Flashback to the 90s: The Levellers, and why they were awesome
would you buy a used campervan from these men?
Nothing like today, then.
The early nineties were an interesting time, musically and culturally. There wasn’t any one overwhelming movement (Britpop hadn’t happened yet), despite the continued attempts of the British music press at the time to manufacture one. Instead, there were a lot of disparate bands trying to make it.
One of the more unusual bands stalking through this musical landscape were the Levellers. They were an odd one to categorise- a sort of folk-rock version of the Clash, with a resolutely anti-establishment, anti-society outlook on life that seemed to extend to the. They sang about climbing up onto hillsides and looking down on cities in disgust. They started out playing in squats for gypsies and new age travellers, living in squats in Brighton and singing about life on the road. Not in a rock and roll sense, mind- they were less about the groupies and tourbuses as they were hand-woven coracles and gypsy wagons. As such, they were a focal point for every vaguely disaffected youth who saw the concrete overpasses, identikit shopping centres and Enterprise parks that covered large swathes of their country, and wondered if there wasn’t something more, something better lying underneath it all. Well, they were for me and my mates, anyway. We loved the Levellers. We would sit round campfires singing their songs whilst our schoolmates got drunk and had a miserable time in city centres. We were different, we were out-of-step, and the Levellers were our band. I found out later that some people at our school called us ‘the Levellers Posse.’ Suited me just fine. ‘Do I belong to some ancient race/I like to walk in ancient places/these are things that I can’t understand’ they sang, and there were a lot of people who felt exactly the same as they did.
And that was the point. They stood for something. Not just alienation, a feeling out-of-step. They actually felt in step with something, with a sort of pastoral, anarchist ideal of a world where money wasn’t as important as community. Where there was such a thing as society, and where freedom was more important than the law. It was hopefully naive, but that was part of their charm. They weren’t trying to be smarter than anyone. They were trying to have more fun.
Musically, they bore a similarity to other, less well-remembered acts such as The Outcast Band and their predecessors, TheWaterboys, in so much as they combined electric guitar and violin to fashion their sound. This was nothing new, of course- Fairport and the like had done this thirty years previously, but the Levellers were a bit more straight-ahead, a little musically basic in that kind of primitive, punk way.
That very simplicity helped their cause, and the presentation of their message. They were angry but unlike someone like Billy Bragg, they made no attempt at all to disguise their message- you listen to ‘Sell out’ or ‘Battle of the Beanfield’ and you’re getting straight down-the-line, simple takes on the old-versus-new struggle they saw going on in the world around them. Travellers good, police bad. Freedom and fun good, offices and jobs bad.
Sounds about right to a seventeen year-old, I can tell you. This was the era where the Tory government were passing more and more ridiculous legislation which seemed aimed at the prohibition of fun. Most notably, if you were three or more people in an outdoors space, listening to ‘repetitive beats’ then you could be legally classed as a rave and ordered to disperse or face arrest.
In a world like that, you got to fight for your right to party. Because the Man don’t want you on his land. Or your dogs on strings, neither.
The Levellers put their money where their mouths were, too- they set up the Metway, which for years was home for the anarchist newspaper Schnews, as well as a variety of other local artists, anarchists and odd cultural concerns. It currently lives on as The Metway Studio and has made a long-running contribution to the general vibe of Brighton as a wild and groovy place.
The Levellers are still going strong, though in some ways they are still frozen in time in that golden period where their vision of an older world shone bright as we reeled in the ashes of Thatcher’s Britain, waiting for what came next. Of course, we got more of the same in a different suit, but it’s nice to dream of what could have been.
I listen to this band, and despite my current state as a tubby thirtysomething with a reasonable haircut who works for a bank because they offer flexi-time, a good pension and a decent work-life balance, I still feel like a gawky, long-haired teenager in a shabby coat and ripped jeans again. And I feel all the better for it.
The Levellers’ essential album is Levelling the Land. Go track it down, and learn that there’s only one way of life, and that’s your own.