|
This interview with Annette was conducted
in April of 1989 over the phone. The interviewer, Bill Reynolds,
a Toronto journalist, phoned Annette where she lived at the time,
in rural Berkshire, which is located about 45 minutes from London
-- "I don't like cities particularly." Annette's bass
player from that era was Ed Poole and her drummer was Simon Price.
That trio was the unit that recorded the Abstract-Contact
LP. Unfortunately for Annette, Poole quit the group two weeks
prior to a much-anticipated engagement in Toronto. She phoned
the promoter and begged off the gig because she didn't think
she could find a drummer who could learn the intricacies of the
arrangements in time. The gig, which was to be held at a club
called the Rivoli in downtown Toronto, had to be cancelled. Consequently,
the preview article never ran as scheduled in the alternative
weekly newspaper that was around at the time, Metropolis, where
Reynolds worked as a correspondent.
>>>This,
then, a slightly cleaned-up version of the interview, is happily
distributed to visitors of this site as Annette's new CD release
for ECM, An Acrobat's Heart, becomes available. As the
story on Annette never made it to fully edited form it should
be kept that way.
>>>Abstract-Contact's magnum opus, the long, complex tune "Elect
Yourself," is almost a revolutionary tract, a polemic of
the very highest order. In it Annette rails against blind idiot
capitalism, environmental degradation, youthful irresponsibility,
regressions against feminism and so on. It's not surprising this
interview focused on words and not music.
>>>Some
of the discussion reads like it is quite out-of-date now, and
yet at the same time is strangely prophetic. To take one small
example, there is a discussion about "green products"
as if they actually were a real response to possible environmental
catastrophe, and not, as we all suspected, just another scam
perpertrated by greedy corporations in order to polish their
badly tarnished images. This is, after all, years before Mad
Cow disease, Gulf War syndrome, Bosnia and a hundred other atrocities
from the past decade.
Bill Reynolds: The song "Elect
Yourself" could be construed as implying that you think
there's no hope, that the Judeo-Christian male-dominated world
will simply get worse.
Annette Peacock: I don't know. I used to be extremely optimistic.
Now I'm more realistic about man's ability to transcend his basic
nature, or his basic conditioning.
>>>Unless
people start becoming active, in terms of doing what they can
actually do in their own sphere of activity (within their family,
socially, within their circle of friends, whatever), yeah, there
is no hope.
>>>I
call that the personal revolution. Drastic, extreme things have
to be done in terms of consciousness raising and behaviour patterns.
>>>People
are becoming more and more aware, but they are still in the minority.
They're questioning everything that permeates the fabric of their
lives -- too much waste, taking too much, what to purchase.
>>>That
is happening, but it's a question of whether it will happen fast
enough. The damage is being done exponentially, and of course
we can't determine what the consequences of these kinds of things
is going to be.
>>>I
wrote a song called "I Belong to a World That's Destroying
Itself" in 1969. That was 20 years ago. It's getting worse,
not better. People are victims of habit. It's very difficult
to break behaviour patterns. Not many people are able or willing
to take the effort to do that. Unless it becomes a socially accepted
lifestyle to change your behaviour patterns very quickly, I can't
feel too positive.
BR: Maybe we'll just blindly end up poisoning ourselves.
AP: Yeah, or people will end up dying by disease more and more.
There is so much pollution in the environment, and the body can
eliminate only so much, and withstand so much assault. Your system
becomes weakened by the environment. Of course, that's another
way of eliminating the population, of dealing with another crisis,
especially here in England.
BR: But there alternatives around...
AP: Yes, it is now socially acceptable and economically viable.
In Safeway you can buy organically grown foods now. It's still
a very small quantity. Five years ago Thatcher said she was going
to remove the lead from petrol b1990, and she's still on schedule.
But she's being pressured by the public to do it, because these
concerns are becoming popular issues. Change is happening faster
than it's ever happened before, because people are genuinely
frightened. Also, there is a lot of profit to be made by going
green.
BR: Business says, "Go Green!" because they can
make greenbacks.
AP: It's up to people to say they're going to support green products.
Here on television almost every day there is some kind of green
issue being discussed, and information is being brought to the
fore. But you go into health food shops and they're still not
stocking organic products. It doesn't make sense. There's no
intelligence behind it.
>>>People
are in the habit of buying a certain brand. It's very difficult
for them to change. You have to make a conscious effort to do
that each time, before it becomes unconscious and automatic.
That's very difficult for people living in a very stressful world
who have to stay on their toes all day long -- it's so competitive
and tough out there. It takes an incredible amount of stamina,
mental agility to survive.
BR: How do you spend your days in Berkshire?
AP: I spend most of my time protecting myself from the environment.
There was a scare here recently about dangerous levels of aluminum
in the water, which causes brain damage in large doses.
>>>They
also put large supplies of chemicals in the water to eliminate
some kind of mite. They didn't notify anybody about it because
they said it was harmless.
>>>I'm
bent on a protective path, because you can't trust anybody. I
get my vegetables from people I know who grow them. We don't
eat fish anymore because you can't trust the oceans over here.
BR: Well, judging from the news, like the Alaska oil spill,
you've got good reason...
AP: We just can't afford things like that anymore. They have
to pass legislation for horrendous fines for people in business
that will absolutely bankrupt them if they do this. Then they'll
be pressured to take safety measures that are foolproof. This
is very serious. It's life or death for everybody.
BR: Your line "No nookie till the nukes are gone"
reminds me of Aristophanes' play The Lysistrata.
AP: It's a very basic elemental power that women have over men.
It's the only threat that men will listen to. If there was just
a sexual strike throughout the world... there's nothing that
grabs a man's attention faster than withholding or offering sexual
favours. Sexual politics I think it's called.
 >>>As for women's liberation, we seem to be going
in the opposite direction now. The offspring of the 1960s generation
are very right wing. They are a conservative consumer society.
I don't like that. >>>Take women's liberation, for example. There
has been so much information and education about it, and still
attitudes haven't changed that much. They're still crying the
same blues. It's a subtle thing for women, insidious. Women have
had so many roles in the relationship with men as they're growing
up, so it requires so many strata of awareness and behaviour.
Mothers have to reject all the behaviour patterns they grew up
with. Unless your very survival depends on it, people won't change.
Even then it doesn't matter sometimes. A lot of people know that
smoking can kill them and they continue smoking.
BR: In the first verse of "Elect Yourself" you seem
to be criticizing youth.
AP: I'm not criticizing them. I'm just defining them. I can't
pass judgment because I was that age as well, and I might have
been pretty fascist as well. But then, I didn't have a generation
of proven success as a group of youth who were able to wield
such political power. Who were able to bring down the government
of the most powerful nation in the world at the time.
>>>It
has been proven that youth can collectively effect great change.
The power to do that is historical. For them not to use that
power is a great tragedy. They've just reverted back to the way
it was before, to the 1950s generation, to the time of affluence,
a time of just having fun.
>>>This
is the great emotional crisis of out tome. How to come to terms
with the world we're living in. Each person has to find their
own way. Many people don't take it personally and think it's
happening out there, and not to them. That's totally untrue,
and they must realize that. Unless they're just braindead zoids
walking around, they must realize there is this discrepancy between
the way they would prefer it to be and the way it really is.
>>>The
people who are aware just try to survive every day within those
thousands of shocks going on around them.
>>>Once
you're aware it's your natural instinct to collect information
in order to survive. At first you're shocked by it, but then
you accept the fact that every 45 minutes or so a new piece of
information comes in that could lead to insurmountable catastrophe.
>>>You
feel helpless because you know that the people who are in power
are not so concerned with the legitimate priorities. It takes
so much effort for them just to continue the machine -- to keep
the economy going and manage the running of a country. For them
to start assuming responsibility for the environment and the
whole world's environment, because you can't think about your
own patriotic little patch anymore, it takes a complete reorganization
of approach. Governments haven't even begun to take this into
consideration. Every government should have ecology committees
and representatives. There should be an ecological United Nations
which is meeting continually to set down legislation.
BR: What about Swedish Prime Minister Gro Bruntland's much-discussed
Sustainable Development and The Bruntland Report. you know, economics
and environment cannot be sacrificed at the other's expense.
Do you agree with her assessment?
AP: It makes perfect sense. A woman's logic. Women think is terms
of maintaining. There are exceptions, like Thatcher, who thinks
like a man. But that can be admirable too, in the lack of sentimentality
and so forth.
BR: Over here in Canada, our Prime Minister Brian Mulroney
has endorsed The Bruntland Report, has won an award for his commitment
to environment issues, but then he has cut the environment budget
by 60 per cent over four years.
AP: Politicians don't think past their terms of office. They
can't think 50 generations ahead, but rather their own lifetime.
Most people have trouble thinking beyond today. It's the nature
of the way the human brain works. It has so much potential to
achieve. That's what's dangerous about it. There are no restrictions
on the level of enthusiasm. That's the thing about capitalism.
It's a great theory, but it's very extreme. If you can make any
amount of money, you will make any amount of money, at any cost.
>>>Bruntland
doesn't have as big a profile as Thatcher or Bush. If she did,
she could get a marketing machine working for her. Spend a lot
of money promoting and publicizing principles. Putting them into
action and showing that the work. It might become popular to
behave in that kind of way for heads of state, and therefore
we might be able to have real change.
BR: I get the impression you have a problem with men.
AP: They obviously have a need to create. They're inspired and
they don't have the same physiological satisfaction that a woman
fundamentally has by creating life within her own being. Obviously,
though, that experience for a woman makes her realize how ephemeral
life really is, how precious it really is because of what she's
gone though to conceive and protect it.
>>>Also,
giving birth trains a woman's mind to think laterally and in
terms of cause and effect. [Annette was raising a toddler at
the time of this interview.] A woman has to basically be a genius
to keep a child alive through to the age of five. You have to
think ahead, because anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
Murphy's Law. You follow through consequences all the way. If
you don't think like that your child won't survive. That's all
there is to it.
>>>Men,
as a rule, don't think that way. They're very goal-oriented.
They focus on one thing at a time, and put the thrust of all
their energy toward concentrating on attaining that particular
goal. They move straight ahead towards it, very fast, with a
lot of momentum and vitality. They get things done, manifest
change. But they're not cautious. They don't often think of the
consequences of the actions they are taking.
>>>We
need men and women working together to achieve a balance of sorts.
Women move more cautiously, so if change is going to happen at
the tempo it needs to happen to turn things from destruction
to conservation, then we need that male force. But we also need
that female force to maintain and sustain things and put the
male force in check.
Bill Reynolds is editor-in-chief
of eye Weekly, Toronto's weekly newspaper.
Bill Reynolds <reynolds@eye.net>
"Essential Toronto"
http://www.eye.net
http://www.eye.net/torontorockhistory/jimihendrix
|
