Two weeks at number one from w/e 13th November 1982
Initially I was tempted to bundle this number one and Robert Wyatt’s “Shipbuilding” together in one entry. The double-whammy effect of two back-to-back number ones on the same political topic feels like the kind of thing which could only have happened in the indie chart – short of World War III, it’s hard to imagine the official national charts ever replicating the same phenomenon.
It also tells us something about how high feelings were running in British society at that point; whether people wanted the considered, empathetic jazz-pop of “Shipbuilding” or the downright savage “How Does It Feel…” or (more likely) neither, The Falklands War was a topic it was obviously difficult to look away from.
If “Shipbuilding” is an aerial view of a conflicted town populated with people struggling to see over the barrier of their own personal struggles towards a bigger societal tragedy, “How Does It Feel” is just visceral blame. Crass may have begun to fall out with the second wave punks who dominated the scene at this point, but lyrically speaking, they were the closest to the original punk spirit of 76 – while the likes of The Exploited fell back on simplistic chants and slogans and the odd cuss word, Crass damn near scream an entire diatribe on the Falklands conflict over the course of a mere three minutes, and even find time for some sloganeering in the dying few seconds.
“So keen to play your bloody part, so impatient that your war be fought/ Iron Lady with your stone heart so eager that the lesson be taught/ That you inflicted, you determined, you created, you ordered/ It was your decision to have those young boys slaughtered” – this is a world apart from the taut, staccato, monosyllabic machine-gun attack of most eighties punk. It has so much to say that the song itself feels as if it can barely contain the anger; each line is elasticated close to a snapping point before the release comes, followed by the next swollen, unyielding attack. Then the next.
If there’s a moment here where Crass feel like every other punk band of the early eighties era, it’s probably around the chorus. That’s when the drums punch, the vocals get guttural, and the group take apparent glee in the chief slogan, perhaps hoping that it will stir the tabloid press to respond. What’s interesting is how quickly the song then collapses away from that chorus and descends into mania. Unlike “Shipbuilding”, it’s not clever as such – though the lyrics do stand alone perfectly well as a form of ranting poetry, which couldn’t be said of any other track in the indie charts at this point – and nor is it tuneful, but its design and precision are hard and sharp. It sets out to wound, and while it’s doubtful Margaret Thatcher considered their views, there isn’t a single line that leans back from the attack. Every single one is a tiny bullet, a distinct and aggrieved opinion.
The distance between this and the kind of fag-end punk dross that’s littered the indie charts over the last year is obvious. The senile tail end of any subgenre generally tends to consist of groups who have enthusiastically bounded into the room only to immediately forget what they went there for – you can hear this in the worst of glam rock in 1975, the collapse of disco, and even the lad-friendly meat-and-potatoes rock of 1996 Britpop. All were filled with chancers who only remembered the basic tricks of their trade, devolving rather than evolving.