1977: Origins The band was based around an anarchist
commune in a 16th-century cottage,
Dial House, near
Epping, Essex, and formed when commune founder
Penny Rimbaud began jamming with
Steve Ignorant (who was staying in the house at the time). Ignorant was inspired to form a band after seeing
the Clash perform at Colston Hall in
Bristol, whilst Rimbaud, a veteran of
avant-garde performance art groups such as
EXIT and Ceres Confusion, was working on his book
Reality Asylum. They produced "So What?" and "Do They Owe Us a Living?" as a drum-and-vocal duo. They briefly called themselves Stormtrooper before choosing Crass in reference to a line in the
David Bowie song "
Ziggy Stardust" ("The kids were just crass"). Other friends and household members joined (including
Gee Vaucher, Pete Wright, N. A. Palmer and Steve Herman), and Crass played their first live gig at a squatters'
street festival in Huntley Street,
North London. They planned to play five songs, but a neighbour "pulled the plug" after three. Guitarist Steve Herman left the band soon afterward and was replaced by Phil Clancey, a.k.a. Phil Free. Joy De Vivre and Eve Libertine also joined around this time. Other early Crass performances included a four-date tour of New York City, a festival gig in
Covent Garden and regular appearances with the
U.K. Subs at
The White Lion, Putney and Action Space in central London. The latter performances were often poorly attended: "The audience consisted mostly of us when the Subs played and the Subs when we played". Crass played two gigs at the
Roxy Club in Covent Garden, London. and Rimbaud's essay for Crass's self-published magazine
International Anthem, "Crass at the Roxy". After the incident, the band took themselves more seriously, avoiding alcohol and cannabis before shows and wearing black, military-surplus-style clothing on and off the stage. They introduced their stage backdrop, a logo designed by Rimbaud's friend
Dave King. This gave the band a militaristic image, which led to accusations of fascism. Crass countered that their uniform appearance was intended to be a statement against the "
cult of personality" so that no member would be identified as the "leader". Conceived and intended as cover artwork for a self-published pamphlet version of Rimbaud's ''Christ's Reality Asylum'', the Crass logo was an amalgam of several "icons of authority" including the
Christian cross, the
swastika, the
Union Jack and a two-headed
Ouroboros (symbolising the idea that power will eventually destroy itself). Using such deliberately mixed messages was part of Crass's strategy of presenting themselves as a "barrage of contradictions", challenging audiences to (in Rimbaud's words) "make your own fucking minds up". This included using loud, aggressive music to promote a
pacifist message, a reference to their
Dadaist, performance-art backgrounds and
situationist ideas. The band eschewed elaborate
stage lighting during live sets, preferring to play under 40-watt household light bulbs; the technical difficulties of filming under such lighting conditions partly explains why there is little live footage of Crass. They pioneered
multimedia presentation, using video technology (back-projected films and
video collages by Mick Duffield and
Gee Vaucher) to enhance their performances, and also distributed leaflets and handouts explaining anarchist ideas to their audiences.
1978–1979: The Feeding of the 5000 and Crass Records Crass' first release was
The Feeding of the 5000 (an 18-track, 12"
45 rpm EP on the
Small Wonder label) in 1978. Workers at an Irish record-pressing plant refused to process it because of the offensive and
blasphemous content of the song "Asylum", and the record was released without it. In its place were two minutes of silence titled "The Sound of Free Speech". This incident prompted Crass to create their own
independent record label,
Crass Records, to retain editorial control over their material. A rerecorded, extended version of "Asylum", renamed "Reality Asylum", was released shortly afterward on Crass Records as a
7" single, and Crass were investigated by the police because of the song's lyrics. The band were interviewed at their Dial House home by
Scotland Yard's vice squad and threatened with prosecution, but the case was dropped. a band with whom they regularly appeared. This was a double album, with three sides of new material and a fourth side recorded live at the Pied Bull in
Islington. The next Crass single, 1980's "Bloody Revolutions", was a benefit release with Poison Girls that raised £20,000 to fund the
Wapping Autonomy Centre. The words were a critique (from an anarchist-pacifist perspective) of the traditional
Marxist view of
revolutionary struggle and were partly a response to violence marring a September 1979 Crass gig at
Conway Hall in London's
Red Lion Square. The show was intended as a benefit for Persons Unknown, a group of anarchists facing
conspiracy charges. During the performance,
Socialist Workers Party supporters and other
anti-fascists attacked
British Movement neo-Nazis, triggering violence. Crass later argued that the leftists were largely to blame for the fighting, and organizations such as
Rock Against Racism were causing audiences to become polarised into left- and right-wing factions. Others (including the anarchist organisation
Class War) were critical of Crass's position, stating that "like
Kropotkin, their politics are up shit creek". Many of the band's punk followers felt that they failed to understand the violence to which they were subjected from the right. "Rival Tribal Rebel Revel", a
flexi disc single distributed with the
Toxic Grafity fanzine, was also a commentary about the events at Conway Hall attacking the mindless violence and
tribalistic aspects of contemporary youth culture. This was followed by the double single "Nagasaki Nightmare/Big A Little A". The strongly
anti-nuclear lyrics of "Nagasaki Nightmare" were reinforced by the fold-out sleeve artwork. It featured an article by Mike Holderness of
Peace News magazine connecting the
atomic power industry and the manufacture of nuclear weapons along with a large poster-style map of nuclear installations in the UK. The other side of the record, "Big A Little A", was a statement of the band's anti-statist and individualist anarchist philosophy: "Be exactly who you want to be, do what you want to do / I am he and she is she but you're the only you."
1981: Penis Envy Crass released their third album,
Penis Envy, in 1981. This marked a departure from the hardcore punk image that
The Feeding of the 5000 and
Stations of the Crass had given the group. It featured more complex musical arrangements and female vocals by Eve Libertine and
Joy De Vivre (singer Steve Ignorant was credited as "not on this recording"). The album addressed feminist issues, attacking marriage and
sexual repression. The last track on
Penis Envy, a parody of an
MOR love song titled "Our Wedding", was made available as a white
flexi disc to readers of
Loving, a teenage romance magazine. Crass tricked the magazine into offering the disc, posing as "Creative Recording and Sound Services".
Loving accepted the offer, telling their readers that the free Crass flexi would make "your wedding day just that bit extra special". A
tabloid controversy resulted when the hoax was exposed, with the
News of the World stating that the title of the flexi's originating album was "too obscene to print". Despite
Lovings annoyance, Crass had broken no laws. The album was banned by the retailer HMV, and copies of the album were seized from the Eastern Bloc record shop by
Greater Manchester Police under the direction of
chief constable James Anderton. The shop owners were charged with displaying
"obscene articles for publication for gain". The judge ruled against Crass in the ensuing court case, although the decision was overturned by the
Court of Appeal (except the lyrics to "Bata Motel", which were upheld as "sexually provocative and obscene").
1982–1983: Christ - The Album and strategy-change The band's fourth LP, 1982's double set
Christ – The Album, took almost a year to record, produce and mix (during which the
Falklands War began and ended). This caused Crass to question their approach to making records. As a group whose primary purpose was
political commentary, they felt overtaken and made redundant by world events: Subsequent releases (including the singles "How Does It Feel? (To Be the Mother of a Thousand Dead)" and "Sheep Farming in the Falklands" and the album
Yes Sir, I Will) saw the band's sound return to basics and were issued as "tactical responses" to political situations. Crass anonymously produced 20,000 copies of a
flexi disc with a live recording of "Sheep Farming in the Falklands", and copies were randomly inserted into the sleeves of other records by sympathetic workers at the
Rough Trade Records distribution warehouse.
Direct action and internal debates '', illustrating Crass' stenciled graffiti From their early days of spraying stencilled
anti-war, anarchist,
feminist and
anti-consumerist graffiti messages in the
London Underground and on billboards, Crass was involved in politically motivated
direct action and musical activities. On 18 December 1982, the band helped coordinate a 24-hour squat in the empty West London Zig Zag club to prove "that the underground punk scene could handle itself responsibly when it had to and that music really could be enjoyed free of the restraints imposed upon it by corporate industry". In 1983 and 1984, Crass were part of the
Stop the City actions coordinated by
London Greenpeace that foreshadowed the
anti-globalisation rallies of the early 21st century. Support for these activities was provided in the lyrics and sleeve notes of the band's last single, "You're Already Dead", expressing doubts about their commitment to
nonviolence. It was also a reflection of disagreements within the group, as explained by Rimbaud: "Half the band supported the pacifist line and half supported direct and if necessary violent action. It was a confusing time for us, and I think a lot of our records show that, inadvertently". This led to introspection within the band, with some members becoming embittered and losing sight of their essentially positive stance. Reflecting this debate, the next release under the Crass name was
Acts of Love:
classical-music settings of 50 poems by Penny Rimbaud, described as "songs to my other self" and intended to celebrate "the profound sense of unity, peace and love that exists within that other self".
Thatchergate Another Crass
hoax was known as the "
Thatchergate tapes", a recording of an apparently accidentally overheard telephone conversation (because of crossed lines). The tape was constructed by Crass from edited recordings of
Margaret Thatcher and
Ronald Reagan. On the "rather clumsily" forged tape, they appear to discuss the sinking of during the
Falklands War and agree that Europe would be a target for
nuclear weapons in a conflict between the United States and the
Soviet Union. The
U.S. State Department and British government believed the tape to be propaganda produced by the
KGB (as reported by the
San Francisco Chronicle and
The Sunday Times).
1984: Breakup Questions about the band in
Parliament and an attempted prosecution by
Conservative Party MP Timothy Eggar under the UK's
Obscene Publications Act for their single "How Does It Feel..." made the members of Crass question their purpose: The band had also incurred heavy legal expenses for the
Penis Envy prosecution; The group's final release as Crass was the "Ten Notes on a Summer's Day" 12" single in 1986. Crass Records was closed in 1992; its final release was ''Christ's Reality Asylum'', a 90-minute cassette of Penny Rimbaud reading the essay that he had written in early 1977. On 11 July 2024, the full 7 July 1984 concert was released as a free download to celebrate its 40th anniversary, albeit as a poor and upscaled tape transfer.
Crass Collective, Crass Agenda, and Last Amendment In November 2002 several former members arranged Your Country Needs You, a concert of "voices in opposition to war", as the
Crass Collective. At
Queen Elizabeth Hall on London's
South Bank, Your Country Needs You included Benjamin Britten's
War Requiem and performances by
Goldblade,
Fun-Da-Mental,
Ian MacKaye and Pete Wright's post-Crass project, Judas 2. In October 2003 the Crass Collective changed their name to
Crass Agenda, with Rimbaud, Libertine and Vaucher working with
Matt Black of
Coldcut and
jazz musicians such as
Julian Siegel and
Kate Shortt. In 2004 Crass Agenda spearheaded a campaign to save the
Vortex Jazz Club in
Stoke Newington, north London (where they regularly played). In June 2005 Crass Agenda was declared to be "no more", changing its name to the "more pertinent" Last Amendment. After a five-year hiatus, Last Amendment performed at the Vortex in June 2012. Rimbaud has also performed and recorded with
Japanther and
the Charlatans. A "new" Crass track (a remix of 1982's "Major General Despair" with new lyrics), "The Unelected President", is available.
2007: Ignorant's The Feeding of the 5000 On 24 and 25 November 2007, Steve Ignorant performed Crass'
The Feeding of the 5000 album live at the
Shepherd's Bush Empire with a band of "selected guests". Other members of Crass were not involved in these concerts. Initially Rimbaud refused Ignorant permission to perform Crass songs he had written, but later changed his mind: "I acknowledge and respect Steve's right to do this, but I do regard it as a betrayal of the Crass ethos". Ignorant had a different view: "I don't have to justify what I do...Plus, most of the lyrics are still relevant today. And remember that three-letter word, 'fun'?" remastered reissues of their back catalogue. Three former members objected, threatening legal action. Despite their concerns the project went ahead, and the remasters were eventually released. First in the series was
The Feeding of the 5000, released in August 2010.
Stations of the Crass followed in October, with new editions of
Penis Envy,
Christ – The Album,
Yes Sir, I Will and ''Ten Notes on a Summer's Day'' released in 2011 and 2012. Critics praised the improved sound quality and new packaging of the remastered albums.
2011: The Last Supper In 2011 Steve Ignorant embarked on an international tour, titled "The Last Supper". He performed Crass material, culminating with a final performance at the Shepherd's Bush Empire on 19 November. Ignorant said that this was the last time he would sing the songs of Crass, with Rimbaud's support; the latter joined him onstage for a drum-and-vocal rendition of "Do They Owe Us A Living", bringing the band's career full circle after 34 years: "And then Penny came on...and we did it, 'Do They Owe Us A Living' as we'd first done it all those years ago. As it started, so it finished". The exhibit featured artwork, albums (including 12" LPs and EPs), 7" singles from Crass Records and a complete set of Crass' self-published
zine,
Inter-National Anthem. Artwork by Gee Vaucher and Penny Rimbaud, including a recording of the original 'Thatchergate Tape', featured as part of the 'Peculiar People' show at the Focal Point Gallery in
Southend-on-Sea during the spring of 2016, part of a series of events celebrating the history of 'Radical Essex'. Vaucher's painting
Oh America, featuring an image of the
Statue of Liberty hiding her face with her hands, was used as the front page of the UK
Daily Mirror newspaper to mark the election of
Donald Trump as US President on 9 November 2016. From November 2016 to February 2017 the
Firstsite art gallery in
Colchester, hosted a retrospective of Gee Vaucher's artwork. In June 2016, "The Art of Crass" was the subject of an exhibition at the LightBox Gallery in Leicester curated by artist and technologist Sean Clark. The exhibition featured prints and original artworks by Gee Vaucher, Penny Rimbaud, Eve Libertine, and Dave King. During the exhibition, Penny Rimbaud, Eve Libertine, and Louise Elliot performed "The Cobblestones of Love", a lyrical reworking of the Crass album "Yes Sir, I Will". On the final day of the exhibition there was a performance by Steve Ignorant's Slice of Life. The exhibition is documented on The Art of Crass website. == Influences ==