Chumbawamba Interview with back2front zine October 2006

Everyone likes to point the finger from time to time but there’s one band that have probably been pointed at more than most, maybe for good reason, maybe not. They first appeared on the Crass compilation album “Bullshit Detector 2” back in 1982 and emerged from their peacepunk roots into a militant anarchist band that took the baton fromwhere Crass had left off. Initially they recorded their own cassettes anddistributed them from their communal squat in Armley before making
albums. They were called sell-out from the moment their first vinyl album, the quite brilliant “Pictures of Starving Children Sells Records”, hit the streets in 1986. Chumbawamba then began a long and varied career using every sort of musical vehicle but always maintaining an anarchist bent and a wicked sense of humour. Occasionally superb and occasionally, in their own words, just plain crap the band signed to the dreaded EMI in 1997, had a huge hit single and a multi-million selling album “Tubthumper”. As the band had spent many years condemning EMI for its one time involvement in arms manufacture they were seen as hypocrites and sell outs by long term fans. At the time singer Alice Nutter commented :
“We thought long and hard before we finally decided what to do, and we’ll explain the reasoning behind our choices. Our
experiences over the last fifteen years have robbed us of the naive view that there’s ‘good’ and ‘bad’ capitalism. We learnt the hard way that 'indie' isn't shorthand for integrity - it's become a style guideline rather than (how we originally perceived it) a shortening of the word Independent". As a band we've tried releasing records in various ways : we started our own record label, Agit-Prop, but found that we had to choose between being a boss label and a band. We were OK at the creative end of running a label but we were crap at the business side and lost a lot of money helping bands put out records which didn't sell very well. During that time we used an independent distributor; mad as it seems now we told them that as anarchists we wanted to work on trust rather than from contracts. It took us a while to learn that 'trust' is another word for 'sucker' in the music industry - basically, we got ripped off more by our own naivety than by the industry. We signed to One Little Indian, our last label - thinking that we'd found a label that we had things in common with. We'd known Derek Birkett (OLI's boss) since his days in the band, Flux of Pink Indians, and we assumed that the label had other objectives as well as profit. We knew the label would only keep us as long as we sold enough records, but that seemed like a fair deal. In the end, though, the label became preoccupied with its financial problems; and as we were one of the few bands who didn't lose them tons of money in £200,000 videos and ultra expensive promotional failures, OLI were keen for us to stay safe, don't try anything new, and release an annual imitation of "Anarchy" to, keep the float topped up. (Which we weren't prepared to do). The final straw was a sudden interest in taking away Chumbawamba's artistic control. ("Go away and write some stronger songs..."). We told OLI that we wanted to leave in December 1996. When we started looking round for another company we realised that we no longer made a distinction between 'major' and 'indie'. We knew labels would see us only in terms of whether we were profitable so we stopped pretending that we had to, have some vague political trust in whoever released our records; plus we were fed up with constantly bypassing the "popular" part of popular culture, not being able to play in places like the USA, and watching as a million other crap bands were getting the airtime/press space to talk absolute crap whilst we sniped tinily from the sidelines. We wanted to work with the labels who'd work the hardest in our interest. We went to Germany to sign with EMI and one of the EMI blokes asked us if it was problematic for us to, be signed with EMI. We said it was, because EMI has symbolic status. Chumbawamba's early history is rooted in (so-called) "peace punk” and EMI was always shorthand for everything evil about the music industry. Signing with EMI for us finally lays the ghost of peace punk, its political mistakes and its misplaced logic, to rest. It isn’t the eighties any more... you can't fight a modernized army using outdated weaponry. We realise that some people are going to be unhappy about our choices, but it's not our job to placate people with false distinctions between 'good' and 'bad' bosses. Our job is to, spread propaganda, throw up debate and argument, cause some trouble, and carry on making music which goes against the grain of these shallow times. We reckon all these things deserve to reach a bigger audience.”

B2F: I agree that these ideas need to reach further and wider. Continual preaching to the converted will get nowhere. I must admit I was quite taken aback, but I didn’t think they’d “sold out”. In my book selling out means a compromise of principles and yet the irony wasn’t entirely lost either. I waited to see what might happen. Chumbawamba used their 15 minutes of fame to fund assorted underground projects, throw water around the deputy prime minister John Prescott and shout free Mumia
Abu Jamal on prime time US television among other activities. Things have now come full circle and the band now are now back on a small independent label, No Masters, and have gone back to their folk roots, a style which was always in the background of their music. Anyway make up your own mind, here’s guitarist Boff with how it all began :

“When the band started there were three blokes and a super 8 projector. It was anti-Falklands war cabaret strangeness. Two women, a dog and three cats moved into an empty house in Armley, Leeds and promptly joined the band. Other people came and moved in, lived there for a while, some joined the band, others didn’t. There were frequent police raids and a garden full of vegetables - and bizarre haircuts and vegan footwear, for a while. Then the band started to take it all more seriously, so for a few years they rehearsed and played and put out independent-label cassettes and records. John Peel championed the first single and meant the band could play further afield, in empty church halls in Bristol and redundant slaughterhouses in Swindon. These were exciting times, with the band intent on switching between thrashpunk
and acapella harmony singing. By the late 1980’s Chumbawamba discovered dance beats and primitive samplers. They toured the USA in a van, shocked people who decided they’d “gone disco”, and came home broke A couple of personnel shifts came and went. The squat almost collapsed beneath its own weight. People moved out, others moved in, and Chumbawamba took itself seriously and toured throughout the early nineties. After a period of relative success playing with Credit to the Nation and working with One Little Indian Records, a slump period coincided with OLI’s disillusionment with the forthcoming album by the band. Taking part-time jobs for a while, Chumbawamba passed round tapes of the finished album in the hope of someone being able to manufacture and distribute it. EMI and Universal, bizarrely, loved it, and offered enough money to keep the band working for several years. Much discussion followed. Band meetings were fraught and electric. Seizures and fainting, hollering and shouting. Armed with good contract lawyers, Chumbawamba decided to go with the multinationals and see where it took them. The album ‘Tubthumping’ (an album written about what was happening in northern England at that time) spurned a one hit wonder and Chumbawamba flew around the world poking fun at the stupid business they were in. Some of it was ironic, some simply crap. They returned to earth and carried on making belligerently unformulaic records for smaller labels, changing styles to suit whim and bloody-mindedness. They continue to this day as a rockin’ bunch of geriatric teddy boys playing the hits of Chuck Berry with an old Casio keyboard and a wardrobe of mothballed stage wear.”

B2F: Tell us how the band got going and what motivated you down this path? Tell us a little about the early DiY years, cassette culture and squatting ?

“We started in various other bands, punk bands, learning how to play and generally wanting to just make music. We came together not through the idea of the band but by living together and by moving into a squatted house together. Here, we’ve got a spare room, this is what we’re trying to do — sharing money and repairing the house and garden — oh and by the way, there’s this band which I’m sure you can do something in. We constantly swapped instruments and tried different musical ideas out - went through a phase of being called ‘The Four Duncans’ playing only children’s plastic instruments.
By dint of the bands we were listening to, we got more and more into wanting to say something about the world we lived in. First the Clash, Slits, the Jam, Wire etc and then Crass, Flux and Conflict. When we made our first cassette demo to sell at gigs, we had people telling us we’d sold out. We ran our own printing press in the basement and produced booklets and leaflets, and had a funny green van that was used on most local political campaigns. We must’ve looked like a real rent-a-mob. The van always broke down or was stopped by the cops, seemingly always hobbling from one demo to the next. The saving grace through all those years (I reckon) was having women in the house and in the band. It kept us from turning into a lad’s rock n roll party. Our ethos was, if you can’t pitch in and do your share of the cooking and washing up then what’s the point in talking about revolution ? ”

B2F: The band’s political ethos made a major shift from peace-punk ideology around the Great Miners’ Strike 1984-1985 to espousing what Kropotkin called ‘propaganda by the deed’. Your stance became proviolence. What caused the militant shift and is this perspective still important for you nowadays ?

“Well we were sort of reacting to the way campaign and demo politics had created its own strict rules. After a few Hyde Park CND rallies they sort of became just ‘good days out’. Great to go and listen to Tony Benn or watch Gil-Scott Heron or whatever,but in real terms, under Thatcher/Reagan, it felt like this huge movement wasn’t going anywhere. Everyone was into creating ‘alternatives’ instead of confronting the real issues. The Miners Strike was great for us lot, it woke us up. It all happened on our doorstep and suddenly we were aware that this was a big issue in that world of peace-punk and CND rallies. We liked getting involved in a different way. I wouldn’t say it was all effective, and there was an amount of ideological confusion and jumping in the deep end, but it was good that people went through it. It was important to ditch the way protest had been boxed and compartmentalised. We were suddenly singing about the idea of getting more militant, smashing windows, going on picket lines and joining in riots. After those pleasant CND rallies, finding yourself at a colliery gate with hundreds of miners fighting the police had a buzz of involvement and a spark of life we relished. I could go on and on about that year, when the Strike turned a lot of heads around. That peace punk scene had run its course, at least for us in northern England.”

B2F: Were you disgusted by the attitude of people who wouldn’t support the miners because the strikers “ate meat” and “were sexist”? Thatcher destroyed traditional industry in a number of areas removing not just jobs and livelihoods but culture itself. Do you think that that cultural wound can ever be healed ?

“Well I don’t remember if we were ‘disgusted’, but it really did make us think about this whole culture we were involved in. And yes, that was a wound that Thatcher opened up which won’t ever repair, it’s become a defining point for so many people. Destroying resistance has always been about more than attacking people — you have to destroy their culture, too. I know the story of how Gaelic football was banned in Ireland in 1918; the British government named the Gaelic Athletic Association on its list of banned organisations, saying it was tied to Irish revolutionaries. The cultural stuff is as important as the military and political stuff. As for whether the cultural wound can be healed — Alice (from the band) has announced many times that when Thatcher dies there’ll be a spontaneous party at her house. The reaction she gets to this is that everywhere, different people think the same thing… The Witch is Dead! Party! People who lived through the eighties and saw, or were part of, that Thatcherite revolution, will never forget it.”

B2F: Around 86-87 there was a song in the live set called “Read All about It” in which support for the IRA’s armed campaign was announced. I understand that 2 members of the band stayed in West Belfast briefly and based their observations on that experience. However some people from Belfast took issue with the fact that the IRA are a totalitarian regime and impinge upon freedom in the same way as the State and that Chumbas had only visited one side of a divided community. Can you discuss where the line is drawn between freedom-fighter and usurper ?

“I don’t think the song ‘Read All about It’ was a direct result of staying in Belfast. It was a result of our realisation that Thatcher was waging a war much closer to home than the Falklands, and that whatever our position on it, we’d better start finding out about it and reading about it and talking to people about it. Of course the IRA represented so much politically that we didn’t agree with, but they were Thatcher’s sworn enemy and that, at least, counted for something. The first trip to stay in Belfast was with the Troops Out Movement, which surprisingly wasn’t overly reverential towards Sinn Fein (there were some heated and fascinating arguments in the forums and debates there) but even so we kept a distance between ourselves and the TOM party line. Still, it was an opportunity to go to Belfast. I can’t deny I had a right good time in the pubs and bars and like a proper tourist I had a gun pushed in my face by a young soldier from England. Even amongst the bands and radical political groups in Belfast (over the years we talked and argued with a fair few) there was argument and dissent on support for anything vaguely ‘Republican’, and we knew full well that a bunch of anarchists from Leeds weren’t going to get to the heart of the situation by reading some books and staying in West Belfast a couple of times. It just seemed to us that there was a time when Thatcher was so intent on pushing her anti-Republican agenda to the point of using torture, murder, and with it the full force of the media, that we chose sides. The side we chose wasn’t Sinn Fein’s Marxist line or the IRA’s gangster fetish, but it did match some of the campaigns both Sinn Fein and the IRA were spearheading. The hunger strikes had a real effect on us. Before that we hadn’t taken much notice of what was happening in Ireland, and why. Suddenly there was this young bloke who wrote radical poetry, was being demonised by The Sun, and got voted as MP by his own community even though in prison. I know it’s not as simple as all that, but I think us writing songs about Ireland, pro-Republican, anti-Thatcher songs, was a good thing for our English audience. It’s strange though — twenty-odd years later and I’m still walking a tightrope when trying to talk about Ireland, at that time. What’s clear to me now is that it was important for us to see it from our own northern English perspective, because that was our audience and that’s where we wanted to start people talking. I still have no qualms about us quoting Bobby Sands on stage back then, and I still think Christy Moore’s ‘Spirit of Freedom’ album, focussing on the hunger strikes, is one of the most powerful and beautiful records ever made. (But I also know how crap and shallow it would seem to some people living in the middle of that divided
community to hear people like us trying to encapsulate some kind of three-minute rebel stance on the situation with a few harmonies thrown in for good measure).”

B2F: That’s interesting because I think very few people have analysed the Irish situation to any great depth often being content with the black and white distortion of a media bent on the great quest for sensationalist headlines where anything remotely green was somehow wrong. Many people do not realise the oppression of both working communities in this situation by those who maintained the fear and lived off the misery. (The UVF actually realised this years ago and pulled their support away from the DUP). Do you still raise the question or is that tight-rope too dicey and what role can alternative
media offer ?

“We don’t raise the question because it doesn’t seem to get asked anymore. We’re a band that often walks on those ‘dicey
tightropes’ and very often falls flat on our faces. Basically, we’re on the side of people who want change. Who want things to get better. That’s a starting point. The whole Irish situation was, and is, something we have to approach as English people, talking to English people. Through the late eighties we were playing to English student audiences who were so amazingly unaware of the Irish situation. All we seemed to have over here was the knee-jerk anti-IRA stuff which the media peddled. It was our instinct as an anarchist band to try to articulate some of that stuff (the song you talked about was about media distortion of the situation). At the time Gerry Adams’ voice was still being blanked on TV, whilst Ian Paisley was allowed to spout his war-mongering bloodcurdling rhetoric whenever and wherever he liked. Mind you, the ‘dicey tightropes’ are always there. We had it in the neck for a while from animal rights people, from the DiY community (especially in the USA), we get it every time we make a move which steps slightly sideways.”

B2F: Chumbas have always had a thing for football. I appreciate that football at a community level is a positive feature of local life for many but when it becomes the domain of the Companies it turns into farce. The football star becomes the commodity and children aspire towards the great plastic goalposts in this season’s kit. Is it simply the involvement of the companies or is it the structure of the game itself, and by extension all sports, being male dominated, competitive and concerned with domination of one side over another allowing patriotism and racism an easy back door ?

“I don’t agree at all with your latter assertion. And about football, I sort of agree, but with reservations. I was born and brought up in Burnley, a dilapidated town with a dwindling population and an extinct industry. Burnley has a football team just about holding its head up in Division One (not the Premier League), no money, small squad, no famous players but a central place in the community. Kids in Burnley don’t wear Man Utd or Arsenal shirts, they wear Burnley shirts. The buses are Burnley FC’s colours, the players drink in the local pubs, and the team are big news in the Burnley Express whether they win or lose. So my view of football is tainted by growing up with this world a million miles from Sky TV and David Beckham and multi-million pound wages bills etc. Of course it’s all still commercial, still marketcommodity entertainment, but it does have a peculiar and powerful role in the life of the town. And in a town which the BNP have targeted for local council seats, the role of the football team, with its multi-racial make-up and overt anti-racist stance, is essential. And no, I don’t think all sport is bad just because it’s competitive. I reckon competition is fine as long as it doesn’t go hand-in-hand with the Nike-promoted “Second Is Nowhere” ethos so prevalent in USA sports (or in USA culture in general, in fact — “anyone can become President”. So that’s just under 300 million failures every election, then). And if you take away the overblown commercialism, the patriotism and the male dominance, you’re still left with many many millions of people who play sport to
keep healthy, to be part of a community, to have a laugh, to test themselves, to get out of the house, to see more of their world… I live opposite a school playing field, and the sight of kids running around playing football almost every day — both
organised and unorganised — fills me with more hope than any number of things those kids have as alternatives (TV, Playstation, drugs, whatever).”

B2F: Hmmm…well it is a game of two halves after all.

“No, I don’t agree. I’ll give you an example. England played a friendly game recently, and towards the end of the game there
was a double substitution. The England manager brought on two substitutes at the same time. Sean Wright-Phillips and Peter
Crouch, one a tiny (5’2”) black lad and the other a blonde-haired geeky-looking 6’7” lad. And weirdly, it made me really happy to be from this strange country where we’re such a mongrel mix of culture and style and influence, made me think that this sport is one way to see what a mixed-up, interesting place we live in. I mean I’m not saying it was ebony and ivory living together in perfect harmony, but it was a real one in the eye for bigots and racists. It transcended football, basically. And I think this happens quite a lot, nowadays.”

B2F: For many years you incorporated elements of street theatre into your live set. How important is it to include the visual perspective as a means of communicating your ideas and does this defeat the consumer spectacle that divides performer from punter ?

“Well, that spectacle dividing performer from audience is a pretty solid fact of live music. We used to talk about ways to challenge that gap, but it’s really hard. When you go to a gig you tend not to want the band to start playing with the format too much, you want to hear and see what’s going on. I mean, there’s a lovely thing on ATV’s first album where it’s a live gig and Mark Perry (lead singer) says he wants to break down the star/audience barrier and invites people on to the stage, and… people just get up there and yell obscenities and start fights. We always used the visual part of the show because we realised that in a culture where people grow up watching TV it might be a good idea to use the audience’s visual sophistication to make the whole show more memorable. Make it more ‘readable’. If you’re parodying a game-show host on stage, then stick on a gold lame jacket, make it a bit more complete. A lot of the stuff I grew up listening to had a big visual thing going on — even the Pistols were full of theatrics. Lately we realised that a way to get around that approach was to do the opposite — talk to the audience. Get involved in conversations from the stage, talk about the place you’re playing,
ask people in the audience what they think about things, get them singing along. It’s such a different thing for us, but we’re
trying it because it’s interesting and challenging and we didn’t want to wear the gold lame jacket forever.”

B2F: You have utilised a number of approaches and constantly reinvented yourself by the styles of music you play. Is this a deliberate approach for you or do you to some extent follow musical fashion as a way of keeping credible from a commercial standpoint ?

“Well we sometimes follow musical fashion but only because we love the music. There’s not much attempt at ‘credibility’ — I think we’re so far away from what the ‘taste-makers’ decide is ‘credible’ that it’s laughable to us. We started doing acapella singing, using wah-wah guitar rhythms, writing singalonga choruses, ripping off sampled vocals, looping sampled beats, because we loved listening to them. We’d literally hear something and someone would say, “Let’s have a go at that!”
The other thing is that we constantly run scared of getting in a rut. I can’t abide the idea of becoming the kind of band who has “a sound”, and who sticks to it.”

B2F: Everybody is stealing from someone else as you have mentioned. Is originality merely a re-arrangement of what has already been done before in a new format ?

”Oh probably, yes. There are exceptions, where something comes along and shocks you, you can’t work out where it came from, and it sounds new and fascinating. But mostly, we’re living in an age where stuff is largely recycled and twisted. Some of the things I love right now, culturally, are great to me because they take stuff I know from the past and mix it with something modern. I have to be careful now, though. I don’t want to become the ageing granddad who sits in the corner dribbling and saying everything sounds like something-or-other “from my day”.”

B2F: You promoted filesharing a few years ago with a series of free downloads. Can you think of any particular ways of combating the likes of the RIAA and those trying to demonise MP3 culture? I notice some P2P folk are putting a disclaimer on their files for example.

“I can’t think of a way other than people constantly finding ways around the whole thing. Well, we could make a point by
executing people like Madonna and Metallica, which would be some good forward publicity, but it’d have to be followed up by a concerted campaign to encourage millionaire record company execs and over-fed musicians to spread their obscene wealth to those at the bottom more and in time encourage fans to invest in helping those bands who need support.”

B2F: The playing of practical jokes has long been a hobby of yours. Do you do them just our own amusement or do you think they make some kind of impact politically? Tell us a few of your own personal favourites ?

“Practical jokes don’t abide by any pattern or structure. They don’t, do they? You just sit there and the next thing you know,
someone’s had a stupid idea that you think is worth making an effort for. Sometimes it ends up turning into a record, sometimes it just fizzles out. Sometimes you just can’t afford to make it happen. Even putting a bucket of water on a door takes a fair amount of effort to prepare. My favourite was a photo-sequence we did for Class War paper once. A long time ago. We were fans of the paper but treated it with a certain amount of, er, tongue-in-cheek. Or a pinch of salt. Or something. They had a section where people were invited to write in to say how they’d “Bashed the Rich”. So we set up some photos. Me and Dunst, dressed in suits and carrying briefcases and newspapers, are walking along a busy street in Leeds. Suddenly a skin headed ruffian (Harry) steals up behind us, and finally, in the last shot, he showers the two rich bastards with a ‘shit-filled condom’ (apparently a favourite weapon of the time amongst Class Warriors). They duly printed the photographs along with the caption ‘Leeds Comrades Attack Rich Scum’, or somesuch. There you go, a bit pointless and a lot of effort. See, that’s what you can get up to when you don’t have a proper job.”

B2F: Signing with the multinational company EMI enabled you to reach a huge audience and further your ideas but to many you’d compromised your ideals as the fact that EMI no longer manufactured weaponry did not detract from the fact of who they were and what they represented as an expression of big business corruption. However you used your money and fame to further certain causes important to you. Can you describe some of these causes and if you have any regrets about this juncture in your career? Is it a method of fighting the system from within for you and what is your relationship with the company now?

“We did the EMI thing (this is in a nutshell) because we wanted to give up our crap jobs, wanted to get out of the indie ghetto, wanted to create argument and debate amongst the purists and stamp-soapers, wanted to be able to sell our records in places we’d barely heard of, wanted to be able to pay the people who worked for us, wanted to break the rules, and wanted to have a laugh for a year or two at somebody else’s expense. No, that’s all a bit frivolous, but you get the idea. We really got sick of arguments with drunken vegans questioning our leather footwear. I specifically remember Dunstan in 1996, standing outside a venue surrounded by about six black-clad blokes, having to argue about his shoes. His shoes! Every time I’m asked about the EMI thing now I get a wry smile and a flashback to that. What EMI were to us was a vehicle for us doing some fantastic things for a while. Believe me, we had a very good contract and weren’t about to be ripped off by Mr Suit and his Evil Cohorts with their Ponytails. We went into it with both eyes open, got what we could from it, and left.
We earned ridiculous amounts of money in that time. Not because of EMI, but because we had a popular song which people wanted to play on the radio. So we had our usual weekly meetings, eight of us sitting around, deciding from week to week
where the money could go. For a couple of years it was broadly a ten-way split — eight of us, one tenth for the husband and wife management duo, and a tenth for people who wrote to us and asked for money. In addition, all money from adverts and
soundtracks and stuff was up for grabs, and given away to all sorts of different groups and people. Hundreds of thousands. It
was stupid for a while, and now it’s back to normal. I have no regrets about all that stuff whatsoever. But no, it wasn’t a method of fighting the system from within; it was more a way of getting inside the system and having a nosey round, see what it was like, see how much it matched our expectations. I loved, for once, having the power (which isn’t the same as just having the ideology) to turn down big companies. None of us come from money backgrounds so it was interesting having some to do something with, for a few years. Being able to come up with an idea for a one-off song and saying “let’s record it, press up 5,000, and send them out for free!”. That was good. Being able to go on David Letterman and sing about Mumia
Abu-Jamal, Letterman threatening to pull our appearance if we didn’t change the words, us saying No and walking out of the
building. Watching it on TV that evening, knowing he couldn’t pull it because we were selling too many records. I know, I know, it’s pathetic really, but we had such a good laugh. Mind you, we spent two years being totally knackered.”

B2F: Isn’t there a danger though that the big politics will be lost amongst the small politics ?

“It’s all politics, and the big stuff and the small stuff are all joined up anyway aren’t they? War, fundamentalism, religion, the
teaching of evolution or creationism in local schools, racism, bullying, bigotry, media lies, September 11, oil, petrol in our car,
recycling, etc. It’s hard to see where one issue ends and another begins.”

B2F: The anti-globalisation movement has been gathering momentum, focusing around major demonstrations against the G8, IMF and World Bank tea parties. How do you see this movement progressing now and what might be the next stage in its evolution be? I realise that this is a highly speculative question but how does a social movement of such historical importance ultimately gather momentum and what is the next stage ?

“I’d say it’s been losing momentum for a little while. It seems there was a peak, somewhere between Seattle and Geneva, where the pattern of demonstrating was successful and clever and got the media and made its point. I think there has to be a change now, somehow. It can’t just be a repeat of the blackbloc/ surround the meeting/water cannon and tear-gas stuff. I was at the Geneva protest in 2001 and felt like I was part of something revolutionary and defining. Recently I haven’t thought
this as much. For a radical movement to keep challenging effectively, it has to change. I have arguments with people in Leeds that I know about this. Mind you, I do think that any kind of mass protest, including the huge anti-war protests, has a galvanising and inspiring effect on the people who attend. The fact that up to two million people gather in anger and are then completely ignored by the powersthat- be can only inspire a healthy cynicism of parliamentary democracy.”

B2F: The ‘Readymades’ album, which I regard as one of your best works to date, has a wonderful theme of water and flow throughout. Is this the flow of folk music as protest throughout history? Was the theme of water intended or did it develop organically and is folk music the only true form of protest for the revolutionary ?

“The theme of water was deliberate and premeditated. It’s such a lovely traditional folk thing, the sea and the shore etc… I’m glad you noticed it (most people don’t, I’m sure). I love the stories we based the songs on — naval mutinies, the King fleeing down the Thames, all that. And the sample of Lal Waterson’s voice (‘Salt fare… north sea’) still completely captivates me. She’s originally singing about fish n chips, I think. ‘Salt Fare’, meaning fish suppers. Sometimes, live, we sing her original version of that song. I don’t think folk music is the only true form of protest, no. I’ve got so much music on my shelves which I think of as radical music which isn’t ‘folk’ — Frank Zappa, Public Enemy, The Clash, KLF, to name some obvious ones. Every genre has its revolutionary artists.”

B2F: I mention folk music as being truly revolutionary in the sense that it is oral tradition (largely) and not product (mostly) – therefore it belongs to people on a community level and is outside the sphere of commodity, though I do realise this has changed in the last 5o years ?

“I don’t have a problem with ‘commodity’ as such, though I do love that tradition of people-based culture, singing together in
pubs etc. We have to be careful with any notion of ‘purity’ in this. I think you can say that the folk tradition changed immeasurably when recorded music came along, but I’d say that the folk tradition carried on, for instance through skiffle and gospel — I mean, these were traditional forms translated for the jukebox. We can look back now and see the jukebox as part of the localised tradition; gospel, soul, hillbilly music, brought into our pubs from thousands of miles away, all adding to the general stew of people’s music. You should hear Martin Carthy’s version of ‘Heartbreak Hotel’. It’s gorgeous, and he recorded it (about five or six years ago) as a way of looping the circle from its history, and through rock n roll, and back to being a folk song. I think Arctic Monkeys singing songs about seeing a fight in a taxi queue in Sheffield is pretty folky, too.”

B2F: Nowadays half the band is on an indefinite sabbatical. Is this the beginning of the end for Chumbawamba as we know it or will the band continue without several key members in the form it now exists ?

“Well, there’s a five-person Chumbawamba playing live right now. It’s a step away from the Chumbawamba people know, and thank goodness for that. Same ideas, same political outlook, but with a different slant to playing in front of audiences. Right now we’re obsessed with talking to the audience. Pop/rock n roll seemed to move away from there being any interaction at all between stage and crowd. With acoustic music there’s no ADAT/amps/drum kit to hide behind, so we’re forced to come right out and get involved. It’s fascinating and weird and thoroughly rewarding, for us. I’m fed up of watching bands who mumble intros and then say ‘thanks’ at the end.”

B2F: Do you think the prices of your CDs are fair? What is the revolutionary product?

“No, I don’t think the prices of our CDs are fair, but I do think we’re tied into a commercial pattern that we can’t escape from very easily. We either accede to the accepted mark-ups (manufacturer/distributor/dealer) or we sell only from our
website and at gigs. But that cuts out the so-called ‘casual buyer’ people who just see a CD and think, “oh, what’s this…?” I mean you know and I know that it’s all a bunch of crap, but it’s the way people have been taught to consume their music.
I’m as bad as anyone — I download something illegally, like it, look for the official release on the internet, see that there’s other stuff available… before you know it I have three albums instead of just the one I wanted. I have to say though that we do put a fair amount of effort into making the CD sleeves more than just crappy four-page photos of sunsets and empty recording studios. If people are paying for a CD then I reckon they should get sleeve notes, lyrics, pics and a bit of thought along with the disc.”

B2F: Does it bother you that people (the fans) want to know the tiniest details of your personal lives? It taxes my mind when people seem more interested in the idiosyncrasies of their idols than their own lives and ideas. Do you try to avoid the ‘personality’ trip that inevitably comes with the job or is it just something to have a bit of fun with?

“I think we’ve been fairly good at avoiding banging on about our personal lives. In general, people don’t ask us. We’re one of those bands that has enough to say, so interviewers and fans tend not to bother asking us about what studios we record in or whether the trumpet player is shagging the engineer.”

B2F: (Is the trumpet player really shagging the engineer?)

“If I cannot dance to it, it’s not my revolution” is a quote attributed to Emma Goldman that you used. There is a spirit of fun and mischief that permeates much of what you’ve done. How important is this aspect and is it what defined you in a way and lifted you out of the anarcho-punk rut? I put this because the early punk movement was often so very serious, clad in black clothes and black cloud politics. “We always wanted to have a laugh with it all, to make it enjoyable. We found out after about two years that there are ways of singing about the horrors and ugliness of the world without having to end up getting depressed about it all. That’s counterproductive, as a political artist. As an anarchist I have hope in a future. I never had sympathy with those mates of mine who got profoundly upset and depressed when Ian Curtis killed himself. Yeah, anarcho-punk was sometimes a pretty dismal scene.”

B2F: You mentioned you are a fan of the great Frank Zappa. On an interview Zappa did with that epitome of free-thinking Larry King in 1993 I think, Zappa was asked about the activity of Tipper Gore and the PMRC. Zappa replied that he did not think that music made people go out and do things and used the example that 90% of the stuff played on American radio was about Love and yet it did not create a nation of love. Perhaps this is slightly out of context from that but do you honestly believe that people pay attention to your lyrical and political ideas ?

“I don’t agree with Zappa here. People like Ice-T and Marylyn Manson use the same argument. It’s a get-out. I hate that weird logic. Of course art is part of influencing the world; otherwise why use art to say anything? Of course it influences people. They’re saying that the influx of black music from Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye to hip hop and RnB into British culture hasn’t had a positive effect on young people’s attitude to racism? That the influx of gay culture in music, TV and film hasn’t had a positive effect on our homophobia? Music certainly made me go out and do things. It changed my life. The ultimately successful anti-Vietnam movement was sound tracked by CSN&Y, Dylan, and Hendrix. The Civil Rights movement in USA was sound tracked by James Brown, Marvin Gaye…Look at how even Green Day right now are influencing hundreds of thousands of kids to question the American myth and it’s warmongering leaders. So yes, I do think art plays a part in changing people’s minds about the world and about themselves. It bugs me that Manson tries to hide behind the shield of ‘blame the parents’. Especially when he’s saying, ‘fuck your parents’.”

B2F: You have often described yourselves as anarchists and your material is full of reference to Goldman, Kropotkin, Paris 68 and all things anarchist but do you think this old tag carries too much historical baggage? Anarchists, next to the Peoples Front of Judea, are traditionally splitters to the extent that the international movement dwindled rapidly after the demise of the CNT and the Spanish Civil War. Bakunin and Marx in Russia, Proudhon and Reclus in France, Malatesta in Italy… all disagreed with one another to the detriment of the International and as such revolution is unlikely beyond the fits and starts of short-lived movements at different stages of history. Isn’t the same problem still there and do you see a way around it ?

“The same problems are still there, but I personally find the philosophy of anarchism full of hope and possibility. It’s not some packaged, boxed-in historical concept as much as a living, changing idea. I’m not over-interested in whether it has a future as a worldwide utopian reality — for me, it’s more about the possibilities in the everyday, a way of doing things right now without getting tangled up in the egomania and dogma of traditional revolutionary politics.”

B2F: The BNP still represent a threat in Burnley, Keighley and other areas in your part of the world. Are you still involved on a local level and if so how? Billy Bragg suggested leafleting every house where the BNP or other far right candidates might stand explaining what they are and what they stand for, a kind of anti-canvassing if you like. It seems that many people in working areas, particularly the elderly have little idea of modern politics. Would you agree and do you espouse any particular strategy for dealing with this ?

“A broad coalition of anti-fascists, spearheaded by Searchlight, did in fact leaflet many, many thousand of homes in Keighley
before the last local election, in a successful stand against the BNP.”

B2F: Can you briefly tell us what the others are up to and your plans for the future. Do you believe you can continue making albums that “don’t sound like the last one”?

“What the others are up to… it’s all on our website at www.chumba.com. That’s not a cop-out, I just know they tell it themselves better. As for the future… thankfully, weirdly, interestingly, I just don’t know. We haven’t talked about it other than in the broadest, most abstract of terms. Not sure where we’re going, or how. I do really hope, though, that it’s somewhere different and fascinating and enjoyable.”

B2F: Tell me about your disturbed childhood and your relationship with your abusive father ?

“Well, it started when I was very young. I remember one night when my father came home drunk and…”

B2F: That’s enough of that. I wanted gossip and anecdotes, not hidden pain and tortured self-loathing…

“But, you said…”

B2F: The verdict from the Harry Stanley inquiry surely reinforces the notion that, as Robb Johnson would put it, “there’s no justice anywhere till we put it there.” How important is politics on a local level to you? Does/should it take precedence over the larger scale politics ?

“How local is local? I’m currently involved in an email battle concerning cycle lanes in West Yorkshire. It’s purely personal and I don’t like to mention it in public. But most weeks I’m writing songs about politics, stuff that affects us on a local and a global level. It’s all important. I can’t read the newspaper without feeling aggrieved and angry and knowing that politics (local and global) won’t just disappear from my life.”

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