Brown Inbound Interview #3: Benny Farrar [CROWN COURT]

There are very few people in the world who upon meeting them for the first time, you simply cannot forget. If someone were to ask me a High Fidelity-style top 5 larger than life characters question, I wouldn't have to go any further than Benny Farrar to claim an instant spot on my list. Benny quite literally is larger than life and I seem to forget just how big the guy actually is, which I'm reminded by every time our paths do cross. The first time I met him, we were going home from some gig and were the only two pundits making the journey South of the river. Benny lights up a fag on the tube platform, as calm as you like, stamps it out once the train arrives and disappears into the Southside vortex. Crown Court were an important band, no question. They single-handedly brought Oi music out of the clutches of the old and deranged, plummeting back into a contemporary setting that the genre had long since been a stranger to. Benny was the final ingredient in bringing phenomenal lead guitar playing to the group and I've been looking forward to doing this interview ever since I started the series...

Hi Benny, thanks for agreeing to do this interview with me. I'm going to start with some quick questions about yourself starting with your family background, could you give us a quick history? 

Yes brav. Honour and a priv. My family background is rather standard issue for SE London. Caribbean father, Celtic mother. My parents met in N.I, both were in the army. My mother was stationed there and my father was boxing in the army. My mum comes from a family of police and coal miners and grew up in deep Yorkshire with Scottish parents. My father was a jack of many. Body builder/hired muscle/reggae musician. I have some(?) siblings and was raised entirely by women. 

Did your parents listen to a lot of music growing up at home? What kind? 

I was raised on my mum’s music. My mum has the worst taste in music but I have a soft spot for it all. We are talking Simply Red greatest hits on repeat for most of the early 90s spliced with the Beautiful South and KD Lang. My Father's musical influence was never far away growing up, at home I was pretty typically displaying weird only child behaviours from the get go and had taken to knocking about in the loft on me own from like the age of 6, 7 and 8. Early doors either way. Up there was a few suitcases and a couple of bass guitars. In the suitcases were many, many dubs. 7s. Many, many of which he’d laid down the wobble lines on. That's where it begins. That and The Strokes.  

Were they into alternative or punk music at all? 

Not at all. What so ever. Both equally as disapproving. My aunty, Carolyn is the punk of the family. She also served in the army with my mum but left early, moved down to London and dived straight into the squatting scene in Brixton and Camberwell. She was the one who used to come and collect me from the nick when I was unfit to interview, getting pinched out of my tree on trips at 14 and that. Silly bollocks. She had time for silly bollocks ha.

What was your perception of punk/oi if you had any as a child or adolescent before you fell into the subculture? Did you see it a certain way that clashed with your identity or place in your community before you came to know more about it?

 

Simply Red letting us know that the 'Greatest Hits' is
always the best album. The ginger star, loved nationally by mums,
has been spending his lockdown ranking the top "coolest cultures"

I used to bunk off school and mime playing these guitars to the music video channels. Only child init. This is like early days yeah, last year of primary school and going into secondary school so like 11/12? I liked the punk stuff more. Big up the P-Rock gang. I always saw the music as Either very British or Very American. I had and still do have a very binary outlook on life. Two simple choices. I liked guitar music so it was; Punk or Metal? Easy! UK or US? I know which I’ll be thanking you very much. 

You're a great guitar player what got you learning to play and were there any guitarists that influenced you? What were the musical, aesthetic and cultural influences that you have taken from most when presenting your art?

 Aw thank you mate I've just gone all hot on me ears and cold in me fingers at the praise. Playing instruments has always just come very easily to me without ever trying very hard or wanting it very much and I think it has showed! Played with some bad boy/gal musicians in my time and they all made me better. Some Greek fella after a show in Brighton one time said I played not with my head or my heart but with my balls. He came a long way with a friend just to see us. The accent lent a great deal of gravity to the statement but till this day that's still the case. Aesthetically have had fun with and been exposed to so many cultures, subcultures and revivalism too. Always had my own very black British, very South London take on things though. Steadfast and stout.  

What was your first and/or most memorable experience of racism?

Gonna have to cop out. But I will say this. I've been going up to Yorkshire and Glasgow with just my mum since birth. I know the difference between evil and ignorance. I wouldn't recall 80-year-old women at a bus stop in early 90s Barnsley as evil for cooing over and tussling my curly hair. Ignorant. But not evil. 

Being a lump has made me quite attuned to reading the unsaid and spotting people swallowing it for a quiet life. because I’ve never really been the one. By virtue of this I have to add, I would never baulk at another POCs experiences of racism and just accept that because of my gender and physicality I haven't had the rawest deal. Saying that something that's been fairly unique to my upbringing has always been equally accepted in black and white households of friends as family. I've heard what's said behind both doors. 

How did you eventually find out about punk and oi and what was the process that eventually got you going to shows and playing in bands?

South London. You know how it is man. 

What people did you gravitate towards when you began going to shows? Did the social aspect of it affect how you experienced the scene? The people you were surrounded by? 

It was more of a thing that all me pals just happened to get into music at the same time I guess nights out were going to watch awful local nu-metal bands at a couple of pubs in Bromley. Full of kids. It was mental they never got shut down. It was as organic as could be I suppose. Since those days it seems most friends I have been introduced to through playing music. Wild init. Ain't had to learn much new socially that I didn't already know. 

When you first started going to shows were there any bands with ethnic minority members or other people at shows that made you feel more comfortable in their presence or did you not really think about it?

Flirta D was a member of NW ogs, SLK.
The Hype! Hype! video is a pure Channel U classic.
Check out 'Warp Speed' for Flirta D's best solo song.

Just me though I didn't really think much about it to be honest. I knew where the black kids were. And I’d chosen not to be there. I used to go about with a grime crew in like 2005/6. I had bars ha. We used to do Cold.Fm up North and Ontop.FM in South the energy was wild. Went to a young man standing at Stratford Rex and I found out how much one of the top bikers on the event was getting paid and thought fuck this, am gonna do music that pays (LOOOOOOL).

But this was a time when the police were just locking off all the events so there really didn't feel like there was any future in that kind of music. It took another 10 years for people to learn how to squeeze a quid out of the British urban music scene. 

The top biller was Flirta D. Few of those boys used to cut about with are still doing variants of that music and doing really well, am proud. 

I'm not very well versed in all the non-musical elements of the oi scene but it goes without saying, it’s had its fair share of racial controversy over the years. I’ve heard several Crown Court stories regarding trouble at gigs to do with Nazis. Should we still be worried about the whole racist skinhead/Blood and Honour movement or does racism manifest itself in more dangerous ways at present? Did it ever affect your involvement in going to gigs or do people outside of the scene make a much bigger deal than need be? 

Oi music I thought was the buzz that I was missing from doing guitar music in safer spaces and the only time I’d felt anything near the edginess of early days grime. Grime was more punk than punk. As in it was a room full of angry young men in a smelly dingy room where you could very quickly get fucked up badly and all there because of the music. After that everything else felt a bit tame but the skinhead thing was a good time and has always spoken to my very working class values. Real life nazis are a myth. Haven’t seen one brave enough to ever pipe up to me but that being said I was told I have my own thread on that white power website/forum where Brian Bird and the other old duffers congregate. There’s been some scuffs but nothing to shout about. The Cavendish gig was fun. (white) Pride comes before a fall hahahha.

 (me kicking B-Squadron out of London)

 I would like to state very obviously that nothing about Crown Court was ever racial. I also want to recount the time I was being my usual loud self and regaled a story to one of me bestest boys up at New River In quite an excitable way because had just arrived and the timing and cadence of my voice made the word NIGGER carry really far and really wide and quicker than you could say Corbyn, there was like 50 bods spun round on the spot spoiling for some proper social justicing. The unspent energy and confusion was hilarious to me. 

There’s a lot of discussion among people about the separation of the art and the artist? Do you think it’s possible to consume and enjoy art made by people with political or social views that are ugly and in opposition to your own? Is it on a case by case basis?

Benny and Trev in Crown Court. I only ever saw CC
twice and both times it was nothing short of intimidating.

Tough one this. Truthfully, I’ll play Jackson songs until I die. And have never seen anything redeeming about Screwdriver. If its shit then its shit init. 

How have things changed for the ethnic minority involvement in punk and oi since you started going to gigs? Is there a noticeable difference, have things got better or worse? I know that you are a father yourself, would this scene be somewhere you would take your child? Could it be made safer? does it need to be?

It's safe as houses and probably something I'd encourage the boy to become interested in. A lot of people with open minds which is a long chalk better than the other sort. Alternative culture ain’t that alternative no more so it's not so much of a thing to nail your flag these days unless I'm wrong and I'm just that far indoctrinated. 

Tell me about the sketchiest/wildest gig you've been to that comes to mind.

Looooool we played some thingy bob in Bratislava. Mate. Hairy. I ended up drinking this evil syrup called borovica or something mental like that with this huge Polish bonehead covered in all the tatts. He didn't speak a word of English. But we couldn't stop cuddling each other. Homoerotic tae fuck. I had a good time. But don’t think I'd have been there as a punter. Me and Trevor ended up staying out out but I don't think the rest of the boys could have bounced any quicker, I don't blame em hahahah.

Lastly, do you have any new musical endeavours you will be undertaking in future? I know you have been focusing a lot more on your boxing career at present, will we see you pursuing this more full time and music taking a back seat?

I will one day sing. Like a fucking bird Ben. Like a bird. 

Any last words or anything you want to air, please do!

Stay strong cunts. They are trying to kill us.