Many thanks to
The Guardian Newspaper for this fine interview with Ian Brown. i do not claim to support or agree with everything the man says in this, but by my word i agree with his right to say it.
Would you vote for this man?Ian Brown slides into a booth in a West London cafe looking every inch the weathered rock icon: a camouflage jacket, fancy trainers, raffishly fringed hair. His cheekbones protrude so starkly he looks like a man peering between jammed lift doors.
Today though, Brown doesn't have anything as trifling as rock or his place in its hall of fame on his mind. The former Stone Roses singer is about to release his fifth solo album The World Is Yours and in it, he sets out his stall on a number of pressing geo-political issues. New single Illegal Attacks addresses the Iraq invasion in starkly undiplomatic language: "So what the fu*k?" he begins before going on to deal with Israel/Palestine and the Taliban. Elsewhere on the album he tackles South America's street children, and the plight of Africa.
On Some Folks Are Hollow Brown turns to old campaigner Sinead O'Connor and with her specialist knowledge of religious affairs advances the theory that there is Nazi gold buried under the Vatican.
As notional "rock PM", Brown has assembled a motley cabinet of what he calls "rebels" for the this album: Steve Jones and Paul Cook, guitarist and drummer from the Sex Pistols, come in from the political wilderness after performing on the band's 1970s neo-Nazi anthem Belsen Was A Gas. Former Smiths bass player Andy Rourke and Happy Mondays bass player Paul Ryder also feature.
Brown is an unusual artist. He refuses to discuss the Stone Roses, except that the last offer to reform was last year: £5m for five shows.
"I can't be bought," he shrugs. "I'm proud of what we did. But I'm happier solo now."
He manages himself - while we chat he fields a call from an Australian promoter and agrees to some gigs on the basis that the man will cook him a barbecue and let him use his swimming pool.
He hasn't been drinking since 1998 - the year he was sent to prison for threatening to cut an air stewardesses hands of with plastic cutlery after she offered him duty-free in a dismissive manner. The prison experience was formative. Entering Strangeways Brown declared himself a Muslim, although he now states this was to "wind up the screws" and also to "guarantee chicken for my tea". "Otherwise they give you pies and you don't know what's in 'em."
Muslim or not, there is undoubtedly an Eastern tinge to his plans for the UK. His ideas he says have been influenced by the decision not to smoke ganja during the making of this album.
"People in the past have tried to make out I'm some kind of space cadet or a stoner," he says. " I gave it up for nine months to see if it would give the music and my ideas greater clarity."
As he slurps a coffee and sets forth policy ideas for an alternative Brown government, no one can accuse him of not taking up the old Blair challenge and thinking outside of his box...
Foreign policy Lambs On The Pentagon Roof
"America won't accept that there is global warming. It's not good enough. We can't all perish because of their blindness. We need to ban all air freighted food. Carrots from Holland. Potatoes from Egypt. It's got to stop. Lamb from NZ. Let's get lambs grazing on the roof of the Pentagon or on the lawn of Buckingham Palace.
Permacultures - where you use the immediate environment to grow food - should be mandatory.
We should be growing carrots up the side of the Empire State Building or Big Ben. Round my house I pull the kids off Xbox and make them dig soil in the garden. We grow parsnips, carrots and potatoes. I like to see 'em grafting. They appreciate the taste."
All Cars To Be Filled With Sh*t "It makes me angry that they've been able to build cars fuelled by corn oil or chicken sh*t for years. But the oil companies won't allow it. Same with tyres and light bulbs: everlasting versions of these were invented years ago. The big corporations bought the inventors off . We're all going to perish because of their greed. The chicken sh*t-powered car will only do 60mph but so what? Leave your house a bit earlier."
Restraining Orders For Pink Floyd, Bono And Geldof "I get angry about how African kids have to live. I thought the G8 Summit at Gleneagles in 2005 was a real missed opportunity. I applaud how Brown and Blair tried to put it at the top of the agenda. I didn't like the way Bono and Geldof hijacked the G8 Summit demo with their pop concert. The only result was Pink Floyd sold a few more million albums.
People have to realise you don't help African children singing along to 60-year-old men playing their tunes from 40 years ago. It was like 1750 all over again: we are the great white do-gooders. If there is another G8 meeting then there should be a court order banning Pink Floyd or Geldof or Bono from leaving their houses until it's over."
Send JCBs To The Vatican "The Nazis looted gold from Spain and Portugal. Then when Mussolini took over Italy he stored all the gold in the Vatican. After the war the Catholics let the Nazis escape to South America dressed as priests on jets. The Nazis were religious nutcases who thought they were mentioned in the Bible as saviours of the world. Hitler converted to Catholicism just before he died.
Let's dig up the Vatican cellar and get the gold and the treasures and use them. They stole them. Let's steal them back."
Melt Down The Space Shuttle To Feed Farmers "We've got to stop kids thinking of Space exploration and astronauts as a fun and glamorous thing. Nasa is an arm of the US military. The International Space Station is a military undertaking. We need to melt down the rockets. We've got to divert the money to the poor. The rural poor in this country are overlooked. The country mouse - he needs feeding."
Recruit A Panel Of Dolphins For Crisis Planning "Here we are with the polar ice cap melting due to global warming. Everyone wondering how the humans are going to survive. Well, we could do well to consult the animal world for clues. Dolphins used to walk on the land because they have warm blood. Also, they have the same bone structure in their flippers as humans have in their hands. Something made him go back to the sea - Now what was it? A lack of food or a terrifying predator on the land? If we could get some answers from dolphins then we'd have a fair idea of what to do next ourselves."
Domestic policy
Taliban Patrols Of UK High Streets "The Taliban are demented right? But they did have TWO good ideas. No booze. No gambling.
I thought the news footage of them running over bottles of whisky and brandy with tanks was brilliant. In our society liquor companies run the world - they ruin lives and make high streets no-go areas on a Saturday night.
Also casinos. I've got a friend who went on the internet gambling and he lost his house. His kids went to bed - and by morning he'd lost the house on online poker. It's evil. They're building a super-casino in Salford which has got enough problems already. Gambling is all based on 666 which is the number of the beast."
Bring Back The Hoodie "This is what I'm saying on the track Me And You Forever. Teenagers are being demonised for wearing hoodies. I've got a 15-year-old son and he can't walk with his two mates through the Trafford Centre in Manchester. What's that all about? The hoodie happens to be the perfect piece of clothing for up north. It gets flippin' cold in Manchester. My dad wears a hoodie and he's 72! The hoodie is one of the best and most useful items of clothing ever invented and it's attacking northerners, anyone who is genuinely cold, to ban them."
Starter Homes In The Grounds Of Balmoral "It p*sses me off when I see pictures off the Queen or that Duke husband at Balmoral or Sandringham or wherever. I don't look at them, I look at their surroundings. All those little salmon rivers, beautiful creeks and beaches that they've stolen from us a thousand years ago. Let's have them back. Gordon Brown says he wants to build three million new homes then that's where we should build them. How many homes could you build on Balmoral? Loads.
Wembley Arena Designated A Cathedral "There are some beautiful Bible stories - it's just that in UK schools the teaching bores you stupid. The feeding of the 5000 isn't meant to be taken literally. Jesus spoke to the people and that fed their spirit - that's your two fish. Then he spoke some more - that fed their souls. That was the loaves. Then his posse went among them and the baskets were overflowing - that was the vibe in the air. That was the energy, the feeling. No, I don't have a Messiah complex but I think music is the nearest thing to achieving Christian ends. It unifies people and sustains them. It uplifts them and makes them closer to love. You get a great gig at Wembley or somewhere and that is modern Christianity in action."
Citizenship: Accent Tests For All "It annoys me that everyone in this country under 18 wants to talk like Ali G. What happened to REAL accents? We need authentic accents from where people are from. You shouldn't be allowed to talk like someone off the TV or off a rap record that you heard. It's fake."
Bring Back Boredom "My kids laugh at me when I tell them about life when I was 14. They say "Go on dad, tell us again". There was no Walkmans, videos, Nintendo or Xboxes, no internet, no mobiles. No computers. No DVDs. There were only three TV channels. They cry laughing. But it made us hungry and thoughtful. And we had great things like the Sex Pistols.
We're breeding a generation who won't invent anything. They've got everything. They're stimulated all day and they're never bored. I think there should be an hour of total boredom every day for all kids."
