GREGOR GALL - THE CLASH, THE REDSKINS, ROCK’N’ROLL AND REVOLUTION
James Kennedy interviews Gregor Gall about his new book on the socialist band The Redskins, exploring how bands like The Clash sparked political awareness in a generation. They discuss whether modern artists avoid clear anti-capitalist ideologies, the power of music in affecting change and how the modern social and technological landscape has changed the nature of socially conscious music.
James Kennedy: Thanks for being here, brother. How are you doing?
Gregor Gall: Thank you very much, James, for the invitation. I appreciate it.
James Kennedy: Well, mate, honestly, I’ve got loads I want to ask you. That's quite an introduction there. I'm loving the title of the new book. I haven't had a chance to read it yet, as I mentioned, so I'm hoping that you can tell us what it's all about and what motivated you to write it, because that's quite a title.
Gregor Gall: Well, I do like titles that have alliteration in them, so that was why there's the C's in the first part, if you like, and then the R's to do with the Redskins. I grew up being a massive Clash fan. I wasn't old enough—rather, I was too young to see the original Clash lineup, but I saw what is known as Clash Mark 2, which existed from 1983 to 1986, and I saw them three times live at the Brixton Academy in London in 1984. It's an often-said thing that certain things change your life, but I was already massively into the Clash otherwise I wouldn't have gone to see the gigs. But seeing the Clash live made it very apparent to me how powerful live music can be, particularly when you have somebody who is such a front person as Joe Strummer. And people know—a lot of people know—what Joe Strummer was about in terms of his lyrics, the interviews that he did, all those kind of things, and it all came together seeing the band live. And although there's controversy over whether the Mark 1 version or the Mark 2 version—which one was best?—to me they were a very, very powerful outfit with great stage presence.
So anyway, I ended up writing a book about Joe Strummer's politics because they were very important to my own political development. I think I'm much more left-wing than Joe Strummer was, but that doesn't take away from the fact that Joe Strummer was, if you like, something of a teacher for me as a youth. The reason why I wrote this book about the Redskins was that in that book about Joe Strummer, which is called Punk Rock Politics of Joe Strummer, the most mentioned band—other than Billy Bragg being a solo artist, other than Paul Weller in terms of Style Council—the most mentioned band was the Redskins. And the Redskins were, if you like, not just a band that was against something—against Thatcherism, the Tories, capitalism—but they were also a band that were very much for something, which was revolutionary socialism.
The contrast with Strummer there is quite acute, quite sharp. Joe Strummer was very left-wing; he was very much against certain things—obviously racism would be an obvious thing, fascism—but he was relatively ambiguous, if you like, about what exactly he was for, other than he was for the overthrow of Somoza, the dictator in Nicaragua, and supported the Nicaraguan revolution. But on other things, he was a lot less specific, whereas the Redskins were a band that was quite clear what they were about. Two of the leading members—there was only really three of them—were members of the Socialist Workers Party, which is a Trotskyist party in Britain.
So that was kind of why I wrote the book, and I was really testing out: if you have a much more hardcore and specific form of politics that you're trying to get across in your music, how effective is that? And to cut a long story short, when I took testimony for the research for the book, I found out that of the people who were fans and followers of the Redskins, some joined the Socialist Workers Party, the Trotskyist party I mentioned; others joined the Labour Party when it actually still had a left-wing party and some left-wing kind of side to it; others joined the Communist Party; or many others who were already on the left were sustained in their willingness, their ability, their confidence to remain on the left.
So that's really the reason why I wrote the book, and I think, again to cut the story very short, it does show that some kinds of music can be very effective in spreading political messages. And obviously, as someone on the left, I'm most interested and most concerned about how people on the left use music to spread their message, particularly in a time which is dominated by neoliberalism and now that sort of move towards fascism.
James Kennedy: Hundred percent, man. Well, it's fucking amazing with a band like the Clash that they're still having that effect on generations now. I mean, I'm an 80s child, so I never got to see the Clash, and I didn't really discover them until later in life. I was kind of like a grunge kid, you know? I was into Nirvana and Rage Against the Machine and all that sort of stuff. They gave me that thing that I think my father got from the Clash, you know what I mean? Or the Pistols or something like that. But they're still relevant today, man. I mean, London Calling and the first album—fucking jesus christ—the fact that, musically and lyrically, it's still just as relevant today, and also has that kind of political awakening effect in people such as myself who discovered it a generation later, is really, really unique, I think.
Gregor Gall: Isn't it? Two examples: one from the Clash and Joe Strummer, the other one from the Redskins. But they speak to the point you've just made about how it can be a political awakening, almost like an epiphany. Many people say about "Spanish Bombs," which was a song on London Calling, the double album the Clash released in 1979, that they didn't know that there was such a thing as the Spanish Civil War that lasted between 1936 and 1939. It was a kind of precursor to the rise of—well, a precursor to Hitler and the Second World War and the Holocaust and so on. They didn't know about it, and what they found out was that there were certain things like George Orwell wrote the book Homage to Catalonia; they didn't know anything about Federico García Lorca, the left-wing poet who was murdered by the fascists in Spain. So they found—they kind of took this, and it was like a little tiny little history lesson that whetted their appetite. And this is obviously back in the day before the internet; they either went to the public library, school library, asked a history teacher that might have been a bit left-wing, "What was the Spanish Civil War about?"
And then a similar thing with the Redskins. So there was a period in which the Clash and the Redskins overlapped for a few years, and this speaks to me in terms of my own political evolution. There's a song on—the Redskins only released one album, so there's a song on that called "It Can Be Done," and it speaks about different revolutions starting with the October Revolution in 1917 in Russia, but it moves on to talk about a revolution that wasn't successful: the one in Germany between 1918 and 1923. I think I'd heard of people like Rosa Luxemburg, woman revolutionary, Karl Liebknecht. I didn't know that they had both been murdered by the fascists at that time. But it made me find out about this thing, the German Revolution. And I was at university at the time, at the University of Aberdeen, and I went to the university library. Unfortunately, there was a book about the German Revolution in the history section. It turns out it was the same book that Chris Dean from the Redskins had read that led him to write this song.
So to me, you've got two examples there that a three-, four-minute kind of pop song tells the listener about something they didn't already know about, stimulates their interest. And the song never attempts to say this is the be-all and end-all, you don't need to know anything else. It basically says, if you're interested in this—implicitly it says, if you're interested in this—go and find out more about it. And that's exactly what I did. And I found out through research for "Spanish Bombs" and for the Redskins that it can be done. That's what people did.
So I think songs, at certain points in time, can be tremendously powerful. They don't change the world, but they can change individual consciousness, and that's important. And it's not just obviously written in the 1980s. You go back to America in the late 60s, early 70s, with songs—civil rights songs, Black Power songs—they can be tremendously inspiring and have that educational role.
James Kennedy: Yeah, I love that. I totally echo that as well. I mean, for me, it was the Manic Street Preachers that got me into Noam Chomsky and things like that. I did the same thing, going to the library and reading up and all that stuff. And for me, it just made political activism cool. You know, I was much more likely to listen to the bands that I liked, that I thought were cool, than some kind of stuffy politician or some kind of author or left-wing activist banging on about something that I didn't know much about at that time. So bands kind of gave you a license that it was okay to dabble with that stuff and to take an interest. And yeah, I think as an angry young man, you're much more likely to listen to your favorite artists than a teacher or a parent or something. So it's very powerful when bands merge those two aspects.
Gregor Gall: Absolutely. And I think the other thing is that they merge it in the short form. It's like they don't have to go away and read a long book—a book that's maybe dense and difficult. Here is something that's very short, very appealing, it's set to music. It's not just some kind of like three-minute speech. If you listen to something like one of my favorite songs—so the Clash is "The Clampdown," again from the London Calling album, and it's about racism and fascism. But the music really fits the—I suppose it was really Mick Jones, the lead guitarist and arranger, that did the music; Joe Strummer tended to do the lyrics. But the two really come together in a powerful form. And I think if the music hadn't been so suitable or amenable for the lyrics, it wouldn't have had the same impact.
So the lyrics are important, but if they're supported by the music, which is like "The Clampdown" song—it's almost working for the clampdown, clampdown being this fascist kind of right-wing racist clampdown on people. It's almost like music that you could imagine in your wildest dreams rushing to the barricades to defend the barricades against attacks from your enemies sort of thing. It's that kind of thing; it's tremendously inspiring. So music can have that influence.
I think that music has that potency more than reading a novel, although I think that can be powerful; more than a painting; more than theater. I think not only is it very, very powerful, but—and I know that all generations listen to music—when you're young and you get turned on to music, and it's like your thing more than it is football or girlfriends or boyfriends or whatever it is, it is so powerful at that time in your life. It's really, really educational, and you're at that time when it has that formative influence on you that you carry on later on in your life. And I'm approaching 60 and I still listen to the Clash. I won't guess what your age is, James, but the fact that you've mentioned the Manic Street Preachers, who were really coming to the fore in the early 1990s, shows that that music to you has stayed with you as well.
James Kennedy: 100%. Yeah. Well, I think with music, like you said, it's different to sport or painting or your first love or something like that because it weaves into your being, doesn't it? You carry it with you for the rest of your life. It's the soundtrack to your developments and those peak moments in your life. So it's a very—yeah, it's a strange one. It's like you just said now: you're 60, you still listen to the Clash, and you probably still love it as much as you did when you first discovered it. And I'm very much the same. Like I said, I'm a 90s boy, so for me, I can still listen to Rage Against the Machine and I've heard it a thousand times, but it still gets me going, you know?
Gregor Gall: Yeah, indeed, indeed. I think that's because music, more than some other art forms, has a greater emotional and psychological impact and connection. And different songs—if you were to talk to somebody who you respected about a particular song that you think was very powerful, it might have more of an impact on you than the other person you're talking to. It can be quite a personal thing, but when artists have a big back catalog, a big canon, then you can find in their back catalog particular songs that mean something to you because certain events—world events, maybe like what's going on in France at the moment with riots—it speaks to you in a way that wouldn't necessarily speak to somebody else in the same way. So there's an emotional and psychological impact, and people have done studies on this, and I do mention some of them in the Redskins book. I think it's maybe not something to go into in the here and now, but it has to be acknowledged that that has that impact that some other forms of art don't have.
James Kennedy: Do you think then that music, or art more generally, has a role to play in overthrowing injustice or tyranny or fascism? Does it have a role? And how effective a tool is it in doing so? For me, I feel like the answer lies somewhere in the fact that throughout history, the powers that be have tried to censor and subdue art and control art. So that hints to me that it is a powerful tool. What are your thoughts?
Gregor Gall: Arts and culture—I can just use that broadest term—does two things. The first thing is that it tends to represent the status quo. Now, that can be done in the sense of, if you go back hundreds of years, you would have the court of king or queen or whatever, and they would patronize somebody. They would basically pay for an artist to paint them, their family or houses or whatever. So art can actually represent and figuratively portray the status quo. That can be done in a sort of way that is entirely supportive, particularly if a person is basically paid to do it. It can also be done in a way which can be kind of critical and take the piss out of it, depending on how it's portrayed. But that's one side of it.
The other side of it is that art and culture doesn't just represent what is going on, doesn't just portray the status quo; it can actually try and change things. I think those are the two basic historical trajectories that art has been shown to have. And the major one, unfortunately, if you like, has always been to portray the status quo. Now, we've lived under a society called capitalism for the last 200 years or more. The current phase, epoch, or era that we're in is a neoliberal phase. It's a phase of capitalism.
And so if you think about most of the stuff that's in the charts, whether it's going from Taylor Swift to God knows what, some of it, if you like, doesn't even seem to directly address anything that's going on in the world. It's just like somebody's love life or their personal relationships—kind of love and loss type stuff. And even though that seems to be completely apolitical, I would say that it is political in another way, because it deliberately chooses not to say anything about anything, if you like. It doesn't say the way the world is at the moment is either good or bad or anything else.
Then you get the kind of—I think something that developed out of hip hop and rap in the United States in particular. It went from being quite rebellious and radical, with like N.W.A and Public Enemy. It then went to stuff like 50 Cent, who were really saying, you know, if you're not rich and successful, it's your own fault; look at me. 50 Cent started—took that name because that's what he allegedly started off with, and then he becomes kind of very rich and famous and all that sort of stuff. So you get some kind of art and culture that deliberately tries to legitimize and support the neoliberal phase of capitalism that we're in.
So you've got two variations of that supporting the status quo, and then you've got the alternative. I mean, you mentioned and Rage Against the Machine there—are loads of other bands which have done that kind of thing, some more successfully than others. And you look at just the controversy that's engulfed Ed Sheeran recently: all the support artists on his American tour pulled out because Malcolm Moore wasn't going to be allowed to play at a particular stadium that was owned by the guy that owns the Kraft conglomerate, and clearly they were saying something. Now, it's not my kind of music, if you like—I know that makes me sound like some old kind of whiny, "always better back in the day" sort of thing, some kind of old curmudgeon, if you like—but I did find out enough about some of the stuff that Malcolm Moore has done. It would be wrong to say that he only makes statements that are pro rights of the Palestinians; there are a couple of songs that he's done that do talk about politics.
But in the main, what you have at the moment, I think, are some people who use their profile and their platform to say things, and that's great; I applaud them for doing that. But what would be to me so much more powerful and better is if more of their songs, more of their albums, and anything that they release in their lyrics, they deal with these issues. Because I think it's one thing to say something on stage or when you're interviewed by the media; it's much more powerful and far-reaching if you put that sentiment into your lyrics, and it gets more of an airing because you look at the Spotify figures or YouTube or other streaming platforms—many more people are going to listen to a song than some kind of statement that you made to whatever news channel it was in America.
So I think there are, as I say, two sides: those that support the status quo, the ones that don't say anything but implicitly that's for it, there's those that are explicitly for it, and then you've got some of the rebels and the radicals and those that want to resist. And to me, the question then becomes: how can you be more effective in rebelling and resisting and being radical? And some bands like Rage Against the Machine are much more successful than others. But we go back in time into my time, more in the 80s, and there were many other bands to mention. In 1980—I think I'm getting this right—the Specials' "Ghost Town" was a massive, massive single. I'd have to check this, but I'm fairly sure it was certainly in the top 10, it may even have been number one, and it was talking about the beginnings of deindustrialization, mass unemployment, and that was affecting Britain. And the lyrics were very clear, without being like "Kick the Tories out, kick Thatcher out"; it was just very, very—and the music it was set to, it was very kind of foreboding and so on. So there is a tradition to that music of rebelling and radicalism that goes back decades and decades, and you could mention not just the likes of Billy Bragg in Britain, but Woody Guthrie in America, Pete Seeger, and so on.
ENJOYING THE CONVERSATION?
GET JAMES KENNEDY'S LATEST INTERVIEWS, WRITING AND LIVE SHOWS STRAIGHT TO YOUR INBOX
James Kennedy: Yeah, yeah, I totally agree with you, man. And silence is compliance, isn't it? I mean, not saying anything is the same as acquiescence with the bad guys. So yeah, I mean, I think I did read something that you said recently when you were asked about the Ed Sheeran thing, which was inevitably going to come up when speaking to yourself on this subject, and I think you said that he could have told Robert Kraft to fuck off, which you know he could have and should have. Possibly easier for me to say as someone who is an independent artist—well, not a politician, an outspoken artist that has been listening to this sort of music my entire life—than it is maybe someone like Ed Sheeran that writes songs about his girlfriend. But still, he is part of a massive machine, he has advisors, he knows what influence and clout he has, and the fact that he bowed down to some billionaire fucking businessman is pretty shameful, I think.
Gregor Gall: Yeah, I think it's almost—I mean, I think there's probably—obviously I don't know the guy, but I imagine there's two things. One is, like what you've alluded to, there's all the kind of record company, the media management people saying, "Safety is the best course, say nothing, that's the path of least controversy." But I think some people don't realize potentially the power that they could have if they chose to use it; he clearly didn't. And when he was kind of forced to come out with this mea culpa, this apology, as I understand it, it was almost right off an autocue; it seemed very, very insincere, didn't seem genuine. So he almost doubled down on the mistake he'd made by then saying something that didn't come across as being sincere, whereas he could have turned the situation around.
But then again, that would have required some kind of personal epiphany on his part to go from "I write songs about, like you say, my girlfriend or whatever" to "What do I think about the world? What's right, what's wrong, and how am I as a massive selling artist going to create a situation that's better than the one that exists at the moment?" And nobody was expecting Ed Sheeran to turn into kind of a socialist revolutionary, but he might have just said something that was like, well, you know, positive but also critical. For example, he might have said, "Well, what's the British government doing about supporting genocide—the genocide being carried out by the Israeli state?" He could have talked about loads of other things. He could have said, "Why is it that basically Britain is obsequious and subservient to America under Trump?" There's loads of things he could have said.
And also, you know, he could have been relatively opportunistic, because if you look at the polls, it would actually be quite popular to say those things at the moment. Support for the rights of the Palestinians is a substantial part of the population, notwithstanding any backlash that he would have got. But you could almost say that somebody who's really, really canny and almost quite calculating could have said, "Well, I'll do this, I don't believe in it, but I'll do it nonetheless." But he didn't even go that far.
James Kennedy: Yeah, it's crazy, isn't it? I mean, you're going to draw heat whatever happens. Somebody like Roger Waters, who I always love—I love Pink Floyd and respect him—gets criticized all the time, and for good reason sometimes, because he can be a bit of a dickhead. But I agree with what he says and how he uses his position. But I would much rather be criticized for speaking out and pissing a few people off than being criticized as the guy that kowtows to power, and you're never going to shake that off, you know.
Gregor Gall: You mentioned the guy from Pink Floyd. I remember that when Sinéad O'Connor tore up a photograph of the Pope on stage, she was supported by Roger Waters there. I mean, it was a very difficult time for her, and all she was protesting about was the abuse of children by priests and so on, which we now know has happened over and over again. But she had the temerity to do that at the time—I think this would be late 80s, early 90s—and she took pelters for it, right enough. But that was such a strength of character that she decided to do it and took the flak, and I think she wouldn't have said "I shouldn't have done that"; she said "I should have done it, I did do it, and the fact that you're criticizing me only shows up how correct I was to do that."
James Kennedy: 100%. Well, you made an interesting point about the Redskins as well. Like a lot of the artists—I mean, there are plenty of artists still today who are speaking out on issues and using their platform, but it's very much in the form, like you mentioned earlier, where it's commenting on one issue or reacting to one issue, but not much more than that. And obviously your book explores the Redskins, and they had a much more ideological nature to the band, didn't they? It wasn't just reacting to this issue or that issue; they were actually actively involved. It was a deeply entrenched part of the whole nature of the band, wasn't it?
Do you feel that is something that is lacking since those times? You mentioned neoliberalism. I feel that because of the nature of industrial life back in the 70s and 80s, it meant that artists reflected working life in that way more than they would now, where they've had 40 years of Thatcherism and neoliberalism kind of grinding everybody down to the point where ideology—the idea that there could ever be an alternative ideology to live by—is kind of gone, like neoliberalism won, so all we can do now is shout about issues but not really espouse an alternative ideology. Do you feel like that's what's happened, or is another cultural force at play?
Gregor Gall: I think you've nailed it there. Neoliberalism really begins in the 1970s, and most obviously it becomes much more advanced and embedded when you've got the arrival of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 in Downing Street and Ronald Reagan in the White House in America in 1980. And we've really had no departures from it. I mean, Tony Blair, to my mind, was a Labour version of neoliberalism. In fact, when Margaret Thatcher, before she died, was asked what was her proudest achievement, she said, "Tony Blair and New Labour." What she meant by that was she made Labour change from being social democratic—in favor of full employment, the welfare state, blah, blah, blah. She made Labour change from what it was to what it became. Tony Blair was, if you like, only the mechanism by which that happened.
So yeah, neoliberalism is the dominant ideological force in the vast majority of the world today; there's no getting away from that. And unfortunately, it's not changed. There was a slight blip that some people thought was going to signal change when there was the pandemic and you had massive state intervention. But what they misread was the situation: that state intervention—"Eat Out to Help Out," I can't remember the exact phrasing—that was basically state intervening to support capitalism at a time of crisis.
And you have a situation where in loads of other places—you go back to the Great Financial Crisis, particularly in the United States—there was massive nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Those are the two companies that really started the credit crunch and the housing crisis and so on. So when you had the state intervening, it wasn't socialism of any stripe; it was state intervening to support capitalism. That's two examples in the last 20 years.
So you still have it. The rise of Reform in Britain doesn't change that; it's a particular variant, a racist variant of it. So I think the reason I say all that is I think it is genuinely much harder to be a left-wing socialist revolutionary anywhere, but particularly in Britain, than it has been for decades and decades. And that, of course, filters through and percolates through to music.
So I think you're absolutely on the money when you say that it is relatively easy for an artist to say in one song, or maybe a couple of songs, something about something—and I don't want to decry them for doing that, it might be Palestine, it might be homelessness, it might be unemployment, whatever—but you're absolutely right to say that it is not part of a wider worldview which says, if you join the dots together: Why do we have a failing NHS? Why do we have massive youth unemployment? Why do we have racism, et cetera? What is the common factor in all this? And to my mind, it's capitalism. It's the neoliberal form of capitalism. But they don't look for the other signs of it, and then they don't join them all up together.
And what the Redskins did was that they did have an ideology which said that all these issues come from one source, and that one source is capitalism. We need to abolish capitalism in order to—if capitalism is the cause, and homelessness and unemployment are the symptoms, we need to deal with the cause and the symptoms; they're two sides of the same coin.
So you do have an absence of that today. One of the contemporaries of the Redskins at the time was Billy Bragg, who obviously is still gigging and releasing material today. He'll be—I think he's going to be 70 in a couple of years' time, so he's no spring chicken anymore. Now, he's had a slightly less left-wing form of politics, but nonetheless he is still one of the artists that is talking about various issues. And I find it hard to think of others that are doing the similar. There are two people that I can think of that are broadly similar to Billy Bragg: one guy is called Joe Solo, another person is a woman called Grace Petrie, and they do the same kind of thing as Billy Bragg. But it's likely that very, very few people have heard of Joe Solo or Grace Petrie. And that speaks to the fact that it is much more difficult now to speak out and to get a platform, or to get a wide platform, for the kind of lyrics and content that you're singing about and that you want to let people know about.
So yeah, it's absolutely true that there aren't enough genuinely left-wing musicians around. And some of that is down to their personal predilections—they don't want to stand out, they don't want to put their head above the parapet. But it's also these wider societal forces where left-wing ideas—we had a little change in the late 2010s when Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party; we know what happened there, taken over by Keir Starmer. Now we've got Andy Burnham. The fact that Jeremy Corbyn was basically defenestrated—he was kicked out—and then replaced by Keir Starmer and then Andy Burnham... unless you're deliberately rebelling against that, I don't think either Keir Starmer or Andy Burnham are going to inspire you to think, "Oh, I need to write left-wing lyrics." I'm not sure who younger people would look to in Britain today or around the world; I mean, it's difficult to find particular individuals that you could use as a kind of symbol or manifestation of those ideas.
James Kennedy: Very good point.
Gregor Gall: You probably would have to go back a lot further in history.
James Kennedy: Yeah, that's a very good point, actually. Like the revolutionary iconography and imagery is certainly about 80 years behind us, but definitely we don't have any modern versions of that to be inspired by.
Gregor Gall: I was a student in the 1980s and mid- to late-1980s, and it was quite common for people in their halls of residence or flats or whatever to have posters like Che Guevara, maybe Chairman Mao in China, a few Karl Marxes, maybe the odd Leon Trotsky. But I don't think that they—I don't know for sure, but I'd be surprised if there's anything like the same thing going on at all.
And so there was an American folk artist whose name escapes me right now—he is mentioned in the book—and he said the only chance of revolution—he was talking about America in the sort of late 60s, early 70s—he said, "The only chance of revolution is getting Che Guevara to become Elvis Presley." And what he meant by that was that we need somebody with the politics of Che Guevara, but the popularity of Elvis Presley, the kind of outreach, and they put the two together. And we don't have that kind of figure at the moment. I'm not saying we won't, but right now we don't have that.
James Kennedy: Well, there's a cruel irony to that as well, isn't there? I mean, a band like the Clash or the Redskins would speak out about the evils of capitalism. But the irony of it is, unfortunately, that most people would never have heard of them had they not had the backing—certainly in the case of the Clash with CBS Records—of a major record company. And the same could be said of Rage Against the Machine and so many of these bands. We never would have heard of them had it not been for the fact that they were signed to major labels. They had all the expensive radio plugging, they were flown around the world, put on all the big TV shows, and stuff like that. And that's not to criticize the bands; it's just an interesting irony, I feel, that made their influence more possible: the fact that there was still that unfortunate influence of the seedy hand of capitalism.
Gregor Gall: Malcolm X, the Black revolutionary in America, he had this phrase: "by any means necessary." And certainly that's what Joe Strummer of the Clash looked at CBS as: a sort of necessary evil. I mean, Joe Strummer was aware of what other bands were doing; the obvious example would be Crass, the anarchist band who had their own record label, they had their own kind of commune, they did their own artwork. And sincere as they were, clearly the influence of Crass—even though other bands like Discharge and Conflict came in their wake—they were small scale compared to the Clash.
And so Strummer—one thing that the Clash, or the members of the Clash, did that was silly was they didn't read the contract they were signing, which was to produce 10 albums! Fortunately, they got away with some of it because London Calling was a double album, Sandinista! was a triple album. But nonetheless, they didn't read the contract, which is really pretty stupid; they were just so desperate to get a contract. That said, they knew what they were signing up to, and they knew there would be conflict and tensions, and they needed to navigate those tensions as best as they could.
Because back in the day, the big market to break was America. So once you'd done your sterling work going round playing all the gigs and the clubs in Britain, you wanted to go to America, not just because it was like the kind of mythical home of rock and roll, but also at that time during the Cold War, America was either one of the two superpowers or it was the most important superpower, and so what happened to America was important, so you wanted to go there, you wanted to tour there, and the Clash did that on a number of occasions. So they were well aware—Joe Strummer in particular was well aware—of those conflicts, but there was no other way around it.
Today, to some extent—I wouldn't exaggerate it, but to some extent—you can independently not only produce but also distribute your own music, because there are different platforms available now, the technologies are available, and they're cheaper and they're relatively easy to use. So that's important. And think of the example of Taylor Swift: she's a rebel in as much as she's bought back her own back catalog, but she's still a massive figure that's supported by the music and record industry overall. So it's not changed that much, even if it allows—I suppose what it allows is some artists, some musicians, some bands to get up to the point where they're noticed by the majors. That would have been more difficult to do under your own steam; you would have had to maybe get signed by an independent label like Rough Trade, then do well, get one of your singles into the top 40 in Britain—this is talking about the 1980s kind of thing—get on Top of the Pops, then you might be offered a better contract, financially better contract, by a major once you'd done that. But then that means you leave Rough Trade to go to a major.
So I think you can maybe get to that point on your own a bit more easily these days, but it's still the case that the vast majority of the most listened-to, the most streamed, the most bought singles and albums are all from the majors. So I think we're still in the clutches of the capitalist music industry, which does make it difficult.
Sometimes there are ironies and paradoxes. In terms of the Redskins, the band that I've written about in this book, they knew that there would be difficulties signing to London Records, which is owned by Decca, but they also knew that they had a unique selling point, which was the kind of left-wing revolutionary socialist lyrics, and they knew that the record label didn't necessarily agree—well, they knew that the record label didn't agree with the politics at all. But they knew that the record label itself knew that if it tried to water down those lyrics, it would undermine the selling ability of the Redskins' record. So there was some kind of compromise there. If the Redskins had developed beyond having just one album and seven singles and existed beyond late 86, early 87, that compromise would have been tested a lot more, and I don't know what the outcome would have been, but for the time that they existed they managed to actually navigate those tensions quite well.
James Kennedy: I can imagine the tensions at the time were very real, and it was a very difficult time socially in the 70s. I mean, some would say that was probably what was the spark that created punk rock. But looking back at those times now, it does feel a lot more innocent in a sense that there was an ideological alternative. Going back to what we were talking about at the start: a band like the Clash today—if they formed today and they were singing the same songs—the chance of them getting signed would be zero, and unfortunately they would be doing all the things that you just mentioned, you know, they would be self-distributing themselves onto Spotify and having to make silly little TikTok videos to try and get traction and things like that. And that's the world we're living in now, and I'm certain that there are thousands of politically outspoken and activist bands out there, but because of the way that the industry has changed they're just never going to get heard. And it does almost feel like things were a bit better back in the day when the goodies and the baddies were a lot more clearer, you know.
Gregor Gall: In terms of the kind of political situation overall, yes, it was a lot clearer. You had a situation where, even though in my view Labour had never been a socialist party, it was left-wing, it was social democratic, it believed in public ownership, public health, public transport. None of those things meant that society was run by workers, which is I think the definition of socialism coming from the likes of Karl Marx, but it was clear that Labour was a different kind of party. And so—I mentioned the thing about Thatcher's greatest achievement being Tony Blair and New Labour—that does make a massive difference. And I think without that alternative being there, a lot of people, they don't like to raise their horizons, their sights; they quite understandably think about how do they make the rent this month, how do they meet their food bills, their energy bills. Their sights are much, much lower. And in some ways you could think, well, that would be a reason why some people would not necessarily form the bands themselves, but would actually say, "Well, our bands should be talking about these things." But I think those things are so encroaching, they're so powerful, that just to get through the week or the month you concentrate on the little things and you don't think about the bigger things.
So I think that's part of the mix. But the other part of it is that for all the changes that we've mentioned in terms of how music is produced these days, it is still the case that there is—sometimes rebel bands rebelled against what was called "the man," "the man" being the sort of figurative characterization of the music industry; it wasn't a person as such, but it was the record company executive, the one that said this would or wouldn't fly or we will or won't sign this band. There is still that hierarchy there; that hierarchy is very, very powerful.
And even if bands get signed—I think you mentioned this earlier—it's also whether the record company decides to put the resources into promoting the band: How much do they promote their album? Back in the day you'd have things called radio pluggers, people who would go around to try to convince a radio station to get a certain single on the playlist. You know, there were people like John Peel and David "Kid" Jensen and Janice Long, but they were like night-time, late-time music; you wanted to get on the daytime stuff, you know, the sort of Simon Bates or goodness what else on Radio 1. So if record companies are not going to put the resources into getting their artists onto the major airwaves—whatever those airwaves now are—then the bands just won't get a hearing in the way that they need to. And it's almost like a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy: if they don't get that promotion, they'll then get dropped from their record contract because their second album won't sell as well as the first album, and that's not necessarily because that second album is worse than the first album; it's because it didn't get the promotion. And then, as I say, they get dropped. That kind of thing happens, so it's just very difficult.
And then the other side of it is that bands, particularly the kind of lower-level bands, they need to go out and tour much more in order to earn a living; they need to sell more merchandise at the gigs. The kind of issue of surviving as a band when you decide to jack in your job—you've been working in Caffe Nero for five years and you're now going to become a full-time musician—that really puts the pressure on your finances. And again, that's not a great situation to be in in terms of trying to think about wider issues. So it is a very hard situation.
Plus the other thing that the Redskins certainly benefited from was that before this all changed in the late 80s, early 90s, you could go on the dole. You'd basically tell a couple of white lies: you'd say, "I have been looking for work," but you obviously hadn't because you're rehearsing and demoing and all that. You would get unemployment benefits, you would also get housing benefits, so you could get the rent for your flat or whatever. You could actually survive on that money, get your band together to a point where we actually really played well live, you might get to do your first record, your first single, that kind of thing. All that's been taken away.
And there's almost like—I used this phrase before, it sounds a bit unwieldy—there's been a middle-classization of a lot of art and culture, because it's only really the bank of mum and dad of certain people who can afford to support their sons and daughters in this time, because things like unemployment benefit and housing benefit have been taken away. So this again isn't the natural territory for rebels; your mum and dad, no matter how much they love you, are hopefully going to get some kind of return on all the money they've given you—I don't necessarily mean that you pay it back, but you use it wisely, you become successful. How do you become successful? You fit in with the existing status quo.
James Kennedy: Very good point. And when you mentioned the dole, I almost had like a positive flashback. It was like, "God, remember those days? Like those days are gone." Yeah, everything you've said is definitely true. I'm in a band that tours and stuff and puts out our own music independently and stuff like that, and it's fucking hard, man, juggling real life and putting food on the table and stuff with literally no support from anybody—not from a label, because most of those have gone now—having to figure out, certainly if you want to be a politically active band, how to use the medium that is available to you, which is now online, in a way where you just don't get shadowbanned by the algorithm, which I have many times over—being shadowbanned, to be made invisible online—and finance everything. It's really difficult.
And it does kind of mean—one of the things I wanted to ask you as we sort of round up: do you feel like the conditions that will create the sort of bands like the Redskins—to bring it back to the theme of the book—do you think that those social conditions are ever likely to return again that can give us a band that does have not just a reactive song here and there, but an actual ideological message that will inspire future generations, or do you think that may have been something that was a one-off?
Gregor Gall: I don't think it's a one-off. I think there are a couple of bands—there's actually, I don't really fully understand it, but there seems to be some bands that are coming out of the Republic of Ireland, the south of Ireland, which are a bit more—so I'm not talking about Kneecap, I'm talking about bands like the Mary Wallopers. For a band to take that name, if you know or you could search out on Wiki "What's the Mary Wallopers?", for them to take that name is significant, and some of the stuff that they're talking about. So there are some—I mean, they're not revolutionary socialists by any means, but they are progressive, they are radical. So there are some of them.
And then it's maybe down to: do they get lucky? Do they get to play Glastonbury next year or whatever? I don't know, that sort of thing. So I wouldn't entirely dismiss the possibilities of it. But those bands, if they do get those breaks, are still going to have to really struggle hard to support themselves. Because I think it's pretty silly and naive just to criticize artists for wanting to make money; everybody has the right to have, or should have the right to have, a decent standard of living from whatever kind of endeavor they choose to engage in. So let's not be crass about this: they should have the ability to earn a decent living. That doesn't mean they fly around the world in private jets—I'm not talking about that kind of thing—but if they've got families and they want to have their own house or whatever, that kind of thing.
So there are some around there. There's a band from Huddersfield called the Hurriers; they are a socialist band in terms of their lyrics and so on. But again, going back to the point that you've made several times, they're not really breaking through. I mean, the bands that are maybe breaking through a bit more is like Fontaines D.C., who are progressive, or Dropkick Murphys—sorry, this is just thinking about kind of Irish bands or Irish-related bands—but they're not the kind of bands that you've asked me in my question about; they are not—they don't have an overall worldview, and they are not saying, "We're not just against what's happening in Gaza or the West Bank, we're also talking about what's happening in America, what may happen in Brazil, how the Chinese state is basically buying up influence in Africa through trying to get hold of rare minerals and things like that." They don't have this bigger world picture, which is really lacking.
And I think that that means that no matter how good these bands—the kind of bands we're talking about—are, you will never get this full picture, and that means that you get little insights into how evil and nefarious capitalism is, but capitalism is kind of getting off the hook because you're not seeing the full picture. Going back to the point that we talked about earlier: if music, as I think it is, is a good way of introducing people to radical ideas, you need to have those radical ideas out there most explicitly, not just a little tiny bit of something. Saying that you are anti what's happening to the Palestinians is good, but it's not enough; there are so many more issues. How do you explain that Israel has been like the police watchman for American interests in the Middle East for decades and decades? You can only start to explain that if you've got a wider understanding of how capitalism works and whose interests it serves, and, conversely, whose interests it doesn't serve.
So that's to me what's lacking. But we almost must live in hope, otherwise we'll go and slash our wrists, kind of thing; we'll commit suicide. We have to live in hope. I mean, things are not great at the moment, but they're not as bad as they could be, they're not as bad as they have been. And if you think about times when they have been really absolutely awful—let's go back to the Second World War: yes, there was a conventional war fought, in many ways Britain and America and particularly defeating the Nazis, but there was the French resistance, there was the resistance in Greece and Yugoslavia and Italy. I mean Mussolini, the fascist dictator, was hanged by the Italian resistance. So even in the darkest days, there is the possibility of resistance; we need to support that resistance through whatever measures we can.
So I think, as I say, we have to live in hope, otherwise we're all fucked. And of course that is in some ways going against what I've just said, because the issue of the environment and climate wasn't what it was 50-odd years ago; we also now face an existential threat to the future of humanity. Elon Musk may well be able to fly to mars or the moon and live there as the world goes on fire, but for 99.9% of the population, we're stuck here. So we really do have to stop the earth being destroyed by capitalism.
James Kennedy: Psychopathic billionaires. Well, "I think we have to live in hope or we're all fucked" is a great sentiment to end the conversation on. Gregor, thanks so much for being here.
Key Points:
Guest Gregor Gall, a professor of industrial relations, discusses his new book "Marxism in Music: Creating a Communist Contraculture, The Redskins, Rock and Roll and Revolution."
Gall explains that his book examines how The Redskins conveyed explicit revolutionary socialist politics through their music, contrasting with The Clash's more ambiguous left-wing stance.
Both speakers agree that songs like The Clash's "Spanish Bombs" and The Redskins' "It Can Be Done" served as educational entry points that inspired listeners to research history and politics.
Gall argues that art either reinforces the status quo or challenges it, and that apolitical pop music implicitly supports the neoliberal order.
The conversation critiques Ed Sheeran for not using his platform to speak out, while praising artists like Roger Waters and Sinéad O'Connor for taking principled stands despite backlash.
Gall contends that neoliberalism, entrenched since Thatcher and Reagan, has made revolutionary left-wing politics far harder to express in music today.
The episode closes with Gall noting that economic precarity, loss of welfare support, and industry control make it difficult for radical bands to emerge, though he insists on living in hope.
Summary:
In this episode of the James Kennedy Podcast, host James Kennedy speaks with Gregor Gall, professor of industrial relations and author of "Marxism in Music: Creating a Communist Contraculture, The Redskins, Rock and Roll and Revolution." Kennedy begins with a brief plug for his band's forthcoming album "Rebel," due November 30th, before introducing the episode's central theme: the intersection of punk rock, politics, and revolution.
Gall explains that his book grew from his lifelong fandom of The Clash and a prior book on Joe Strummer's politics. He was drawn to The Redskins because, unlike Strummer's more ambiguous leftism, the band explicitly promoted revolutionary socialism, with key members belonging to the Socialist Workers Party. Gall's research found that the band's music genuinely influenced fans, prompting some to join political parties or sustain their left-wing convictions.
The discussion explores how songs such as The Clash's "Spanish Bombs" and The Redskins' "It Can Be Done" acted as accessible history lessons that spurred listeners to educate themselves. Both men share personal examples of bands leading them to political literature. Gall argues that art either upholds the status quo or challenges it, and that ostensibly apolitical music still serves capitalism implicitly.
The conversation turns critical of Ed Sheeran for failing to use his platform, contrasting him with Roger Waters and Sinéad O'Connor. Gall contends that neoliberalism has dominated since Thatcher and Reagan, making revolutionary politics much harder to express, and that economic precarity and industry structures now prevent most radical bands from being heard. He nonetheless identifies hopeful examples and closes by insisting on the necessity of hope and resistance.
The James Kennedy Podcast is a Society and Culture podcast hosted by musician and author, James Kennedy. Exploring the big questions around health, social issues, the arts, politics, mental health, the human condition and how to navigate this thing called life through casual conversations with scientists, activists, rock stars, philosophers and academics. Please subscribe, leave a rating and support the show.
