Questions about the Band
Half the bands on TV now seem to have met at stage school. How did Chumbawamba come together?
This question begs a sarcastic answer which you can guess for yourself. In reality we met in pubs and at gigs, looking at each other across rooms, being introduced by friends and wondering whether we had anything in common. Harry wrote us a letter saying he wanted to visit our house. Alice confronted me at art school with cocky put-you-downs. Dunst I met after answering an advertisement in a record shop. Lou was crying in the carpark at the punk club. Jude walked into the practice room with bleached hair and we thought, "That'll do! " Danbert, he was wearing a home-made straitjacket. We all have different answers to this. Stage school was never involved, obviously, since we were all what those schools would call talentless.
How come you don't play benefit gigs anymore?
Strictly speaking that's not true - but yes, in general we rarely play benefit shows now. It's just economics, basically. For us to travel somewhere and play a show (and without the band getting paid) still costs a fair bit of money (we pay accordion player, booking agent, van hire and sound engineer, and someone has to pay for the PA, the hall and advertising). At the moment we make £100 a show each and play about sixty to seventy shows a year. Which doesn't add up to a full-time job. So we pragmatically (and selfishly) decided to avoid playing shows where we make next to nothing. I don't want to go back to working in a shop to subsidise Chumbawamba! In the past we've obviously been spoilt by selling lots of records, whereas right now the shows are what we do for a living. We do still play lots of shows and events which are linked to and part of political ideas and groups - and of course we do occasionally pop up for bugger-all on the back of an open-topped wagon at some demonstration or other...
I have been wondering about this for a while now, on the inside of my copy of "Uneasy Listening" right behind the cd is a picture of one of you Chumbas (Lou I think) with her arm around one of the Spice Girls. What's the story behind this picture?
Lou decided a long time ago to collect enough me-and-my-celebrity-pals photos to make a calendar. Since she didn't have much respect for most of the featured artists and didn't care what they thought (with the exception of Kirsty McColl) it was easy for Lou to approach celebrities, grin shyly and ask politely for a picture. Only Lou Reed refused to oblige - he was a spoilt brat who wouldn't play his spot at a festival because it had started to rain. Last Xmas she gave us all a celebrity calendar as a spoof Christmas card. My mum didn't recognise anybody but Lou, not even Dolly Parton and Tom Jones.
Where did you get the name Chumbawamba? Secondly the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, where did they come from? How did they get involved? Where are they now?
Chumbawamba doesn't mean anything. At the time we formed (early 80's) there was a rush of bands with obvious names. It was the time of 'peace punk' and you couldn't get across a youth club dance floor without bumping into a Disorder, a Subhumans, a Decadent Youth or an Anthrax t shirt. We liked the sound of Chumbawamba because it wasn't nailing ourselves down. Thatcher On Acid were a good band but it's lucky for them that Thatcher stayed in power for 11 years. If her influence had only lasted 18 months Thatcher On Acid's sell by date would have come and gone a lot sooner. We wanted a name which wouldn't date. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence were a troupe of male gay nuns who used to come to gigs and join us on stage. I think the original Sisters were from San Francisco but the order spread throughout the world, and they used to be a regular feature on demos and at Gay Pride. During the demos against Clause 28 the Sisters were a very visible presence and an antidote to the "I don't mind gays as look as its not obvious" bigotry. Our friend Deek had been a nun for years, he used to drag the Sisters along to gigs and suggest haphazard dance routines. Him and Mothersuxcox (Simon) joined us on the Anarchy tour in 1994. Simon died from Aids in 1998 and though we're still in touch with the odd nun they're not out and about as much as they used to be. Because the Sisters is an idea rather than a lifelong religion, the faces under the habits change.
What are your attitudes to drugs?
Have you ever seen the picture of Robert Mitchum just after the Judge had given him a prison sentence for smoking dope? His face has an absolute classic sneer of disdain which says he doesn't give a fuck for the court or America's drug laws. Time has vindicated Mitchum and proved that he, rather than the judge, was the sensible one. Which drugs are in or out of favour is more about historical and contemporary morality than anything else. Cocaine used to be legal; respectable ladies used to take it for depression. Alcohol went through a period of prohibition but is now socially acceptable, so what i am trying to say is that you can't base your attitude to drugs on what is or isn't legal. The numbers of alcohol and tobacco related deaths prove that. Most of us grew up at a time when drugs were easy to get hold of and in a climate where the tabloids said that one sniff or one pill were a downward spiral to drug-underworld-hell. Well, we sniffed and took the pills and we didn't descend into hades, most people don't. There isn't enough real information available for people to make proper informed decisions about drugs. There is a big difference between smack and ecstasy and I personally have never tried smack because I think it is too dangerous and too addictive to be used as a recreational drug. Unfortunately there's a tabloid mentality which treats all drugs as equally evil, which just leads to people not believing any of the scare tactics, in itself dangerous because some drugs are highly addictive.If you take things like ketamin on a regular basis you are going to end up either dead or very short of brain cells.