Monocled Alchemist

TIM SOMMER reports on the Anti-Nowhere League’s clandestine bid to beat the softening-up tactics of the clean-up campaigners

Article published in Sounds, 3rd July, 1982

Anti-Nowhere League | Escape To Victory | THIS IS a story about freedom, really. It’s about the battles the grungey and churning Anti-Nowhere League are fighting to remain grungey and churning; about how the Anti-Nowheres are being forced to compromise —not because of failure, but because of success; and how folks who think they know better insist that the Anti-Nowheres need to undergo a bit of censorship before they reach the masses.

A phone-call wakes me up on a weekday morning after about four hours sleep. An apologetic voice on the other end informs me that ANL bassist Winston is in New York City for the week, living temporarily in a state of semi-voluntary exile. Would I like to talk to him?

I jumped at the chance, even at 10 am, and by noon we had met. All sort of clandestine, you understand, but apparently Winston’s whole band-approved runner (you’ll read why shortly) is sort of under wraps to the band’s agency, record label, and numerous POWERS THAT BE.

Winston probably doesn’t fit your image of what an Anti-Nowhere should be. Sure, he’s got more than his share of tattoos and muscle, but he’s also handsome, friendly, far from intimidating, and quite articulate — in no way the brute biker you might expect.

Anti-Nowhere League | Escape To Victory

First of all, what’s Winston doing in America when the rest of the band is back home in England?

Winston: “We’ve had a lot of trouble with the company that distributes our records — they want us to change the lyrics to all our tracks, and it’s getting like ridiculous now ‘cos they’re trying to clean up the whole album.

“They originally pressed twenty thousand copies that had all our original material on it, but piece by piece they’re trying to change each track, making us clean it up. So, they wanted us to go into the studio and the only way we could get away from it was if one of us could get out of England, that way they can’t make us go in and do it then.

“We stipulated with our record company that, unless we are all together, we won’t record anything — we won’t have someone else go in and play an instrument, or something like that. Animal could go in and just lay the vocal track down, but we wouldn’t agree to that — we have to go in as a unit.

“So what’s happening back there is that they’re going to have to distribute the record as it is, ‘cos Faulty and WXYZ are going to lose money if they don’t. There are so many records selling that they’re going to have to distribute the one they got and press up more copies, so that way they still put out what we want them to put out, rather than what they want us to put out.

So What?

“I was the only one who had a visa, so we clubbed together and got the money for the flight over here, and I came over.

“The kids come along and see you and it’s the Anti-Nowhere League they come along to see, and when they buy the records they want to hear the Anti-Nowhere League, they don’t want to hear cleaned up versions of what were about.

“We had this trouble with our first single, ‘So What?’ — it got banned and all that and people expected us to clean up after that. But there’s no point really, ‘cos then it wouldn’t be the Anti-Nowhere League — that’s the sort of music that we do and there’s no reason we should change or clean up the lyrics. That’s the way we see it, anyway.”

Anti-Nowhere League | Escape To Victory

WHAT ABOUT the new single, ‘Woman’?

“Yeah, that’s a cleaned up version. The original one is on the album, which has got the ‘f”**s’ an’ all that in it. But Faulty products wouldn’t distribute it unless we did a cleaned up version of it.”

I’m surprised that Faulty has that attitude.

“I don’t know why, ‘cos normally they’re pretty sort of —how would you say — they’ll accept anything. But with us, it seems that anything we put out the police will take interest in, just because of that stupid thing with ‘So What?’. And I think they’re a bit worried about prosecution.”

Why do you think the police picked on ‘So What?, out of any of the hundreds of singles that could be considered obscene?

“In England, you have pubs and you get boozers who have a few drinks inside of them and they go on about what they’ve done and what they’re never gonna do and it’s like a total pisstake of that, really — ‘So What?, you boring c***, ‘cos people are boring when they go on like that. And it must affect people, I suppose — they see what they’re really like and they don’t like it.

“A lot of people thought that the confiscation was a publicity stunt at first — we ourselves thought it was a publicity thing, it sounded like our record company had done it or something – but I think it was just that people had complained. It’s ridiculous that people are so small-minded that they can go out and ban something like that, there’s much worse things in the chart than that.”

Top of The Pops

Could you have done Top Of The Pops if you cleaned up the lyrics?

“That’s happened already. The single before this, ‘I Hate People’, it’s not really obscene or anything, but it has got a few swear words in it. Top Of The Pops approached our manager when we were on the American tour and they told us we could do the show if we did a cleaned-up version of the song. But we wouldn’t do that.

“And with our first single we had a chance to do Top Of The Pops as well; we got to the studio, went into the dressing room, and then they blew that out for us as well, they wouldn’t let us do it. But it don’t really matter.”

Anti-Nowhere League | Escape To Victory

IT SEEMS that people considered ANL a bit of a joke at first.

“I think people thought we was a ‘fun’ band, sort of like a Splodgenessabounds type of band, but I think people are taking us a lot more seriously now.

“A lot of our lyrics, people thought they were a total pisstake; like ‘Animal’, it was taken as a joke, it was like ‘Come and watch the Anti-Nowhere League and have a good laugh and then go home.’ But people are taking us a lot more seriously now. They’re understanding our lyrics; they are funny, but it’s a matter of laughing together, laughing at the people you’re singing about.

“Christ, if you can’t come down and see a band and enjoy yourself and have a laugh, then what’s the point of going? I’m not into serious music, none of us are. You can tell by our lyrics. We could clean up all our lyrics and get accepted as a nice clean punk band, but we don’t want to do that.

“Even though we’re categorised as a punk band in England, none of us are punk rockers — for a start we’re older than that sort of thing.

Our music is not that fast

“I think we’ve got more in common with the old punk bands, like the UK Subs or The Damned and bands like that. I mean, our music’s not that fast, it’s not like Discharge or The Exploited — I think we’re different, we got a different approach than the other punk bands. We’ve proved a point because we have done quite well in England, so we must have something. I don’t know what, but we’ve got something.

“We’re still only a young band, really; even though we’ve gotten all this press and have had the press on our side and all that, we’ve still got to find our roots.

“We’re coming up with new songs all the time now and they’re varying from the earlier stuff. As we get better at playing our instruments, our music is changing accordingly. It’s still rock ‘n’ roll and it’s still the same Anti-Nowhere League, but were able to do sort of better things.”