drawn & Quartered’:

“I sold my soul to rock ‘n’ roll,
now I’d like to buy it back

for a laugh and a pint of stout”

Which was written four years ago, so the final curtain’s been a long time coming – cutting the teenage umbilical cord wasn’t a decision taken lightly or quickly. But in the end I had to be certain.

Now there are new futures, new landscapes, new atmospheres, new possibilities and new senses of possibility to explore.

And the dream is only over for me – for others there will be different mountains to climb, different flights to charter.

Another quote at the start of ‘Horse-Drawn�.’, taken from an old Dexy’s Midnight Runners song ‘I’ll Show You’, explains a yearning still shared by many and maybe rock n roll can fulfill it yet for some:

“Mortgaged-up families looked at first too mundane

something special perhaps”

Something special perhaps.

Bon soir. See you round.

George Berger, London, September 2000.

I’m Looking Over Pink Floyd’s Wall, And They’re looking At Me

by George Berger

The Background

Berlin, after WW2 proved the nightmare nobody could wake up from. The cold war begins and is set in place with a wall dividing Berlin. The wall becomes a symbol, differing in meaning to both sides.

Then – as years roll on – it becomes a focus of hatred as much as a symbol of it. Somebody adds to the graffiti: ‘just stop for 30 seconds and think about where your own wall is’. Nobody does, it never becomes the wonder-wall.Years of suffering later, the wall is torn down, as capitalism celebrates it’s victory of the cold war. There are no street parties in Britain, not that I can remember anyway, but the Berlinners look excited. Friends waffle with Pavlovian enthusiasm as virtual-tanks plunder their way through the Eastern-Bloc, in the guise of MacDonalds and soft-porn. Freedom, as the West likes to practise it. Strange times in hindsight. Particularly strange to experience in the very recent aftermath.

So, the Berlin Wall had just come down and ex-Pink Floyd bloke Roger Waters decided it would be a good idea to do a gig there, performing ‘The Wall’ with a host of co-stars. I was writing for old music paper Sounds at the time and they decided they wanted an ‘On The Road’ piece. I hated the idea of having to suffer the whole thing live, but the perceived interest of the moment got me big-time. Something to tell your grandchildren about, maybe. Unless your grandchildren had the good sense to hate Pink Floyd and be unimpressed by the twentieth-century obsession with fame…even if it’s only the fame a moment contains. Not many will possess these fine traits, I fear. We as a race like to look back – it cushions us against looking straight ahead and spares us looking forward.So, having always fancied myself as a bit of a globetrotting type, I volunteered, thinking I’d got a proper result.

With hindsight, that most wondrous of benefits, the other journalists simply had the experience to never volunteer for anything that involved coach trips. But I was raw and eager, fancying myself as more street-level and cutting edge. Bloody hell, most of them had stayed in Bed & Breakfasts when they went down to review Festivals….And so it came to pass that I found myself at London’s Victoria Station at midnight, waiting for a bus to Berlin. I’d always fancied Berlin, when it was West Berlin and various friends were coming back with wondrous stories about the nightlife. Sounded like a holiday camp for the counter-culture. It had an edgy romance about it, like a friend you enjoy seeing when drunk but want to keep away from your daytimes for the most part. You dig?

God, should I have remembered…

I think of Michael as I would imagine one war victim thinks of another – fellow survivors, bound in a mutual experience few share. In our case, it was the complete appalling jungle that was our school. Though it never got to Michael the way it got to me, he’s the only person I’ve bothered to keep in touch with and it…..means something. It means something in the guts, far too hard to try and transfer it to the head for a rationality-translation. I should have listened.

The Foreground

With me for the duration was a Sounds photographer by the name of Leo – an amiable Irishman possessed with a spirit of adventure. He immediately impressed me when he told me he’d met a mutual (English) friend for the first time outside a hotel in South America during an anti-government demonstration. He’d been sprayed with acid from a ‘water’-cannon on that particular demo, and written about it for the Guardian. All of a sudden, the Berlin trip was beginning to feel quite romantic. As we left Victoria, Leo whipped out a bottle of Jack Daniels and I whipped out a feeling that I was Jack Kerouac….part of the endless freakshow on the highways of the night. One way ticket etc. The yellow lights lit up the neon of the city and we sped through the streets, somehow more knowing; more wild, more Indiana Jones than the shitkickers who lined the wet pavements on their way home. Depressed about going to work in the morning, no doubt, to some job they hated but were too scared to leave. Not me! I WAS the Beat Generation, albeit in a steward role. I’d checked everybody aboard the coach, nobody was late and we were off. Time for adventure.

Whoosh!

Bristol is a long way away when you’re travelling on a coach. So is Brighton. Everywhere is. Berlin, then, is a long, long way. Nothing to do but talk, and you know small-talk won’t last long when you’re sat next to the same person till Berlin. So you open up. The alternative is awkward silences, and if you’ve done a long trip once, you know how easy an option opening up is. All had been relatively quiet on the Western front as Leo and I swapped life stories, sharing swigs of Jack. By the end of the bottle, we were both several years older and getting maudlin about the times we’d loved and lost. More so, the women. Whilst everybody else was sensibly stockpiling sleep-hours in preparation for the fun ahead, we were giggling at German road-signs like ‘ausfart’. Well, I was anyway.

People woke up gradually, as the countries rolled on. Excited chattering filled the coach as everybody got seriously awake to pass through to East Berlin. One to tell their grandchildren – the wall might have been down, but the borders were still up And they sold beer from vending machines. I’m looking over the wall, and they’re looking at me. Chatter filled the air about ‘history in the making’ and other such stuff that people conjour up to convince themselves they’re living exciting lives. Which is alright, y’know…

Having trundled the tourists off to their rooms, quietly smug that I wasn’t one by way of the work ethic, I handed something to the receptionist. I can’t remember what, a list or something.As he reached out to receive it, his shirt sleeve rode up to reveal a concentration camp tattoo. I looked at it, looked at him and hoped I hadn’t been gawping. Then I wondered how many times he must have to face this unprompted reminder. With hindsight, I can’t help but be reminded of ‘The Night Porter’, with all the bitter ironies within the comparison inevitably clouding my memory. I, hopefully quickly, shrugged the thought off and retired to my room.

The Nearground

The gig itself was about an hour’s drive away (so was that Dusseldorf? Answers on a postcard..)

At least, it was normally. Of course, hundreds of thousands of people were converging the same place – hippies clogging up the traffic – perhaps a precedent. The sun beat down hard on the coach as we sat in traffic jams for hours, getting more and more frustrated. This ain’t rock n roll, this is….whoops!

Inside, we stood on what looked like grey sand (????) for approximately twenty years waiting for the ‘fun’ to start. My personal fun started queuing for the toilets, which took almost as long as the traffic jams had. I realised why when I got to the front, buttocks clenched, to see the provisions were urinals for about six and two log cabins. This made Glastonbury look very good indeed. It made me feel panic – my bowels had been loosening in closely studied anticipation. Then I got to the front of the poop-queue, as the lucky pissers came and went. And came and went. And came. And went.Twenty minutes! What are the chances of both log cabins being occupied, by the people who entered within a minute of each other, for twenty minutes? Am I missing out on something here? I started getting visions of Christianne F and two overdosed German junkies busy dying in the khazi whilst I was touching cloth. Thankfully it was not to be and eventually one of them left me to it. I let out a mile and praised the Lord.

That was great on the video.

He turned up eventually, half an hour after the last-but-one seat had filled. That he was in a bad way was unquestionable, whatever the cause. My heart lifted as I realised was going to live. I’ve always thought cowardice the most noble of virtues when it comes to violence. As the coach was about to leave, he approached me announcing that he’d gone yup to the Scottish kids at the back and they’d tried to rape him. At that moment, I passed from being out of my depth to the verge of a nervous breakdown.About three hours later, maybe 4.30 in the morning, we arrived back at the hotel. Personally, I’d had a shite night. It was like being lost in the West End, or at Glastonbury, which is worse. It was even a bit like being Lost In France, as I remember Bonnie Tyler describing the feeling. Now I was knackered and suffering the sort of hangover that post-piss-up sleep-deprivation can only bring. The George Mitchell phase had got to me – I’d realised just how genuinely dangerous these people were and I was sick of being around them. I made sure everyone knew we were leaving at 9am on the dot – don’t be late! – when I was approached with more great news.They’d been kicked out their room, I was informed at the hotel desk. They’d been impersonating Keith Moon the night before and they weren’t welcome anymore. I, of course, had to tell them. I knew they’d go mad and I figured it’d be at me. God, was I not cut out for this.

I went to get some moral support from Leo the photographer before facing them and he just shrugged and came down. It was at that moment that I realised why it was him in South America and not me. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a coward – I am and I’ve already lived longer than some of my friends. The Scottish troop were fine, almost resigned about it. Phew! I went to bed, hassling everybody that I’d be waiting for them at 9am sharp and if they weren’t there the coach would leave without them.9.10am the phone ring finally stirred me from my hungover slumber to find a very cross man on the other end telling me my coach had been waiting outside for ten minutes… The ribbing I got may be seen as sublimely deserved, but I shrivelled nonetheless.

Later…They got nicked in Holland for shoplifting at a service station, in the middle of the bloody night. I had to negotiate with a hangover and armed cops to stop them being left there. All I could do was stare at this coppers gun holster and groove on the surreallity of it all. Quite why I wasn’t just up for leaving them there, logical as it would have been, escapes me at the moment. I would write ‘anything for a quiet life’, but it would sound silly given the circumstances.

Later…The ferry crossing was fine, funnily enough. Me and Leo had another heart to heart, where we tore the British press to pieces and vowed we’d make this a special piece. After all, we’d really suffered for our art this time round. It never was – it was hacked to pieces by the people upstairs, even changing it from a first-person piece to a third-person piece. I complained, realising as I did that the horse had already bolted and all I was doing was shit-stirring. Berlin just after the wall came down was a bit like Birmingham. Roger waters was a hippy on a stage I couldn’t even see. So, the Pistols failed then. 1989 was personally a great year – how was it for you darling – and this trip was definitely it’s low point.You never know, I might write about something I enjoy next time. But maybe that wouldn’t be as much fun.Later…Back at Victoria coach station, the drivers are saying goodbye to everybody. They’re old troopers, done it before, doing it again tomorrow, wishing everyone well with well-practised smiles. . The one who looks particularly like Jack off On The Buses patronisingly ruffles my hair and jokingly says ‘….and I hope we never see you again’. Only he means it, which is a bit of a bummer, if mutual. Personally, Leo and Michael aside, I hope I never see any of them again. Berlin can wait too…

George Berger

With thanks to Leo Regan, who was an inspiration that weekend, and other times. Hope this version did your advice justice, Leo!

Apologies for the tumbleweed… hectic at home.

Here’s a GB column from 2002, written for 3am but not published….??!

Perhaps because its heretical about voting:

2 May 2002

After all the recent news about voter apathy, largely in the wake of Le Pens horrific successes in France, I’ve just been out to vote in the local British Council elections.

I’m not one of those who needed prodding, mind you. I’ve never not voted….even the most stupid hippie would surely agree with hindsight that you can’t ignore things to death. Practitioners of the ‘if voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal’ cliché would do well to remember that Thatcher, Reagan and Hitler were all voted in and all went on to make a lot of changes – all of them for the worse, and all of them in situations where the majority of the vote came nowhere near the majority of eligible voters.

But enough of the sermon.Voting is always a vaguely bizarre experience, but voting in the ward I’m voting in is also a complete waste of time. For my sins, I presently live in a Conservative safe seat, and a trip to the polling booth quickly shows you why: the average age of the old biddies collecting the cards was at least 60, and they were spring chickens compared to the average age of people zimmerframing-it round the booths. Turning up in torn trainers and a ‘vive le rock’ t-shirt, with your border collie dog trotting beside you makes you stand out like a sore thumb in situations like this, even in this day and age. And it’s remarkably annoying – they know you’re not on their side, but they know they’re going to win anyway. It’s a shared contrivance that makes the act of voting seem exasperatingly futile. I haven’t been looked at in such a contemptuously patronizing way since….the last time I voted here.

The last time I voted anywhere, in an area as solidly anti-Tory as this area is pro-, the scene was very different. Middle-aged lefties rather than Old Tory Women, so the futility belonged to someone else, but doubtless it was still there. We got a Green candidate on the council that time, which felt quite good – he’d even been round to see us…no sign of anyone this time. It’s always slightly frustrating that the Tories never come round – I’ve been waiting years to politely waste as much of their time as possible before shouting at them as impolitely. The site of a quickly retreating nervous Tory candidate will have to wait for another time.

Anyway, I soldier on into the booth with my list of candidates, pick up the pencil and peruse the pox. Such is the state of local excitement that not even the local press have told me who’ll be standing, so this is the first chance I get to see how another part of my lifetime’s ration of democracy will be used.

Three choices I get. Three bloody choices……if indeed you can call them choices by virtue of the parties having different names and microscopic differences in policy. I was planning to vote Green, but such is the nature of local democracy that they haven’t got a candidate. Given that I would only ever vote Conservative if I was faced with a ‘vote Chirac, not Le Pen’ type nightmare, that leaves Labour or The Liberal Democrats. None of the parties come even close to sharing my world view, and never really have – but at least 20 years ago I felt an illusion of choice, albeit within narrow parameters.

‘Democracy’ has come a long way since the Greeks invented the word. Perhaps ‘gone a long way’ would be a better way of putting it – gone a long way from peoples’ aspirations beyond the financial, gone a long way from the idea of fair representation, gone a long way from any notion of serving the people rather than ruling them. Given up on the idea, in Britain at least, of giving you a genuine choice.

With a heavy heavy heart, I vote Liberal Democrat – Labour lost my lifetime General Election vote when Blair dragged it to the right of acceptable to me in order that it may be acceptable to Tories instead. And, of course, the old cronies voting around me still think Labour are in bed with the Soviets, so they won’t get in round here anyway. Not how you planned it, is it Tony? So the Lib Dems get my vote by default, because it’s still better than not voting. But not much, and it seems less each time.

‘Just a reminder, get out and vote’ says the (left wing) DJ on the radio as I’m typing this ‘whatever you want to vote, just go and do it’. But that’s the point, I can’t vote for whoever I want to. Three choices – no choice at all. I’ll continue to vote, as far as the I can see, but as it becomes more futile and pointless, the turnouts are never going to get any better.

On the way out, as I’m untying my dog Muttley from the fence, he makes a little break for it and enjoys a minute or so of freedom dancing around. The simple joy of being off his leash, and being able to go any direction. He strolls up to sniff the steward, who is clearly horrified.

I smile, somehow it seems very symbolic.

George Berger

Coming up -  both Italian and Japanese editions of The Story of Crass, with Agencia X and Kawade Shobo as the publishers.

Interview with Gerard as George Berger here (or even as Gerard Berger at one point!)

http://www.3ammagazine.com

EPILOGUE – REFLECTIONS

A couple of years ago, Pomona Books released a book of all the Crass lyrics entitled ‘Love Songs’. Bassist Pete Wright wrote to publisher Mark Hodgkinson with his thoughts on Crass:

“Things were fine when we started gigging, before we had any status or influence. The main discomfort I felt and still feel about what the band promoted, started when I realised that Thatcher’s sordid right-wing laissez-faire was little different from what we were pushing. It was an unpleasant shock. Neither Thatcher nor we considered the damage done. We concentrated on the ‘plus’ side always. To say thateveryone can ‘do it’, and counting it a justification when the talented, the motivated, or the plain privileged responded, while ignoring the majority who couldn’t ‘do it’, and those who got damaged trying, is a poor measure of success.”

“Just as Putin has become the new Tzar of Russia, Crass used the well worn paths to success and influence. We had friends, people with whom we worked and cooperated. We were educated, socially connected. We networked, lied, cheated, intimidated, tricked, bought, bribed, mocked, flattered, self-deluded, and
accommodated all manner of contradictions to maintain our ‘rightness’. And we worked hard.”

“The early ad hoc nature of the band led to some weird rationales. The Anarchy banner at gigs was there purely to stop us being co-opted by the far left or right who were circling at the time. That’s all it was, an inspired move, suggested by Penny, I think, because who the hell knew about the academic aspect? It was what we said it was. This was England. Anarchy is as bollocks in this country, as it is bourgeois on
the continent.”

“The barrage of querulous questions that ensued crammed us into defining a cod ideology, a chimera of individualistic libertarianism. Blue-black.”

“The parallels between Crass and the opposition penetrated everywhere. The ‘apocalyptic’ nature of our outlook, our ‘all or nothing’ message, reflected the State pacifying its population through fear of total destruction. It’s not easy to put forward a reasoned analysis of the use of bogeymen to justify State oppression, if the supposed radicals are plying the same trade to bolster an identical ‘us and them’, ‘all or nothing’ mentality.”

“I think it was about 1982 when I came across an article by an Australian scientist/scientific journalist who suggested that if all the nuclear weapons in the world were launched, arrived and exploded at the same time – an unlikely worst case, but go with it – then the net result, excluding the highly improbable occurrence of a catastrophic crust split or some such, would be that most of northern Europe and parts
of north America would be a wasteland. Since most people in the world live south of the equator, and the weather systems north and south hardly mix, the result for this majority would probably be a move to the right in their governments and a marginally increased radiation count. Our big bombs just weren’t that big. The Apocalypse which we projected on the rest of the world was our local apocalypse, limited to ourselves. “We are the world.” Oh yeah? It’s the same today. Me is everything.”

“The writer’s coda to the Crass world view was that it made fighting for substantial reforms virtually impossible. The view we promoted was the view the State promoted. The grooves run deep.”

“The early quality of Crass was a much more hopeful, anarchic, irresponsible ‘ fuck off to the system’, inchoate, intelligent and insidious.”

“The central premise of your book: Crass lyrics as love songs troubles me. What can I say. It seems almost churlish to carp, although I get a mischievous image, as Crass members wax lyrical about love, of maudlin alkies crying into their Special Brew. The Crass people were personable, affectionate, hospitable, but the Crass engine was something altogether darker.”

“Those poignant claims – yes I’m as guilty – of a bedrock of love and sensitivity driving all that bilious doggerel and poetry was the lure of mystification that flooded through the last thirty years, like the uncritical taste for alternative medicine and self-centred views of the beast, ‘human spirit’. Hand in hand: State, media, and us proles alike. We were all at it. Still are.”

“I wonder when we’ll be able to face up to the essential nature of evangelism, of proselytising. Forceful persuasion requires a platform plus charisma plus bigotry (plus the promotion of the same message in a different package if possible). That works well.”

“Crass was bigoted. A singleness of message, a polar view shorn of checks and balances and considerations. The nature of the people who are good at this is by nature skewed. Balanced people don’t cut it.”

“Bigotry is widespread. Rarer, is that extremist edge to society which allows the centre to adjust as it sees the need. The raw material for this edge is always the fuckup people, and they usually get more fucked up in the process. That’s the cost. I feel we failed. We were the raw material, but somehow we fluffed it.”

“The pacifism that ran through the Crass output is something else that has pretty much escaped examination. If you can get what you want by your class, education, charm, money, contacts, location – where is the need to fight? In the far off places where the shit that this country generates is manifest, the difference between the pacifist and non-pacifist, is that the first chooses to suffer to change things, while
the second chooses to inflict suffering on the opposition. In this country pacifism is a convenience, a safe, assured parking bay.”

“And part of the Crass pacifist ‘message’ was the recognition of the exposed and public nature of our lives, and the danger of kids screwing up theirs with serious but naive, ‘on message’ bravura. It was also a sharp cut-off point to what we were prepared to do. We could shout as loud and as violently as we wanted, while holding tight the lid.”

“When Penny kindly offered me ten minutes of stage time at the Queen Elizabeth Hall Anti-the-coming-war gig last year, and I got an unsettling glimpse of the retro programme, my concern was how, despite all this, was it possible to communicate my reservations. An audience can’t really hear what a band is saying, so I hired an actress to fake a stage invasion half way through our allotment, and
challenge me with all the things that I wanted to challenge both the other performers and the audience with. Lord knows, I’d been years challenging myself. The central aim for me that night was for us to ask ourselves, “Is this enough? If it’s not going to be enough to do what’s needed, if it’s not going to do the trick, why do it? Why not spend the time and energy thinking up something that will work?” Shift the dialogue up an uncomfortable notch.”

“I suspect that art follows and interprets sea changes within societies. Artists traditionally claim the credit for initiation, but it’s perhaps more an essential ‘camp following’ and inspired packaging of the glorious, shocking, organic us. The most successful artists are often the most eclectic. No less for that. But it’s too easy to be uncritical as we bow before innovation.”

“We watched the unions in the seventies trading the power of collective action for a pay rise, rather than for time and space, and they subsequently watched their gains vanish into the mist of inflation.”

“Crass grabbed hold of something undefined in ’77, and transformed it by diligent effort and talent, eventually, into more of the same old same old. That is our legacy, bless us. The music was good; the gigs were good; good art; good prose; good records; it was great to believe; comforting to have our egos looked after; terrific to work with people we respected. And we’re still fucked up. Still becoming what we most
despise. Still looking.”

“For me, more of the psycho, please. Less of the phant.”

Penny Rimbaud: “There’s that slightly offensive element in that saying only if you’re in the arse end of it, can you have any sense of reality. It’s not MY fault that I’m public-school educated, that I came from a wealthy family etc – if I’d become a bank manager, I’d have toed the line, but I didn’t toe the line: I said I’ve got a lot of privileges – I can talk, I’ve been educated, I can use that as far as possible to the benefit of everyone I come into contact with. I never pretended to understand how it must feel to be a working class kid anymore than how it must feel to be a woman. What I’ve tried to do is say this is my life and I’m happy to share everything I’ve got in that life with you, and listen to what you’ve got to say.”

George McKay: “They didn’t strike me as being an individualizing or bourgeois event. If you look at it from a purely consumerist perspective, the fact they played benefits and played all these grass roots little places… all the events spoke to me of a project to do something a bit different.”

Joy De Vivre: “I don’t think I deserved to have no money, but because we never played the game, then I’m not surprised that we didn’t have rewards of the game.”

Phil Free: “It seems absolutely kosher – fabulous. That’s exactly how it should be. I didn’t come out of there thinking ‘oh fuck’. The only regrets I would have would be about inter-personal relationships.”

Joy De Vivre: “Yes, absolutely, that was sad.”

Phil Free: “Maybe the problem was that it was artificially tightly bound.”

Penny Rimbaud: “Most of the people I know who were involved in that era then fanned out into all sorts of other satisfying forms of action, be it becoming writers or becoming social helpers – an amazing number of people. You can’t be saying ‘oh alright, but look at the damaged souls along the way, you can’t do that…”

“It’s just not true to say all that success came out of middle-class values and middle-class attitudes. I know a large number of kids who came from very hard working class backgrounds who are now involved in all sorts of activities which hitherto were exclusively middle-class – it’s one of the great successes of Crass was to introduce working class kids to middle class attitudes and middle class concerns. The simple fact is we’re dominated by middle class values, we probably will be for a considerable time yet in social history. Look at what happened to vegetarianism – we took vegetarianism from the ramblers association having their cheese sandwich into something which became a radical movement. And remains a radical movement. And the effects of that radical movement has been that supermarkets have to consider what they put on their shelves – they have to satisfy a new market. Well, that isn’t what we set out to do…”

“We live a long life and there’s not many people who touch our soul, who help us to see something, feel something outside what we thought we were seeing or feeling. I meet them still all the time, kids who say “if it hadn’t been for you….”

“Of course, there’s probably lots of them who ended up in mental hospitals as a result of exposure to our ideas.”

David Tibet: “The Crass legacy is incalculable. Personally, I am proud and honoured to have known them and to have been a friend of theirs, as well as a collaborator even if on just a tiny scale. On a grander level, they were without doubt one of the most important groups ever, and I mean “group” to be taken in the musical and conceptual and cultural senses; none of the other punk groups even get a look in. I think their legacy has had a far greater resonance and influence than practically any other cultural entity since the the late 1970s. Sonically, the ferocity of their sound coupled with the articulacy of their passionate vision made everything else around seem redundant. They revitalised CND, gave anarchy back its true nature as a state of mind and heart rather than a fashion statement, made rebellion an act of thoughtfulness rather than of wearing leathers, and showed many, many people that you could be angry yet, with ferocity and humour, create a thoughtful beauty, fighting back against the ugliness and the horror of the world around, that still scares the shit out of warmongers, liars, media parasites, authorities, Caesars, Pharaohs and all the other forces of Antichrist everywhere. They have become increasingly more relevant as the years go by, and as long as there is deceit on any major scale in the world their importance will grow. It really is difficult for me to say just how much they meant, and mean, to me; I don’t think the members of Crass ever really knew.”

Alistair Livingstone: “With punk, Vivienne and Malcolm took powerfully contrasting/ conflicting images/ energies and brought them together. The absolute impulse of anarchism towards freedom and liberation, the equally absolute impulse of fetishism to slavery and bondage. The political and the sexual. Magickal power and economic power. Hegel – thesis and antithesis combined to create a synthesis. Punk. Such energy, such ecstasy as eternal delight…

But was it? Crass said Punk is Dead

(…quotes the song lyrics, highlighting… Patti Smith you’re napalm,You write with your hand but it’s Rimbaud’s arm)

Fuck off Crass, you never got IT. Sexless black zombies who stole our dreams, our tainted love for all that is forbidden and denied, you spoke of punk with its corpse in your mouths, and never knew the pleasure of our decadent desires. We were the children of Ziggy Stardust and Lou Reed, glammed up to our eyeballs with the new york dolls, falling in ecstasy at the feet of Patti Smith. How Dare You Insult Our Goddess whose words we made flesh? We Shall Live Again was the chant with which we began the Centro Iberico Anarchy Centre. And where were you? Lost in your hippy dreams in Epping… we spit upon your graves, you dead souls.

This is our babelogue , our gift to Babalon, into her cup we pour our desires , our energies, our dreams, our nightmares…”

Boffo From Chumbawamba: ”1,2,3,4… I was getting used to travelling around the country watching this band, Crass, wanting to infiltrate the big gang which followed them around and which looked (from the outside) like a community worth belonging to. Young and idealistic, focused and passionate. And good-looking, too. All dressed in black, skinny and tattered, punk’s real Dickensian waifs in vegan boots and pale faces. I was probably older than these Crass followers, more a refugee from the Pistols/Clash fall-out.

But I loved this whole thing, its attention to real life and a band who still shocked me with their utter lack of rocknroll. Crass were so unrocknroll it hurt. I couldn’t fathom it, couldn’t understand how I could love rocknroll so much and yet embrace this group of punks with their anti-everything stance. Loved it.

Crass were the first group I saw who stepped right out of the mythology and presented themselves as real people. They were still heroes to me — no kidding, they were up on stage, I was in the audience, I bought their records — but they made every effort to shorten the gap between them and me. Me, standing half-way back in every audience, an arm’s length behind the manic dancers and two giant steps in front of the bemused and curious onlookers.

And after a while, after ten or fifteen shows, I thought I could make a move and introduce myself to the band. I wasn’t going to walk up and shake Penny Rimbaud’s hand, of course. Wasn’t going to tell Eve or Andy how gorgeous and inspiring they were. “Hey Joy, good to chat. I just want to tell you that I wear black all the time because I’m apeing your rejection of fashion norms by copying you.” No. Kept it to myself.

So I wrote Crass a letter. The first of several. It followed a gig they played in Bath. At the gig I’d arrived early after hitch-hiking down from Leeds and waited outside amongst the straggling bunches of Crass faithfuls and local cider punks and saw how one older bloke — all in smart black, and wearing a beret — waited silently on his own. I decided, there and then, that I wanted to be that bloke when I was his age… probably mid-fifties, early sixties. Dignified, cool and radical. I still think that. I later got to know him; Raymond, a lovely and loveable bloke, an East European refugee who lived for anarchist punk music.

At the gig, packed to the rafters, sweaty, dark and exciting, Crass played ‘Nagasaki Nightmare’. Instead of the strange and (frankly) scary version on the single, they played a shortened, punkier ‘Nightmare’ which cropped out a lot of the dissonant and very un-rocknroll atmospherics of the recorded song. I took this as the green light to steam ahead with my own one-man vigilante attack on Crass, and on returning home to the stale safety of my bedsit in Leeds promptly sent them a letter.

It went something like this: “Dear Crass, I wanted to write because I think you underestimate your audience. You play ‘Nagasaki Nightmare’ live as a purely punk song, as if the people there can’t handle several minutes of clanging bells and funereal intoning voices… etc etc (goes on in this manner for ages). Yours, Anarchy Peace and Freedom, Boff”.

I got a snotty letter back from Pete Wright telling me to calm down. I tried to resent him for it. A few months later myself and friends put together a fanzine. Looking round for a name, we hit on the idea of calling it ‘The Obligatory Crass Interview’, since all fanzines around that time seemed to include an interview with Crass. Our joke would be that there wouldn’t be an interview with Crass inside the ‘zine.

I wrote to Crass, telling them about our idea, hoping they would see the joke.

Pete Wright wrote a stern and schoolteacherly letter back, saying “calling your fanzine ‘The Obligatory Crass Interview’ is petty and small-minded.” Oh how I loved this; it somehow gave me release from my hero-worship and allowed me to get on with the business of sorting out my own life. Much later I met Pete, informally, at the house where Flux of Pink Indians lived. He was snotty and dismissive and lived up to all my expectations.

I was in a band, and we started to make cassettes. We adamantly refused to sound like our heroes (Crass, The Fall, Wire) and made a first tape of assembled, rambling ideas. Wordy cut-ups. We sent a copy to Crass, as if for approval; they replied saying “we’re putting some of it on our Bullshit Detector album.” Faith restored. Superhumanity recovered. Can you imagine how important this was to four lads in Leeds? We’d made it. From now, everything was going to be alright.

Crass fell apart in 1984, just as we were really finding our feet. My love/hate relationship with them turned into a vital part of my own history, and compounded their effect upon us. Some things about them, I never understood. Years later our band toured with Eve Libertine in America, and though she was funny and delightful and lovely to be with, I never found a good time to sit down and say “so, here’s a list of questions and observations I’ve carried with me since 1980… if you could answer succinctly and clearly, please.” Nah, it’s all history, and what a lovely history it is.

Crass were the band who took me from the anger and politics of punk into the reason and sense of anarchism. And bloody hell, it’s still right here with me today. Even the clanging bells and funereal voices. All together now: 1,2,3,4…”

Eve Libertine: “I’m personally inspired by greatness of soul – poetic soul: the bravery of being yourself and being able to communicate that. Of thinking new ideas and being able to put those forward. They’re the people who last: Picasso, Matisse. Daring. Daring to put down something that’s new and be laughed at, but carrying on…’

“I’ve just read a short book by the film-maker Herzog about a walk he did and it was
extraordinarily inspiring… To inspire through your poetry – I mean your poetry within you – and your art, I find that much more inspiring than political diatribes.”

“What I always found in Crass was there was an awful lot of relating to the slogans – it was very easy… very often you can put yourself outside and it’s very easy to blame: it’s this, it’s that, it’s the politics, it’s men, it’s ‘cos I’ve got no money… actually, it’s inside and it’s something you have to find within yourself. What I find inspiring is people who’ve dared, much more than any political ideas.”

Pete Wright: “Any system/party when shaken up can take control and be improved
on. An improved society is more humane. We have a responsibility to bring about that change. No responsibility means no reform. We should all be able to live reasonably. The role of politics is to promote justice. Make the jump from knowing the enemy to doing something about it. In the 70′s, the political radicals were saying we’d all be marginalised. I warned that goups like CND would alienate extremists. This is what happened to punk.”

“Punk forced the establishment into synonimity with people- this was a dangerous move. People get hurt and damaged. But you have to shake things up either in a minor way or radically. In some areas it’ll succeed and in some it’ll fail. Part of the reason of getting into Crass was not to get involved in punk but to shake things up. Some of the things we did with integrity were frightening. We germinated ideas. Communicationg our information about the Falklands was to get it on record. We had info from the White House, CIA and armed forces. It was dangerous. It was all on tape. We were
actually trying to bring governments down.”

Pete Wright: “We set out to damage reputations. My perception as to what went on may be different to that of others. We took the considerations of the band over our own. It was a really exciting time. Mixture of personalities. That’s where it really happened. Penny was our drummer and you wouldn’t normally associate the drummer with being the predominant creative force. His role is usually associated with the front person. Our gigs were intense.”

Honey Bane: “I think their achievements have been for the most part in areas other than music. I think they succeeded through their music in bringing attention to other political issues, Green Peace, etc; They did shake up the system somewhat and that is always a good thing, society sleeps, disengages from the reality around them and needs a good reality check from time to time, Crass were very good at the wake up calls.”

Charlie Harper: “A big mistake Crass made – they didn’t want to go to America because they thought all Americans were rich fucks. Which wasn’t really true. They missed out there. It was a big misjudgement – to me it was almost part of their propoganda to do that. They gave up in the mid-eighties when punk wasn’t fashionable anymore, to go into organic farming or something. As punk rock collapsed in the mid-eighties, it was just taking off in Europe.”

Garry Bushell: “Crass had integrity. I may not have agreed with them but they stuck to their guns and they never sold out. It was a smart move to form their own label and thereby keep absolute control of what they were doing. The Oi bands should have done that. And what were their worst traits? Being hippies!”
Pete Wright: “Those who have the energy to do something have personalities to match. That was all of us in Crass, but we were in danger of becoming mainstream and iconic. We believed we could change things by music. We could’ve caused more damage. We were in the right position.”

Andy Palmer: “I think the biggest social change you can have is if somebody comes along to a gig and they think ‘yes, that made me think’ and they go to bed and they think about it. That is effecting a really big social change. If one person goes away from a gig we do and thinks maybe going home from the pub and beating up his wife is bad…as far as I’m concerned, it’s been worthwhile doing that gig. That’s how it starts – it doesn’t start through big political campaigns, it starts through people: people are what’s important to me.”

Phil Free: “Crass as a band decided it would be a good idea to take time to consider what action would give the results we feel is necessary. I think we’ve helped a lot of people today realise that what is happening today is not what they would choose is happening.”

“What I hope we’ve done – what I feel we have done – is to give people an awareness of themselves, which is the only real awareness you can show people. It’s no use telling people how to get a better job or how to lead a better life… you can only say to people ‘is the life you’re leading, or the life that has been chosen for you, the one that you would actually choose? What is it you really want to do? What is the best way for you to lead that life that you wish?”

“The people that I’m thinking of are people that are trying to live a life which is satisfactory, which helps them and will help other people. These people you don’t see loitering on corners with incredible green hairdos. These are the people who are working wherever – in their homes, in communities, in peace centres, bookshops – who are actively changing themselves and the world in which they live. So you won’t see these people; they’re not standing on corners broadcasting their ideas. But they may well be organizing gigs or projects for community groups up and down the country…”

“…It isn’t dramatic and one would like something dramatic. It would be grand if tomorrow morning we could get up and know that however many thousands or millions of people were prepared to dramatically overthrow the state.”

“For the last seven years, we to a certain extent, and certainly punk, has been talking about how to fight the system. What it hasn’t been doing is saying what do we do once we’ve broken the system. That, if anything, has been the breaking point of punk is that it didn’t offer anything beyond the idea that you could smash the system. What we are trying to demonstrate to people through the records, the written stuff we do, the images that we give, is that there is possibilities beyond the system. Something to look forward to, something to work for beyond the fences which hold us in; beyond the lines of policemen, beyond nuclear arms. If by getting rid of nuclear arms, you then offer people exactly the same world, the benefits are great, but they’re not enough. We hope to offer something real for people, something which affects them personally. To show people how to find that reality beyond what they have at the moment.”

Penny Rimbaud: “I don’t like that part of the movement that has really gone into a bunker – they do all these gigs in squats in London, but it’s bunkered. That doesn’t mean isn’t fun, but …we all believed in it – there was a ten year old kid in Liverpool who believed in it and that kid still matters to me. We inspired people to look at themselves, and how they dealt with that was their business and not ours – we didn’t make anyone become anything, all we did is help people to become themselves – that continues and I still feel that same responsibility now. So when I play to an audience of fifteen people with free jazz, I’m still tying to touch one soul – that’s all I’m interested in – that’s all I’ve ever been interested in.”

Eve Libertine: “I think there’s a movement, in terms of thought movement. Not ‘a movement’, just ‘movement’ – maybe through one person taking something from that they’ve gone into their lives… that’s how I see things happening. I don’t see it as a movement, I see it much more as progression. We were there as an entity, an energy – from that it’s inevitable that people will have been affected – one way or the other – and things will have changed. Because Crass existed. Things will also change because you exist. That’s the only way I see movement.”

Pete Wright: “I’m glad to have done it. We did it with a certain amount of reverence.
Not just pissing about. We weren’t out of kilter with the rest of the group, we discussed and operated democratically. I’m happy with how it was.”

Eve Libertine: “I’ve believed for as long as I can remember in the power of life and how we fuck it up. It’s to do with love and all those words that are difficult to say because it’s embarrassing. I think we’re all part of the same thing, but because of everything that’s happened to us: because of who we are, who we think we are; we don’t relate to people. We put people in groups. We do a quick scan on people and make our decisions. And I think life is more than that. Life is greater than that. I also think confrontation is very necessary when you’re working on your idea of yourself, your ego. And that on a larger scale is what is happening in the world today. What’s going on with Blair & Bush is that there always has to be an enemy, because then you see who you are. Then you think you know who you are.”

Eve cites the Che Guevara quote: ‘At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.’
“…I think that’s where Crass came from. I think that’s very important. People have gone their different ways and I’m not interested at all in the animosity and what happened. I hope that people have found their own way – I’m sure they have. When I first heard the early Crass stuff, I felt I didn’t know what it was, but I felt inspired. It was love actually. I felt very moved by these people making arses of themselves, with people walking out. But doing it because there was an absolute passion of what they were saying – and meaning it. And that held through the years of the band. I think it came out of love and wanting things to be better. Wanting people to see the possibilities in their lives. To see what was possible – not just what they’d been given, not just what they’d been told – actually to be big people in their lives. Not big in an ego way, but to see that life is big, life is fucking amazing. Good or bad, it’s fucking amazing, and I’m here. To open that up to people who had not seen that possibility and, to my mind, that’s what Crass was trying to do.

Eve: “That’s why some people hated us. But some people loved Crass. So maybe that came through… it wasn’t a deliberate thing, but I think that’s it. That’s what was moving about it. And that’s why we put our differences aside, because that was our egos. To come together and try and open up some possibility that maybe people hadn’t seen. And not just that they weren’t on their own – you are actually on your own and it’s fucking great. Because you’re big – you’re as big as the next person.”

GOD

Steve: “I have my own personal thing which I don’t talk about. Because I think everyone’s got their own personal thing and that’s unique to them. It’s so personal that you can’t really externalise it without sounding like someone else. But no, I don’t believe in God, and if this Christian God does exist then he’s doing a pretty bad job of it and he wants to get his fucking act together pretty quick.”

On the subject of the air of spirituality that can nevertheless be glimpsed within Crass, Steve recounts the story of a friend of his who found Jesus through attending the Alpha Course so popular in the UK today.

“Fine – for him that’s OK. I was talking to him one day and saying that I was probably closer to a Christian than most of the blokes in the pub. Because if my worst enemy fell over in the street in front of me, I’ve got to pick him up. Because that’s the person I am – I just can’t be a bastard. Sometimes I wish I could. My whole thing is about hippy and peace and love. So, in that sense, it’s very spiritual. But established religions are crap.”

Steve: “I don’t believe in an afterlife. I think we just get one go at it and that’s it. I don’t see what makes us so special that we think we should get another go. Nobody can prove it.”

Penny Rimbaud: “In the Christian sense or in any religious sense, absolutely not. Because that’s a heresy against whatever God might be. If one means an absolute, then of course I believe in an absolute – one could not not believe. It’s human weakness that requires that the absolute is given a name and defined – to give it a name and define it is an absolute heresy. You cannot name the un-nameable. Yes, I absolutely believe because I am of the absolute. It’s human vanity to try and engage with it. So, in short, yes and no!”

Penny Rimbaud: “I’m not about to buy that bullshit of Thatcher or Blair that we’re a classless society. There is a fucking class war still going on – nothing’s been resolved. Women are still the niggers of the world, blacks are still not culturally given any position of value. The value of black culture is still repeatedly not recognized unless it can be exploited to white gain. W.A.S.P values reign utterly supreme, and if we look at what’s happening in Blair’s Britain and Bush’s America, it’s not just White Ango-Saxon Protestant ethic which is now dominant, it’s White Ango-Saxon Puritan ethic. We are now heading towards fundamentalism. And that’s because we never looked to sort it out. No-one tried to deal with the problem. What Crass tried to do was say, look, there is a fucking problem.”

Do they owe us a living? Who do anyway?

Pete Wright: “Are you suggesting that the function of the rich nations is not to piss as much energy and resources up the wall to keep it from those who have less control, while forcing large parts of their own population to live on the breadline? There is, actually enough to go round. There’s even enough for all to live a life of plenty beyond Solomon’s wildest dreams.”