WE ARE THE RESISTANCE.
KULA SHAKER CHARGE BACK INTO THE LIGHT.
PART 2 - “WE WERE RIGHT ALL ALONG”.
By David J Ham
“So when you put your article out, you write your words, you should think of yourself literally as the revolutionary resistance, the fucking Jedi. Think of yourself as a weapon”
Hopefully you read and enjoyed Part 1 of this double header. If you did, then you will be all over Part 2 like Corbyn’s blazer. Crispian, well, you might say in this part he tells it as it is, like the true unvanquishables, takes society to task - and me for that matter, I’m a weapon (in a good way) - equates an Enya album to Sgt. Pepper, tells us about Rick Rubin’s giant stuffed bear and dungeon, plus a few fan questions, some quickfires thrown in and some amazing competition details. Loaded!
First stop on the magic bus, we went back in time to the ‘90s because I was keen to know how Crispian saw it all now that he’s older and wiser.
“Well when I think of the 90s - and I'm asked to define it a lot actually - I think that the narrative that's been written is that it was a time of hedonism and that it all kind of screeched to a halt. Not because Robbie Williams wrote ‘Angels’ and it all became, you know, sort of poppy. It screeched to a halt because of 9/11 and because of what came in the wake of that, but I think that, you know, Kula Shaker were also…they fit right in, because hedonism is a spiritual impulse. The soul is searching for this original connection. Once you understand you're this body, and this is it, in which case you're a nihilist, because you just think that everything is pointless, and you're just a lump of flesh, and if you really dig into that way of looking at life, it's completely measurable. But if you understand that life has a separate existence outside of the body, there’s a perfectly good reason for hedonism, because everybody's trying to be happy. Everybody's looking for their natural dose of bliss and pleasure. Obviously we have a connection, a deeper connection, to our existence that we've lost. So you going out and getting on the lash, you're in the class of ‘90s hedonism. You're trying to find that pleasure. You're trying to find that happiness. It makes total sense. And we're all looking for something, exactly that, and we should be getting loaded, and we should be getting high, and we should stay high forever. And that's the reason we're all suffering while we're all in anxiety because we haven't made that deeper connection, and I think we look at that ‘90s thing as being just a mess. I think it just makes perfect sense when you understand what people are and what they're all looking for, you know, you get to a certain age and you think, ‘have I given up on that dream of being happy?’ Or am I ready to believe in it again? Am I ready to give myself a second chance?”.
By this point I’m starting to feel like maybe, no make that definitely, maybe we need more Crispian Mills and Kula Shaker in the universe. Pulsating positive messages out into the ecosystem from a giant K (with a triumphantly transcendent bearded goat perched on it) in the middle of Stone Henge. If Crispian started a cult tomorrow I’d definitely pop along on day one for the Crispian own brand crisps. The Golden Wonder of it all! He wasn’t finished there…
“I look at Gen Y…Gen X, you know, had some attitude. Gen X had an independent spirit. Gen X did not trust the man. Gen X liked a big chorus. Gen X liked to party. Gen X wasn't afraid of speaking out. Gen Y had a real fucking number done on them, and it's tragic, actually. And the problem with Gen X is that they all just shut up and did what they were told after the shock of 9/11 and it was all, you know, ‘it’s just war’. We've had decades of war and bullshit, and they've basically trashed the world. The world is completely broken to bits. Everyone is broken. And you know, what can you do but just laugh and go ‘we all got taken for a ride’. Our whole generation got completely f*cked and became totally obedient and conformist and terrified of speaking out, terrified of saying anything. And now I think Gen Z is going to kick back against that. I mean, the problem with the world is - it's the problem with people in general - that there's so much vanity, that's where all of our problems are, where we all like to think that we're something more than we are. And on vanity, I think that cancel culture and woke culture, well so much of it’s built on vanity and virtue signalling and hypocrisy and Gen Z are definitely kicking back and I’m seeing a lot just don’t give a fuck. And then it's like, wow, this is… back! This is now the generation that reacted against, you know, the old guard, with punk and / or rock and roll. It's happening. It is happening again. I think maybe a good handful of Gen Xers are going to come to their senses and just say, ‘yeah, I need to snap out of this like I was doing really well. What happened to me?’. So, go and sit with some ritual group of monks in a monastery on an island in the far reaches of Scotland, or go and make love to your wife in a blue bell field, or just do ANYTHING to break yourself out of the fucking lousy reality that they've boxed you into. Anything, whatever it takes just to snap out of it, because the reality that we're living in now; it sucks. It sucks for everybody. And it's not a generational thing. This is not like John Lydon saying ‘bands these days they're all crap’. It's not about the bands. It's about the reality that we are supposed to accept. IT’S A FICTION. It's not real and it's being dreamed up by marketing people and accountants and people who sell bonds and drugs and these people are like, they're just the worst possible people. They should not be telling you what your reality is. So I hope there's going to be a kickback, and like I said, Kula Shaker were right all along! and maybe it’ll bring through a braver tranche of young people who are enlightened. You can see it, but it's really good for music, it's really good for art, and it's really good for creativity in general, because people start valuing their own life, start valuing the potential for experiences and every aspect of your life. But it's kind of like; you do need to step outside of this, this box that everybody's been pushed into, and say, ‘I'm just not going to play along’”.
YES BROTHER! SHOW ME THE DOTTED LINE! That was the most transcendent tangent ride I’ve ever taken.
Bringing it back to this dimension briefly…whilst we’re on the subject of experiences; it seemed an apt moment to ask Crispian his memories - if any - of the infamous Knebworth gig, supporting Oasis there in 1996. How must that feel? Because I was there and it feels to me like the last great moment of pre-digital enslavement.
“Um, yeah, there was the music part, and then there was the event perception. And the musical perception was, well, how does Oasis stand up to a gig of this size? Musically. You know, like when they started playing their music, it did seem like they weren't ready. They'd gone from playing the Lomax in Liverpool to Knebworth in two years! But in terms of the experience - and I understood that that is what people want - music is about a deeper connection. So when everybody comes together, that's really what it's about. It's like, I am part of something. I'm not on my own anymore and the same with the bands, the bands are not just playing in my fucking living room to my mates, however many, 125,000 people were in that room at the time. It was a big deal. The shock when we arrived, when we walked on that stage, was that the guest enclosure was the size of an arena and that the punters didn't start for 100 metres. That was the shock. But it was a fantastic thing”.
But how does it feel? How does it actually FEEL? To experience playing to that many people?
“I used to swim in the school team when I was a kid, and getting the nerves before a race and that feeling of jumping into that cold water, that's how it feels with a really big stage. It takes a while for the sound to settle down. So you're playing blind for a little bit, and you're playing blind in front of a LOT of people, and you have to not panic”.
Is it a spiritual thing? Or is it purely an exercise in what you have to do?
“You have to have both. I mean, you have to lose yourself in your music. And that's what people want to see, that's what people in the audience want to do, and they can't do it if you're not doing it. But like I said to you earlier, you've got to reconcile the opposites. On the one hand, you've got to be really conscious and careful with what you're doing, and on the other hand, you just got to go fucking nuts. You've got to get into your ecstatic trance”.
Never heard it explained any better than that.
We got to some fan questions, starting with my own and then some quickfire questions to wrap it all up:
Would the comeback have been affected if you'd have gone bald?
“Yes, a wig. There’s always wigs”.
Next question, Steve Johnson has asked - “Can Crispian remember meeting Eamon Andrews when it was his grandfather's episode of This is Your Life?”
“It wasn't Andrews. Michael Aspel, oh, he's right! No, no, no, he's absolutely right. Eamon Andrews did do my Grandfather's and then Michael Aspel did it for my Auntie. Absolutely right. Very good. I do remember Eamon Andrews and I was kind of a bit overwhelmed. The first time I was really starstruck by my Mum's work friends was when Ian Ogilvy, who at that time was The Saint (and I used to really enjoy The Saint), when I met him, I, you know, my eyes welled up and I just stared at the floor”.
Echoes of my meeting with Clinton Baptiste. I pressed Crispian further on meeting heroes:
“Well, I never met George Harrison, but there were a couple of times where we almost met, and he wrote to me once and sent me a record. I was really touched by that, because he's just a scouser who had a remarkable life. What he did with his fame and what he did with his music was inspiring to me. I kind of got the best of both. I got to meet him without ever having to kind of lose that, right? The mythical version was okay”.
Andrew Wragg asks “what was ‘Tatva’ about?”
“‘Tatva’ is about Andrew. Andrew Wragg, Tatva is about YOU”.
Raul Flower Miranda. What a name, Raul Flower Miranda. It's lovely, Portuguese I suppose. Anyway he asks: “Do you have a favourite Indian restaurant?”
“There's an amazing one, quite healthy, and it's called Saravana and there are restaurants of theirs all over the world, and it's kind of like a chain. It has plastic dining seats and they serve you quickly. It’s everything you can imagine and they cater to Hindus and Jains and people with strange diets. It's really tasty, it's really quick, it's really cheap, and it's always full.”
So some random questions to draw things to a close:
If you're on your deathbed, what's the last track you would play to go out to?
Something very odd happened at this point, as Crispian peered into my eyes, read my mind and said “I was going to say the Beatles because you just read my mind”. Which was really trippy as I was genuinely thinking ‘he’s going to say a Beatles track’.
“I think the Beatles song I would go out to would probably be, ‘I'm Only Sleeping’. You know, there's a really beautiful recording of ‘Govinda’, not ‘Govinda’ (Jaya Jaya,) but a song called ‘Govinda’, sung by the London Radha-Krishna Temple. A beautiful recording produced by George that's really trippy and beautiful”.
Did you have any weird celebrity experiences back in the day?
“We kind of had a force field around us. We still do. A pretty powerful force field. There is a lot of weird, dark shit out there, and I kind of bumped into it in Hollywood, but luckily I was invited to - but didn't attend - one really weird event that went down. Some of those stories about Hollywood Babylon and everything are based on reality. Rick Rubin had a giant white polar bear in his living room - which is kind of the oddest thing I've ever seen in my life - this was incredibly impressive, but you might as well of had a giant stuffed person, this guy’s 10 feet tall, and he’s been stuffed, well it’s just awful”.
That's extremely unsettling.
“Yeah, yeah and I think he had a torture dungeon as well. But I didn’t visit that”
Thankfully, or you might not be here now.
Guilty secret album?
“Enya. I like to think Enya ‘The Watermark’ is the Sgt. Pepper of the new age group”.
Someone once said, no one will ever remember you, but they’ll remember ‘Sail Away’ by Enya.
“I’ll sail away with Enya any day”.
How would today’s Crispian view ‘90s Crispian if you met?
“I say to my generation ‘snap out of it. Get back in there and back on the horse’”.
As the winds of Oasis mania inevitably blow across the valleys once more, do you have a favourite Oasis or Liam story that you would like to share?
“I met Liam, we kind of crossed paths but we never actually kind of like hung out until after I went to a warm up show, the Who at Shepherds Bush, which was one of the greatest gigs I've ever seen in my Life. December 1999. We were having a chat, Liam and I, and he obviously had a very big heart. He's a good guy. He invited me into the box with his bodyguard and I said ‘what’s going on in here?’ to which he says, ‘what the fuck does it look like we're doing? smoking incense?’”.
Finally some one word instant response questions:
Prince?
“Revolutionary”
Animals?
“Spirit souls”
Royal Family?
“Past their sell by date”
Britain's Got Talent?
“Or has it?”
Trump or Nixon?
“Your wall”
So finally, what's coming up, and what are you excited about?
“I don't know. Just think of what you do when you write your work, when you send your work out into the universe, you should think of yourself as, you know, a ray of light. Think of yourself as a weapon, literally a ray of light into the darkness. Know the timing, and look for the best moment to strike because you are the resistance. The sad truth is, they're gearing up for a big fucking war, all kinds of other shit. I mean, what's coming is, just no freedom, no freedom at all. That's what's coming. And the end of any kind of wiggle room, you are just gonna have to fit into a sheet, on top of that there is going to be a big fucking war. This is coming really, really soon. So when you put your article out, you write your words, you think of yourself literally as the revolutionary resistance, the fucking Jedi, to get you in the mood. Because, you know, that's what we're dealing with here. So, yeah, I'd say, choose your moment, a good time to strike”.
I stand and applaud! Love it! Churchillian! As for the ensuing music…
“Okay, yeah, we've released a single - ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ - and another - ‘Good Money’ - and then another one planned for September, and then the album will drop”.
Before you know it we’re back fighting the power again, I could do this all day!
“It's also all about groups, splitting people up, getting them all bickering and fighting amongst us, meaning the evil, the pure evil that's going on out there is like, this is not being paid attention to. ‘You're a man’. ‘No you’re not’. Whatever it is we’re supposed to be fighting about. It's a distraction, because the real enemy is somewhere else”.
Is that what ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ is about?
“Yes, it was more about the workers of light uniting. You know, whether it's a large, desperate battle, it doesn't matter if you're charging into the enemy guns because you're eternal”.
What a great place to leave things. We’re all eternal, as I am eternally grateful to having had the chance to speak with someone as illuminating as Crispian. Shining light beams around in his wake like a Far Eastern superhero who conceived Green Lantern’s much cooler Great Grandad.
“Rise like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you,
Ye are many - they are few”
The Masque of Anarchy.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Follow @kulashakerofficial for their album tour dates and I implore you to see them live, download the singles and the album and FIGHT THE POWER.