CRASS
Interviews
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CRASS Interviews
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The Spin Alternative Record Guide wrote that Crass were "probably the first rock band whose liner
notes are not only indispensable, but often better reading than the records are listening." Rather more cheekily, British
lo-fi pop prodigy Martin Newell (Cleaners From Venus) once commented that "they did actually sound like two lathes buggering
each other on an elevator in an aircraft hangar." And Crass drummer Penny Rimbaud noted, "I don't think we were in the least
bit involved in developing as a band... It would have been nice to have had that time to think, 'it would be nice to use a
C sharp there.'" So why did Crass matter? It's more down
to the method of their rebellion than their actual buzzsaw punk records. The Crass were not Rage Against the Machine, delivering
metalish rants against the system on Epic Records. Unlike most bands delivering rebellious diatribes, they actually lived
out the uncompromising politics of their songs. They lived in a commune, debated the Falklands War with a conservative politician
on the BBC, helped fund an anarchist center, and refused to dilute the confrontational, explicit lyrics and sleeve designs
in the face of enormous legal pressures. That helped give their songs-- articulate, if blurrily delivered, attacks upon war,
organized religion, sexism, and social injustice of all sorts-- more weight. The struggles inherent in doing things
their way, on their own label, may have led to their breakup in 1984, although they note that they had planned to disband
in that infamous year all along. Their legacy lives, however, in the countless hardcore punk bands that emerged in Crass'
wake, who found inspiration not only in their lyrics and lifestyle, but also in their striking black-and-white album graphics,
which were emulated by countless other releases, albeit without as much style as the fold-out posters designed by Crass' G
Sus. There was a lot of mystique built up around
Crass in the United States, where their records were only available as imports, and where vague rumors circulated about this
bizarre hippie-punk commune in the country that was getting harassed by the British authorities. Unconcerned about building
up American sales figures, Crass nonetheless aren't all that hard to contact today, with various ex-Crassers still involved
in music, art, literature, and political activism in the late 1990's. G Sus and Penny Rimbaud talked at length about
Crass' history and significance near the end of 1996, in an interview conducted for the Crass chapter in UNKNOWN LEGENDS OF ROCK'n'ROLL, a volume examining sixty cult rock artists,
which was published by Miller Freeman in
the spring of 1998. G: The commune is always a word I've kept away
from, because I never liked how other communes I saw were run, with written rules and regulations. People take responsibility
by what they feel and what they see, usually. So we don't have any agendas for "it's your day to cook" or "your day to clean".
When you see a job needs to be done, you do it. So it's really worked on taking on responsibilities. The longest living members
are Pen and myself. The rest came later. Pete came before Steve, on and off. And then people just joined in gradually, because
we did have a another band before Crass which went on touring, and people would join in that, because it was a band that could
incorporate any number of people, being a sort of avant-garde band. Q: Was Crass' stance informed by what had happened
to your friend Wally [a friend whose life disintegrated after incarceration in state mental institutions, as documented in
the extensive liner notes accompanying Crass' Christ-The Album? G: Informed to a certain degree, but through
meeting Wally and what happened to him, we became much more politicized as far as this particular social system was concerned.
It led on from there, really. I suppose on the periphery, we all had things to do with CND in the '60s. But on a personal
level, my first political awakening was through a very enormous catastrophe here, which was [in] a small village in Wales,
a mining village, which the mining company had dumped slag behind the village year after year after year. People were fighting
to have it moved before it moved itself, which of course it did, and killed all the children in the school and half the village.
For me, that was my first sort of big angry protest. That was in the '60's. From there on, one informed oneself as best you
could. 'Cause there wasn't a lot of information around then. Not alternative information, not the other side of the story.
You had to very much dig it up yourself. But meeting like-minded people, you sort of got a handle on it. Q: How long have you and Penny been living in
your group home? G: We got here in '68, something like that.
As usual, Pen and I both took the whole sort of '60s hippie do it yourself thing for real (laughs). Especially Pen, because
he found the house first. We wanted to have a house that was very open, a safe house for people, that was somewhere people
could rest and think and share ideas. So most of the rooms in the house still are studios. We have dark rooms, we have a music
room and all sorts of things. And we hope people will come and create here. Which they have done over the years. There's been
some big things, good things, bad things, and actually learning to live with each other. And we were a fluctuating community
of people. We're very tolerant, I would say (laughs). It's not a commune, basically, it's an open house. And people come here
very respectfully, because it's very comfortable, it's very welcoming...well, we think it is. There are certain unwritten
laws, but most people come, and they give how they can. It's on a farm, about 15 miles from London.
We're out in the fields. It's a very good side of London, if you know London. On one side, it's got this enormous forest,
really big forest, which stretches from London out to the country. So it's a very good barrier to stop building. On the edge
of that side of London, you hit the forest very quickly. From then on it's countryside, really. Slightly northeast. If you
follow the River Thames out to the mouth of the sea and then go straight up halfway along that river, you'll come to where
we are. Slightly northeast, Essex. But it's a county that's fighting for its life, really, because it's surrounded by the
major routeway coming in now from the Chunnel. It's sort of like a Bermuda triangle we're living in, fighting off all comers.
But we're winning at the moment. Pen and I had been to art school together, so
we've known each other since we were about 15, 16. We've always worked together in some way or another, from different music
bands, from happenings and theatrical pieces. Musically, we were affected by the Beatles a hell of a lot from the start, especially
towards the end and John Lennon and Yoko Ono's stuff. They were a big driving force for us because of the sentiments, I suppose,
were very similar to our own-"Give Peace a Chance." We were outright hippies, but hard-edged I suppose. I suppose that's why
Crass happened. Q: What were Crass' musical influences? G: When the Pistols started, we thought they
were fantastic. We took them seriously, and again did it ourselves. I suppose influences come from all areas. Musically, we
both loved Benjamin Britten and jazz and classical stuff. But there's never been a condemnation of much really, except for
the Top 20 in the sense of anything but the Beatles. For obvious reasons, they were all the things that top bands are now,
just a conceived group, and pushed for money. So we weren't much into anything else, really. A lot coming out of Ginsberg
and Kerouac and all the obvious things. Being visually orientated, a lot of my influence came from other things, really. We did do it for love. Something was always
going on in the house, whether it was all the things I've mentioned, performance pieces or avant-garde. So it was a very obvious
energy for us to be towed along with. We thought it was a great statement, the Pistols' statement. Because what was happening
in England at the time was just diabolical. And being older made a lot of difference. We've always been that much older than
most people who make (music)--we're all in our fifties now, more or less, some of us, not Steve of course. I suppose the only goal for me was to converse.
And obviously, it was conversing with a younger generation. I was much older, but that was where the music was going to. I
think we all felt that it wasn't enough to stand up and write a poem or write a book. I mean, it had to be up there on stage.
That was the way of conversing at that point in time. For me, that's the way my work was going anyway. So I extended upon
that by starting the newspapers and other work that I was working on. That went together with the words. Pen's writing was
very different. And we all started writing, along with that, new songs. I think the whole thing was that we felt very,
I suppose, concerned. I personally felt very strongly about what was happening to this country, and that youth needed a voice
again. Obviously, if you wanted to share what you'd understood up to then, you had to find the right language. And the right
language at the time was how we did it with Crass, really. That's changed again. I think image now is slightly defunct at
the moment. I'm not quite sure how it's being made over. But we're sort of building up for new things somewhere along the
line. Q: Was it always the intention to put out your
records yourselves? G: I think that set in pretty quickly. None
of us ever believed that you could sign with a big company and think you could play it your way. I think the Pistols did very
well with that. I think the disillusionment set in quite quickly, although not with the energy that seemed to be building
on the streets. We picked up from there, really. We always felt that we'd never, ever allow anyone else to dictate how we
were going to do it, when we were going to do it, and for how long. Most of us came from an artistic background. Andy paints.
I think the only musician amongst us was Pete, and he actually knew how to play. We had to learn as we went along, really.
Again, it had to be done the way we felt we could do it. That became a driving force, really. For us,
it was to share with people, to say, well, just don't hang around waiting for someone else to hand it to you. Just go out
and do it. Also with art, with producing your own magazines, which I think really took off in this country. There's so many
fanzines, from sublime to ridiculous. But wonderful energy. I think the one thing that really tells about our energy is the
bullshit detectors. I think they're a great documentation of what was going own behind locked doors, with young people. And
a lot of writing went on--a lot of good writing, a lot of bad writing, the usual thing. A lot of good bands, and a lot of
cliches, and a lot of people who jumped on the bandwagon. But I mean, that'll happen whatever you do, really. I don't think
that was a problem. I think there's people now that are still continuing. They're quietly beavering away underneath, which
is the way it has to be done in this country at the moment, which is very good. The first Feeding of the 5000 was put
out by Small Wonder. He was like the punk shop in London, and he was putting a lot of stuff, like Patrick Fitzgerald and a
lot of people that were around at that time. He just wanted to put out our single, and it sort of grew. We were still sort
of mucking about, really. Didn't think there'd be much comeback. That was just done live-it was done in a couple of days,
and that was it. No overlapping, no re-recording, it's just straight and as it is, really. It hit us as much as it hit anybody
else, I think. It actually sold a lot, and he couldn't afford to do it again, so we really had to start doing it ourselves.
Q: What do you think were the most important
ways the group's music changed as they kept recording? G: Every time we went into the studio, I suppose
there was an idea of how we were going to do it in the sense that we weren't prepared to give them another one of the same.
People got comfortable with Feeding the 5000, and I think the second one was Penis Envy, I can't remember. And
it was totally opposite to what people expected. I think it's too easy to record comfortably and know it's going to sell.
We sort of tried to push it and take chances each time. And keep to what we wanted to do. It was no skin off our backs if
it didn't make it. It's just something we thought was very important to stick to, the way we wanted to do it. I think the most significant change you can
hear, really, is the total desperation about the Tory government. I think you can really hear it in Yes Sir I Will,
the black one. I mean, that's pretty heavy, that one. I think it's not disillusioned as such. But you can see what's really
going on. I for one, when she [Thatcher] got in the third time, I thought that's it. I'm not prepared keep making videos,
keep doing illustrations, that are really concerned with her shit. I just thought, enough, there's another life outside of
this. You can only take so much. Unless you really live here and you've known the English sort of spirit and seen it really
crushed through what happened with the miners, what happened with the newspapers here, what happened with the women at Greenham,
it just took its toll on all of us. We just thought, well, we're not giving up. We're gonna have to change tactics. I suppose
that's what's happened. Q: Why did the group stop releasing material
in the mid-1980's? G: We'd always said that we'd stop in 1984,
which is really what we did. People have just gone on to do other things, and keep working at it really. I think as far as
visually hearing the difference, that's where it lies for me, is that there's this enormous weight. The fun has gone out of
it really. The jokes are there, but they're very black, unlike Feeding of the 5000, which is full of sort of...I think
it's very funny, I think it's very lively, I think it's all there, but I mean you play it next to Yes Sir, I think
it's (an) enormous difference. And I don't suppose any of us wanted to share that blackness, really, and that way anymore.
Pen's gone on to write novels, which are pretty heavy as well. He's gone on to do different music, Steve went on to get another
band together. I personally, I didn't want to paint another corpse, I didn't want to paint another effigy anymore. I wanted
to start working on my own work. So that's what's happened. Q: Was there ever a feeling that because your
music and presentation was so uncompromising, that you were only preaching to the converted? G: It did come up time and time again, really.
But unless you go with big companies at that point in time, then you're not going to cover enormous amount of people that
are not punks, or are not in that ilk. It's never really bothered me particularly. Just the fact that we had so much mail
from irate parents was great. Because they'd find them in their kids' bedrooms, or they'd find the poster of the hand. It
would be the parents that were totally freaked. In fact, one of the prosecutions came from that, a kid bringing home a record
of Crass, and there was so much swearing on it and what they saw as obscene images that the police had to prosecute. But I mean, I think that's great. I love to
think of those things lying in people's natty little living rooms with the TV on (laughs). I mean, that interests me more.
I'm not interested to be the big wonder stars, where you're plastered up everywhere. I much, much prefer to be a little worm
burrowing underground somewhere and coming up in unexpected places. I think we've all felt the same, and I still do. I'm not
interested in being a big media personality. I don't think you can get half the stuff done that way. I think Crass is still
niggling away down there, and that's great. I know we are, simply because of the mail and stuff that comes over the Net is
concerned. Yes, we are, have been preaching to the converted
who are already, I suppose, informed. But I still think we took it a step further. I think it is information. And then there's
the way you put it. I mean, information is easy. But it's the way you present that, and all the outlying bits to it. I like
to think what came of it most of all was that we actually genuinely cared, and still do care. I never did an illustration
that there wasn't hope in. Any picture you look at, for myself, I always some sort of image of hope. Whether people recognize
that is another matter. But I think the overall feeling from all the illustrations is not one of pessimism or of no hope,
that there is possibility. And I hope it's shifted a lot of people's brains, even unknowingly, into different ways of looking
at things. Because most of the illustrations I did were just a combination of everyday images, but put into a context where
they usually weren't seen. You can't force people into anything. The intention was to put how we felt about things, the information
we'd gathered, out there, and for people to make their own minds up. There was never an intention to make people change their
mind. It's the same at gigs. We did a performance,
and people respected that the area on the stage was ours. We said what we said, it was pretty heavy. But then somebody always
puts the kettle on after the gig. I mean, they were great. Just tea started flowing everywhere, and everybody sat down and
chatted. Because I think if you confront people with heavy stuff and strip them maybe of some of their armory, you've got
to be there, you have to be there, especially with young people, it's too much. So they were very big social events, and they
were great, really great fun. People just really got to know each other. People would bring food to share, and it was good
all around. And hopefully that got taken out in their everyday life, who knows. Q: Did it bother Crass that the band were so
little-known in the US? The records were always hard to find here. G: Not at all. It didn't concern us at all.
We were more interested in producing the goods, really, just getting on with new work each time. It's never been a big problem
for us to think, well, we're not selling here or selling there. It still isn't, really. We really didn't care what happened. We did
what we had to do, for our own personal wanting to share. What course that took was beyond our control, really. Not always,
we controlled it. Especially the "Thatchergate tapes," that took a long time to surface. They were sent out, what, a year
before that. That was good fun. [Note: This finely edited tape collage purported to be a telephone conversation with Thatcher
and Ronald Reagan; at one point, the sound bites were manipulated to produce a threat by Reagan to "nuke" Europe in defense
of American interests.] That was Pete's main instigation, to do that.
Feedback from that was more than we thought it would be. We just really didn't think people would be taken in by it (laughs).
It just goes to show what you can do. Anything goes, really. And if it didn't, we'd have to be very meticulous about the way
we did something, to make it guide up a certain route. But we were never that conniving, really. We had dreams, and we'd joke
and say, bring the government down here... we were very close to getting compromising photos of Dennis Thatcher, extremely
close. The person who had them backed out at the last minute. That would have been such a wonderful thing as far as
I'm concerned. Had we computers then, we could have knitted two photos together. I mean, you could have great fun now, couldn't
you, my God! But during those days, there wasn't that technology, so we were relying on the real thing. But I would have been
extremely pleased with that. But the person got very frightened, sort of backed off. Q: I read once that Crass folded because of
a debt that arose from a large debt of accrued value-added-tax, which struck me as strange. G: It would take more than VAT to make us stop.
That's totally wrong. The reason the band stopped was several reasons. One, we always said we'd stop in 1984. That's why we
had the countdown on the numbering [of the LPs]. Secondly, when we got to 1984, Andy wanted to go back to art school, he went
to the Royal College. And none of us could see any point in continuing without Andy. The band kind of operated like that.
We certainly couldn't get a stand-in, because that wasn't what the band was about. We were all very committed to each other,
and that was the band. And if somebody left, then the band stopped. We decided on a more positive note, in the sense,
a lot of young punks here were immersed in death and disaster. And they were forgetting why they were angry. I thought
that was very negative. So we did Acts of Love [a 1985 release credited to Penny Rimbaud & Eve Libertine], really,
apart from Best Before, but that's just a compilation. So Acts of Love really was the last word. I thought it was very
important to do that. But the VAT thing is intriguing. Maybe we should leave that one up. Maybe we should make that into a
really big story! (laughs) Q: How do you see the influence of Crass on
today's music and culture? G: From a personal level, it's great to still
have loads and loads of friends from that era that were just kids at the time, and just sort of putting their feet in the
water and testing the air. They've gone on to become very solid, kind, concerned people, still battling away out there, whether
they're up trees, trying to save roads, or writing books privately, or whatever, they've gone on to remain very solid people,
and I think that's great. I love the fact that they're all out there badgering away in some way. I think people should be proud of how Crass
conducted themselves, as far as being independent. But it doesn't mean a lot to me in the sense that I personally could never
have it any other way, nor could Pen, because we're so meticulous about images and words and the construction of a packet
and the design of this. I could never have let it out of my hands anyway. To me, it was no great big deal. If I'm gonna kick,
I'm gonna kick from where I'm standing, and I'm not going to go through anybody else. I never really think of it in those terms, to
be honest. Because the band have never stopped in the sense of how I feel about the same issues. I feel about the issues as
strongly. I have shifted in the way I fight it, or the way I understand it. But I'm still on the edge, I hope, or I keep pushing
myself to the edge and keep fighting. But it's not in such an obvious way now. To look back on Crass, it seems quite funny
to me. I am glad that we got as far as we did with Crass. I'm glad all the people have met through that and continue to be
friends. Anything else I'd have liked to see different
was internal stuff, really. There were times when it became a great strain for us. It never stopped for what, eight, nine
years. That did put a strain on relationships. Nothing we couldn't handle, but it's taken a long while to sort them out since
we've stopped. But then that's the nature of close relationships. You couldn't change that, because that's the way it goes.
I'm not even sure I would have wished that computers were around at the time. Because I think, the thing with Crass, it was
hands-on. Everything-every event we did, or confrontation in the streets, was by word of mouth. That's great. People would
gather in the hundreds just by something being whispered in someone's ear. I think that was great. I think the one thing about
computer age now, I think it would be something different. I think we'd have to deal with it very differently. I think they're
great fun on one level, but I would find that sort of domestic angle of Crass a sad loss, really. I've seen a lot of imagery that has been taken
from what I've done. But I think that's great, I don't mind that. 'Cause that's what art's about anyway. Art's about robbery,
and using it your own way. I've sort of lost contact with the punk music that's going on. What I have heard is like 1970's,
1980's, it doesn't seem to have moved much. But then again, any great music movement, that's what you get, isn't it? I mean,
you've got loads of heavy metal bands coming out all the time, and loads of rock and roll. Now you get loads of punk bands,
and there's been a set rhythm and a set way. I don't mean that unfairly, but I'm sure there's great stuff out there. But I've
sort of lost contact with that, having had to shut myself in the studio and be private and work alone. I think there are a lot of things going on I
come across that seem to emanate from Crass. I suppose the most notable one is walking into a gig, the rare times that I do
walk into a punk gig, there are lots of banners on the stages. There's people talking to each other, there's people smiling
and laughing and that's nice. I think there's a community that's gone on. I think very much, in this country, the new age
travelers and the sort of road protest people have come out of Crass. I can only judge, really, from the letters and things
that we get. We had an email this week from somebody, and it was quite long. It said, "I've always liked Dead Kennedys, now
I've suddenly found Crass." He was going into great detail of all his influences, and "by the way, I'm only 12 years old."
And it isn't all positive. A lot of it's very negative. A lot of the young, punk-orientated people have sort of got themselves
locked something. If it isn't cider or dope, it's the clothes thing. But to every positive side, there has to be a negative
following. In this country, you can very much see that. I suppose the people that really came to the gigs and traveled with
us, obviously, are all in their thirties and forties now. They've moved on to something.
P: Really, there was two major situations.
One was very early on. We were still with Small Wonder Records in those days, who were the people who had put out our first
12-inch record. We had difficulty getting the first track pressed, the first track being called "Reality Asylum." It was being
pressed in Ireland. The actual people on the shop floor objected to the content of the first track. So we left a three-minute
silence, or the length of the track silence, at the beginning of the album. So that the management of Small Wonder weren't
under any threat from it, we decided to press it ourselves as a single. We found someone who'd do it in England. Shortly after
we released it, Small Wonder was raided by Scotland Yard's vice squad, whose normal job is to sort of raid porn shops in Central
London. They couldn't really understand quite why they'd been sent out to a cottage in the Essex countryside to investigate
the record. They were completely out of their depth, basically. There had been a similar case several
years earlier with the Gay News [which] was prosecuted under exactly the same thing they were writing up, which was criminal
blasphemy. Which I don't think exists in any other western country. So they were investigating us on a case of criminal blasphemy.
Having interviewed us, they then said they were going to put it before the director of public prosecutions. About six months
later, we actually heard that they had decided to drop the case. But we were given a very stern warning not to release any
similar material, which naturally encouraged us to release more. We then moved our material away from Small
Wonder. When we released Feeding the 5000, we put the track back onto it. We did a new version for the single release,
we did an extended version. Following that, obviously what the authorities had decided was that rather than prosecuting us
and risking another sort of Pistols pantomime, we heard very soon after the case had been dropped that they were hassling
shops, they were raiding shops throughout Britain, with no grounds whatsoever, they had no legal grounds to do so. But they
were just harassing... mostly small shops, telling them that they were liable to prosecution if they sold our material. Which
of course had no legal backup whatsoever, but it was sufficient to scare off a lot of the small shops from stocking our stuff. The authorities, rather than making a
big newspaper case out of it, just decided to harass people individually throughout the country. It clearly was a form of
policy, which would have the same effect, or a better effect, than making us public names. That followed us right through,
from that point on we were in constant, sort of having problems, always at third hand, from the authorities. We were never
raided, we were never directly harassed. But anyone who was arranging gigs, selling our material, etc., was very liable to
harassment. Then basically we didn't get threatened
with any sort of prosecution until after the Falklands War. We released "How Does It Feel To Be Mother of a Thousand Dead,"
which referred to Thatcher obviously. She was actually asked, in the prime minister's question time, whether she'd listened
to the record by a sympathetic left-wing member of Parliament, sympathetic to us, that is. [Someone] was sort of given the
job of opening prosecution against us this time for obscenity. That completely failed. The newspapers picked up on that very
quickly. Because we were quite hot news at the time, because we'd actually divulged quite a bit of official secrets about
the Falklands War. We had a contact who was actually serving in the Falklands, so we actually got a lot of classified information
sent to us by him, which we were able, one way or another, to sort of get out. We ended up on the radio being confronted
by [conservative] Tim Eggar. Basically, he was completely flattened by our arguments. At that point, the Tories withdrew proceedings,
which hadn't gotten any further than the director of public prosecutions looking at the case. That was the second near-skirmish. The third one was a prosecution, where
a shop in Manchester was raided. A large amount of material, including Dead Kennedys material, was taken by the police. They
put together, again, an obscenity case against us. We lost the first round, and then we took it to appeal. We decided to fight
it in Manchester. Having fought it in London, then it would have set a precedent. Which would have meant had we lost, that
we wouldn't have been allowed to sell our material anywhere in Britain. As it goes, we're still not able to officially sell
our material in the Chester area of Manchester. We took it to appeal. We won the appeal,
except on one count. They managed to [classify one] track obscene, which actually was a sort of feminist statement about Chinese
foot binding, mostly. But obviously the magistrate sitting in the court probably reflected on his own sort of predilections.
So he found us guilty of obscenity on that. We were fined peanuts for it. But the case actually had cost us a phenomenal amount
of money in terms of, if ever there was a time at which we were very nearly buried by what we put money into, that probably
was it. We'd been promised money and support from
quite a few of the underground distributors and the alternative music biz. But when it actually came to it, we got very little
support, and certainly very very little finance. So it cost us a phenomenal amount. It was probably the first time that we
were actually encountered financial difficulties, really. So maybe that story about the VAT thing stemmed from that. We certainly
had a problem at that point with money, which we hadn't had up until then. Mounting the case had cost us a phenomenal amount,
and taking it to appeal had cost us a phenomenal amount. All the way through, there was sort of mild harassment. Those were
the three sort of major situations, where the harassment was overt. Q: What were the most important ways Crass'
music evolved over their career? P: I don't really think one can talk in
those terms. I think after our first two albums, I think we responded. I don't think we were involved in sort of any evolutionary
process, in the sense that we weren't a band for musical or lyrical reasons. We were a band for political reasons, and therefore
increasingly, as the years wore on, we were producing stuff out of response social situations. Therefore, artistic or aesthetic
considerations didn't really come into it. I think we became increasingly angry, increasingly aware of our impotence, which
makes our work increasingly more desperate. But it was desperate in response to what was happening in the country, or globally,
at the time. It's almost an irrelevant question, 'cause
I don't think we were in the least bit involved in developing as a band. I don't think that entered into the equation. I think
we simply... our political analysis broadened, then narrowed, and broadened, or whatever it did. And what we produced as a
band was a reflection of where we stood politically. Our response to things wasn't a musical or a lyrical response, it was
a political response. I think that we brought to our music a wide range of influences. But then they weren't employed as musical
influences, if you understand. We weren't a band. We never were a band.
I don't think we even saw ourselves as a band. I certainly never saw ourselves as a band. We certainly didn't belong in the
sort of pantomime of rock'n'roll, and probably even less in the pantomime of what became known as punk. It wasn't our interest.
I mean, we weren't interested in making records. We were interested in making statements, and records happened to be a way
of making statements. It would have been nice to have had that
time to think, it would nice to use a C sharp there. But it wasn't like that. Maybe it was right at the beginning, where we
were sort of consciously doing something. But as the sort of machinery sort of grew, it demanded this, or it demanded that.
The machine demanded whatever response was necessary, particularly during and after the Falklands, where probably we lost
our rag as a band. I think we'd probably blown it by then. We were no longer being particularly rational. I don't think we
ever were, particularly. But certain situations were just so appalling, it starts to become sort of absurd to try and deal
with it through that medium. It's sort of absurd to compare the Falklands with Vietnam, for example. But protest songs, protest
rock'n'roll, can just be a joke against the real situation. I think, certainly from the Falklands, I felt that. And I think
probably other members of the band did too. It's too serious to be dealing with in this possibly superficial way. That was
a big question for us over the last few years. Obviously, no musical consideration comes in. The considerations were, should
we be doing this at all? Q: Can you see Crass' influence on contemporary
music and culture? P: We're inseparable from the entire youth
movement of the moment. What we contributed was so broad, and so powerful, so invasive, that I think it's in everything. And
I don't think I'm being pompous in that. In everything alternative--from the road protest to class war to feminist cells,
whatever, to the American hardcore movement to the Polish, whatever. It's everywhere. I don't think there's any single, individual
influence. I think that would be irrelevant. Like the hippie movement. People say,
oh, it was just people wandering around with sort of long hair. It wasn't. If you look at any health food shop or book shop
or la la la, you'll find the sort of effects of that movement. Likewise with Crass and the sort of movement that it spawned.
I certainly think without Crass, none of what has now looked back as the effects of punk... it would have had no effect at
all. I mean, the Pistols and that group, those commercial people, lasted for about two years. They were just an extension
of the usual music business tactics. They had no sort of political overview whatsoever. It was us that introduced a meaningful
overview into what was then called punk. And bands similar to us. It's an untold... I don't think you could even quantify
it. It's sort of like saying, well, what influence did Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir have? They wrote a few books
that you might like or you might not like, but their influence is global. I think it's likewise with us. I don't think that's
pompous to compare ourselves with the sort of French existentialists. They were similarly sort of authentic movement who had
this profound global effect in all sorts of untold ways, I think. I can see a bit of us in everything. In a funny way, those things almost didn't
enter into the equation. As far as I was concerned, I was happiest about the fact that the young 'uns came up well that year,
or the cat wasn't sick, or I was making love nicely. As far as Crass was concerned, we sacrificed those sorts of pleasures
and pains for the common good. I would almost go as far as saying, we didn't know what we felt on that sort of personal level.
That wasn't part of the equation, that wasn't part of the agreement. It was a machine, an incredibly efficient machine, in
which we could and did act as human beings. But I don't think... I can't recall any day thinking, that was a wonderful day,
any more than I can recall thinking, that was a terrible day. We made mistakes and we had successes, and they all seemed to
be one and the same thing in a way. 'Cause we were what we were. I'm sure other members of the band would
say, well, I remember such and such. But I can't do that, 'cause I wasn't me, I was Crass. I think really we all were by degrees.
We had an incredible sense of omnipotence, in the sense that because we were Crass and we weren't individuals, there was this
extraordinary sense we could take on anything. And we did. We were sort of relatively fearless in our attacks and our attempts
to confront the authorities. I suppose an awful lot of what we did
was to test the boundaries all the time. We were constantly testing the boundaries-how fast can we go? It seemed we could
go as far as we wanted. It seemed that we could do anything that we wanted to do, we were able to. The only limitation was
our imagination, lack of political analysis, or whatever. But ultimately, we could do just what we wanted to do. And no one
seemed to get in the way. And if they did get in the way, it didn't matter, because they were getting in the way of a name,
Crass. They weren't getting in the way of me at all. I was still looking after the young 'uns and stroking the cats. Things only make you frustrated if you've
got expectations. I don't think we had any expectations. We didn't start with any expectations, and we didn't finish with
any expectations. So you can't really be frustrated if you haven't got any expectations. I couldn't now, and I didn't then,
care whether or not a record was at #10 in the charts or nowhere at all in the charts. It didn't really interest me very much.
I don't think it interested anyone particularly. It didn't mean anything. What meant something was that people were expanding
their own consciousness. And if we were a part of that, that was all well and good. But again, we didn't know that we were.
We couldn't know that. We saw that people were happy to be at our gigs. You can't qualify all that, or quantify it. I think
I was just happy to do it, 'cause it needed doing, I suppose, or I felt it needed doing. I don't think that we were a band in the
conventional sense of the word. I don't think we saw ourselves as individuals within a band. We stripped ourselves of that.
We were the band-we were Crass. I think that's why we were so strong, and why we were so impenetrable. That becomes an irrelevancy,
because if you haven't got individuals, then you can't ask certain questions, they became meaningless. We've become individuals
now, but we weren't then. I think our greatest achievement was to manage for however many long years it was, seven years,
to sort of put aside our own individual passions and needs and desires, for what we believed was the common good. And which
some of us might no longer believe was the common good, but we certainly did at the time. PENNY RIMBAUD INTERVIEW by GEORGE BERGER (1999) NB. This is a long interview - you may well want to print it out to save time, money
& your eyesight! " I did everything I possibly could, but it wasn't enough. The same with Crass. It didn't
have any effect. Crass was out there to destroy society as we know it. If I thought I'd done enough, I wouldn't do anything
else." Penny Rimbaud is ruminating on the death of Wally Hope and Crass - the band formed as a subsequent
chain of reactions to that death. The year is 1999 and we're sat in a place as unnervingly near to paradise as I've experienced.
And it's in Essex. How did I come to be here? There's a couple of answers to that, depending on how you take the question. Back when they were going, there used to be a sleepy 'Oh Dr. Beaching' tube stop (North Weald)
near Crass' house. At the stop, it was rumoured there was a man employed purely to dissuade many young visiting punks from
bunking the fair, as was their inevitable want. However, the tube station is now gone and the line ends a few miles up the
road at Epping. Therefore it's a cab ride for us decadent ones. The cab driver treats me to the claims-to fame of North Weald: the aerodrome hosts the biggest
market in the world and was the set for the 'Battle Of Britain' film - both reasonably ironic in this setting. Though the
farm track up to Dial House is a good mile long, I decide to stop at the local pub for a pint before going up there, and walk
the rest. The reasons for this are two-fold: it's a nice walk and it will stir some most pleasant memories; and I'm about
to enter an 'otherworld': the old Crass HQ is like nothing I've ever experienced, as I will detail shortly. But first a pint to prepare myself in the ridiculously olde and poshe pub. Collecting my
thoughts along with my change, I remember the days when Crass were at the forefront of the 'battle'. Singularly the most important
band ever, for a generation at least. This lot left the Pistols at the starting blocks when it came to '4 Real', and the Manics
too, for that matter. The walk is as I remember it, only this time I do remember it and save myself a good half-hour
in the process. I'm nervous. I don't know why. I've met Penny many times, and not just here, but Crass always gave me a sense
of insecurity. Later, Penny was to sum up the feeling when he talked about the effect John Lennon had on him: precious few
peoples' music pokes you in the side to remind yourself that 'morally' (for want of a better word) you could be trying harder,
doing better. For many music journalists, this is a reminder of the 'See Me' days at school and they react with according
hostility. To suggest music might have some synergy with life beyond it is, it seems, a heresy. Up to Dial House. No door bell. A couple of doors (if you know where to look), but no discernible
front door. Plants, flowers and vegetable patches everywhere, all immaculately cared for like the house belongs in some posh
property magazine. Which it has, but more of that later. Stroppy cats eye you and reject all attempts at friendliness. And
then Penny. Penny, real name Jeremy John Ratter, greets me and makes what I can only presume with hindsight
is an inordinately strong cup of coffee. Fair trade coffee, organic milk. We go out into what looks from the outside to be a garden shed, but what inside is a beautiful
study-cum-bedroom and commence the interview. When Penny speaks, his replies are so considered that he barely makes eye contact, staring
instead out of the window that looks across a field of contented, grazing sheep. This, you feel, is more to do with him being
sure to give a carefully considered answer than any shyness, though that too may play its bit-part. Usually when interviewing
somebody who has made his or her name through music, you're pushed to find the quotable quote. Mainly because popstars are
devoid of personality. But with Penny, you're at a loss as to what leave out. You want to write a book, you feel it deserves
that much time and space. Luckily for me/us, then, that he just has. 'Shibboleth' is his autobiography. "Shibboleth was going to be a Last of The Hippies re-write, but I felt now it should be put
in a context, so I made it basically autobiographical." It will be read across the world by people whose lives he has changed, via Crass - the vehicle. He'd kill me for saying that. He'd insist that Crass were a band and all had their input.
And in a way, he'd be right. Crass could be ridiculously crass, not to mention inaccessible and sometimes downright shite.
A lot of idiots got into that side - a sort of anarchist Sham 69 cum Harry Enfield's Old Gits on speed. But Crass were never
crass when Penny was behind the words. Some of things they wrote and sang - generally his in my opinion - were amongst the
most inspiring and well thought-out ideas I've come across from an individual. Like Lennon's 'Imagine' brought to life and
down to the earthly realms of possibility. Penny met Lennon by the way, when he won a competition organised by old TOTP predecessor
'Ready Steady Go' with a painting he'd done representing what was then their latest single 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand': "I really got into the Beatles when they first happened. But by the time that actually happened
(two years in), I'd gone through that, because they seemed to have sold out..I knew I'd win it if I went in for it, because
I was adept at pop-art. Now they've put out the Ready Steady Go videos, and it's included in those. I was at a friends house,
about fifteen years ago and they showed them. For some strange reason, they'd left in my bit. "I turned up at the programme. I was meant to do a rehearsal. I didn't want to. I didn't
want them to able to make some smart-arsed remark about me, but equally I didn't want to be in the position where I'd make
a smart-arsed remark myself. I wanted to go in 'pure'. I was meant to go and meet 'the lads' after the programme and have
a cup of coffee in the dressing room. I was so pissed off with it by then that the moment I got my prize I pissed off home. "Iconically, it was amazing. Peter Blake had done a picture of the Beatles and the only thing
left to go on it was their signatures, and he never got them. I think that paintings in the Tate Gallery now, minus the signature.
In the shot, the three of them were standing in front of my picture! That to me was puerile. They were going round scribbling
on all the other entries, writing funny things. They were getting round to mine - I didn't want them writing on top of my
art! I prevented them from signing mine." Penny unfortunately lost the painting when Rank took it on a tour round the ballrooms of
the time, and it got lost/stolen. WALLY HOPE 'He was a heady mix of cultures, from kibbutz to the Native American Indians. Master and
servant. Dancer and the dance. The son and the father. The seeker and the sought.. The peyote warlord, yiddish assassin, redskin
warrior of the golden beard. He was the synthesiser of experience, hunter of the great white whale, bhoddisatva of the broken
nose, writer of the Great Book, prophet of the Koran, Meher Baba's tongue, source of the Ghanges, bhikku, guru, shaman, priest.
He was the yogi of the great purple mountain, carrier of the holy lingam, new age medicine man, yin and yang, light and dark,
at least that's what he told me.' - Rimbaud on Hope, 'Shibboleth' The true scope of Rimbaud's talent for writing both moving and politically inspiring work
came in the shape of the Last Of The Hippies booklet that was initially released with Crass' 'Christ-The Album'. Though he
shows a genuine talent for bringing in a range of disparate issues, it's mainly the story of Wally Hope. "The most important bit of that book (Shibboleth) to me was 'Last Of The Hippies. I wrote
Last Of The Hippies and Shibboleth mainly for Wally Hope. He was a visionary in the way that he had some sense of seeing beyond
the everyday world in a very positive and active way." Shibboleth sheds new light on Penny's life-changing friendship with fellow Stonehenge Festival
founder Wally Hope. Wally paid the ultimate price for starting the fun when he was found dead in mysterious circumstances,
and has become somewhat of a folk-hero-myth with certain groups ever since. Shortly before the second festival, Hope had been
arrested, sectioned and fed dangerously-high doses of the mind-numbing drug Largactil, before being released without warning
upon the festival's ending. He died shortly afterwards. In Shibboleth, Rimbaud claims that despite his previous writings citing
the official inquest verdict of suicide, Wally was murdered. Indeed, Hope's corpse haunts him throughout the book. So you think it was murder "Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't. When I first wrote LOTH I didn't take that line at
all. When I first wrote Homage To Catatonia, I certainly thought he'd been done in. I felt I had conclusive documented proof.
Most of that got burned.' It got burned because Penny feared for his life. "It changed my life in that respect. Prior
to that I was very relaxed about everything. I used to sleep in the garden. We never locked our doors, but I started feeling
I wanted to lock them. "When I was investigating Wally's death, the police turned up. Police I didn't know - we
were quite used to the local bobby coming down and looking through the herb rack etc. Basically they'd come to say 'fucking
lay off'. There was a sense of discomfort and ill-ease. That's when I burnt the evidence - all except that which was owned
by other people, which was what I then used to write Shibboleth. "Ultimately, as I said in Shibboleth, it doesn't matter a fuck whether he was deliberately
murdered or not, he was murdered. He was existentially murdered - he certainly died as a result of his treatment, no question
of that. Call it what you like - that's doing someone in, isn't it?" "When I was writing Homage To Catatonia, I went through all the evidence and all the dates
and times to do with when Wally's body was being shifted around, didn't add up. I used to go through it all everyday and then
all of a sudden I saw it - it was like a jigsaw. I went through the roof - I knew I'd got them, I'd solved it. It categorically
showed he'd been murdered." If so, he wasn't the only Wally from Stonehenge to meet his fate in such a way. THE OTHER DEAD WALLY Penny is reticent when I bring this up and seems to take a snap decision to talk about it,
leaving me with the strong impression that he'd rather not. His first reaction possibly explains why: "That was an area that almost lead to my death. Another Wally - Wally (surname censored -
we'll call him NoName) was found in Epping Forest tied to a tree with a joint in his hand. I can't remember the time sequences
but it was when I was working on Wally's death. I got a letter from some 'Wallies' in Brighton saying 'look into this'. So
I started looking into that & it turned out that there it was a sort of connection between Brighton gangland and the Essex
police, and that Wally NoName was a small-time dealer who'd probably been working on someone else's patch and had subsequently
been fixed up. Certainly all the evidence suggested that he couldn't have committed suicide. I got some fairly substantial
evidence. Then I started thinking 'fucking hell, what are you supposed to do with this? " Then one day a taxi pulled up outside Penny's house. Out-stepped Mrs. NoName - Wally's mum
- and he got an immediate instinct that "something seriously wrong was going to happen". Penny asked somebody else to go down
to the door. "She put her bag on the side and put her hand into it andI just knewshe said later that she'd come to do me in.
Not only had she lost her son, she'd then been given false hopes through my looking into all this stuff. I hadn't got back
to her when I said I would, because I was trying to muddle through all this crap. Net result, I was going to get it." In the end, she was pacified and left happily. "So all that stuff happened with Mrs. NoName and I just freaked - I couldn't deal with it.
I was living here on my own and I just felt frightened. Frightened on every level - I felt lonely, scared of what I was doing,
so I just went into the garden and burnt it. In this book (Shibboleth), I thought I'd try and set the record straight." incredible adj. (inkrédibl) 1. Not to be, incapable of being, believed. 2. (colloq.) Marvellous, extraordinary,
remarkable. In-credible. No street cred. Hard to lend credibility to. HEALING Some of Penny's more extravagent claims have been to do with what could be termed paranormal
reality. From his claims of Wally Hope's weather-miracles to his controversial views on madness. Particularly, in Last Of
The Hippies, Rimbaud asserts: 'By allowing people to learn from the experience of their so-called "madness", rather than
punishing them for it, new radical ways of thought could be realised, new perspectives created and new horizons reached. How
else has the human mind grown and developed?' I've asked Penny previously about the Hope incidents, which he insists were objective reality
and not subjective hallucination. Mental illness was always something I wanted to press him further on, being a universe away
from the lyrical Crass rhetoric: "The whole idea of mental illness is essentially (not totally) a psychological invention.
Likewise medicine - straight allopathic medicine. It's been taken over by a particular body of people with a particular interest.
The high priests of a particular attitude, like the psychiatrists are - high priests of a particular dogma. That dogma has
been forced, more often than not through class interest, to become the dominant dogma. That happened in Russia very obviously,
where there was a fantastic tradition of healing and herbal medicine, which was free. The state systematically destroyed that
and it was replaced by similar dogmas that we have in the capitalist society. Those holistic traditions have been systematically
destroyed in the Western world. "I feel much the same about cancer. I think cancer is as much an invention as schizophrenia
is (cancer isn't a disease, it's a way of describing a vast myriad of diseases); it's like talking to someone and calling
them 'people', because everyone's a person. The whole idea of 'cancer' is an attempt to define something which is indefinable,
by giving it a name. It's stupid because it's all so extraordinarily individual." MADNESS "Most of the people I've known, quite a large number of people, who are supposedly 'mad'
are people who are just going down a very different avenue. Those avenues, basically, are tabooed. I've met quite a few 'Christ-nutters'
- the irony of that is that if you try to imitate the very essence of Christianity, to adopt a Christ-like attitude, it wouldn't
be very long before you were sectioned. Yet we live in a Christian society" Which suggests that those people who are 'round-the-twist'
on God, they've just gone off down a tabooed avenue. The thing I'm afraid of is that those avenues become more and more defined
in the last twenty years. Since Crass broke up, I think the arteries have hardened considerably. I think they're hardening
even more now, under New Labour. Under the in-yer-face Thatcherism, your anger bulged, your passion was drawn. Whereas now
there's this dreadful sense of impotency - if people feel cheated, they think it's their own fault just for existing. There's
something sick and horrible about it. And it throws you back into your own disillusion." PUNK "There were very few punk bands I enjoyed listening to. I went to see the Clash and The Slits
in Chelmsford. I thought the Clash were very exciting, but when I started looking at what they were doing, I couldn't continue
my interest. It was another piece of pantomime. I thought they were taking the piss. I found the Slits more inspiring because
the Clash were actually a very talented rock n roll band. But the Slits were bloody awful! I though, well if they can do itso
we did. "I used to go down the Roxy a lot as well, because I really liked the atmosphere. I liked
the live vibe of it, but the idea of listening to that on a record. " I remember the first time I went to the Roxy, with Eve. We were both pissed put of our
brains and she was running along the street with a rose hanging out of her mouth which she'd picked up off the street. I was
33 or 34 then. I remember the youthfulness and the charm and the gorgeousness of it. Rushing down into the Roxy and getting
more pissed. There was a band called The Bears on (Ed - I may or may not be right in thinking this was Jimmy Nail's old band.
Yeah, that Jimmy Nail). They were absolutely awful, but it didn't matter. Then we went home and fucked like hyenas. It was
all wild. "And then it all grew and became an institution and that wasn't wild.you pick out little
moments, which actually would have been the same if you were having a holiday in Crete. The whole thing just becomes a big
headache - I suppose in Shibboleth, I wanted to share my headache and confusion and doubt. I think so many people have got
such a mythological concept of Crass". No old punk connections then? "I think Andy managed to nick his guitar from one of those original punk bands, but that
was the only connection. I wasn't interested." Penny also recalls that when Gee was living in New York, she bumped into Johhny
Rotten, who was in a particularly bad way following the Pistols USA debacle, and looked after him for the evening. Penny isn't
impressed at all. I am. Penny is 56 years old and speaks with a public school accent. In some ways, this lends a
much-welcome credibility to a much-stereotyped anarchist scene. In others, it lends ammunition to the cynical. You couldn't
tar Crass singer Steve Ignorant with either brush, but how else are we to break down the (particularly British) barriers but
to establish common ground by virtue of common ideas. Indeed, in this day and age, an interest in ideas at all is a decidedly
minority sport. CRASS And so onto Crass, the old megalith itself. A few random reflections, the thoughts of Chairman
Penny: On their dour image: "All of us individually were lighter than the sum total of the band.we were always seen as
dour-faced. Bloody Revolutions has a lot of ironic humour that people didn't understand." On their anonymity: "Crass were by and large as anonymous as we could make ourselves - I've chosen to break that
for myself" "I probably respect (certain ex-members') anonymity more than their personalities" On stories left out of Shibboleth: "I didn't want to write Crass-go-Archers. I thought of writing a book on the class aspect
of Crass - I felt the expectations of the band members were very related to their class. If I was offered a million pounds
to write Crass-go-Archers..." On cheap records: (Though still cheaper than most records accompanying them on the shop shelves, the records
aren't as cheap as they were back in the days of vinyl, indeed they could little afford to be. For the single 'Reality Asylum',
Crass were actually losing ˝p on each sale) "I felt it was an extension of our fortune - we were being fortunate in selling stuff, fortunate
in not paying much rent and living very cheaply. It was a way of extending that, sharing it with people. I used to feel we
were the prow of a ship cutting through a sea of turd. On the end of Crass: "I remember that miners gig. My general impression of it was 'this is a fucking pantomime'.
There's all these people leaping up and down; meanwhile there's all these people having their entire lives stripped from them.
Thatcher's army destroying a complete lifestyle. "One of the band had just stopped smoking. They were saying that statistically smoking is
the biggestand he was trying to persuade his partner to give up smoking. I just rather innocently said "well, statistics don't
mean anything. More people are killed on the road every year than die of smoking-related diseases etc etc I was bullshitting
as much as he was. It was some stupid little thing. There was a terrific difference at the end between the direct violent
action and the direct non-violent action. We'd managed to hold that one at bay for seven years. I couldn't go on pretending
that I still believed in the ethic that we'd been promoting for all those years. I was a profound pacifist and I'd still like
to be" OTHER CRASS DUDES Look up the Crass website and you'll be dissappointed to not find out what most of the others
are up to. Penny harps on about their anonymity when this comes up, but he talks about the people he's still in touch with: Eve Libertine is learning jazz singing and doing stained-glass windows. She's also very involved
in the healing arts. Gee Sus is strongly back into painting. Peter Kennard (old CND artist & RCA lecturer)
had been showing slides of Gee's work as examples of wonderful collage. He and Gee met two or three years back and he showed
him her work. He was absolutely staggered that what he thought was collage was actually painting. She's also a T'ai Chi instructor. Steve Ignorant has got a new band together (Stratford Mercanaries) and is writing a lot and
learning piano. From alternative research, I also gather Andy Palmer left the band to attend the Royal College
Of Art, and Pete Wright has started a new band called Judas II. THE HOUSE Far and away the most inspiring thing from a personal point of view was the house that Crass
lived in. It made the all-important diference between talkin' 'bout a revolution and living one. It's what set Crass apart.
'Crass were the best punk band because they lived the lifestyle' remarked ATV's Mark Perry once, hitting the nail on the head.
It made their words more than rhetoric, which was the catalyst for a lot of punks disillusioned with the theatrical revolutionary
poses of the first wavers. "I found it having spent the best part of a year driving round a radius of about sixty miles
from my home, just looking for places. Oddly enough this one was advertised in an Estate Agents. It might have been a mistake,
because several years later I saw the other house I was due to look at, which was fantastic!" DEFENDING THE EMPIRE It is now under threat, however, from property developers who seek to turn Rimbaud's shangri-la
into a country theme-park. For the last year, Penny has been tied up wading through mountains of legal documents in an attempt
to keep the wolves from the door, almost literally. Thirty years down the line, it would be nothing short of a piece of history
disappearing if it went. Penny always was a fighter though: "Maybe like all empires, it's going to crumble into dust. But it's not going to crumble into
fucking gold dust. If I'm going to close down thirty years commitment, it's not going to be because some yuppie bastard has
decided to make my house into a gold mine. What they'll get is a burned-down ruin." "It's been a home to over a hundred people. It's been saving hundreds of lives, not just
through what goes out of the place, but also what goes on within it. It would be a total tragedy. It will always be what it is if I've got anything to do with it, which is the open house
it always has been. But whether I've got the strength to still be behind the open door, I don't know." (Since this interview, Crass have won the court case and kept the house) STOP
PRESS - at least I thought it was all over - it's not - see the Dial House Appeal for details) The last time I interviewed Penny, for an article that anarchist Schnews-letter were understandably
too scared to publish, on legal grounds. I played the tape to a flatmate of the time. A scouser, with a big interest in dope
and dub-reggae and none in anarchism, punk, or Crass. For a solid C90 we both sat there smoking the breeze in total silence.
At the end, my flatmate just said, 'God, he's intelligent, isn't he?' And he is. Penny is the nearest thing we've got to a
philosopher these days. Which isn't to say that you've got to agree with him. But most similar peoples' ideas are intellectual/theoretical
(Noam Chomsky) or pseudo stand-up comedy (Jello Biafra). Only Mark Thomas comes close, but Penny makes no concessions to dumbing
down for the masses. There's clearly space for both; it's just that Rimbaud, unlike Thomas, isn't afforded his rightful share. After the interview, Penny calls me a cab. (Hey, you're a cab!) With no front doorbell or
surrounding lights for miles, he has to keep going to the door to check it's arrived. Eventually, it has. I go out to meet
an old East-End wide-boy driver made good to the delights of suburban Essex. He's freaked. "I'll tell you, I was going to give it another minute then I was out of here!" I know what
he means, but I also know that we're both suffering from a serious lack of reality - so dependent on the props that make us
cold but convince us we're warm. Reality has been too much for me too though. I instruct him to drop me at the nearest pub
to the station and go in and order a pint. I'm physically shaking, like a junkie hanging out. I can't stop myself; self-conscious
but unable to do anything about it. For a while I think Penny must have dropped some acid into my coffee. There's a scene
in the film 'Flashback' where Dennis hopper persuades Keifer Sutherland that he's spiked his mineral water, and then just
lets Keifer's imagination take over, effectively opening up a mental Pandora's Box. Though I love and trust Penny, I can't think of any other reason I feel so weird. All the
locals stare at me. I still can't stop shaking, though I desperately want to and fear I might be in for a seriously hard time
off them. The pub jukebox sings 'I've Never Been To Me' and the words seem to have a new resonance. I can't help feeling I'm
quite happy with that little arrangement - something to do with mental health. Penny confronts you with the enormity of everything,
as you suspect he confronts himself every day. 'Too much fucking perspective', as Tap one philosophised. Four pints later, I feel sane enough to get on the tube and I'm transported back to Central
London. Back to 'reality', but certainly not back to life. Life was out there. With all it's difficulties, with all it's imperfections,
all its hardships and all its deep and manifold meanings. With the hindsight of writing all this down a couple of weeks later, I'm inclined to take
the opinion that what freaked me out and made me shake was the fact that I'd opened Pandora's Box and seen too much beauty.
Conversations like the one I'd just had are usually carried out with the benefit of copious alcohol, consequently incoherent
and forgotten in the morning. I've seen the cutting edge and it cuts you. The last time I'd made this journey back, I'd got
back to Liverpool St station and been unable to get on the tube. Too crowded. Too desperate. I'd gone in search of my usual
solution - the pub - and found the same feelings keeping me out on the pavement. There was too much of a paradox between what I knew was real and what I saw around me - my
eyelids had been forced up - much the same as Crass records did for me back when I was seventeen. Much the same as 'Shibboleth' will do for you if you've got the guts to buy it. 'Shibboleth' is out on AK Press now. |
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