The Kid Was Just Crass: Steve Ignorant and Penny Rimbaud

Phil Ross journeys across England to meet the bandmates whose relentless attacks on god, government and society helped reshape the mindset of modern Britain.

We’re late, we’re lost and we’re getting later. As the last remnants of morning mist linger along the north Norfolk coastline, grey drizzle sprays the windscreen of photographer Tony Mottram’s Vauxhall Astra. Tony was an art student in Harlow Technical College, Essex in 1977 when he and his college mates came up with the idea of starting a fanzine to cover the local punk scene. His friend Derek Birkett had told him about a band who were based at Dial House, a creative commune near Epping Forest, who were gaining notoriety in the area. Little did he know that this newly formed outfit would go on to become a life changing phenomena for many; possibly the most influential anarchist activist mouthpiece of the late ’70s/early ’80s punk scene. Their name would become synonymous with ultra-blasphemy, pacifism, feminism and a wide range of protest messages and activist movements. Their revisionist and outrageous rejections of society were wrapped in the dark imagery of visual artist Gee Vaucher and set to raging, grinding semi-experimental punk that critic Garry Bushell called ‘an assault on the senses’.

Mottram’s early photos of Crass were the beginning of his 40-year career as one of the most prolific rock photographers in the UK music press of the ’80s and ’90s, covering hundreds of artists from AC/DC to ZZ Top as staff photographer at Sounds, and freelancer for Melody Maker, NME, and Kerrang! This year it will be forty years since Crass played their final gig in Aberdare, South Wales, a benefit for striking miners. So when I contacted Mottram, he got excited and immediately agreed to drive from Northampton to photograph the former frontman and co-founder. I had arrived the night before from South London to rendezvous with Mottram in Norwich. This morning, we’re travelling together in his car along remote country roads but the pin on my google map keeps bouncing around, and the pin on Mottram’s mobile is showing a completely different location. The best we can do is keep the sea to our left and keep on searching.

If I’m honest, my journey to interview Steve actually started at last summer’s Rebellion Festival in Blackpool, where twenty thousand punks annually breathe much needed life into an otherwise rundown seaside town in the northwest of England. The festival selects bands ranging from the biggest punk legends: Subs, Damned, Killing Joke to excellent new groups like Jo-Jo & The Teeth. I usually mooch around Rebellion with my Spizzenergi bandmate Luca Comencini exploring the music, and last August we were blown away by The Steve Ignorant Band. It was nothing short of a monster rock outfit disgorging classic Crass with power, energy and precision.

Their final song Banned From The Roxy is still ringing in our ears, as we head off to Rebellion’s large but basic backstage bar. “I never saw them back in the day” I moan, placing my pint of piss-weak lager on one of the bar’s plastic patio tables. Luca had however been lucky enough to witness their legendary 1982 squat gig at the ZigZag in West London. “I was only sixteen and I remember being a little scared”, his eyes widen slightly as he recalls the electric energy of the night, “but it was totally amazing. Lots of Italian punks knew about Crass and came over to follow them” he recalls, “a load stayed at Dial House”.

The early shows had a reputation for sounding really rough with Sounds journalist Winston Smith describing the ZigZag gig as ‘mainly a monotonous racket’ before going on to extol the ‘sheer impact’ writing: ‘Christ, Crass were impressive, and so utterly spellbinding’. My conversation with Luca stops suddenly. We both stare at a solitary figure, delicately carrying a plastic pint tumbler of the same piss-weak lager that we’re drinking. Wearing the same Crass-embroidered white polo shirt that he was wearing on stage only ten minutes ago, Steve Ignorant sits just a few feet away from us at one of the plastic patio tables. Post-gig sweat steams off the shirt and a surreal, slightly elongated moment slowly passes before Luca and I turn to each other, and I mutter, “I should ask him for an interview”.

Fast forward, again to a wintery morning on the farmed flatlands of the north Norfolk coast, and I’m sitting in the conservatory of the well maintained, smart brick cottage that Steve shares with his wife and manager Jona Hofman. She’s a polite, petite Dutch woman who manages Steve’s affairs with calm, firmness and efficiency. They met “a long time ago at Dial House” and have been together since he asked her out at a tai chi class over 25 years ago. “Ah, you do tai chi?” I say to Steve, “well he did that one time” laughs Jona, and he grins. After a long career as a teacher, Hofman became Steve’s manager following the Last Supper tour in 2012 and is now a seasoned veteran of the music business. Apart from today’s interview, she arranged for me to bring a photographer to their recent Manchester show, and also helped me set up a meeting and photos with Crass co-founder Penny Rimbaud. Their hall is full of cardboard boxes of differing sizes containing items of merchandise; T-shirts, CDs, books and 400 re-pressed LP copies of Live In Bristol 2023. I glance through the patio doors at meticulously tended flower beds set in lush green foliage, and I wonder which of them gives their garden such green fingered love and affection.

Steve wets a cigarette paper with his tongue and folds the sticky, gummed edge into a tidy roll-up. “Originally I wanted to be a vicar” he says, his manner quite matter of fact, perching the unlit roll-up between two fingers. There’s a stunned silence at this unexpected announcement before Jona lets out a shriek which bursts the tension in the room like a needle in a balloon and we erupt into laughter; Jona, Mottram and myself. Steve grins, quietly pleased with himself; we’re a small audience and he clearly enjoys having us in the palm of his hand. “Really, are you kidding me?” I ask, incredulous, as the laughter subsides. He rocks slightly, nodding. “Seriously”, he replies “I got into Christianity, because I liked a woman teacher at my school in Dagenham, she made bible discussion really accessible, so I went to her Christian Union meetings”. Still taken aback by his revelation, I pull myself together momentarily as he describes the meetings. “We mostly talked about the New Testament”, says Steve “in modern language, how it related to our lives, she made it accessible, and it made a lot of sense”.

My own Catholic schooling in Clydebank during the ’70s and ’80s flashes through my mind, and I remember the shock I experienced reading the lyrics that accompanied The Feeding of the Five Thousand, the first Crass album, named ironically after a miracle performed by Jesus. A huge number of West of Scotland Catholics are of Irish descent and the education system at that time functioned hand in hand with the church. We were brought up by priests and teachers to somehow believe that our greatest achievement in life would be to die cheerfully as martyrs for the Catholic faith. Given the armed conflict going on at that time between Irish republican movements and the British Army and security forces, martyrdom was particularly poignant. It seemed that God wanted us to fight the British Army, while conversely, communities who followed the Protestant faith disagreed and thought that God had chosen them, ‘the people’, to keep Catholics under control in some form of religious apartheid. Like two furious dogs barking at each other in a mirror, unwilling and unable to acknowledge their reflection, sectarianism simultaneously horrified and confused me. Listening to Crass at a young age had a huge influence on my secular outlook on life.

Punk had come along and of the many doors that it kicked in, the question of Northern Ireland and religious partition was there to be hammered hard. Belfast’s Stiff Little Fingers spoke with lived experience of The Troubles, of the ‘inflammable material planted in my head’ while The Sex Pistols had a nuanced approach; ‘Is this the IRA or is this the UDA, I thought it was the UK?’ Crass however preached in no uncertain terms that the squaddies in Belfast ‘in the front yard’ with ‘machine guns resting on the fence’ were simply doing the bidding of ‘the rich and the fortunate, chaining up the door’. They went further, claiming that government exploits our fear of nuclear war to ‘keep their fuckin’ power cos their finger’s on the button’, it was an ugly blunt logic that was simultaneously enraging and enthralling. They conflated so much ugly blunt logic like this, relentlessly going for the religious jugular. Eve Libertine’s ‘feeble christ, the gravedigger of Auschwitz delighting in the bodies of Hiroshima’ was as intellectually measured as Steve Ignorant was seemingly mindless on that first album – ‘So what if Jesus died on the cross’ he screamed ‘So what about the fucker, I don’t give a toss’.

“That’s an awfully big leap” I blurt out as he lifts the unlit rollup to his lips, “from bible group and wanting to be a vicar, to screaming about ‘the fucker’ who died on the cross”. Emphatic in agreement, he nods, lowering the unlit cigarette again, “I’m wondering what could have happened to a teenage schoolboy to make him become Steve Ignorant?” I say as he draws a breath to speak. “Dial House was definitely part of it”, he exhales, “there was so much knowledge, it was a real education” he tells me. “I was 19, they were in their 30s and talkin’ about things I’d never heard of before, like the Left Bank and Haight-Ashbury. I knew nothing about Northern Ireland, I was embarrassed, that’s why I took the name Ignorant, cos I was ignorant, Steve Ignorant!”

I’m struck by the humility and self-awareness that must have been present in the young Steve to acknowledge his ignorance, but also by strong vestiges of anger when he talks about his step-dad. “I was brought up mostly by my grandparents who had a Victorian attitude, they thought the boss was always right,” he continues, “but Crass talked about trade unions, and stuff I had no idea about”. Steve first visited Dial House with his older brother who “told me about this guy Jerry”. He’s talking about Jeremy Ratter, his Crass co-founder, who would later change his name by deed poll to Penny Rimbaud, after Arthur Rimbaud, the French poet infamous for breaking 19th Century moral and social boundaries. Jona introduced me to Penny via email, and a week after interviewing Steve, I made my own pilgrimage and navigated the large potholes of the rambling country road that leads to the 16th Century Dial House.

Penny Rimbaud was born in 1943. His father, John Ratter CBE, had served in the Royal Engineers during WW2, reaching the rank of colonel. We’re drinking tea from mismatching mugs in his den, an endearingly rustic cabin at the back of the Dial House garden, filled with plants, carvings, books and art. He leans back from a small wooden desk with a laptop and some speakers. Occasionally, he takes wood from a wicker basket and throws it into a little log burning stove. “I had well-read parents with a large collection of books. I got my love of classical music from Dad, he used to take the family on luxury holidays,” Rimbaud recalls. “One time, he was taking us around Italy, to bridges he had built during the war, to see if they were still standing”.

Penny was 14 years old, when a young American beatnik artist, painting in Positano on the Amalfi coast, introduced him to Zen Buddhism. The Ratters were Anglicans, regularly attending church, but he had already told his parents, “‘I’m not going!’ And eventually they accepted it”, he shrugs. “When I was very young, about five, I found one of Dad’s books, a black book with a Star of David on the cover”, he recalls. “It was a book about the Holocaust, with photos”. Penny is now 80 years of age with long white hair and beard, but his voice still trembles as he relives the memory. “I was looking at these pictures of dead bodies lying in pits”, he continues, “and I actually thought this is what Dad did in the war”. The shock of seeing those images never left him. The young Rimbaud was thrown out of two schools: “I just didn’t want to learn,” he admits “but I’ve been reading about the Holocaust since my early teens,” he adds. “Anytime Dad would tell me ‘to get real’ or talk about ‘the real world’ I would always reject it, I would think about those pictures. I’ve never accepted the atrocities and the absurdities of the real or material world, which frankly continue to this day”. He pauses for breath and I sense him relax a little, “Zen was the first thing that made sense to me”, he concludes.

In 1962, Rimbaud met Gee Vaucher, his creative partner, at art school and in 1968 they occupied Dial House. The rent was free initially as the grade 2 listed farm cottage was semi-derelict at that time, infested with mice, and had just one habitable room. After three years, they paid an annual rent of £20. It was “my transition to bohemianism”, he says earnestly, and together they formed performance art groups EXIT and Ceres Confusion, removing the locks and establishing an open house for radical creativity. “People started turning up to get involved, and to help do it up. I was teaching art at the time and asked some people from the college to move in”, he explains. In 1972, with his friend Phil Russell aka Wally Hope, he co-founded the Stonehenge Free Festival, which ran until 1985 when it was violently suppressed by Wiltshire Police in the ignominious Battle of the Beanfield.

To this day, Rimbaud is convinced that, contrary to the coroner’s verdict of suicide in 1975, his friend Wally was in reality murdered by the state. In many ways, regardless of the ‘never trust a hippie’ sloganeering of Jamie Reid and The Sex Pistols, the anti-establishment activism and countercultural politics of the ’60s and ’70s went hand in hand with punk’s anarchist rejection of monarchical, capitalist society. In any case, it was amidst the dream catchers and incense sticks of Dial House that the teenage Steve Wiliams would discover both Buddhism and a channel for his searing rage. “I remember seeing him when he came here at first”, Penny recalls, “I thought here’s a kid with good feelings and good sentiment”. 

Steve remembers that first visit: “It was summer holidays, I was stacking shelves in a supermarket,” he recalls, “David my brother had got into Buddhism. He’d met the people at Dial House and I went with him one time. I got given a copy of Zen for the West. I’d really recommend it”. He’s talking about the 1959 book by Sōhaku Otaga, an abbot from the Kotoku-in and Shōkoku-ji Temples in Japan whose work greatly contributed to satisfying the new interest in Buddhism that followed WW2, particularly in the USA. Reverend Otaga was also the first Zen abbot to open his temple to international visitors in the immediate postwar period. Having welcomed thousands of westerners with warmth and kindness, Otaga sadly passed away in 1973, the same year that the teenage Steve first came to Dial House. “I wanted to discuss what I’d learned about Zen in our bible group”, Steve explained, “but when I got back to school, the teacher I liked had left. The new teacher was a complete prick!” he exclaims. “He would go on about Lazarus rising from the dead, but just dissed Buddhism, he wouldn’t have anything to do with Zen. He was basically saying ‘my fairy story is better than your fairy story’ and I thought nah, you’re having a fuckin’ laugh, I’m finished with you and your fuckin’ God. I never went back.” 

By the time Steve returned to Dial House in 1977, he had discovered The Clash, and Penny was into Television and Patti Smith. There had been a music room for many years before Crass came along, where people would jam, play instruments and experiment. Penny explained, “Steve had ideas he wanted to try out and initially I was just banging the drums, not interfering”, he said, “he claims his own space, which I love”. Steve remembers the period well, “Eve was about, Gee was doin’ Time Magazine, Pen said ‘I’ll play drums for you if you like’ and we thought: just drums and vocals? Who else is doin’ it?” He shrugs as if to say, ‘so we gave it a go’. He’s keen to point out that although credits on the band’s albums state that all songs were written by Crass, tracks were often written by just one person. So What, for example, was a vitriolic assault on religion that flowed directly from the anger he experienced at bible class, while End Result was inspired by the widespread industrial unrest of the ’70s and layoffs at the local Ford Factory in his hometown of Dagenham.

However, “the poetry” that Steve holds closest to his heart as his “lifetime achievement” is the anthemic Do They Owe Us a Living? The music room at Dial House was, in essence, an experimental DIY space and members often joined for just a session or two; “there was a lot of people going in and out,” he went on. “But I remember Dave King (Crass logo designer) was there, and Pete Wright (bassist) was there. He was playin’ in a folk band at the time and he really hated it, “he said to me ‘I can’t do this much longer’, Steve laughs. “I remember Andy Palmer (guitarist) would come into the room and say ‘hello squire’ to me in this posh voice, and I’d think; what a middle class prick!” Early line-ups were very fluid, with Rimbaud encouraging anyone who felt like it to join in, and I wonder if he had some sort of svengali influence on the early Crass. Steve immediately dismisses my suggestion, “no Pen wasn’t a McClaren”, he says “none of us knew what we were doing! We had no direction, I thought the furthest we would get was to play in the village hall or something”.

Rimbaud also recalls their formative period, saying “we were a complete shambles” about their drunken performance at the seminal Roxy in Covent Garden. “We weren’t really performers, we were almost just people fucking about”, he laughs. “Don Letts was running the PA, I don’t know if it was him, but after ten minutes someone turned us off. So I started smashing the drums on my own”, he tells me. “The crowd started to get really into it, they became this great mash of bodies and drinks flying”. Crass took punk on its word, ‘just be yourself’ and ‘smash the system’, the audience understood that, “but we were told not to come back,” says Rimbaud. “We got banned for doing our job, for doing a great job!”

The evolution of Crass accelerated after the Roxy gig as punk ethics further merged with the hippie activist ethos of Dial House. “We took a serious line” he continues, “no sex or drugs”. The band “chose to subvert individuality” with homogenous black army surplus uniforms and with minimal 40w bulbs lighting the stage. King’s anti-authoritarian Crass logo became their backdrop, Libertine’s radical feminism was everywhere, and gigs became enhanced events with the projection of Gee Vaucher and Mick Duffield’s harrowing protest films and video collages. They distributed leaflets explaining their anarchist stance and door money often went to good causes, such as the miners, Rape Crisis and McLibel.

Crass raged against the establishment machinery of society; god, government and monarchy. But as my afternoon with Rimbaud comes to a close, I wonder if their activism, especially in the latter stages ever crossed the line into publicity stunt? “We were a body, we agreed on the job we were doing,” he replies. “We allowed people to create themselves, we were saying: ‘look to yourselves not to us’”. It’s not a direct answer, which is understandable as I realise I’m actually asking: Were Crass for real? They greatly influenced how I think to this day, and I believe their polemics on pacifism, environmentalism, animal rights and much more, influenced a whole generation. “Words and songs are there to be felt. Ambiguity teases the mind” responds Rimbaud, with the soothing air of a tribal elder. “Crass had deep psychological resonance” he explains. “I’ve been trying to destroy the status quo since I opened Dad’s book, but it was collaborative. Eve was a big influencer in the band, and Steve, he had the wisdom of the street”.

I think back to the interview with Steve. I’m left with the impression of a man at ease with himself, his legacy and the former bandmate who was an inspiration to him. He’s busy writing music, enjoying life with Jona, and his place in the punk pantheon with Penny. “I’m dying for this smoke,” he says, stepping through the patio doors into their beautiful English country garden as Mottram follows with his camera. He lights his rollie as the camera starts to click, and I ask myself, is he happy? Course he fuckin’ is!

The Steve Ignorant Band live 2024
29 Feb – Leeds, Brudenell Social Club (tickets)
01 Mar – Stockton, Georgian Theatre (tickets)
02 Mar – Carlisle, Old Fire Station (tickets)
03 March – Liverpool, Cavern Club (matinee 4-7pm) (tickets)
26 April – Corby, The Raven Hotel (tickets)
27 April – Scotland Calling (tickets)
04 & 05 May – Mexico City, Internacional Punkytud Festival (tickets)
08 May – San Francisco, GAMH (Great American Music hall) (tickets)
09 May – Pomona, Glasshouse (tickets)
01 – 04 Aug – Blackpool, Rebellion Festival (tickets)
10 Oct -2024 – Cardiff, Clwb Ifor (tickets)
11 Oct – Plymouth, The Junction (tickets)
12 Oct – Frome, Cheese & Grain (tickets)
13 Oct – Bedford, Esquires (matinee show) (tickets)
14 Nov – Nottingham, The Old Cold Store (tickets)
15 Nov – London (to be announced)
16 Nov – Brighton, Concorde 2 (tickets)

For merch, music and more visit Steve Ignorant Official

Visit One Little Independent for Crass and Penny Rimbaud

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Photography by Tony Mottram
*except Steve Ignorant at Rebellion Festival by Dod Morrison

Words by Phil Ross.
More writing by Phil can be found at his Louder Than War author’s archive.