Sleeve Talk

Originally published November 2007

Bryan Ferry recently got into a spot of bother for saying that he thought Nazi iconography was “really beautiful” and found himself having to deny that he was a closet goose-stepper. Quite ridiculous really, Bryan may be a bit of a Tory these days but I don’t think any man who names his first son after Otis Redding could be considered a Nazi.

The thing is, he was right. On a purely aesthetic level the films of Leni Riefenstahl and the buildings of Albert Speer are beautiful, as are the posters, the rallies, and the suave uniforms — the Nazis were masters of staging and presentation, selling something terrible by making it look sexy.

The Skids flirted with similar controversy when their 1979 album Days In Europa appeared with a sleeve image of a noble, God-like athlete and an Aryan beauty that looked lifted straight from a poster for the notorious 1936 Berlin Olympics complete with very Germanic Gothic lettering (in fact it’s a pastiche by illustrator Mick Brownfield.) I don’t remember anyone seriously suggesting that the band were Nazis, they were just being very naive in their plundering of art history, but the sleeve (and song titles like “The Olympian” and “Dulce et Decorum Est (Pro Patria Mori)” which translates as “It is a sweet and glorious thing (to die for one’s country)”) did bring up the same unfortunate associations that Joy Division were also dogged with, and the late 1970s weren’t a good time to be mucking about with fascist imagery when there were real neo-Nazis marching on the streets of England. So when the album was remixed a year later (the record company wanted to put a more commercial gloss on Bill Nelson’s original production) it was issued in a completely different sleeve. Though the band put their foots in it again when their next album came with a bonus record called Strength Through Joy. You think they’d have been studying their history books a bit closer by then.

But let’s face it, a lot of post-punk did sound like fascist music. The thundering dynamics, martial drumming and violent guitars (not to mention the severe haircuts) of The Skids and Joy Division, Killing Joke, Theatre of Hate etc. had all the aggressive Wagnerian Sturm und Drang of a stormtrooper blitzkrieg. With his hearty singing over their big, anthemic songs like “Working For The Yankee Dollar” lead singer Richard Jobson often came across like a General leading troops into battle.

Download: Working For The Yankee Dollar – The Skids (mp3)