Belle & Sebastian‘s STUART MURDOCH slammed Primal Scream‘s recent political stance as “bullshit” at a fan club question and answer session in LONDON last night.
Murdoch was talking yesterday (May 3) at London‘s trendy Ten Rooms bar, where the band held the meeting to promote the release of their new album ‘Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant’, which is released on June 5 through Jeepster.
His tirade came after he was asked whether bands today should be more active and vocal in their beliefs – an indirect criticism that the band don’t use their position enough as a political platform. But Stuart stormed that music was the most important aspect of a band, as opposed to what they stood for. He said: “I think self-conscious anything is a danger. For instance The Stone Roses. They got fame and started doing interviews and they started to get a bit self-conscious and to me that’s rubbish. What they had at the start was magic and powerful.
“Primal Scream is another one. I haven’t really heard their recent records, I think they give it a bit of standing up on soap boxes…it definitely does not appeal to me. I don’t want a party political broadcast on behalf of the Primal Scream party. It’s just bullshit, do you know what I mean? What’s important to me is Velocity Girl“.
nme.com approached Murdoch following the press conference, and pointed out that he himself spoke at a Socialist Worker meeting in Glasgow late last year, a political group who believe in direct action – the kind of direct action that Primal Scream‘s Bobby Gillespie, along with Asian Dub Foundation, comedian Mark Thomas and author Irvine Welsh took part in when they chained themselves to the Home Office in November last year to campaign for the release of Satpal Ram, an Asian man jailed 13 years ago after stabbing a man following a racist attack.
But Murdoch retalitated: “We do it in our own way, but we live in Scotland, I’m in the fucking street, fucking spraying the walls, you don’t fucking know about that, I’m not going to come down here and fucking talk about it. That’s my own way, it doesn’t have to be on the cover of the NME.
“I don’t know much about what the Scream are up to but the feeling I have recently having loved them in the past is that I stand by what I said. Obviously we’ve got a lot more in common with Primal Scream than with 99.9% of other bands and I used to absolutely love them and that’s why I feel I have to say something.
“I’ve only heard little snippets of the new stuff and I don’t like it, none of my friends like it either. I think it’s great if you do it well, but the art is the most important thing.”
Also at the press conference, the band told reporters that they would not be playing at this year’s Glastonbury Festival, but were lining up some UK dates for later in the year.
The band’s new single ‘Legal Man’, which does not feature on the new album, is released on May 22, also through Jeepster.