Children of a Lesser Guild: an Anarcho A–Z

PUNK 3 (1) pp. 41–47 Intellect Limited 2014

Interview

Alex Ogg Independent

Children of a lesser guild: An anarcho A–Z

Abstract Keywords One of the fallacies concerning the anarcho-punk movement, diligently dispelled by Amebix the recent work of Ian Glasper and others, is that it was a self-limiting oeuvre, Zounds peopled by the non-descript and musically unadventurous. While there was unar- Anarcho-Punk guably some sheep farming north of the Falklands latterly, that was far from the Crass case originally; specifically in terms of the output of Crass Records, whose symboli- Independence cally attired monochrome 45s surveyed an astonishing breadth of musical styles and Rough Trade ideas. Approximately three decades down the line we have a chance to look at new ‘product’ from two supposedly ‘anarcho’ bands who were equally innovative but sounded as distinct from each other in musical ethos as it is possible to imagine. Originally recording for the Subhumans’ Spiderleg imprint, Amebix’s thunderous early EPs and Arise album (Alternative Tentacles) still sound as if souls were being cheese-grated live in the studio and were hugely influential in bridging punk to dark metal, crust and beyond. Conversely Zounds’ winsome charms were rooted in a neo-folk musical vernacular that had trace elements of 1960s pop. Alex Ogg spoke first to Amebix’s Rob aka the Baron and subsequently to Steve Lake, whose The Redemption of Zounds is out now through Overground Records. The interviews were undertaken in 2011 and a small number of quotes from these exchanges were published in an article for commercial magazine Vive Le Rock.

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Amebix Alex: Tell us about the reasons for throwing Amebix’s cap back into the ring? Rob: It was an indirect consequence of a DVD project that I was working on to summarize the history of the band and to address some of the rumour and speculation that had followed the Amebix story over the years. We wanted to finish it off by revisiting some songs and trying to see how they might have sounded given the right space and equipment.

A: Amebix were considered part of the anarcho-punk scene, yet the sound was imme- diately distinctive. The combination of influences was self-evident, from Sabbath to, particularly, Killing Joke. But you’ve spoken in the past about trying to find, without necessarily the technical ability to channel it, an inner power. Where did that obses- sion come from? R: Maybe through the sense of personal powerlessness that was perva- sive within that scene in the 80s; a morbid negativity which seemed almost vampiric at times, It seemed to me that people had lost touch with what had originally empowered the first wave of Punk; self expression, art, positivity and experimentation. These all combined for us as the essence of what we believed in.

A: You’ve been widely credited with providing a ‘bridge’ between punk and later death/doom metal, and especially ‘crust’ bands. I know you’re likely affronted by such genre pigeon-holing, but do you recognize, or celebrate, your influence in some of these subsequent developments? R: Of course it is an honour to have been cited as an influence to so many bands. For me I love to hear really interesting developments for fans of our music. I am listening to Melodica Deathship at the moment; brilliant to think that Amebix could have inspired something so ‘un-crust’. Also Starkweather and Panopticon. What gives me greatest pleasure is people who go out on a limb with their music, not genres or standards, but when they are true to themselves it transcends the stereotypes.

A: Similarly, I know you’re pretty agnostic about some of the perceived values of the anarcho movement, and particularly the self-righteousness of its inner hier- archies. When all’s said and done, however, a force for good in the world, and a movement that forced people to think more than it shut people’s thought processes down? R: Hmmm. Well, yes but no. Some of the values that were originally propa- gated by the anarcho scene are directly linked to what has come to be associated with political correctness and Nanny State politics. I am not a fan of censorship and feel that some things have led to an impasse.

A: Is it true in your frugal early days you used to purloin dumped food from super- markets, etc, but often found that Disorder had got there before you? Quite clearly you lived right on the margins for a while, and there’s an assumption abroad that artists who suffer tend to produce better art – that the authenticity of the experience is reflected in the authenticity of the artistic output. R: Well, what I think separates us from the great majority of extreme bands is that we actually lived that life, had those experiences and delved into the

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personal darkness to retrieve what we did; madness, death, magick, drugs, hunger and homelessness. We survived somehow and were informed by what we passed through. A lot of people like to wear a uniform and talk about things that they have little personal experience of, or don the corpse paint and faux-Satanism to fit in with this week’s trend. It gives me great amusement to see all these pseudo warriors posing with swords and I wake up in the shadow of the mythical mountains of Cuchullain and set my fire up to start forging the first sword of the day. In the real world, according to my ‘metalometer’, that rates as an 11.

A: Can you tell me more about your sword manufacturing business? R: Well, I disappeared to Skye some twenty odd year ago after the band had split up, depressed and disillusioned. I turned my back on everything from before and decided to return to a simpler way of life, to learn how to forge a sword as both metaphor and practical application of alchemical principles. So I taught myself and built a small workshop and over the years with the advent of the Internet I became known as a swordsmith. I sell all over the world now, mainly to either collectors or those who want an heirloom made in the tradi- tional manner, using fire and hammer. I always stress to the customers that whilst the sword may remain on the wall it is a working piece in an age where everything is mass produced and replica-based.

Figure 1: Knights of the Black Sun album cover.

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A: Can you tell us some more about [new single] ‘Knights of the Black Sun’, and what we can expect from the forthcoming album? There’s clearly a marked change in the band’s sound and direction. What’s impacted on that? R: It was difficult to choose a song to release as a preview of the album. We have a lot of different textures in [forthcoming album] Sonic Mass, ranging from very clean to very heavy and dark, so I am pleased that people are enjoy- ing this so far. Overall it’s a better production and sound, but the essential spirit of the band has remained solid and recognizable. The album is really a piece to be listened to in its entirety. I think people will understand how that song fits into the tapestry once it is released.

A: I’m very interested in the lyrical themes. Despite writing ‘No Gods, No Masters’, you were very connected to the whole atavism movement, Crowley, etc. You’re again referencing theology in what I take to be an analogy for the battle for the modern world. R: True. I think the ‘No Gods, No Masters’ motto has been taken very literally by some and more allegorically by others, as it should be.

Zounds Alex: You’ve periodically said you’re embarrassed by the Zounds catalogue, particularly your ‘albatross’ record ‘Can’t Cheat Karma’. You’ve obviously made your peace with the fact that a lot of people were fond of Zounds. Steve: Yes, it took a long time really because I am my harshest critic, well, apart from a few cruel and unforgiving types that stalk the comments columns of YouTube and various Internet message boards. For a long time I felt that a lot of the Zounds stuff I wrote was a bit naïve. The fact is, it was. But then I was naïve at the time and I don’t feel any shame about that now. Mainly because it was sincere and I meant every word, it is the person I was at the time and I have stopped worrying about it.

A: It’s not just 30 years down the line for Zounds, but also pretty much the whole anarcho-punk shebang. Do you still see anarcho’s ‘achievements’ as positive? S: Yes I do see it as largely positive, though at the time I don’t think the term ‘anarcho-punk’ was in use. The bands we were associated with, The Mob, The Astronauts, Poison Girls, Crass, Flux, were all very interesting and very different from each other. We were positing ideas and a way of doing things that was valid, and that turned a lot of people on to stuff that wasn’t getting said or done elsewhere. Of course, we all made countless mistakes, but it showed there was another way of looking at things, and that you could work more autonomously. There are a lot of people in the dance scene that took that up and applied it to their own areas of expression. Which is a damn sight more interesting than hundreds of bands dressing in black and moaning on about vegetarianism and the government to the accompaniment of unimaginative, tuneless, monotonous buzzsaw guitars.

A: Speaking of subcultures … I note that you now teach/lecture in cultural studies. S: The idea that I am a cultural studies lecturer is a scurrilous and hurtful rumour perpetuated by jealous, ex-members of Zounds who want to belittle and diminish me. My career since I first disbanded the group has been that of a petty criminal preying on the weak and the vulnerable, mugging pensioners and

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Figure 2: Ancient Briton album cover.

exploiting the needy. It is true that while in prison I did a cultural studies course, but only to get out of sewing mailbags. On the whole the academy accepts the prevailing media notion of punk, that it was a metropolitan phenomenon based around the McLaren inspired London glitterati. It seems to have bought in to the Jon Savage line that it was all about the Clash and the Pistols and Jon Savage. Punk was much more about unfocused kids from small rural and suburban towns trying to make their lives a bit less boring. It was much more about Billy Childish than it was about poor schmucks like Sid Vicious.

A: And speaking of retro-vision, you’re now officially a post-punk band. Does that label appeal any more than anarcho-punk? S: Mmmm … I’ve noticed that too. I am not bothered either way really. All those labels have much more to do with marketing than genuine identity. In places like Greece we were always seen to have more in common with bands like The Cure and Joy Division than with the ‘ramma-lamma-fuck the system’ bands, so it’s not entirely new.

A: You’ve been very clear about your political impulses being borne out of the actual reality of growing up with no prospects apart from the factory, rather than getting your political compass from literature, etc. S: None of the original members of Zounds had a college education. Our ideas were formed by getting dead end jobs, suffering police harassment and

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Figure 3: Various Zounds memorabilia.

being clueless about the way the adult world worked. Mainly the only things I read in those days were music papers. As we became more marginalized, and started to exist in our own little bubble, it became clear that no party or group represented our views. I became very conscious that I was working class when we started mixing with the Crass people and Rough Trade. I never resented middle class people though, I actually quite liked them. Working- class environments were often a bit violent for my wimpy, cowardly person- ality, and I was glad to be out of that scene where fighting seemed to be the answer to everything. I stopped going to football and didn’t have the temperament for the pubs and meat markets that made up the social territory of my schoolmates.

A: Similarly, one of the defining attributes of the anarcho bands seemed to be, for want of a better word, certainty. Whereas Zounds always seemed to be knee-deep in introspection, self-doubt and uncertainty. And that continues with something like ‘Damage’ on the new record. S: Absolutely. I was never sure about anything, but agonized about everything. That was the whole point of ‘Demystification’. I just didn’t know what the hell was going on. I really wanted to know but I just couldn’t get a handle on anything. I would meet someone and fall under their spell, think they had all the answers, but the more I would get to know them the more I would see they had the same insecurities and confusion as I had; that their arguments were shot through with contradictions. The same with movements, hippies, punks, Rastas, Buddhists, whoever. You start to get seduced and then you see the ideas are inconsistent and ridiculous.

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A: Also, on something like ‘Subvert’, there was an energy there that was all about possibility (If you have a job, you can be an agent) when so many of your peers expressed themselves in the vernacular of the negative. A valid observation? S: Very valid. Despite my angst and confusion I was young and enthusiastic enough to think we could find a way out of it all. That was a bit of a hangover from the older hippie bands I think. The Pink Fairies/MC5 philosophy of ‘do it’. Come on kids, the oldies are fucked up but if we trust in each other and think positively and help and support each other it will all come right in the end. I told you I was naive. I am not that positive anymore. I’ve seen too much. I’ve seen all the idealism and hope corrupted. I have been corrupted myself. But you know, if another generation comes along and picks up the flag then they have my full support. I might not be able to join them on the barricades but I will be cheering from the sidelines.

A: Moving to the new album, what’s the impetus behind the new songs? S: I am essentially a shallow person who just loves rock n roll and loves writing, singing and playing. No one is interested in any music I do other than Zounds so that is how I have to express myself. It is a curse but also a bless- ing. I can’t really do anything else anyway. I actually think the times are a bit more conducive to Zounds music again anyway. The world is going to hell in a handcart and I would quite like Zounds to be on board as the ship sinks in to oblivion. I am also a bit of an attention seeker so sometimes I feel the need to jump up and down, shout out loud and be noticed.

A: Any thoughts on having to move to London from Cowley Road Oxford, only for Cowley Road to become music central twenty years later? S: I consider the success of Radiohead to be solely down to me and my influence on them. Of course I would have preferred that it was Zounds that became the world’s biggest band, but they can do it for us by proxy. It is a shame they do not acknowledge the fact that I paved the way for them, but that’s the breaks baby. I can handle it.

Suggested citation Ogg, A. (2014), ‘Children of a lesser guild: An anarcho A–Z’, Punk & Post-Punk 3: 1, pp. 41–47, doi: 10.1386/punk.3.1.41_1

Contributor details Alex Ogg is the co-editor of Punk & Post-Punk; a peripatetic lecturer, he is the author of The Art of Punk (with Dr Russ Bestley), No More Heroes, Independence Days, The Hip-Hop Years (with David Upshal), The Men Behind Def Jam and more than a dozen music and art-related titles. His new book on Dead Kennedys’ Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables is due to be published in the United Kingdom, United States, Germany, Finland and Brazil in the summer of 2014. E-mail: [email protected]

Alex Ogg has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that was submitted to Intellect Ltd.

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