Subhumans Anarcho Punk Interview
Subhumans and Citizen Fish Frontman Dick Lucas on Anarcho Punk Scene
Dick Lucas of The Subhumans talks about the conditions leading to the British anarcho punk scene that formed in the wake of Crass in the late 70s and early 80s
Forming in the wake of punk legends Crass in Wiltshire, England, The Subhumans were at the forefront of what would come to be known as the anarcho punk scene, releasing a string of classic albums, including The Day The Country Died and the concept album of sorts From The Cradle To The Grave. The band split in 1985 but got together for a brief reunion in 1991 and again, on a more permanent basis in 1998. In 2007, they released their first new studio album, Internal Riot in more than a decade.
The Anarcho Punk Label
Suite 101: Did you see your scene as a different entity to the punk rock of 1977?
Dick: “We didn't see ourselves as completely different because it was still punk rock to us. First of all we needed the music, otherwise we would have all ended up writing books or whatever – doing spoken word for the rest of our lives. The music was very much based on early punk rock so we never thought of ourselves as any sort of split away from the main thing although anarcho punk became a label, much like oi! became a label and labels tend to confuse things more than sharpen them into focus.
Bands, ourselves included had songs that were not anarcho-punk songs – we were singing silly songs about the pigs coming round and smashing your party up or whatever. It was all part and parcel of punk rock as far as we could tell. The divisions that were created – people like labels, they like slapping labels on things and anarcho-punk became another label. A lot of people started dressing all in black because that was the thing that anarcho-punks did. It all became a bit regulated even though the basis for a song could be any subject whatsoever."
Punk and Thatcher's Britain
Suite 101: To what extent was the anarcho punk scene a product of its time? Could it have arisen outside of Thatcher's Britain?
Dick: “Well, life wasn't fantastic before Thatcher either, come to think of it, in the face of the ever-shifting Labour and Conservative governments. In the 70s there were power strikes and the lights would go off and the bread would run out and that sort of thing. Life wasn't a bowl of cherries before Thatcher came along but she certainly made things a lot worse for a lot of people. Generally whatever government's in, there's plenty to complain about – they do f*ck up people's lives a lot but...it depends what age you are when these things are going on and being late teenage, early twenties when Thatcherism was going on, the awareness of politics sets in. The nuclear arms race was really heavy and on the other side we had Reagan as well because the Reagan-Thatcher years was a double-edged right-wing sword that cut at peoples' ambitions and made life on the planet fairly dangerous.”
Click here for more from Lucas on The Subhumans circa 2008.
For more on The Subhumans and Lucas' ska-punk outfit Citizen Fish, check the bands' combined site.
