Roots of CRASS (Taken from the insert to Best Before 84) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ When in 1976, punk first spewed itself across the nations headlines with the message 'do it yourself' , we, who in various ways and for many years had been doing just that, naively believed that Messrs, Rotten, Strummer, etc. etc. meant it. At least we weren't alone. The idea of becomming a band had never seriously occured to us, it simply happened. Basically, anyone was free to join in and rehearsals were rowdy affairs that invariably degraded into little more than drunken parties. Steve and Penny had been writing and playing together since early 77, but it wasn't until Summer of that year that we had begged, borrowed , and stolen enough equipment to actually call ourselves a band....CRASS. Having finally managed to rehearse 5 songs, we set out on the road to fame and fortune armed with our instruments and huge amounts of booze to help us see it through. We did gigs and benefits, chaotic demonstrations of inadequacy and independance. We got turned off here, turned down there and banned from the now legendary Roxy Club. 'They said they only wanted well behaved boys, do you think guitars and microphones are just fucking toys?' By now we had realised that our fellow punks, The Pistols, The Clash and all the other muso-puppets weren't doing it at all. They might like to think they ripped off the majors, but it was Joe Public who'd been ripped. They helped no one but themselves, started another facile fashion, brought a new lease of life to London's trendy Kings Road and claimed they'd started a revolution. Same old story. We were on own again. Through the alchoholic haze we determined to make it our mission to create a real alternative to he music-biz exploitation, we wanted to offer something that gave rather than tookand, above all, we wanted to make it survive.Too many promises had been made from the stage only to be forgotten on the streets. Throughout the long lonely winter of 77/78, we played regular gigs at the White Lion, Putney with the UK Subs. The audience consisted mostly of the Subs when we played and us when the Subs played. Sometimes it was disheartening, but usually it was fun. Charly Harper's indefatigable enthusiasm was always an inspiration when times got bleak, his belief in punk as a peoples' music had more to do with revolution than McClaren and his cronies could ever have dreamt of.Through sheer tenacity we were exposing the punk charlatans for what they really were, a music-biz hype. Our gigs remained wild and disorderly, we were still to scared to play without a belly full of booze and invariably we were in such a state that we'd realized half way through a song that each of us was playing a different one. For all the chaos it was immense fun, no one bitched about leather boots or milk in tea, no one wanted to know how anarchy and peace could be reconciled,no one bored ou arses off with protracted monologues on Bakunin, who at the time, we probably would have thought was a brand of vodka. Ideas were open,we were creating our own lives together. These were the glorious years before the free alternatives that we were creating became just another set of bigoted rules, before what we were defining as real punk became yet another squalid ghetto. We even played a Rock Against Racism gig, the only gig we'd ever been paid for. When we told the man to keep the money for the cause, he informed us that 'this was the cause'. We never played for RAR again. As the charlatans increasingly headed Stateside, to get a sniff of what refreshed them best, we became hardened by the isolation. We determined to stop fucking about with the booze and start taking ourselves much more seriously. We adopted black clothing as a protest against the narcissistic peacockery of fashion punks. We started incorporating film and video into our set. We went into production of handout sheets to explain our ideas and a newspaper, Inernational Anthem. We designed the banner that hung behind us till the end, and we commited ourselves to see it through at least until the end of the then mythical 1984. Later in the Summer of 78, Pete Stennet, owner of the much missed Small Wonder Records, heard one of our demo tapes and loved it. He wanted to put out a single but couldn't decide on which track, so we recorded all the songs we'd written and made the first ever multi-tracked 45. We named the album Feeding of the Five Thousand because 5000 was the minimum number wee could get pressed and some 4900 more than we thought we'd sell. Feeding is now only a few short of going golden, though I don't suppose we'd hear too much about that in the music press. So, with our entire stage set on record, wrapped in what was then highly inovative black and white, the music press were able to commence on the barrage of attack that followed us throughout the years.They hated it and us and their loathing positively overflowed. It is not grandiose to claim we have been one of the most influential bands in the history of British rock, true we have not greatly influenced music itself, but our effect on broader social issueshas been enormous. From the start the media has attempted to ignore us and only when its hand has been forced by circumstance has it grudgingly given us credence. It's all fairly simple, if you don't play their game, that is commercial exploitation, they won't play yours. The music biz doesn't just buy its groups, it pays for the music press as well. The charlatans were spread thicker and deeper than we could have imagined. Nonetheless, realising that we were a threat to it's control, the first offers started comming in from the enemy. Mr. Big tried to buy us with cheap wine and an offer of £50000 if we'd join 'Pursey's Package'. He also informed us that he could market revolution and that we'd never succeed without his help. It was the first of many offers that werefused, we never looked back and, incidentally, we didn't hear to much more from Jimmy Pursey. When The Feeding came out in Spring of 79, the first track had been silent and named The Sound Of Free Speech. The pressing plant had decided the track that had been there, Asylum, was to blasphemous for their, and your tastes. Such is the true face of censorship in the 'Free World'. Eventually we found a plant willing to deal with Asylum, so we re-recorded it along with Shaved Women, printed the covers at home,sold it for 45p, and totally broke ourselves. On it's release, The Reality Asylum single ran into immediate troubles. Complaints from the 'general public' led to police raids throughout the country and a visit to us from Scotland Yard's vice-squad. After a pleasant afternoon sharing tea with our guardidians of public morality, we were left with the threat of prosecution that hung over us for the next year. Eventually we recieved a note informing us that we were free, but that we'd better not try it again. The nature of our 'freedom' made doing it again inevitable and so the endless roundabout of police harassment set itself in motion; it has continued to this day. It was around this time that we did our one and only radio session for John Peel. From then on our growing reputation as foul mouthed yobs precluded us from being given airplay, although we did appear on several chat-shows which led us to being temporarily blacklisted from the BBC. Apparently, expressing dissident views on the Falklands is not acceptable to the listening public who jammed the switchboard with complaints. To offset claims claims in the press that we were nothing but leftist/rightist thugs, they never could figure us out, we started to hang an anarchist banner alongside our own. At that time the circled A was rarely seen outside the confines of established and generally tedious, small time anarchist literature. Within months the symbol was to be seen decorating leather jackets, badges, and walls throughout the country, within a few years it had spread world wide. Rotten may have proclaimed himself an anarchist, but it was us who almost single handedly created anarchy as a popular movement for millions of people. At the same time, having discovered that CND did actually still exist, albeit in a downtrodden form, self-effacing manner, we decided to promote its cause, something at the time CND seemed to incapable of doing for itself. From then on, despite the screams of derision in the music press, we also displayed the peace symbol at gigs. Our efforts on the road slowly brought CND back to life. We introduced it to thousands of people who would become the backbone of its revival. A new and hitherto uninformed sector of society was being exposed to a form of radical thought that culminated in the great rallies, demos and actions that continue today. The true efforts of our work is not to be found in rock'n'roll, but in the radicalised minds of thousands of people throughout the world. From the Gates of Greenham to the Berlin Wall, from the Stop The City actions to gigs in Poland, our particular brand of anarcho-pacifism, now almost synonymous with punk, has made itself known. Since early 77 we had been involved in maintaining a graffiti war throughout Central London. Our stencilled messages, anything from 'Fight War Not Wars' to 'Stuff Your Sexist Shit', were the first of their kind to appear in the UK and inspired a whole movement that, sadly, has now been eclipsed by hip-hop artists who have done little but confirm the insidious nature of American culture. To celibrate our success with the spraycan, we decided to call our next album Stations Of Crass, the cover of which was a photo of some of our artwork on one of London Underground's stations. Stations featured the first ever six-fold wrapper and came complete with a sew on patch that we printed at home. By now Pete of Small Wonder was beginning to tire of the kind of police attention that we were drawing to his shop, so we borrowed the money to release Stations ourselves. It sold so well that only after a very short time we were able to pay back the loan and get the covers folded by machine rather than doing them at home by hand. Stations continued to sell and soon we were able to consider releasing materials by other bands. Crass records was created and we kicked off with a single from Zounds, the first of well over one hundred bands that we introduced to the unsuspecting public. In the Spring of 1980, having played several benefit gigs for the defence fund of the jailed anarchists, paradoxically known as 'Persons Unknown', we were asked by them on their release if we could contribute to the creation of an Anarchist Centre. We recorded Bloody Revolutions with Poison Girls' Persons Unknown on the reverse side, and the centre was opened on the proceeds. For over a year a unhappy liason existed between the old school anarchists of Persons Unknown and the anarcho-punks. Eventually the ideological pressure got too great and the centre closed. The relative ease which we were able to raise money for the center demonstrated to us the enormous power we had to generate not only ideas but, but the wherewithall to make them possible. By now we were drawing large crowds to our gigs so we decided the best use to which we could put the situation was to play nothing but benefits. Over the years we were able to create funds for a wide variety of different causes. It now seemed right to launch a feminist attack. For some time we had been aware that we were being labeled as a bother band and that the feminist element within our work was largely ignored. We released Penis Envy and the music press, missing the point entirely, heralded it as having been made by 'the only feminist physically attractive enough to make sure they're singing out of choice rather than revenge'. What do you do with these guys? The reaction from many crass 'fans' expressed similar prejudices, but from an entirely different angle. They wanted to know why we'd only got the 'bird singing'. The devil or the deep blue sea? The final track on Penis Envy entitled Our Wedding, a satire on slush MOR romantic bullshit, was offered by 'Creative Recording And Sound Services' to Loving, a magazine specialising in the exploitation of teenage loneliness. Loving proudly offered it to their readers as 'a must for the happy day'. When the hoax was exposed Fleet Street rocked, while heads at Loving rolled. The realease of Penis Envy confirmed a suspicion we had had for some time. After one week in the shops it entered the national charts as number fifteen, next week it wasn't to be found anywhere in the top one hundred.The same fate had befallen Nagasaki Nightmare, we knew that it just wasn't possible to be that high in the charts one week and nowhere to be found the next. It seemed obvious to us that if the major labels paid to get their records 'in' the charts, they'd pay to get ours 'out'. We knew that we were disliked by EMI, they'd sent out a circular to their A&R departments forbidding any contact with 'Crass Personnel' and their HMV shops have not touched any of our materials since they took exception to the poster on Bloody Revolutions. What other devious tricks were going on behind our backs? For some time now we had been touring far and wide throughout the UK, bravely treading where no band had trod before. Village halls, scout huts, community centers, anywhere that was neither the rip-offclubs or the pampered university circuit. Hundreds of people would travel to join usin unlikely spots to celebrate the mutual sense of freedom. We shared our music, films, literature, conversation, food, and tea. Wherever we went we were met by smiling faces, ready andwilling to create an alternative to the drab greyness all around. It was not always easy, there were those who wanted to destroy what we created. We tried to play the Stonehenge Festival but got beaten up by bikers; we had gigs smashed up by the National Front and the SWP; we played host to the RUC in Belfast, sent the British Movement packing in Reading and got thrashed by the Red Brigade in London. There was a lot of trouble, but it never outweighed the joy. Throughout 1981 we were recording Christ The Album which by the Summer of 82 was ready for release. This time, however, the trouble did outweigh the joy. 'Great Britain' had gone to war. Insignificant events on an island called South Georgia, which no one had ever heard of, led to significant events on another island called the Falklands which no one had ever heard of. The first pin-prick had been placed in the anarcho-pacifist bubble, a pin-prick that in the space of a few months would tear the bubble to shreds. As young men died by the hundreds, our songs, protests, and marches, our leaflets, words and ideas suddenly seemed to be worthless. In reality we knew that what we had to offer had value, that what we believed in was worthwhile, but for the moment it all seemed futile. Thatcher wanted war to boost her party's flagging pre-election image. If she wanted war, she'd have it, along with anything else that took her fancy. Cruise, Pershing, PWR's, Unions, Dennis. At risk of being seen as the 'traitors' that we are, through devious routes we rushed out an anti-Falklands War flexi and were instantly labelled 'traitors' by the music press. We also recieved a severe from the house of commons to 'watch our step'. Protest against war seemed to be virtually non-existent and criticism in the press was being supressed. When the issues had been abstract, the Peace Movement had been all too happy to shout 'No more war', now there was a war to shout about, the silence was painful. However, it wasn't until after the war had ended that we released How Does It Feel To Be The Mother Of A Thousand Dead that the shit really hit the fan. After Thatcher had been asked in the House Of Commons whether she had listened to the record, it was inevetable that she and her party would want to punish us. Tory MP Timm Eggar had the hapless task of fronting prosecution proceedings and right from the start couldn't put a foot right. The case crubmled completely when Eggar was exposed by us on live radio as a complete fool. The Tories backed down immediately after his miserable preformance and even went through the trouble of circulating a note in which members of the party were ordered to ignore all provocation from our quarter. Suddenly we startes receiving letters of support from members of the 'Opposition'. Maybe we weren't on our own. Fall guys or what? We found ourselves in a strange and frightening arena. We had wanted to make our views public, had wanted to share them with like-minded people, but now those views were being analysed by those dark shadows who inhabited the corridors of power. Eggar had created a great deal of publicity for our cause and the press had lapped it up, especially those, who literally at gun point, had been prevented from gaining any real information on the war. It was if we had hhoked a whale while fishing for minnows. We didn't know whether to let go of the rod, or keep pulling until we exhausted ourselves, which we knew, inevitably, we would. The speed at which the Falklands War was played out and the devestation that Thatcher was creating both at home and abroad, forced us to respond much faster than we ever had before. Christ The Album had taken so long to produce that some of the songs in it, songs that warned of the imminence of riot and war, had become almost redundant. Toxteth, Bristol, Brixton, and the Falklands were ablaze by the time that we released it. We felt embarresed by our slowness, humbled by our inadequacy. At the end of 82, aware that the 'movement' needed a morale booster, we organized the first squat gig for decades at the now defunct Zig Zag Club in London. Along with free food and copious supplies of ripped-off booze, we celibrated our independance once again, this time joined by twenty other punk bands, the cream of what could truly be called 'real punk'. Together we supplied a twenty-four hour blast of energy which inspired similar actions throughout the world. We'd learnt the lesson. 'Do It Yourself' has never seemed so real as it did that day at the Zig Zag. In many respects the Zig Zag consolidated our thinking, the job was by no means over. So, deciding that we should hang on to the rod and fight the whale, we launched an all out attack on Thatcher and her allies. The run up to the 83 elections had started, the 'Opposition' had all but collapsed. Labour had made the inevatable, revolting turn-about on its anti-nuclear stance and the Peace Movement was in tatters, muted by its own fears. The album Yes Sir I Will was our first 'tacticle response', it was an impassioned scream directed toward the weilders of power and those who passively accept them as authority. The message in Yes Sir was loud and clear, 'There is no authority but yourself'. As our political position became increasingly polarised, we felt it necessary to define our motives in a clearer fashion than perhaps we had done before. The what, where, and why of our anger needed explaining, as did our ideas of 'self'. We had often been accused of sloganeering, now was the time to come out into the open. Several members of the band produced Acts Of Love, fifty poems in lyrical settings, in an attempt to demonstrate that the source of our anger was love rather than hate and that our idea of self was not that of an egocentric socialbigot, but of an internal sense of one's own being. The ambiguity of our attitudes was begining to disturb us. Was it really possible to have a bloodless revolution? Where we being truly realistic? Were we being destroyed by our own paradoxes? It was at this time that we sent the now infamous 'Thatchergate Tapes' to the world's press. The highly edited tape, which took the form of a telephone conversation between Thatcher and Reagan, had her admitting responsibilty for the sinking of the Belgrano, an issue at the time which she had not been confronted with, and implying knowledge of the Invincible's decision to 'guinea-pig' the Sheffeild, a fact that still has not came to light. So as to leave no stone un-turned, we caused Reagan to threaten to 'nuke' Europe in defence of American heritage, a hypothesis which is probably not as wild as it seems. The tape lay dormant for almost a year before surfacing in the State Department in Washington D.C.. The categorial denials that were issued in relationship to the tape and its contents acted as a clear indication that the methods we had employed to discredit Thatcher and Reagan were in no way disimilar to the State Department. Why else would they have taken our somewhat amateurish efforts at tape forgery so seriously? Inevitably, they waved the finger in the direction of the Kremlin. Shortly after that, several papers in America, and The Sunday Times in Britain, ran the story as proof of KGB 'foul play'. It was the first time that the press had run any story that, albeit in a roundabout fashion, questioned Thatcher's integrity concerning the Belgrano. We were overcome with a mixture of fear and elation, should we or should we not expose the hoax? Our decision was resolved when a journalist from The Observer contacted us in a relation to 'a certain tape'. At first we denied knowledge, but eventually decided to admit responsibilty. We had been meticulously careful in the production and distribution of the tape to ensure that no one knew about our involvement. How The Observer got hold of information that led to us is a complete mystery. It acted as a substantial warning, if walls did indeed have ears, how much more was known of our activities? Since the graffit days of 77 we had been involved in various forms of action, from spraying to wire cutting, sabotage to subterfuge. We had been concerned that if we went public on the tape all manner of other 'offenses' might bubble to the surface. Now we had exposed to that risk and the telephones started to ring. The worlds media pounced on the story, thrilled that a 'bunch of punks' had made such idiots out of the State Department, and 'by the way, what else had we done?' Throughout the years as a band we had never attracted such attention, the telephone rang incessantly, we traveled here and there to do interviews, all of a sudden we were 'media stars'. We were interviewed by the Russian press as American TV cameras recorded the event, we were live on American breakfast TV, we talked to radio stations from Essex to Tokyo, always giving the anarchist angle on every question. We had gained a form of political power, found a voice, were being treated with slightly awed respect, but was that what we really wanted? Was that what we had set out to achieve all those years ago? After seven years of being on the road we had become the very thing that we were attacking. We had found a platform for our ideas, but somewhere along the line we lost our insight. Where once we had been generous and outgoing, we had now become cynical and inward. Our activities had always been coloured with a lightness and humor, now we saw that we had increasingly drawn toward the darkness and an often ill- conceived militance. We had become bitter where once we had been joyful, pessimistic where once optimism had been our cause. Throughout those seven years we had attracted almost constant direct and indirect State harrassment, now, inevitably, they struck again. 1984 had arrived, rather worse than Orwell had predicted. Unemployment, homelessness, poverty , hunger. The police state had become a reality, as the miners were about to discover. 'Accidental' death from Thatchers private army of boys in blue had become an acceptable norm. The balance of a whole society was hanging on the apron strings of a vicious and uncaring despot. Far less important by far was our own fate. We were hauled into the courts to face an obscenity charge that almost broke us. 'We have ways of making you not talk'. That Summer we played what was to become our last gig together, a riotous benefit for the South Whales miners. From the stage we vowed to continue working for the cause of freedom, yet, as we drove home, we all knew that the particular path that we had been taking had been exhausted. We needed new ways in which to approach our objectives and, a few weeks after the gig, Hari Nana left the band to seek his. We felt no compulsion to continue gigging. We were no longer convinced that by simply providing what had broadly become entertaiment we were having any real effect. We'd made our point and if after seven years people hadn't taken it, it surely wasn't because we hadn't tried hard enough. 'There is no authority but yourself', we said that, but we'd lost ourselves and became CRASS. We are still involved in the often painful process of refinding that self, of seeing each other again, of healing ourselves of the self-inflicted wounds of 'public life'. In Lennon's words 'The dream is over'. The 'movement', from Class war to Christians for peace, needs to regain the dignity that it has lost in the process of attempting to confront problems that appear to be created by others. We have all been guilty of defining the enemy, and indeed there are those of us who would obstruct the course of liberty, yet ultimately the enemy is to be found within. There is no them and us, there is only you and me. We need to consolidate, reassess, reject what patently doesn't work and be prepared to adopt ideas and attitudes that might. We need to need to find the 'self' that truly can be the authority that is. We need to look beyond the barbed wire and the ranks of the police for a vision of life which is of our choosing, not which is dictated by cynics and despots. The exponent of Karate does not aim at the brick when wishing to break it but at the space beyond. We would do well to learn from that example. We have spent too much of our time, energy, and spirit attempting to dispell the shadow of evil cast over us by the violence and terror of the nuclear age. That shadow has become a stain on our hearts. It is time to wash away the stain and step out of the shadow into the light. We have become trapped in fear outside metaphorical Greenham Gates. 'Knock and ye shall enter... the kingdom of heaven is within you.' We know enough of the sickness of the world, we should be careful not to add to it through our own physical and mental exhaustion and ill health. If we are ever to acheived our shared objectives we must each of us to be strong enough to do so. We have all failed and we have all succeded. this is no tail between the leg ending, but a proud, albeit painful and confused, beggining. Love, peace, and freedom, ----what was once CRASS, but know knows better. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ~Footnotes~ Although we no longer intend to tour as CRASS, we are continuing to work in the same fields whilst at the same time expanding into other areas. Since the late Summer 84 we were involved in the recording of 10 Notes On A Summers Day, our last 'formal' release. We may well choose to continue recording as CRASS should we consider that it makes sense to do so. Each of us is now invloved in developing our own skills, from record production to landscape painting, film-making to healing. We will continue to release material by other bands on Crass Records and intend to become seriously involved in book publishing. As long as there is a job to do, We will attempt to do it. If at first . . .etc . .etc.. Also over the last year Mick has been continuing to work in th field of film and video, and compiled all the work he showed atour gigs in the video compilation Christ The Movie. We would like to thank those many people, both individuals and groups, who shared our years on the road, especially Annie Anxiety, Poison Girls, Dirt, Flux Of Pink Indians with whom we toured extensively and Paul, Ian and the rest of the roadcrew from Tandy's Sound Systems. Our thanks also to Steve Herman for his contribution to the formation of the band. For those who are awaiting replies to letters, we lost. We realise we will never be able to write back to the thousands of letters that have accumilated, if yours was one of them, we're truly sorry.