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Slam Punk! Primal Scream get angry on yer ass!
'I want Swastika Eyes' to be number one all around the world'
The madness of King Bobby and the court of Primal Scream
Text: James Oldham
Photography: Roger Sargent
"Shut the fuck up. I can say what I fucking like"
In the foyer of a north London photographic studio, a wild-eyed and flailing Bobby
Gillespie is screaming at NME. It's now 9.3O pm. An interview that was meant to
happen seven hours ago is only just getting under way. Sitting at a desk behind us,
the manager of the studio looks on, incredulously. Two hours earlier, he tried to
eject Gillespie for daubing 'MC5' in white paint on the door of one of his studios.
In return, Gillespie threatened to smash the place up. Now, he's just standing in
front of us, ranting. "Shut the fuck up," he screams again, his lean frame shaking
with anger, his finger jabbing the air in front of our face.
All we did was ask about 'Swastika Eyes' - Primal Scream's 17th single and a wired,
propulsive disco record that, in spirit at least, marries Donna Summer's 'I Feel
Love' to the Sex Pistols' 'Pretty Vacant', two of the first records Gillespie bought.
It's also the latest Scream release to flirt with Nazi imagery, following 'Stuka' off
'Vanishing Point' and the pop art Luftwaffe packaging for 'If They Move... Kill 'Em'.
It's the suggestion his band are all too preoccupied with such matters that has
incensed Gillespie. But it's not just that.
The last few years have seen the Scream gradually sucked from centre stage. After the
critical zenith of the 'Screamadelica' years, it's been one battle after another, a
constant series of minor skirmishes just to keep the band afloat. The smacked-out
incoherence of the 'Give Out But Don't Give Up' period gave way to the chaos
surrounding 1997's 'Vanishing Point', a critically acclaimed LP dogged by sackings,
cancelled shows and rumours of a split.
During this time, the band have just been getting more militant, more experimental
and - arguably - more marginalised. The Scream maintain they're just adhering to
their punk rock roots. It looks like they've been forced to trade populism for art
rock - and surely that was never the point?
The prospect of asking Gillespie about this, though, appears to be rapidly
diminishing. He suddenly declares that he's had enough. Twenty minutes into a
seven-hour late interview, he turns on his heels, and storms off to the bar.
"The power crazy leader who control your very fate/They will twist your will, steal
your life and sell your soul away',MC5
MC5 wrote that 28 years ago. In 1999, it's where Primal Scream think they're at.
Psychedelic punks with something to say. A band tied into the history and mythology
of protest. The good-time sentiments of their early career are now deemed
inappropriate. Everything is dark and heavy. Britain is fucked. Rock is dead. The
royal family are parasites. Drugs are a form of mind control. The list goes on.
The point is, though, as their manifesto has got more extreme, the music has
followed. Post 'Vanishing Point', all the talk has been of PiL and Joy Division,
tower blocks and free jazz. Their output since then has consisted of a wall of
feedback (the Kevin Shields mix of 'If They Move... Kill 'Em'), an instrumental dub
album ('Echo Dek') and Bobby Gillespie's dark-eyed contribution to Death In Vegas'
'The Contino Sessions' LP ('Soul Auctioneer'). And now, 'Swastika Eyes'.
Despite "additional programming" by The Chemical Brothers, it's left-field. A
twitching cousin of 'Kowalski', a great record totally at odds with the prevailing
trends of 1999. That's the point, but it does beg the question of what the band are
currently hoping to achieve. After all, there's not much point in having a message if
no-one's going to hear it. And as for what the message is beyond some nebulous
anti-authoritarian bluster... well, that's where you came in. Because in the foyer
with people tramping past every couple of minutes, a coiled-up, badtempered Bobby
Gillespie is about to go into a 15-minute rant about what their single means.
"What it is, right," he begins softly, "is that the swastika is a really powerful
symbol of totalitarianism. We thought swastika eyes' was a good image, a great insult
applicable to any authoritarian figure whether it be the head of a multinational
corporation, the president of the United States, a policeman, a prison warden,
anybody like that, anybody at all.
"Listen, right, the song's also about modern fascism, multinational militarism, the
United States' international fucking terrorism. It's like America is a white
supremacist state, we're part of her empire, an aircraft carrier for them, and we do
everything we're told, militarily or otherwise. That's why we used that image, we
used it to get attention, to get across what we're saying, which is basically that...
I think it's... it's... we're using it provocatively to shake people up so they go,
'What the fuck's that about swastika eyes? Who's got swastika eyes?' "Say you get a
photo of Madeleine Al bright, who's the US Secretary Of State, and put swastikas in
her eyes, people will think, 'Why have you done that? Is she a fascist?' And, of
course, she's a fucking fascist. And that was the thinking behind the title and the
song." He pauses for breath, twists on the black leather sofa, stares darkly at NME
and starts quoting the lyrics to the song.
"Your soul don't burn/ You dark the sun/ You rain down fire on everyone/ Scabs police
government thieves/ Venal psychic amputees/ Your parasitic/ Your syphilitic/ Swastika
eyes"
He stops and stares again.
You don't think that the swastika is a precise image in Western culture and stands
for something specific?
"Listen to me, the reason we used a swastika is because people identify that with
fascism, the Nazis, totalitarianism and genocide, right?"
At the start, you said swastika eyes could be applied to any authoritarian figure, be
it a policeman or...
"It can be..."
What, all policeman are genocidal fascists?
This question makes Gillespie flip out.
"Shut the fuck up. Have you ever been inside a prison?"
No.
"OK, right. I go and visit Satpal Ram, right, and if you saw some of the warders in
that place, you would not want to go to tucking prison, right? You just look in their
eyes. That guy gets beaten up, tortured, strip-searched, put in solitary confinement.
You just would not believe what happens to that guy. Fucking jails are concentration
camps for working class people."
I can't believe you're saying...
"I can say what I tucking like. Shut the tuck up."
He leaps to his feet.
"That's what they're fucking set up for, right? The thing is, warders are part of
that system. What sort of people are they? Who could enjoy locking people up every
day? Or six guys deciding, 'We're going to get Satpal Ram, we're going to kick the
shit out of him.' That's fascism, man. That's what it is. That's oppression, and
that's what's happening in this country right now to a friend of mine and loads of
other people. This so-called idea of democracy, there's no fucking democracy... it's
quiet fascism. That's why the song's called 'Swastika Eyes'."
So you're fundamentally opposed to prisons, then?
"No, I'm not opposed to prisons. What I'm opposed to is the treatment of prisoners.
Do you know what I'm saying? And the people, prison warders, who do this, they're the
sort of people who would have worked in a concentration camp. OK? That's what I'm
saying."
That's...
"Don't fucking patronise me, right," he interjects wildly, by now having totally lost
it. "Most of the people who end up in there are working tucking class and it's due to
the conditions in which people are brought up in. You only steal because you've got
nothing. I'm not excusing criminals, I'm not saying prisons shouldn't exist. I'm
saying it's a social thing."
By now, he's pacing up and down, totally preoccupied by his own train of thought. He
talks about Indonesia. Then Serbia. His anger is rabid. For five minutes, he doesn't
pause for breath.
Eventually, he slumps back onto the sofa, but keeps talking. but it's hard to fault.
If you want a band with something to say, then you've got one. It's jost a question
of whether anyone's still listening.
About half-an-hour later, Gillespie decides he's ready to continue. We're sitting at
the back of the studio bar in near darkness. He's calmed down now, but he won't give
up on 'Swastika Eyes'. He starts the whole rant again. America. Fascism. Iraq.
Serbia. He just won't stop.
This is going to make for a fucking boring interview, you know...
"I know, I know," he agrees reluctantly, "but you wanted to know what the song was
about. And it's about..."
He's off again. multinational corporations, US international terrorism disguised as
aiding some kind of democratic process...
I know.
"Sorry," he says, finally pausing for a second. "Shall we talk about something else
now?"
Yes
When Creation signed their £3 Smillion deal with Sony in 1992 Primal Scream were the
biggest band on the label, buoyant both critically and commercially following the
success of 'Screamadelica'. There are some who think it's been downhill ever since.
An accusation that doesn't exactly thrill Gillespie.
"Look," he whispers darkly, "after 'Screamadelica', we made 'Give Out...' because we
had a lot of heroin addiction in the band, a lot of cocaine, we were fucked up and we
wanted to make a different record. It turned out the way it turned out. We were
fucked up, because we were fucked up, but so what? We came back with 'Vanishing
Point', an incredible fucking album, and 'Echo Dek', another great record."
But the accusation is that you chickened out. You started making experimental rather
than popular music.
"We've never said that we're an art band, right?" His voice starts to rise again.
"'Vanishing Point' sold a lot of fucking records, 300,000-odd. How much more
commercial a song can you write than 'Star' and 'Burning Wheel'? They're great songs,
they're great pop songs. Don't you think we want to be a massive band?" I've no idea.
"Of course we do," he retorts, "but we'll do it on our own terms."
So you don't consider yourselves underachievers, then?
"Underachievers? That's a tucking insult. I'll slap anyone who says that."
So you've never sacrificed populism for art?
"No," he declares. "We've always wanted to be massive rock'n'roll stars."
What if 'Swastika Eyes' isn't a hit?
"I'll be pissed off. I want it to be Number One all around the world. We've always
wanted that. We've always wanted to be massive. We've never wanted to be art rockers.
We're working-class, socialist punk rockers. We aren't a middle-class art school band
who've got a trust to fall back on. We're not embarrassed about it. We've always
wanted success and fame and money. What rock'n'roll has been for us has been a means
of escape. It's a real working-class thing."
Your wear your working-class roots like a badge.
"I'm not wearing it as a badge, I'm not saying all working working-class people are
great. All I'm saying is that you get all these American bands saying they want to
sell a lot of records, and Primal Scream have never had that attitude. We wanted the
money, we wanted to travel and we wanted the excess. We wanted to escape. We didn't
want to sell 5,000 records, we wanted to sell 500 million, OK?"
" I want to make a record that sounds like Britain feels like to live in today.
Concrete, steel, f*king spray paint. f*king violence, tower blocks,
overything...claustrophobic, paranoid. You know, a place where there ain't no
sunshine or smiles. " Bobby Gillespie to nME September 1997
It's fighting talk. Bobby Gillespie wants to sell 500 million records. At the same
time, his band's new album is everything he said it would be back in 1997. It's
brilliant, but it's also dark, twisted, uncompromising, malevolent, angry and, every
now and again, jazz. Although still untitled, NME has heard the bulk of it and it's
an incredible progression from the dense mesh of dub sound that characterised
'Vanishing Point'.
Featuring 'contributions' from Brendan Lynch, David Holmes, the Automator and - once
again - Kevin Shields, it stretches from the rattling discordant instrumental of
'Blood Money' to the juddering, almost industrial electro of 'Exterminator' - with
its caustic references to "concentration camps and "prostitutes" and furious
high-frequency noise bursts.
The two best tracks are simply breathtaking. 'Accelerator' (featuring Kevin Shields
on guitar) is four minutes of breaking-glass guitars and wall-offeedback production,
which comes on like a gonzo '60s garage record. The sheer depth of its innovation is
matched only by 'Pills', a clinical, whirring hip-hop track with faded-in speech and
the lyrics - "You ain't nothing/You've got nothing to say/Shine a light on you/You
fade away" looped up and feverish. Like we say, it's a great record. Just not one
you're going to be humming on the way to the shops. And it's hard to equate that with
Gillespie's continued desire for stardom. He, though, doesn't see it like that.
"What I mean," he asserts, carefully, "about bands like PiL and Joy Division is that
they wrote about the time they lived in. They feel like and define that time '79 to
'80. That's all I meant. We wanted to make a record that reflects what it's like to
live in Britain at this point, both sound-wise and lyrically.
It's well documented that you think "rock is dead". Can you explain what you mean by
that, and where 7 exactly that leaves Primal Scream?
"All I'm saying is that to me, it feels like rock'n'roll is leaving the world. It's
like free jazz and people like Coltrane and Sun Ra, they've gone and when they left
the world that music left the world. We've got it recorded, but no-one can or will
play music like that any more. That's just the way things go. It's the same in
rock'n'roIl. I don't hear anyone playing it apart from Royal Trux."
Is that why you recently claimed to have gone "punk disco?"
"Wait a minute," he gags that was ajoke."
You know it's how Duran Duran described themselves
"I don't give a shit about Duran Duran," he spits back, sighing in disgust
Why do you cling to this notion of "Look, I'm old enough that I saw The Clash when I
was 15. The feeling I got from that and the Pistols still drives me, and it still
drives Andrew, Mani and Throb. We were lucky enough to be around at that time. We saw
those people, and we picked up something from them, but I know I can't say to some 1
5-year-old, 'Listen to punk.' They've got their own version of it."
Surely punk was about young people and young bands? It wasn't about careers and
experimental music...
"No. disagrees Bobby, sipping at his beer, "because Miles Davis was a punk. All
through his career, he got criticised for changing styles of music. People never
understood that kind of shit. He was listening to Sly, James Brown and Jimi Hendrix.
He was being true to himself and that was a punk attitude."
You bang on about this in every interview...
"I don't fucking care. When I was a kid I'd buy Zig Zag and NME and I'd read
interviews with bands like Public Image, The Jam and The Clash and they'd talk about
people like Can, Captain Beefheart, Love, The Doors, Miles Davis and John Coltrane.
Because I liked The Clash and the Sex Pistols, I found out about the New York Dolls
and The Stooges. I can only tell you what I'm listening to, right?"
Yes, but sometimes you give interviews like teachers give history lessons.
"No," he coughs, taken aback. "This isn't a history lesson."
But you always talk about Miles Davis.
"I'm just using him as an example. I can talk about a lot of other artists. We're
fans of music, and we're influenced by a wide range of people. We've never been
embarrassed to say that."
But you only ever admit to listening to people in an accepted canon of cool.
He loses it again.
"You don't know who I like, man," he screams, raising himself from his seat. "You
don't know me. You don't know who I like."
MC5, Miles Da...
"So you're telling me some 15-year-old kid knows that the MC5 are great, that Miles
Davis is great. Are you telling me that? (Starts shouting) I can only talk about what
I like. Don't you understand? It's music, it's there to be enjoyed."
You never say, "I dance around my flat . listening to Abba."
"(Almost speechless with ragey I love Abba. The first record I bought was 'Dancing
Queen'. Do you know what I'm saying? We're into fucking music. We like pop music. I'm
into Madonna. A couple of years ago, I thought the best record was 'MmmBop' by
Hanson."
People still think you're a musical snob.
"Who says that?" he demands, now standing. "Let them come here and say that face to
face. We talk about our influences, it's not a history lesson, it's just because we
like those people. OK? We're happy to talk about it. We're not snobs. We'll try and
turn anyone onto anything. If we were snobs we wouldn't do that. Snobs are people who
don't want other people listening to the music that they're into. We don't condescend
to anyone. Maybe our interviews always read the same because we always get asked the
same fucking questions, right?"
Fair enough, but back to the original point. If rock's dead, where does that leave
Primal Scream?
"We're a rock'n'roIl group. We've got the soul, the feeling, the attitude, the
electricity. We're fucking with styles, we're merging them, we're taking them
somewhere new and different. Not for the sake of it, but because we've got the
feeling inside us. It's a path you've got to follow. You've got to get out there. You
can't stay in a darkened room... We are doing something different, that must be
obvious."
Is that your current mission statement?
"Yeah, we stand for sex, drugs and rock'n'roIl," he smiles, before adding, "but
seriously, we're a great tucking rock'n'rolI band. And I think we make great fucking
music. And that's it Alright?"
Then Bobby G rises once more and heads off. This time there's no turning back.
Originally appeared in NME, 13 November 1999.
Copyright © IPC Magazine Ltd.
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