(((O))) : Echoes of the Past Interview: Jeremy Cunningham from The Levellers

A lot of those bands got bad press at the time, partially down to the Thatcher government and the media of the time being terryfied of anthing counter-cultural, and got tarred with the brush of ‘protest music’. While there’s no doubt many of their influences were steeped in the English and Irish protest folk tradition they combined it potently with the anger and fury of punk to create bristling vignettes of normal life under a rabid Tory government hellbent on destroying the unions and the welfare state. If there was ever a time for this music, and it’s visceral rage at the political classes, to return then it is surely now.

The Levellers have just released their Greatest Hits and embark on a nationwide tour this week so when the PR asked me if I would like to interview Jeremy Cunningham, the bass player and artist who created their iconic sleeves, I jumped at the chance, despite my inner 18 year old being utterly starstruck!

(((o))): This is really weird, I have to say. I’m a long-time Levellers fan and I never thought I’d be in the position to interview one of you guys

Well, glad to oblige

(((o))): Had a good week?

Yeah, just come back from Berlin. Love Berlin,. We had a film come out called A Curious Life, that’s been doing the rounds of film festivals and so we went out there for premier of that and to play an acoustic gig kind of in support of it and yeah, it was great. Love it. It’s a great city.

(((o))): So you guys have been going a long time now. How do you feel the music industry has changed in the time that you’ve been trucking along?

Well… a lot. A lot, yeah. I mean, I suppose the main thing is music now is more democratised, because now you don’t have to be a signed band even to put a record out and to have music available to everyone. You can just load it onto the Internet, which is a good thing I think. You know, you don’t need these huge record companies, it doesn’t take massive advances. You can do your own publicity and that, to me, I think is absolutely brilliant.

At the same time, the downside of that is that there’s so much music out there now that it has become a little devalued, in that it’s not the same as when I was a kid when you used to go out and buy a record – it was almost like, you know, a religious experience – having to go to the shop and go and get this record, this physical thing and sit down with it and read through the lyrics and everything and maybe buy it in a shop where people were laughing at you because they didn’t like the record that you bought. I dunno, it’s a different world, you know, but at the same time I’ve got to say that you’ve got to go with it. We roll with it and it is what it is.

(((o))): Do you think it’s made some things easier for you and some things harder?

I think for us it’s mostly made things easier in that we we’ve always been on independent record labels, so we were never really into the big record company thing and, for us, the more control we have over a record the better it is for us – the more true it is for us to get it out from band to audience and with today’s technology the easier it is to keep in touch with your audience. So there’s all that. The downside of it is you just don’t have very big 12 inch sleeves. As the artist in the band, the artwork is important and you just don’t have those big 12″ THINGS, which are so great to look at and hold!

Having said that, we do release vinyl. We do make a point of releasing all of our stuff on vinyl still for our own label but it’s small fry.

(((o))): You guys always got lumped in with the sort of “protest music” umbrella, really. One thing when I was sat here formulating questions on Sunday, I was going to ask you what you thought about the current crop of singers who get tarred with that brush like Frank Turner and then on Monday you released a video of Frank singing “Julie” – that’s kind of answered that question to a certain degree but do you think there seems to be have been kind of a protest revival, if it ever really went away – do you think that’s something to do with the present political situation?

I think probably. I think always if there’s a “protest” thing it’s always got to be protesting against something so I think today’s climate could be an ideal breeding ground for protest music. I know Frank Turner pretty well and he doesn’t actually see himself as a protest singer.

(((o))): No, I don’t think many of them do – people like Chris TT, Grace Petrie, they’re all part of that kind of scene but like you guys whether they are really protesting or just observing and highlighting is debatable?

I think yeah, we’re definitely an observational band – we’ve always considered ourselves to be outsiders, you know. We were always outsiders, that wasn’t decided by us, we were born that way and at school we were always the freaks, you know? So when we ended up in the music business it came as no surprise that we weren’t welcomed into it. So we were always gonna be on the outside looking at things and giving opinions and we’d be the first people to say that our opinions aren’t always right but at least we’re fucking saying something!

(((o))): As a band that’s been at that coalface for 25-odd years, do you ever find it depressing that we’re still talking about the same sort of issues?

Yeah. [laughs] Yeah. In a word. I did an interview a couple of hours ago and the guy was saying, you know, “I was listening to Levelling the Land the other day and the song ‘Another Man’s Cause’ has as much relevance today as it did then” and I said “Well, as a songwriter – although I didn’t write that one, Simon our guitarist wrote that one – that’s great for us but it’s so depressing”. It’s so depressing that that stuff is still relevant. And that we still have to play gigs for the Anti Nazi League and stuff like that, which I thought we’d never have to do – like, 25 years ago when we did our first gig for the Anti Nazi League, I never thought we’d be doing it in fucking 20 years’ time.

(((o))): It’s interesting what you mention doing that first gig; when you first started what did you think you’d be doing in 25 years’ time, if you even considered it?

No, we didn’t consider it. We were 20 years’ old. We thought we’d make the best band that we could – we didn’t even think that we would be able to even be able to make a living from it. We just thought that would be the best thing, if we could. And so two to three years after we started, where we were making enough money off of just things like student gigs and doing our own gigs – ‘cos we played a lot of the squat circuit and travellers’ gigs where we didn’t make any money at all – and so when we started to get on the university circuit and we just were scraping enough money that we could sign off the dole we did and that was still probably, out of everything, the best moment of all of our lives. Including headlining Glastonbury and doing all that shit. Signing off the dole as a musician was still the highlight of everything!

(((o))): Talking of festivals – obviously you’ve always had a reputation as a festival band, how do you see the way that the festival scene in the UK has exploded over the last five years or so? Beautiful Days [started by The Levellers 6 years or so ago]was perhaps something of a pre-cursor to that so how do you see where that fits in now?

I think it kind of fits in where it always did. It’s like an alternative, you know? I mean I know that there has been – like you say – an explosion of festivals here, like we started ours maybe a little bit before that as like an antidote to these huge festivals that we were playing at the time, the final straw being the V Festival [we were asked] where we just went “No, this is not what we want to be doing and we could do it better than this – not as big but we could do it better” and so that’s what we did and subsequently, yeah, there has been a massive explosion here and all over Europe in fact. So many huge festivals all over Europe now and for us, where ours fits in is now festivals – the big festivals – are televised and broadcast on radio and for us, when we were kids, the whole thing about going to a festival was to get away from fucking telly and fucking radio! You know what I mean?! Go and fucking do some chaotic shit. [laughs]. And so that’s where our one fits in.

(((o))): Yeah, fair enough! Just something that perhaps has been bugging me for 25 years and you may well have been asked this before, and I do apologise if not. The name: The Levellers. Did it have anything to do with New Model Army calling themselves New Model Army or is that just coincidence?

No, not really. We take both of our names from the same era of history, yeah. We take our name from the Levellers, who were part of Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army but we have no kind of affiliation to the band New Model Army. Other than they are mates of ours these days, you know. Our name was always from the Levellers of history and to make the Leveller – to me it’s to make all things equal. We really like that as well. And the fact, for me, is doing the artwork for the band – it looks cool written down!

(((o))): I was doing some research – refreshing my mind, ‘cos it’s been a long time – and it was interesting to read that the guys that hitchhiked around to see you guys were known as Happy Hitchers. I was one of those guys – I had no idea we were called that at the time so it’s interesting to hear that.

Well a lot of those guys have gone on to do different, interesting things. One of them – well a couple of those guys came to work for us as our road crew and Paul English, who was one of them, was mine and Mark’s roadie. He’s been production manager for Muse now for a few years. So he’s touring around stadiums now being a production manager, you know? It’s strange where people end up!

(((o))): I could probably bore you to death for hours with anecdotes about coming to see you…Certainly one gig that stands out was in Manchester with Chumbawamba and Credit to the Nation – don’t know if you remember? Probably about ’94?

I do, I do, I do, I do. Yeah yeah yeah of course. That was a great tour, yeah.

(((o))): Still stands out as one of the best gigs I’ve ever seen – just the most fun and enjoyable gigs?

Well that’s very kind, you know? They were great bands, those two bands – that time, as well. We were all peaking at that time. It was fucking great.

(((o))): Brilliant. Good luck with everything. Thank you so much for your time.