Attila the Stockbroker
Smashed Images: nummer 2 | september 2004
On a Sunday evening in June, the English poet Attila The Stockbroker visited our place with his punkband Barnstormer. In the afternoon Attila had already done a 90 minute solo gig at a communist festival in Germany. As this was also the last day of the tour all members were quite tired. In between dinner, soundcheck and the gig there was some time left for a small chat with Attila, a 45-year old punk who's still wearing his Lenin-pin with pride.
To those who don’t know you, can you briefly introduce yourself?
I’m Attila the Stockbroker. My living is being a poet and songwriter since 1981. I started in the punk scene, right at the beginning of punk. I played bass-guitar in some punk bands back then. From 1980 i decided it would be interesting to get on stage on my own, to do poetry. That went quite well and from 1982 i’ve been travelling around all over the world to do my poetry and play songs on the mandolin. I’ve done about 15 albums, four books and all kinds of compilation stuff.
In 1994 i formed my band Barnstormer to play my songs. Since then the band sometimes plays in Mainland-Europe, but with the band i mostly play in the UK and i do more solo-gigs here. So mainly i’m a poet and songwriter with a punkrock band that also has a strange mediaeval tongue to it.
How did you get involved in this whole punk thing and how has it influenced your life?
Actually i’m gonna do a song tonight about this called ‘Commadante Joe’, because what really inspired me was the Clash. I mean, the punk thing means many different things. But to react to the things you wrote in your booklet (he’s referring to the programme-leaflet of the squat where there’s quoted something he said about Sex Pistol’s “Anarchy in the UK”). What i actually said about chess was this; if instead of singing “i’m an anti-christ, i’m an anarchist” Johnny Rotten had said, “i’m a chess player” there would probably loads of punks with chessboards on their back. I’m not an anarchist, but i have many friends who are and i have lots of sympathy with anarchism. But what i meant by that is that anarchism is supposed to be about thinking for yourself and not just putting an ‘A’ in a circle on your jacket, because you think that’s what punkrock is about.
But to answer your question, before punk i was interested in different kinds of music. I love the stuff of MC5, Velvet Underground and Mott the Hoople. I also loved some strange style of crowd rock. Punk was just an extension of the stuff i was listening to, it was not suddenly. The great thing about punk was the politics and the idea that everyone could get up on stage and start performing. That was the main message that got through to me, instead of “that’s the band and that’s the audience”.
I always was a musician, i played bass guitar in the late ‘70s. Then i realised that just playing the bass was not what i wanted to do, so i started with the poetry and make songs myself on the mandolin.
Punk has been a huge inspiration to me. When i saw the Clash it was everything i wanted with music; it was politics and culture coming together, that’s just amazing! That was in 1977 and it inspired me to do what i’m doing now. I like all kinds of music and the main thing i like are lyrics and the words. I like people who’ve got something to say, who’re different and critically about the world we’re living in, whatever sort of music it may be. One of my favourite songwriters/musicians of all time is the Belgian songwriter Jacques Brel, for exactly the same reason. ‘Cause in a completely different way he was as critical about the society he lived in as the Clash or the Sex Pistols were. So i like all sorts of stuff, but punk inspired me absolutely.
You are 45 right now, did you ever think about just quitting playing and all the uncertainty that comes with it?
That’s a very funny question. It’s an interesting thing that rock music is connected with being young, while nobody ever says to a painter or someone who’s playing the violin in an orchestra “you’re 40, so you’re not going to do that anymore”. Anyway, I have a wife and four children. I always made this quite clear to everyone who puts me on or organises gigs, that this is my living. In fact I’m very proud that it is my living. I’m a socialist, so I don’t expect to earn a huge load of money and I don’t want more than in need to support my family.
It’s an interesting thing that for some people in the scene playing in a band is supposed to be something you don’t do to earn any money and if you do, you are a capitalist or whatever. I think that’s just completely stupid. I have always been and will always be independent. I will always earn my living doing this and I have no desire to work for a capitalist boss, or to be involved in the system in any way. I won’t compromise to that under any circumstances. I’m in the fortunate position that I have a good following all over the place and without compromising I can do everything I want. I’m my own organiser, my own agent, and my own manager. I publish all my books, my CD’s… I’m not involved in any kind of commercial business or corporation. I do everything myself, so the only person I have to relay on is me, and I think it works. It works out really well. I’ll never stop performing unless I die. I hope I’ll die on stage, hopefully when I’m 85 or something but I never gonna stop. It’s not an ego thing, what I love is the fact that I have the opportunity to express my ideas and talk to people about things that are important to me and the world in general.
What do you like to say to the people who say you’re selling out because you make a living out of your music and poetry?
I think they’re absolutely idiots and i’ll go even further than that; everybody who says that is probably from a very wealthy privileged family with a mother and a father who have plenty of money, so that they can play punk for a couple of years and then go working for a boss or something. Very few people say it to me, and it can only be said by people who have no experience of life and what life means. No-one would ever say to a plumber or a carpenter “you’re selling out because you earn your money being a plumber or carpenter”, so why saying it to a musician? It’s ridiculous, completely ridiculous to say you don’t want any money… In my view it’s far more selling out to play in a band and charge one cent to get into the concert and than spend the rest of your week working for a capitalist to earn your living, than the way i do, which is to say “this is how i earn myself a living and i’m very proud of that”, that always works anyhow. I know that tonight we don’t get very much money for this gig, but that’s fine, because it’s a good place and what you do is very good. Equally, some of the other gigs we got us some really good money, so in the end it all works out. It means i can do both. But the idea that earning yourself a living means you’re selling out is babyish, it’s spread by kids with rich parents.
Why do you play renaissance-core? Has it anything to do with the romantic idea of being a wandering minstrel or does this period inspire you?
It’s simply because i like the music. It’s something inside of me, i don’t know why, which always responded to the sound of that particular type of music. It’s nothing more or less than that. I guess it’s the same reason why Shane MacGowan formed The Pogues; to play a mixture of Irish music and punk. I did exactly the same with Barnstormer, because i like middle-age music. I don’t know anyone else who did it before. I knew what kind of music i wanted to play and i didn’t know if it would work out well, but it does. It sounds strange, but the people really enjoy it.
When i read your website i get the impression you’re on tour for five months of the year. What are the things you hate and like most about being on tour?
There’s nothing i hate about being on tour, but i miss my wife very much. Something i never forget is the reason why she has to stay at home and look after the kids and everything is because i’m on tour. Quite a traditional division of labour. I don’t like that partically, but she comes with me as much as possible.
There’s nothing i don’t like about being on tour. I really love performing, i love talking to people; i speak french and german, i love foreign languages and i love communicating with people. The band is just great, we’re all really good friends and we enjoy the music we play, so i live it. The only thing i don’t like about touring is that our drummer’s farts are terrible, that’s the only thing i can think of.
(Laughter) and the vegan food…
No, i like it, although i make jokes about it. I think very much for myself and i surely respect people who are vegan or vegetarian. Equally i expect them to respect the fact i’m not. I don’t like the idea that some people seem to have; that if you’re on the left and if you’re a radical, anti-capitalist or whatever that it means you must be a vegetarian. I can tell anybody who thinks that, that for hundreds of years there’s been class struggle and battles in between oppressors and oppressed. The idea of vegetarianism is an idea that can only exists in an advanced society where people have enough to eat in the first place. I have absolutely nothing but respect for people who are vegetarian. For sure it’s a healthy way to live, but i think it’s a personal choice, which got nothing to do with a political obligation. Equally i’m totally opposed to factory farming and the methods that are used to breed animals for human consumption. I think that’s wrong, but no, i’m not a vegetarian.
Once you wrote in our email correspondence that you consider yourself to be a communist, what does communism mean to you, as there’re many explanations of it?
Well, i performed many times in de DDR before the wall came down, and if i was born in the east-german system i would have been about 65% in favour and 35% against what happened there. I wasn’t somebody who said it was all shit. I was believed that what happened in East-Germany was basically a progressive thing, which needed to be changed, developed and made far more democratic. It should have been organised far more from the bottom that the top. I don’t think it was good that the entire system collapsed and i don’t think it was good the Berlin wall came down the way it did. Because all that happened was that capitalism became a tribulation. The end of all this shit is what we see in Iraq or anywhere else. I think the existence of the sowjet-union and the eastern-block countries was a good thing, although what went on there was certainly not all good.
But i’m certainly a communist in the tradition of Marx and Lenin. I have strong links to the DKP, the German Communist Party. We just have performed at a festival for them, i guess if i was german i would be a member of it. They’re quite a mainstream communist party with a good strong left tradition that some others don’t have. Like the French PCH, it becomes a complete joke, while the Germans have just been recast. The festival where we just played was in a park in Dortmund with 100.000 people coming, it’s fantastic, it really is.
