Crass Interview with Vice Magazine

Vice Magazine recently interviewed Penny Rimbaud and Steve Ignorant of legendary anarcho-punk band Crass. The band’s history, beliefs, the band’s demise, and legal issues concerning remastered CDs of theirs are all covered in the interview.

When he [John Loder] died, Southern had a lot of trouble coping with it all and during that time I spent a lot of time worrying about what the fuck was going to happen to our material because with John there’d never been any formalities, nothing had ever been signed, who owned what, what owned who. There was nothing to go by. What I was really worried about was the receivers being called in. I thought, “Well, if Southern goes down, they’re going to go in and all the fucking stuff’s going to get nicked. I want to know what’s ours so we can have it.” I sort of made halfhearted attempts, but really the place was such a fucking mess that I thought, “OK, I’ll back off and let them sort whatever they need to sort out, and then we’ll go from there.” That coincided with trying to stop the house being taken over by a lot of property investors, so I got very embroiled in a big legal battle.

Other members of Crass declined to be interviewed.

Southern Records will be reissuing Crass’ The Feeding of the Five Thousand, Stations of the Crass, and Penis Envy. The releases will be restored, repackaged, include unreleased tracks, and artwork by Gee Vaucher. Southern Records will also be publishing Steve Ignorant’s autobiography The Rest is Propaganda.

You can read the interview in it’s entirety here.