A throwaway comment by 2017’s go-to bell end neo nazi Richard Spencer that Depeche Mode are the “official band of the alt-right”, has caused a wee bit of a stir.
People are asking how in the name of Arse did a white supremacist ever get the notion that Depeche Mode were in any way sympathetic to his cause? It’d be like Kate Hopkins following Billy Bragg on tour. However, I think I might know. He says that Music for the Masses is their best album. On that album is a track that is largely instrumental track called PIMPF. It starts with a simple piano melody that is repeated, a head of steam gathers as more instrumentation comes in – yes, just like the Intro and the Outro by the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. Apparently PIMPF was a sort of slang word for the younger boys in the Hitler Youth. Look at this cover of one of the magazines from the time.
So, yes, I can imagine a politically charged young boy getting attached to this album and applying any meaning he likes to it. Who among us didn’t think *we* were the Chosen Few when cutting a rug to The Dooleys? I know I did.
So, back to the bell end, This is just my theory – but it goes to show that if you like a band enough, you will convince yourself of anything.
Charlie Manson & The White Album.
Talk about the wrong end of a stick that only existed in his warped imagination…
It’s a little-known fact that Martin Gore is mixed-race, so it’s unlikely he’d be a Nazi, to say the least.
Yeah…and Amazingly, Dave Gahan, who is not mixed-race, isn’t a Nazi either.
An obvious example….
Somewhat off topic, but over the hols I watched the Ride Along movies which star Ice “F*ck Tha Police” Cube as a hero cop. Okay, I’m on board with that, it’s dressing up – but the outro song is KRS One’s Sound Of Da Police. I found myself wondering who suggested it and whether they or those sat at the table at the time knew what the song was about…
A while back some cops here got their knuckles rapped (ho ho) for blasting Sound of da Police from their car on Chelmsford High Street late at night.
Crims should have counteracted with “Bo!Bo!Bo!” off the third BDP album. (Not YTing it because it isn’t very good)
People can be so touchy when it comes to how the boys in blue present themselves in public:
http://io9.gizmodo.com/kentucky-police-remove-punisher-logo-from-cop-cars-afte-1792720736
Gretchen Peters was dismayed back in 2008 when Sarah Palin adopted the chorus of her song Independence Day (at least in the version sung by Martina McBride).
It’s a song about domestic violence.
She took the royalties that accrued from Palin’s usage and donated them to pro-choice organisations. I’m not sure if she sent Palin a thank you note.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dVx6_nDeas
You are on to something here, Black. All too often a creative artist suddenly finds themselves lumbered with fans who believe that their art embodies some beliefs that they have.
The Nazis adored Wagner. David Cameron liked The Smiths. The lefties of the 60s loved Dylan and got rather upset when he wanted to do something other than write protest songs.
Bob wanted to go to Nashville and sing love songs and do duets with Johnny Cash. His followers saw this kind of thing as a betrayal.
Sham69 and, to a lesser degree, Madness, being tarred as the band of the NF and BM followers in the late 70’s and early 80’s.
Jimmy Pursey used to get VERY upset
See also Joy Division and New Order. By the time I was old enough to be listening (mid 80s) the unfortunate connotations of their naive choice of band names had long since been rubbished and faded away and it always struck me as utterly bizarre that anyone could listen to Atmosphere, Love Will Tear us Apart, Bizarre Love Triangle etc and suspect some right wing political agenda – but older mates of mine will testify that gigs by them and lots of other post-punk bands in the late 70s/very early 80s were plagued by Sieg-heiling fuckwits and it could all get very nasty indeed.
Fascinating, Dr V. Mercifully those sort of fans a re a thing of the past for New Order. Must have been something to do with the zeitgeist.
I wonder if there has ever been a band who have gone so far as a name change and a reboot to rid themselves of fans who loved them for the wrong reason.
(Slightly off topic now. I once went to a Desmond Dekker gig here in Stockholm. When we arrived we saw that roughly half the audience were Jamaicans, the other half were Swedish skinheads . Uh oh, trouble ahead, I thought.
Not at all. The Israelites Hitmaker came on stage, charmed the pants off the whole audience and a good time was had by all. No nastiness whatsoever.)
Skinheads started as lovers of Jamaican music and somehow over time came to be associated with the right wing Oi bands after punk (although, around the same time, there were plenty of skins at Two Tone gigs). The Yorkshire band Redskins reclaimed the skinhead for soul and the left, but nowadays the skinhead image probably puts you in mind of east European racists. Complicated.
In terms of distancing oneself from the Nazis, John Squire’s original cover design for the One Love single was junked when it was pointed out that it looked like a load of swastikas – the final cover was a torn up version of the original.
(Arriving at a field of swastikas “by accident” might seem a bit unlikely but, as I’ve pointed out before, several of the posters’ computer-generated icons on here are “a bit swastiky”).
You reap as you sow. I think they got a thrill out of the Nazi imagery. After all, they did it twice! I’m prepared to put it down to bring a bit thick.
I think Ian Curtis had a grim fascination with it all, and they definitely flirted with the imagery early on (check out the original sleeve for the first JD single, looks like it could be something by Skrewdriver) but I think they were surprised that people assumed that meant they were Nazi sympathisers.
Renaming the band New Order was just them being a bit thick as you rightly say. Apparently it was a toss up between that and calling themselves The Witch Doctors of Zimbabwe (I kid you not)
I think it was also the dim punk thing of sporting swastikas to upset people. Steve Morris does have his military vehicle thing too. I wonder how many uniforms he has for special occasions.
Siouxsie certainly sported a swastika many times. The weirdest one I saw was Crackerjack’s Peter Glaze dressed as a punk for one of Crackerjack’s closing numbers where they reprised a pop song of the day. There he is – fully swastika’d up for laughs barely 30 years after VE Day.
Joy Division and New Order really din’t help their case with the choice of names.
Add to that the picture of a Hitler Youth drummer on the cover of An Ideal For Living EP, and Bernard’s cry of ““Have you all forgotten Rudolph Hess?” at the start of the track ‘At A Later Date’ on the Live At The Electric Circus LP
But!. Somehow they see something of themselves in there. So who is it incumbent upon to enlighten them? It’s a hard task ahead for the Human Race.
I am not sure they are nazis, I mean probably not, but if they have tied their mast to the socialist cause like Billy Bragg I must have missed that.
Just Can’t Get Enough could be a plinky plonky plea to return to more authoritarian times? New Life a thinly disguised 2 chord hymn to totalitarianism?
The new song calls for a revolution because we’ve been pissed on for too long. Their words, not mine. So, yes, they have got a bit agitated recently they’ve always had a political element to their binky bonk rhythms.
Sort of off-topic, but seeing the video for PIMPF took me right back to Almeria, spaghetti western territory of southern spain, where it was filmed. I was doing a piece for a mag about Anton Corbin, who made it, and the band, and I was stood just off camera when they were doing the ‘chorus’ chant sections. I remember when Fletch hit his head against the museum. Thing is, I don’t recall seeing the completed clip, and it was 30 years ago. Blimey.
Straight To Hell had been filmed there a few months before.
Crikey. That’s a helluva thing to reveal, given that surely only about 20 people at the most must have been on that set? Are you in a position to reveal what it is they are saying in the chorus? “I’ve always heard it as ‘Oh Dear!’ “
On a similar theme…the infamous Bowie Nazi Salute. Anyone who has seen the filmed footage will know once and for all that it wasn’t anything of the sort – it was a very brief wave (and a very fey one, to boot) which was snapped on camera at one particular instant and then used in some quarters as a metaphorical stick to beat him for decades. He was always very honest and open in his repeated mea culpas regarding his dubious behaviour and statements during that period, but significantly was adamant in denying the ‘salute’.
Speaking of Richard Spencer, here’s my favourite response to the whole Depeche Mode thing. Yes, it’s him being punched in time to Just Can’t Get Enough.
I should probably caveat this with something about violence not being the answer, holding ourselves to a higher standard, etc etc, but sod it. If you can’t punch people who actually Sieg Heil the news of Trump’s election, who can you punch?
And it made me giggle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNXkQGPAM48