I can’t remember where I first heard the Subhumans and I’m not even sure where I bought my first record by them (although I do know that it was the ‘Religious Wars’ EP, which I still love to this day…) Not long after that I got a copy of their first LP, ‘The Day The Country Died’ and from then on bought all of their releases as soon as they were available. I only got to see them a few times before they split-up, at the end of 1985, but I enjoyed those gigs and they certainly didn’t disappoint as a live band. At the time, they were most often referred to as an ‘anarcho-punk’ band and undoubtedly they did share common ground with bands like Crass, The Mob and Conflict, both in the DIY way that they worked and the subject-matter that their lyrics often covered. But musically I always found them to be much more melodic and imaginative, with just as many influences coming from late-Seventies punk rock and even earlier sources. They never lacked the raw energy that made punk so vital but were also never afraid to try something different.
As mentioned, the band originally ended at the end of 1985, but the members remained friends and they all continued to play in various bands (most notably Culture Shock and Citizen Fish) so it wasn’t entirely surprising when they reformed for a couple of gigs in 1991. Another hiatus followed, but in 1998 they reformed again, this time for more extensive tours in the UK, America and Europe. An EP, ‘Unfinished Business’, featuring previously-unreleased songs recorded before the original split, was also released to accompany the touring. The response exceeded all expectations and this time the band decided to continue playing live on a more regular basis, although any plans for new material took a little longer. By this point the various band members were no longer living in close proximity (drummer Trotsky had moved to Germany, where he remains to this day) so it made it difficult to write and rehearse new material, but punk rock eventually found a way and in 2007, they released their first new album in over twenty years, ‘Internal Riot’. Capturing both the best elements of the original records and adapting their style towards the current circumstances, the album was met with much enthusiasm and also introduced the band to a much-broader and often-younger audience. There would be another long gap before their most recent LP, ‘Crisis Point’, in 2019, but again the songs more than complimented their older records and proved that the band were still a valid and important voice on the punk scene.
As mentioned, the band originally ended at the end of 1985, but the members remained friends and they all continued to play in various bands (most notably Culture Shock and Citizen Fish) so it wasn’t entirely surprising when they reformed for a couple of gigs in 1991. Another hiatus followed, but in 1998 they reformed again, this time for more extensive tours in the UK, America and Europe. An EP, ‘Unfinished Business’, featuring previously-unreleased songs recorded before the original split, was also released to accompany the touring. The response exceeded all expectations and this time the band decided to continue playing live on a more regular basis, although any plans for new material took a little longer. By this point the various band members were no longer living in close proximity (drummer Trotsky had moved to Germany, where he remains to this day) so it made it difficult to write and rehearse new material, but punk rock eventually found a way and in 2007, they released their first new album in over twenty years, ‘Internal Riot’. Capturing both the best elements of the original records and adapting their style towards the current circumstances, the album was met with much enthusiasm and also introduced the band to a much-broader and often-younger audience. There would be another long gap before their most recent LP, ‘Crisis Point’, in 2019, but again the songs more than complimented their older records and proved that the band were still a valid and important voice on the punk scene.
Although I had never interviewed them before, I had met singer Dick Lucas on several occasions and he always seemed like a genuinely friendly bloke, so when I asked if he’d be willing to do an interview, it was no surprise that he agreed. We made arrangements to meet-up before their gig at New Cross Venue, but my game-plan was slightly scuppered with the publication of Ian Glasper’s excellent biography of the band, ‘Silence is No Reaction’. As there’s so much to talk about, I thought a chronological interview would be the best way to approach a Subhumans interview, but the book had already covered this so well that I didn’t see the point of repeating the same ground. Instead, I decided to follow-up some of the issues raised by the book and add some other enquiries of my own. Fortunately, Dick is a very thoughtful and talkative person and, as such, I think the conversation went rather well…
**Please note... this interview took place in April, a few months before we finally got rid of
those obnoxious Tory shits**
Firstly, as Ian Glasper’s book is such a lengthy and thorough tome, how did you feel when you first saw a finished copy?
‘I felt totally humble and surprised, but very happy about it. Mostly surprised, I think, as I never thought something like that would actually happen and when Ian suggested it, I just thought, 'Really?' But once he started work on it I felt, Okay, this is good! People had actually been asking me for a while if I was ever going to write a book and I’d always think, well, yeah, I guess I could do that, because I’ve always kept diaries, going back to 1979, and I’ve always tried to do them on a daily basis, so I have all these old notes and there’s so much in there… I had even thought about just typing them-up, because some of the handwriting is pretty illegible in places, but when I looked at all of the books, I realised that it would take me years to even do that! But I also think the book has come out much better than if I had done it, because it comes from a third-person perspective. Even though we were all involved and gave him our individual perspectives, Ian was collating everything and putting it all in order, making sure it all linked together in a way that probably wouldn’t have happened if any of us had done it. When someone does something like this themselves, I think it can sometimes be subliminally-tempting to exaggerate certain things to make them sound better than they actually were, or your ego gets too involved and you write things that promote yourself too much. When it’s a third person doing it, then the individual egos don’t get involved and it doesn’t just become someone showing-off in an autobiography. It was also something that I didn’t want to do, not just because of the time involved but also because I’d have to decide what to put-in and what to leave-out. With Ian asking the questions, we couldn’t be selective with them or the answers and because of that I think it’s pretty revealing. There are over 600 pages, so everything’s in there! And I finally got to use the lists of our gigs that I’ve been keeping over the years, cataloguing the support bands and what songs we played… I have to admit that sometimes I'd even ask myself why I was keeping these lists, but basically it’s because I’m a nerd and I like listing things! But finally, they became useful and they’re all there at the back of the book. They’re a good reference source for anyone who wants to check the details of where they saw us or whatever... All the details are there to make up for our failing memories!’
**Please note... this interview took place in April, a few months before we finally got rid of
those obnoxious Tory shits**
Firstly, as Ian Glasper’s book is such a lengthy and thorough tome, how did you feel when you first saw a finished copy?
‘I felt totally humble and surprised, but very happy about it. Mostly surprised, I think, as I never thought something like that would actually happen and when Ian suggested it, I just thought, 'Really?' But once he started work on it I felt, Okay, this is good! People had actually been asking me for a while if I was ever going to write a book and I’d always think, well, yeah, I guess I could do that, because I’ve always kept diaries, going back to 1979, and I’ve always tried to do them on a daily basis, so I have all these old notes and there’s so much in there… I had even thought about just typing them-up, because some of the handwriting is pretty illegible in places, but when I looked at all of the books, I realised that it would take me years to even do that! But I also think the book has come out much better than if I had done it, because it comes from a third-person perspective. Even though we were all involved and gave him our individual perspectives, Ian was collating everything and putting it all in order, making sure it all linked together in a way that probably wouldn’t have happened if any of us had done it. When someone does something like this themselves, I think it can sometimes be subliminally-tempting to exaggerate certain things to make them sound better than they actually were, or your ego gets too involved and you write things that promote yourself too much. When it’s a third person doing it, then the individual egos don’t get involved and it doesn’t just become someone showing-off in an autobiography. It was also something that I didn’t want to do, not just because of the time involved but also because I’d have to decide what to put-in and what to leave-out. With Ian asking the questions, we couldn’t be selective with them or the answers and because of that I think it’s pretty revealing. There are over 600 pages, so everything’s in there! And I finally got to use the lists of our gigs that I’ve been keeping over the years, cataloguing the support bands and what songs we played… I have to admit that sometimes I'd even ask myself why I was keeping these lists, but basically it’s because I’m a nerd and I like listing things! But finally, they became useful and they’re all there at the back of the book. They’re a good reference source for anyone who wants to check the details of where they saw us or whatever... All the details are there to make up for our failing memories!’
I assume you’d already known Ian for some time (the Subhumans had already been featured in Ian’s appropriately-titled overview of the Anarcho-punk scene, ‘The Day the Country Died’, back in 2006) which probably made it a lot easier to work with him rather than someone you didn’t already know?
‘Oh yeah, we’d all known him for a long time, from when he was in Decadence Within or maybe even before that. He put gigs on for us up in the Hereford area during the Eighties and then later on in the Nineties for Citizen Fish and so on. So he’s been around for a long time and we already knew the way he writes and how thorough he is, from when he included us in ‘The Day The Country Died’. He even managed to track-down people that we had lost-touch with… He found Nick Lant, who had done a lot of artwork for us, up until the ‘Rats’ EP. We tried to contact him when we were preparing the ‘Worlds Apart’ album and wanted to see if he could do the cover for it, but we' had no reply and no-one seemed to know where he had gone. There were rumours that he’d joined the police or something like that, although I’m still not sure exactly what he was doing. But all these years later, Ian managed to find him! He told us that he still has the same attitudes, but at that time his life just took a different turn for whatever reason… Anyway, I think we were all happy that Ian was doing the book because he’s roughly in the same age-group as us and had lived through a lot of the same times and experiences that we had, and I think that obviously helped.’
Have you actually sat down and read the entire book since it was completed?
‘Not since it was published, but I was reading it sort-of chapter-by-chapter as they came through. I was going through them to check the facts, make sure the names were right and things like that. I was doing a lot of proof-reading, basically, but he really didn’t make many mistakes at all… just a few minute things like he may have used a semi-colon where it should have been a colon! I’ve always liked things to be done as well as they can, so I didn’t mind doing that and I was very aware of everything that was in there. But I still haven’t had the luxury of sitting down and reading it all the way through to see how it feels in its’ entirety.
‘Oh yeah, we’d all known him for a long time, from when he was in Decadence Within or maybe even before that. He put gigs on for us up in the Hereford area during the Eighties and then later on in the Nineties for Citizen Fish and so on. So he’s been around for a long time and we already knew the way he writes and how thorough he is, from when he included us in ‘The Day The Country Died’. He even managed to track-down people that we had lost-touch with… He found Nick Lant, who had done a lot of artwork for us, up until the ‘Rats’ EP. We tried to contact him when we were preparing the ‘Worlds Apart’ album and wanted to see if he could do the cover for it, but we' had no reply and no-one seemed to know where he had gone. There were rumours that he’d joined the police or something like that, although I’m still not sure exactly what he was doing. But all these years later, Ian managed to find him! He told us that he still has the same attitudes, but at that time his life just took a different turn for whatever reason… Anyway, I think we were all happy that Ian was doing the book because he’s roughly in the same age-group as us and had lived through a lot of the same times and experiences that we had, and I think that obviously helped.’
Have you actually sat down and read the entire book since it was completed?
‘Not since it was published, but I was reading it sort-of chapter-by-chapter as they came through. I was going through them to check the facts, make sure the names were right and things like that. I was doing a lot of proof-reading, basically, but he really didn’t make many mistakes at all… just a few minute things like he may have used a semi-colon where it should have been a colon! I’ve always liked things to be done as well as they can, so I didn’t mind doing that and I was very aware of everything that was in there. But I still haven’t had the luxury of sitting down and reading it all the way through to see how it feels in its’ entirety.
When you were reading those chapters, were there any things that you discovered about the band, perhaps from other people’s opinions, that you hadn’t realised before?
‘Well, I was pleased to read occasional compliments about me from other members of the band, because they’re not things that you get to say to each other just in passing or when you’re stuck in the back of the van on the way to a gig. The last thing we’d do when we’re sat in the van is reminisce about how things were back in the Eighties, or just randomly tell each other how good you think they actually are. I think I say something like ‘Bruce is a genius guitarist’ in the book, but that’s just not something we’d say on a day-to-day level. We’ve always been a lot more jokey about stuff and we don’t take what we think about each other too seriously. We just get on with whatever we’re doing. We know that we get along well, because we’ve still got the same line-up that we’ve had since 1983, which is something of a rarity!’
One thing that gets mentioned briefly in the book is the amount of gossip that used to circulate in the Anarcho-scene. Conflict seemed to be the main target once they became popular (the amount of times I heard that they had been seen eating at a McDonalds after playing a gig...) whilst Subhumans were often accused of being ‘pot-smoking hippies’. This was long before the internet, so were you ever aware of those sort of accusations?
‘It’s a funny thing and in fact there’s one rumour that still pops-up even now. Some people think that we’re all straight-edge, which couldn’t be further from the truth. The only song I can imagine which might give them that idea would be ‘Ashtray Dirt’, but that was actually written by our friend Julian when he was in the Stupid Humans with Bruce. I don’t know why he wrote it because he smoked back then, as we all did. Two of us still do… and we’ve all been drinking since we were teenagers, so I’ve no idea where people get the straight-edge idea. I mean, a guy was talking to me in America last year and he was holding a beer so he said, ‘sorry about the beer, I know you’re straight edge…’ I just said, ‘Who told you that? Get me a beer!’
So people in the UK were accusing you of one thing and now people in America are assuming the complete opposite, but neither of them have it right!
‘Well, I think the hippy-thing came around because, when our drummer Trotsky first joined the band, he did used to turn up at gigs with very long hair, wearing a long Afghan coat with a Led-Zep patch on the back! His mum certainly was a hippy so that’s how he grew-up. Between-us we did like certain bands from the Sixties and early Seventies and we had been to things like Stonehenge Festival, which was full of hippies. But both the hippy and punk attitude was about being different to the rest of society, having the right to be treated as an individual and being exactly what you want to be without being hassled for it. Of course, the punk scene at certain times and in certain places was a lot more violent than the hippy scene, while the hippies for the most part were a lot more peaceful and sharing than the punks. But there was also a massive crossover between the two, as well as other subcultures that just wanted to escape from the normality of society, whether it was just for a weekend or their whole life.’
‘Well, I was pleased to read occasional compliments about me from other members of the band, because they’re not things that you get to say to each other just in passing or when you’re stuck in the back of the van on the way to a gig. The last thing we’d do when we’re sat in the van is reminisce about how things were back in the Eighties, or just randomly tell each other how good you think they actually are. I think I say something like ‘Bruce is a genius guitarist’ in the book, but that’s just not something we’d say on a day-to-day level. We’ve always been a lot more jokey about stuff and we don’t take what we think about each other too seriously. We just get on with whatever we’re doing. We know that we get along well, because we’ve still got the same line-up that we’ve had since 1983, which is something of a rarity!’
One thing that gets mentioned briefly in the book is the amount of gossip that used to circulate in the Anarcho-scene. Conflict seemed to be the main target once they became popular (the amount of times I heard that they had been seen eating at a McDonalds after playing a gig...) whilst Subhumans were often accused of being ‘pot-smoking hippies’. This was long before the internet, so were you ever aware of those sort of accusations?
‘It’s a funny thing and in fact there’s one rumour that still pops-up even now. Some people think that we’re all straight-edge, which couldn’t be further from the truth. The only song I can imagine which might give them that idea would be ‘Ashtray Dirt’, but that was actually written by our friend Julian when he was in the Stupid Humans with Bruce. I don’t know why he wrote it because he smoked back then, as we all did. Two of us still do… and we’ve all been drinking since we were teenagers, so I’ve no idea where people get the straight-edge idea. I mean, a guy was talking to me in America last year and he was holding a beer so he said, ‘sorry about the beer, I know you’re straight edge…’ I just said, ‘Who told you that? Get me a beer!’
So people in the UK were accusing you of one thing and now people in America are assuming the complete opposite, but neither of them have it right!
‘Well, I think the hippy-thing came around because, when our drummer Trotsky first joined the band, he did used to turn up at gigs with very long hair, wearing a long Afghan coat with a Led-Zep patch on the back! His mum certainly was a hippy so that’s how he grew-up. Between-us we did like certain bands from the Sixties and early Seventies and we had been to things like Stonehenge Festival, which was full of hippies. But both the hippy and punk attitude was about being different to the rest of society, having the right to be treated as an individual and being exactly what you want to be without being hassled for it. Of course, the punk scene at certain times and in certain places was a lot more violent than the hippy scene, while the hippies for the most part were a lot more peaceful and sharing than the punks. But there was also a massive crossover between the two, as well as other subcultures that just wanted to escape from the normality of society, whether it was just for a weekend or their whole life.’
One of the things that’s completely changed almost everything we do over the past few decades is the internet. Do you think it’s something that’s made things easier for you and the band?
‘No, not really, not for me personally… You can do things quicker by putting them online, but overall it’s never as quick as you think it’s going to be. You can sit down to reply to ten emails or whatever, but then two or three hours have suddenly gone past because you had to look things up before you could properly reply to a couple of them. And it’s so easy to leave an email unanswered because you want to wait until you’ve got some time to write a proper response, but then it’s suddenly two or three months later and you still haven’t had a chance to reply. I mean, not to be insulting towards anyone who sends me an email, but if someone sends me an actual letter I’m far more likely to respond to it. I’d much rather sit down with a pen and paper and have a better time replying to it because there’s a bit of craft involved, a bit of handwriting… But those days are long-gone. Not that I spend my time worrying about that kind of stuff, but so much of what we used to think of as ‘normal’ has all-gone out of the window. Things like going down to the pub and hanging out with your mates at the weekend, that’s all gone! Writing letters, that’s all gone… Even something like making arrangements by phone, that’s certainly diminished because everything’s gone digital. No-one is going to remain fit when they’re sitting in front of their computer all the time. At least when you were going down to the pub each weekend, you had to walk there and walk back!’
The thing I do like about the internet is that nowadays you have a much better chance of finding out about things that are happening on a smaller, DIY level. During the Eighties, for example, a lot of bands were playing small, independent gigs that wouldn’t be advertised in the music press. You had to depend on word-of-mouth and that was never particularly reliable, especially if you lived outside of London…
‘Well, yeah, I can see that and I don’t want to be completely negative about the internet, because you can find out about things a lot more easily on the internet and when bands announce what they're doing on there, it is a good way to let people know what’s happening. I remember occasions when Crass played down our way and I’d find out about it a week or so afterwards. I’d be annoyed because I would have liked to have seen the gig. But it’s not as if Sounds and NME are still coming out on a weekly basis with all the gigs listed in the back, anymore. Times have moved-on, like it or not.’
‘No, not really, not for me personally… You can do things quicker by putting them online, but overall it’s never as quick as you think it’s going to be. You can sit down to reply to ten emails or whatever, but then two or three hours have suddenly gone past because you had to look things up before you could properly reply to a couple of them. And it’s so easy to leave an email unanswered because you want to wait until you’ve got some time to write a proper response, but then it’s suddenly two or three months later and you still haven’t had a chance to reply. I mean, not to be insulting towards anyone who sends me an email, but if someone sends me an actual letter I’m far more likely to respond to it. I’d much rather sit down with a pen and paper and have a better time replying to it because there’s a bit of craft involved, a bit of handwriting… But those days are long-gone. Not that I spend my time worrying about that kind of stuff, but so much of what we used to think of as ‘normal’ has all-gone out of the window. Things like going down to the pub and hanging out with your mates at the weekend, that’s all gone! Writing letters, that’s all gone… Even something like making arrangements by phone, that’s certainly diminished because everything’s gone digital. No-one is going to remain fit when they’re sitting in front of their computer all the time. At least when you were going down to the pub each weekend, you had to walk there and walk back!’
The thing I do like about the internet is that nowadays you have a much better chance of finding out about things that are happening on a smaller, DIY level. During the Eighties, for example, a lot of bands were playing small, independent gigs that wouldn’t be advertised in the music press. You had to depend on word-of-mouth and that was never particularly reliable, especially if you lived outside of London…
‘Well, yeah, I can see that and I don’t want to be completely negative about the internet, because you can find out about things a lot more easily on the internet and when bands announce what they're doing on there, it is a good way to let people know what’s happening. I remember occasions when Crass played down our way and I’d find out about it a week or so afterwards. I’d be annoyed because I would have liked to have seen the gig. But it’s not as if Sounds and NME are still coming out on a weekly basis with all the gigs listed in the back, anymore. Times have moved-on, like it or not.’
Some of your lyrics are written in an almost narrative style, be they stories or relating to the band itself. Is that something that you particularly enjoy doing?
‘Sometimes they’re just made-up, things like ‘No More Gigs’. People might think that I wrote it about us, but I was just imagining a situation where a band was sitting around doing nothing because there wasn’t anything going on and they couldn’t get any more gigs. I just took it from there, really. I think I was also saying that you have these people like David Bowie who get all the attention, while there are all these other bands who might have some really good songs or ideas but who will never get any real attention. ‘Wake Up Screaming’ was another one that was a made-up story about an invented friend who overdosed. There were some people we knew at the time who were doing some really wacky drugs, stuff that I wouldn’t do. And we’d hear about people O/D-ing or doing really dumb things when they were off their heads, like jumping off multi-story car-parks or whatever. That song was just a reflection on the way that the fun of taking drugs could suddenly get really, really serious. Actually, now I think about it, that might have been part of the reason why we were construed as being straight-edge…’
‘Mickey Mouse is Dead’, from the first album, is particularly interesting as, reading it now, it could almost refer to the recent ‘cancel culture’ phenomena, in the way that it talks about people taking things too seriously, or taking things out of context…
‘Ah, yeah, I hadn’t thought about it, but I can see that. At the time, the song started-off because I’d seen some early Mickey Mouse cartoons where it was all so simple, like, someone slipping-up on a banana-skin, falling on their back and everyone laughs, haha! That’s it, beginning, middle, end, joke’s-over! Even though I didn’t particularly rate Mickey Mouse cartoons over the humour of the time when I wrote the song, the simplicity of the humour was so different. Humour seemed to have become a lot more sarcastic and taking the piss rather than being funny-ha-ha. When you looked at the humour of the time, things like Ben Elton or ‘The Young Ones’, it seemed that it was getting more serious and there were more undertones about the social-background of the people who were being set-up as joke-material. It had all gone a long-way from simplistic, ha-ha humour. The lyrics just came together as a train of thought which started and eventually stopped, so when people have asked me about it over the years I’ve never been able to come out with a straight-forward answer. I wasn’t thinking too much about what it meant while I was writing it, you know? It wasn’t as if I had a plan that it would start here, go through all these bits and then end there… In fact, there were a couple of verses at the end that we dropped completely, because it was just getting too long.’
‘Sometimes they’re just made-up, things like ‘No More Gigs’. People might think that I wrote it about us, but I was just imagining a situation where a band was sitting around doing nothing because there wasn’t anything going on and they couldn’t get any more gigs. I just took it from there, really. I think I was also saying that you have these people like David Bowie who get all the attention, while there are all these other bands who might have some really good songs or ideas but who will never get any real attention. ‘Wake Up Screaming’ was another one that was a made-up story about an invented friend who overdosed. There were some people we knew at the time who were doing some really wacky drugs, stuff that I wouldn’t do. And we’d hear about people O/D-ing or doing really dumb things when they were off their heads, like jumping off multi-story car-parks or whatever. That song was just a reflection on the way that the fun of taking drugs could suddenly get really, really serious. Actually, now I think about it, that might have been part of the reason why we were construed as being straight-edge…’
‘Mickey Mouse is Dead’, from the first album, is particularly interesting as, reading it now, it could almost refer to the recent ‘cancel culture’ phenomena, in the way that it talks about people taking things too seriously, or taking things out of context…
‘Ah, yeah, I hadn’t thought about it, but I can see that. At the time, the song started-off because I’d seen some early Mickey Mouse cartoons where it was all so simple, like, someone slipping-up on a banana-skin, falling on their back and everyone laughs, haha! That’s it, beginning, middle, end, joke’s-over! Even though I didn’t particularly rate Mickey Mouse cartoons over the humour of the time when I wrote the song, the simplicity of the humour was so different. Humour seemed to have become a lot more sarcastic and taking the piss rather than being funny-ha-ha. When you looked at the humour of the time, things like Ben Elton or ‘The Young Ones’, it seemed that it was getting more serious and there were more undertones about the social-background of the people who were being set-up as joke-material. It had all gone a long-way from simplistic, ha-ha humour. The lyrics just came together as a train of thought which started and eventually stopped, so when people have asked me about it over the years I’ve never been able to come out with a straight-forward answer. I wasn’t thinking too much about what it meant while I was writing it, you know? It wasn’t as if I had a plan that it would start here, go through all these bits and then end there… In fact, there were a couple of verses at the end that we dropped completely, because it was just getting too long.’
Whilst on the subject of lengthy songs, what inspired the band to write ‘From the Cradle to the Grave’? There weren’t many bands around at that time who would have attempted to write a track that would take-up a whole side of an album!
‘At first, it came about because I’d written some lyrics that were several pages long! I’d had the idea and then spent several days writing it, just on scraps of paper as I was also working at that time. I started at the beginning and carried on to see where it would end up. I already had that and then Bruce said, well, I’ve got a few ideas that I haven’t put into anything else yet, so, over the next few weeks when we got together for practice, we started to put these things together and decide where the different pieces should go and if we needed to bring something back-in a few verses later. Then we’d have an instrumental bit and it would slow down or speed-up and then we’d just have the drums on there on at some point… We just invented it in a way so that the lyrics all fitted in to it.’
Was it pretty daunting to play it live for the first time?
‘Well, the first time we played it live was in Leeds or Bradford, I think. We’d played there the night before and then we found out that Hagar the Womb were playing the next night, so we asked if we could go on unannounced and play one song before they played and they were happy for us to do that. The thing was, we were going to America a few weeks after that and we were planning to play it over there, so we wanted to try it onstage without any fuss to see if it would work. So that night we went on unannounced and just played the one song to see how it worked onstage.’
You’ve played abroad quite a lot over the years, particularly in America. Do you find audiences more responsive or enthusiastic in different countries?
‘Well, originally, we went to America once in 1984 and then again in 1985. Nowadays, we usually go once or twice a year, because there’s such a lot of it! Generally I would have to say that people are more enthusiastic in America, sometimes scarily-so! In terms of the audience, the average age over there is probably around 22, whereas over here it’s quite a lot older than that. Over here, it seems that a lot of people who saw us back in the first place are still coming to our gigs now, some forty years later, and that’s awesome! Some of them have even got kids, so they bring them along to see us! But over the last five years or so, there have been a lot more younger people turning up at gigs over here again, and thank fuck for that! I think it’s good because they’ll be down the front doing all of that thrashy-dancing and leaping around, but they also know at least some of the lyrics. I always find that to be a real boost and it really keeps you going. But right now, in the States, there just seems to be a lot more kids into it. Maybe it’s because there’s a lot more people over there, I suppose you could look at it that way, but they also seem to have more disposable money to go to gigs in their own cars or whatever... The average crowd-size over here is probably around 200, whereas over there it’s probably around 400, which is pretty mental! We do really well over there and it’s always tempting to go back to a place where you’ll get that many people enjoying themselves, in various cities all over the place. I mean, why wouldn’t you do it? At the same time, it hasn’t got any easier since Trump got in and the laws about bands going over there became even more difficult. He lowered the amount of money you could earn, per band member, from $16,000 per tour, which we never even got close to, down to zero. That meant that we suddenly had to pay tax on everything we earned. On top of that, it now costs a lot more to get work permits over there and there’s even more paperwork hassles… At the end of the day, for us, it’s worth the hassle, but so much of the stuff he introduced is so unnecessary.’
‘At first, it came about because I’d written some lyrics that were several pages long! I’d had the idea and then spent several days writing it, just on scraps of paper as I was also working at that time. I started at the beginning and carried on to see where it would end up. I already had that and then Bruce said, well, I’ve got a few ideas that I haven’t put into anything else yet, so, over the next few weeks when we got together for practice, we started to put these things together and decide where the different pieces should go and if we needed to bring something back-in a few verses later. Then we’d have an instrumental bit and it would slow down or speed-up and then we’d just have the drums on there on at some point… We just invented it in a way so that the lyrics all fitted in to it.’
Was it pretty daunting to play it live for the first time?
‘Well, the first time we played it live was in Leeds or Bradford, I think. We’d played there the night before and then we found out that Hagar the Womb were playing the next night, so we asked if we could go on unannounced and play one song before they played and they were happy for us to do that. The thing was, we were going to America a few weeks after that and we were planning to play it over there, so we wanted to try it onstage without any fuss to see if it would work. So that night we went on unannounced and just played the one song to see how it worked onstage.’
You’ve played abroad quite a lot over the years, particularly in America. Do you find audiences more responsive or enthusiastic in different countries?
‘Well, originally, we went to America once in 1984 and then again in 1985. Nowadays, we usually go once or twice a year, because there’s such a lot of it! Generally I would have to say that people are more enthusiastic in America, sometimes scarily-so! In terms of the audience, the average age over there is probably around 22, whereas over here it’s quite a lot older than that. Over here, it seems that a lot of people who saw us back in the first place are still coming to our gigs now, some forty years later, and that’s awesome! Some of them have even got kids, so they bring them along to see us! But over the last five years or so, there have been a lot more younger people turning up at gigs over here again, and thank fuck for that! I think it’s good because they’ll be down the front doing all of that thrashy-dancing and leaping around, but they also know at least some of the lyrics. I always find that to be a real boost and it really keeps you going. But right now, in the States, there just seems to be a lot more kids into it. Maybe it’s because there’s a lot more people over there, I suppose you could look at it that way, but they also seem to have more disposable money to go to gigs in their own cars or whatever... The average crowd-size over here is probably around 200, whereas over there it’s probably around 400, which is pretty mental! We do really well over there and it’s always tempting to go back to a place where you’ll get that many people enjoying themselves, in various cities all over the place. I mean, why wouldn’t you do it? At the same time, it hasn’t got any easier since Trump got in and the laws about bands going over there became even more difficult. He lowered the amount of money you could earn, per band member, from $16,000 per tour, which we never even got close to, down to zero. That meant that we suddenly had to pay tax on everything we earned. On top of that, it now costs a lot more to get work permits over there and there’s even more paperwork hassles… At the end of the day, for us, it’s worth the hassle, but so much of the stuff he introduced is so unnecessary.’
Since Brexit, a lot of British bands are now having similar problems if they try to play in Europe. The worst thing is, the EU actually offered to allow easier travel for bands, but it was the UK government who turned it down and made things so difficult…
‘We’ve actually been lucky because Trotsky has been living in Germany for quite a long time, as his wife is German. So we have gear stored with him that we can use if we’re playing in Europe. The rest of us just have to fly over, hire a van and then set-off on tour, as opposed to taking a van over, full of gear or merch, which would lead to all sorts of hassles. Fortunately, we don’t have to go through all of that shit, which has completely put-off a lot of bands from going. But as you said, it was actually Boris Johnson who turned-down all the proposals that the EU offered which would have made it easier for so many people, in terms of trade or visiting or work…’
I still can’t understand how Boris and the Tories got away with so much bullshit. During the Eighties, there was a really strong underground-opposition to Thatchers’ government, but these days so many of the younger generation seem to just accept what’s going and even the Labour Party doesn’t offer much of an alternative…
‘Yes, that’s true, but at the moment the important thing is that we’ve really got to get rid of these Tories. They really are like a bunch of fascists and we’ve now got a hedge-fund manager as prime minister. Now, ‘hedge-fund’ sounds pretty harmless but what a hedge-fund manager actually does is strip the assets from existing companies, makes lots of profits for themselves off the back of it, but causes more unemployment and makes sure that the poor and even the middle classes, anyone who isn’t one of the super-rich basically, gets shat-on in terms of opportunity and income, and all those things that the Tories like to bang-on about. But in reality, they’re just shredding the whole fucking country. That’s why they don’t give a shit about climate change, or the rivers or the state of housing. I've tried to be objective but I really can’t think of one good thing that the Tories have done in the last 13 years, but they haven’t improved anyone’s life apart from the rich fuckers. They’ve taken it all… they’re stripping the whole fucking country. And the whole Brexit thing was just a fucking joke! It’s like that saying that if you repeat a lie over and over again, people will end-up believing it. People just got conned by that horrible ‘patriotic’ notion that we can survive on our own and the rest of the world is our theoretical enemy, for some vague reason. I really think that the war for democracy will be lost if the Tories get in one more time, because they really want to take away our basic freedoms, which are enshrined in the European Human Rights legislation, together with Workers Rights and Health Laws. They want to reinvent the whole thing so that it takes us back to the Victorian era where we were all either very poor or very rich and there wasn’t much going on in between.’
‘We’ve actually been lucky because Trotsky has been living in Germany for quite a long time, as his wife is German. So we have gear stored with him that we can use if we’re playing in Europe. The rest of us just have to fly over, hire a van and then set-off on tour, as opposed to taking a van over, full of gear or merch, which would lead to all sorts of hassles. Fortunately, we don’t have to go through all of that shit, which has completely put-off a lot of bands from going. But as you said, it was actually Boris Johnson who turned-down all the proposals that the EU offered which would have made it easier for so many people, in terms of trade or visiting or work…’
I still can’t understand how Boris and the Tories got away with so much bullshit. During the Eighties, there was a really strong underground-opposition to Thatchers’ government, but these days so many of the younger generation seem to just accept what’s going and even the Labour Party doesn’t offer much of an alternative…
‘Yes, that’s true, but at the moment the important thing is that we’ve really got to get rid of these Tories. They really are like a bunch of fascists and we’ve now got a hedge-fund manager as prime minister. Now, ‘hedge-fund’ sounds pretty harmless but what a hedge-fund manager actually does is strip the assets from existing companies, makes lots of profits for themselves off the back of it, but causes more unemployment and makes sure that the poor and even the middle classes, anyone who isn’t one of the super-rich basically, gets shat-on in terms of opportunity and income, and all those things that the Tories like to bang-on about. But in reality, they’re just shredding the whole fucking country. That’s why they don’t give a shit about climate change, or the rivers or the state of housing. I've tried to be objective but I really can’t think of one good thing that the Tories have done in the last 13 years, but they haven’t improved anyone’s life apart from the rich fuckers. They’ve taken it all… they’re stripping the whole fucking country. And the whole Brexit thing was just a fucking joke! It’s like that saying that if you repeat a lie over and over again, people will end-up believing it. People just got conned by that horrible ‘patriotic’ notion that we can survive on our own and the rest of the world is our theoretical enemy, for some vague reason. I really think that the war for democracy will be lost if the Tories get in one more time, because they really want to take away our basic freedoms, which are enshrined in the European Human Rights legislation, together with Workers Rights and Health Laws. They want to reinvent the whole thing so that it takes us back to the Victorian era where we were all either very poor or very rich and there wasn’t much going on in between.’
People like to go on about ‘illegal immigrants’ causing all the difficulties in the UK, but when you look into it, it’s actually the system concerning legal immigrants that’s causing more of the problems… as usual, the wrong people are being blamed!
‘Exactly. As I said earlier, Trotsky’s wife Sandra is German, so he’s allowed to live over there. But he’s not allowed to come back to live in the UK with her and their two kids, because she’s German! That’s how it is now. That’s the freedom of movement situation now. It’s all the other way around if you’re coming back to the UK, having lived somewhere else for a time. He can live in Germany, having married a German, but she can’t live in the UK even though she’s married to someone who’s British. What the fuck is that about? I have a horrible feeling that most people who voted for Brexit had never actually been to Europe and seen how easy it was to travel across borders and get to the places you wanted to visit. You hardly even knew the borders were there! But now, for people from the UK, all of that’s been fucked-up and it will be like that for at least for the next ten or twenty years. But… getting back to why people aren’t so focused against the Tories now as they were against Thatcher… Well, firstly, because very few politicians last as long as Thatcher did. These days we seem to have a new Prime-minister every year or two, so instead of focusing on one Tory Prime-minister over the last thirteen years, they’ve got a choice of five! There isn’t even any continuance in it, apart from the same chaotic, destructive, unhelpful manner in which they behave. I also think that people who are 16 or 17 haven’t had any consciousness of any party or alternative that isn’t Tory. When the Tories got back in, a lot of these younger people were only two or three years old, so what would they have known about the politics of that time? They’ve grown up only knowing the same thing, this general chaos, destruction and poverty that’s been going on ever since they were young. They must think it’s always like this and I’m sure that’s why there’s so much suicide, depression and mental stress amongst younger people these days. And it’s reaching these massive levels at the same time that the NHS is being cut-back even more… It really is a very fucked-up way to be leading the country.’
It’s gets so frustrating that it becomes easy to start thinking that the only way things could be resolved is if people went out on the streets and confronted what’s happening…
‘Yes, and every time that something else happens, you think that this is the point where there will be riots on the streets, but then we sit there and wait for it to happen rather than going out ourselves and protesting, hoping that others will join in. But of course, people don’t even know if they can do that anymore, because they’re unsure if it’s even legal to protest now! So many of these supposed rights are becoming illegal all the time and you can even be nicked for standing somewhere with an empty placard in your hand, because someone might get upset with it! That said, there are still demonstrations still going on but they just don’t get reported on the news. Anybody watching the telly to try and discover how other people are reacting is not going to find out . You really have to search more deeply to find out about these things.’
‘Exactly. As I said earlier, Trotsky’s wife Sandra is German, so he’s allowed to live over there. But he’s not allowed to come back to live in the UK with her and their two kids, because she’s German! That’s how it is now. That’s the freedom of movement situation now. It’s all the other way around if you’re coming back to the UK, having lived somewhere else for a time. He can live in Germany, having married a German, but she can’t live in the UK even though she’s married to someone who’s British. What the fuck is that about? I have a horrible feeling that most people who voted for Brexit had never actually been to Europe and seen how easy it was to travel across borders and get to the places you wanted to visit. You hardly even knew the borders were there! But now, for people from the UK, all of that’s been fucked-up and it will be like that for at least for the next ten or twenty years. But… getting back to why people aren’t so focused against the Tories now as they were against Thatcher… Well, firstly, because very few politicians last as long as Thatcher did. These days we seem to have a new Prime-minister every year or two, so instead of focusing on one Tory Prime-minister over the last thirteen years, they’ve got a choice of five! There isn’t even any continuance in it, apart from the same chaotic, destructive, unhelpful manner in which they behave. I also think that people who are 16 or 17 haven’t had any consciousness of any party or alternative that isn’t Tory. When the Tories got back in, a lot of these younger people were only two or three years old, so what would they have known about the politics of that time? They’ve grown up only knowing the same thing, this general chaos, destruction and poverty that’s been going on ever since they were young. They must think it’s always like this and I’m sure that’s why there’s so much suicide, depression and mental stress amongst younger people these days. And it’s reaching these massive levels at the same time that the NHS is being cut-back even more… It really is a very fucked-up way to be leading the country.’
It’s gets so frustrating that it becomes easy to start thinking that the only way things could be resolved is if people went out on the streets and confronted what’s happening…
‘Yes, and every time that something else happens, you think that this is the point where there will be riots on the streets, but then we sit there and wait for it to happen rather than going out ourselves and protesting, hoping that others will join in. But of course, people don’t even know if they can do that anymore, because they’re unsure if it’s even legal to protest now! So many of these supposed rights are becoming illegal all the time and you can even be nicked for standing somewhere with an empty placard in your hand, because someone might get upset with it! That said, there are still demonstrations still going on but they just don’t get reported on the news. Anybody watching the telly to try and discover how other people are reacting is not going to find out . You really have to search more deeply to find out about these things.’
And of course, the media has become more and more biased and manipulative. Too many people are content to believe whatever headline they read…
‘Well, that’s the monstrosity of it all. A few negative headlines can turn politics upside-down for the next thirty years. Like the Brexit referendum, any basic investigations would have quickly uncovered the facts and revealed that most, if not all, of the pro-Brexit claims were complete bullshit. These things were easy to find, but they weren’t as easy as reading the headlines on the daily papers, most of whom were pro-Brexit. It was just easier to accept the headlines as you stood in the newsagents while you were buying your baccy or sandwich, on your way to work. It was subliminally in your face whether you bought the newspaper or not.’
Subhumans originally broke-up at the end of 1985 but, despite a brief reunion in 1991, didn’t reunite in a more stable situation until 1998. However, it wasn’t until 2007 that the band would release ‘Internal Riot’, thr first album of new material since 1986. What caused the delay?
‘Well, it was mostly because at that time, Phil was living in Spain and Trotsky was living in Germany, so getting together to practice every weekend was just not going to happen. At present, we only really get together to practice once or twice a year, which is not conducive to producing an albums worth of new material at all. But what we can still do is tour and play gigs. Not as much as we used to, but they give us a chance to slowly invent new songs. In the meantime, Culture Shock have made a few records and Citizen Fish have done one more over the same sort of time span. But it’s always been about locality and the ability to work on new records.’
When Subhumans first got back together, were you wary about releasing new material in terms of the expectations that fans might have and how it would match-up to the original records?
‘Well, luckily the original band had quite a few dips and heights, so even if we just replicated the old stuff it would still sound quite varied. We always had a lot of variation in our songs, so I don’t think that was a worry. That said, there were occasions when one or two of us would end-up thinking, actually, that song doesn’t sound very good, so we might ditch it. But I think we were all happy with what we were left-with and that it was valid as Subhumans material. We were happy that it was the way we were sounding at that point and I don’t think I can get more specific than that, really. Luckily for us, there are ways now so that recording new material is something we can still do, but it just isn’t as fast as it used to be.’
I know that the 'Crisis Point’ album in 2019 received some mixed responses, but to me, I thought it was a great album, matching the very best of your records. What do you think of it now, a few more years down the line?
‘Actually, I think it sounded better than ‘Internal Riot’, but I also think the choice of songs could have been better, but that’s just my opinion and not the opinion of the whole band. I think we all wanted to release a new album as it had been ages since the previous one, but at the same time, I don’t think we had enough songs for ‘Crisis Point’ to really call it an album. Most people probably thought there were enough but I’m a fussy fucker and I never think our records are as good as they ought to be...’
‘Well, that’s the monstrosity of it all. A few negative headlines can turn politics upside-down for the next thirty years. Like the Brexit referendum, any basic investigations would have quickly uncovered the facts and revealed that most, if not all, of the pro-Brexit claims were complete bullshit. These things were easy to find, but they weren’t as easy as reading the headlines on the daily papers, most of whom were pro-Brexit. It was just easier to accept the headlines as you stood in the newsagents while you were buying your baccy or sandwich, on your way to work. It was subliminally in your face whether you bought the newspaper or not.’
Subhumans originally broke-up at the end of 1985 but, despite a brief reunion in 1991, didn’t reunite in a more stable situation until 1998. However, it wasn’t until 2007 that the band would release ‘Internal Riot’, thr first album of new material since 1986. What caused the delay?
‘Well, it was mostly because at that time, Phil was living in Spain and Trotsky was living in Germany, so getting together to practice every weekend was just not going to happen. At present, we only really get together to practice once or twice a year, which is not conducive to producing an albums worth of new material at all. But what we can still do is tour and play gigs. Not as much as we used to, but they give us a chance to slowly invent new songs. In the meantime, Culture Shock have made a few records and Citizen Fish have done one more over the same sort of time span. But it’s always been about locality and the ability to work on new records.’
When Subhumans first got back together, were you wary about releasing new material in terms of the expectations that fans might have and how it would match-up to the original records?
‘Well, luckily the original band had quite a few dips and heights, so even if we just replicated the old stuff it would still sound quite varied. We always had a lot of variation in our songs, so I don’t think that was a worry. That said, there were occasions when one or two of us would end-up thinking, actually, that song doesn’t sound very good, so we might ditch it. But I think we were all happy with what we were left-with and that it was valid as Subhumans material. We were happy that it was the way we were sounding at that point and I don’t think I can get more specific than that, really. Luckily for us, there are ways now so that recording new material is something we can still do, but it just isn’t as fast as it used to be.’
I know that the 'Crisis Point’ album in 2019 received some mixed responses, but to me, I thought it was a great album, matching the very best of your records. What do you think of it now, a few more years down the line?
‘Actually, I think it sounded better than ‘Internal Riot’, but I also think the choice of songs could have been better, but that’s just my opinion and not the opinion of the whole band. I think we all wanted to release a new album as it had been ages since the previous one, but at the same time, I don’t think we had enough songs for ‘Crisis Point’ to really call it an album. Most people probably thought there were enough but I’m a fussy fucker and I never think our records are as good as they ought to be...’
When it comes to writing lyrics, is this something you do on a regular basis or do you just work on them
as and when they’re needed for something?
‘I mostly write them when we get together to work on new material, or when I have a deadline. It used to be that I’d write one or two songs a week, but I’m nowhere near that anymore. I guess I’m a lot older than I was in the Eighties, when I still felt excitable enough to have new lyrics flying out all the time. I still enjoy writing and I still enjoy getting things together, like, words and rhymes and scanning and stuff. I still love all of that, but a lot of the songs that I used to write were written spontaneously and that meant that some came out well and others didn’t, so I was spending a lot more time on lyrics back then than I am these days. I could blame the internet for it, because I’m too busy answering emails and all that, or I could blame the fact that I’ve already covered a lot of the subjects and I don’t want to repeat myself. But at the same time, I do think I have a lot more self-belief in myself now and I’m a lot more confident that something good will come out of my writing. I do have self-doubt sometimes and if that happens I’ll start to worry about if I can keep-up the quality of the lyrics… I’ve had times when I might try to avoid writing, just to dodge the risk of something that sounds like bollocks coming-out. So it’s still a psychological mish-mash up here and that’s why I’m always very happy when lyrics do come together and work-well. If I’m in the position that we need lyrics for four songs in three days, I can usually do that but I just have to concentrate on them a lot more. I think that’s the thing, because my concentration can be shot-to-bits at times and my memory-span is definitely getting a bit shorter, but at least that’s just a sign of getting older, rather than getting pissed-up all the time… which I don’t do anymore. So, these are the pit-falls you’ve got to watch-out for, folks. All I can advise is that staying alive is better than dying!’
And with those words of wisdom, we came to the end of the interview. On the way back to the venue, Dick is accosted by a couple of Subhumans fans, the first an older punk from the Bristol area who used to see them during the Eighties and the other a young American who had seen them for the first time and met Dick during their tour of the States last year… which just about confirmed the earlier comments about the band appealing to a much more diverse audience these days!
as and when they’re needed for something?
‘I mostly write them when we get together to work on new material, or when I have a deadline. It used to be that I’d write one or two songs a week, but I’m nowhere near that anymore. I guess I’m a lot older than I was in the Eighties, when I still felt excitable enough to have new lyrics flying out all the time. I still enjoy writing and I still enjoy getting things together, like, words and rhymes and scanning and stuff. I still love all of that, but a lot of the songs that I used to write were written spontaneously and that meant that some came out well and others didn’t, so I was spending a lot more time on lyrics back then than I am these days. I could blame the internet for it, because I’m too busy answering emails and all that, or I could blame the fact that I’ve already covered a lot of the subjects and I don’t want to repeat myself. But at the same time, I do think I have a lot more self-belief in myself now and I’m a lot more confident that something good will come out of my writing. I do have self-doubt sometimes and if that happens I’ll start to worry about if I can keep-up the quality of the lyrics… I’ve had times when I might try to avoid writing, just to dodge the risk of something that sounds like bollocks coming-out. So it’s still a psychological mish-mash up here and that’s why I’m always very happy when lyrics do come together and work-well. If I’m in the position that we need lyrics for four songs in three days, I can usually do that but I just have to concentrate on them a lot more. I think that’s the thing, because my concentration can be shot-to-bits at times and my memory-span is definitely getting a bit shorter, but at least that’s just a sign of getting older, rather than getting pissed-up all the time… which I don’t do anymore. So, these are the pit-falls you’ve got to watch-out for, folks. All I can advise is that staying alive is better than dying!’
And with those words of wisdom, we came to the end of the interview. On the way back to the venue, Dick is accosted by a couple of Subhumans fans, the first an older punk from the Bristol area who used to see them during the Eighties and the other a young American who had seen them for the first time and met Dick during their tour of the States last year… which just about confirmed the earlier comments about the band appealing to a much more diverse audience these days!
Anyway, between the interview and catching-up with various friends at the venue, I managed to miss the support bands but the Subhumans set more than made up for it. Easter Monday is not an ideal date to tempt the heathens out of their holes and down to New Cross, but there’s still a healthy and very enthusiastic audience in attendance and the atmosphere is buzzing. The band take to the stage and dive straight into their set, sounding as fresh and vital as they always do. Despite their unavoidable lack of rehearsal opportunities these days, this is a band that are naturally tight and full of energy, blasting through songs from their early EP’s and the classic debut LP all the way through to their (more) recent ‘Internal Riot’ and ‘Crisis Point’ albums. The point is, although a few songs may sound a little adrift if taken out of context, Subhumans have always released records of high quality and their gigs have always high-lighted their strengths, which is no mean feat considering that their life-span is now in its’ fifth decade. I can’t claim I’ve seen them a huge amount of times over the years, but enough times to know how consistently good they’ve been (I’ve only been disappointed by one gig and, in retrospect, that was more to do with the poor PA sound than the band.) And, as already mentioned , they have the distinction that so many of their original lyrics still remain relevant to this day (which is a sad reflection of the lack of progress the world has made in recent times…) while their more recent songs tackle current issues just as effectively. Trust me, this isn’t just a nostalgia trip. There are other bands from the same scene / era that I totally loved at the time, but over the years they’ve completely lost their way and become such poor parodies of what they once were that I now wouldn’t go anywhere near them or their gigs. But, fortunately for us, some have retained their credibility and intent. Subhumans are certainly amongst the best of the older bands still playing to this day and maintaining their passion to confront the vice and corruption of those in power.. If you don’t believe me, see them or listen to their recent albums for yourself. You may well find yourself being impressed all over again!
