Jeremy Cunningham (b.1965) is bass player and a founding member of The Levellers, as well as being a visual artist in his own right. During the 1990s The Levellers, and most especially their 1991 album Levelling the Land, became a phenomenon. The group were punk-influenced folk-rockers whose songs were often polemic and political. It was no coincidence that their main flush of popularity was during the premiership of John Major. They became a focus for anti-government feeling, especially among those affiliated with the travelling and festival communities (remember Major’s “New age travellers? Not in this age. Not in any age” speech from the 1992 Tory conference).

The band have put out eleven albums, eight of them Top 40 hits, including their latest, We The Collective, an acoustic re-rendering of highlights from their back catalogue, with a couple of new numbers thrown in. It made No.12 in the UK album charts earlier this month. To this day, their 1994 appearance at the Glastonbury Festival remains one of the biggest crowds ever drawn to the Pyramid Stage and in 2003 they launched their own Beautiful Days Festival in Devon, which has gone on to great success.

While Cunningham would be the first to point out that the band is a collective effort with no member more important than any other, his dreadlocked form seems emblematic of The Levellers and what they represent. He was, after all, the only member of the band to adopt, for some years, an itinerant road-living lifestyle. I meet him in the Metway, the band’s Brighton headquarters, also home to their record label On The Fiddle. With his reddish dreads piled high on his head, he sips herbal tea on a sofa. He has a presence that is both gentle and fierce, edgy yet friendly and forthright, punctuating his conversation with a distinctive cackle.

THOMAS H GREEN: What was the thinking behind the new acoustic album?

JEREMY CUNNINGHAM: Basically we’d pretty much written three quarters of a new electric Levellers album and came to a standstill. We wanted a crowbar that would kick us over creatively, to be able to move onto the next phase. Because it was coming up to our 30^th anniversary the powers-that-be were very keen on us doing an acoustic album, rearranging the old songs, putting a few new ones on as well.

What was it like working with John Leckie [famed producer of Stone Roses, Radiohead, Muse and others]?

Really good, he’s a lovely man. On our first day together his eyeball fell out [laughs]. It wasn’t quite as dramatic as that! We were playing through stuff and his retina got detached. He had to be rushed to hospital and lay in a strange position for ten days before he could come back, so we got on with it ourselves, did the major arranging. By the time he came back with his eyeball back in place we played him the songs and he was like, “They’re all shit! That’s shit! That’s rubbish!” He wasn’t quite as blunt as that but he is quite blunt and we like that. Me and Mark said, “Is there anything you do like?” He ummed and ahhed. We went through all the songs we were going to play really thoroughly with him doing a bit of musical guidance. We want our producers to give us musical guidance - they just can’t fuck with the lyrics. He was really good. As soon as we all got to know each other a bit better, even some of the songs he didn’t like, he appreciated why we wanted to do them and started to work on them with enthusiasm. We only work with producers that become the seventh member of the band otherwise there’s no point. You might as well just get an engineer. For this album we needed guidance and we’re massive fans of him and the records he’s done.

Is he doing your new studio album proper?

Quite probably.

Tell us about the two new songs on We The Collective, “The Shame” and “Drug Bust McGee”.

“The Shame” was written immediately after the body of that little Syrian child washed up on that Greek island. Simon wrote the song. He was just appalled – “I’m going to write this song and put everyone to shame.” In the meantime I’d written a song kind of about it as well but he came back really quickly with the complete song and it pissed all over what I’d done so that was one of the first songs, all written for the new electric Levellers album. They were ones we thought most appropriate to use in this situation. He played it to Leckie and he was like, “Fuck, that doesn’t need any work done, just sing it.” Mark wrote “Drug Bust McGee” at a very similar time, about undercover police getting involved with protesters, deeply embedded, having kids with them, then bolting and the women concerned having the rug completely pulled from under their feet.

Watch the video for "Shame" by The Levellers

What book are you currently reading?

I read history. I’m reading two actually. My main field is I’m very into early medieval history. I’m reading The Dictionary of Irish Saints by Pádraig O Riain, a very famous early medieval scholar. Then I’m reading, on and off, a massive 900 page commentary on The Book of Revelations from The Bible. It's by Craig Koester, the Anchor Bible Commentary. It’s amazing, not religious, it’s a historical commentary.

They sound quite heavy, those books.

Oh, they’re weighty. I’ve been reading for 20 years about this stuff.

The Levellers have a special relationship with their fans. Is that a fair thing to say?

It’s a nice thing to say. I’d like to think so.

It seems to exist outside the parameters of the usual fan/musician relationships…

I think that’s why they like it. We’re just normal. We go out and drink in the same pubs. We don’t really give a fuck about all that. We learnt our lesson early from bands like The Clash. Joe Strummer, who we were lucky enough to play with, said, “My ego destroyed this band and I should have kept in touch with the people that mattered,” so we were always very conscious of that and still are. We do a festival each year – Beautiful Days – and the fans are the shareholders.

What was it like working with film director Alex Cox on the video for “Too Real”?

Brilliant. Love Alex Cox, he’s amazing. We were big fans of his from Repo Man then he did Sid and Nancy. Around that time he was introducing an alternative film thing on the telly – Moviedrome – and we went, “Oh, maybe he’d be interested.” We didn’t know him but liked his general vibe. We asked him and he was all over it. Not only the video; he hung about for quite a long time and got deeply involved. The “Too Real” thing, he wanted to film it in Liverpool, his home town. It gave him an excuse to get some of his mates in – and some of ours. it was an absolute pleasure.

Watch the video for "Too Real" by The Levellers, directed by and featuring Alex Cox

[Noticing poster on wall for Levellers documentary A Curious Life] I haven’t seen that…

That’s my mum and dad in the poster. The film was done by Dunstan Bruce who used to be singer in Chumbawamba. He was with us about three years, just hanging out. It ended up with me being the main one in it but that was only because Mark had just had a baby, Jon [Sevink, Leveller's fiddle-player] was moving, and everyone was busy. I ended up being the narrator but it’s about the band. Dunstan got heavily involved. We were touring a lot at that point. He did blogs with us, live blogs on tour. That was eight years ago now, when he started it. The film came out in 2015.

In the late Nineties I had an enjoyable relationship with China Records and the music they released. It was home to yourselves, Morcheeba, The Egg, Zion Train and others. That changed when they were bought by Warner Brothers. How was it for you?

We didn’t know anything about it, we just suddenly found ourselves on Warners. It was basically because Derek [Green, China MD] ran out of money due to a messy divorce, sold the company to Warners. They really wanted Morcheeba and we were kind of a bit of a bonus but they didn’t really know what to do with us. We found ourselves on a major label writing the most obscure leftfield album we’ve probably ever written and it all came on top. We hated it and bought ourselves out of the contract. It cost us a lot of money and they were glad to see us go as I don’t think we made them any money either.

What is The Levellers relationship with the States, in the sense of, how does the band go down there?

In some parts very well but in terms of making an impact it would be like a mosquito on a giant, the impact we’ve made on the States.

But if you tour there you pull a crowd?

Yeah, yeah, the last one we did we went to specific areas we knew we’d be well-received, which is mainly the cities of the north-east and down to Washington DC. We’re not talking big shows, we’re talking 500 capacity, maybe a little more in New York. But when you get to the Midwest it’s a different country.

Some of those states, while they have weird politics, the music culture is very folk/roots orientated, so you’d have thought The Levellers would go down well. They like a good hoedown.

They do but they don’t like politics. We really confused them down there by having a fiddle player and a guy playing electric guitar and singing about radical stuff. They just couldn’t get their heads round it. We thought it would be a great fit. We went out there to support Public Enemy and Rage Against the Machine, two great bands, we just went down like the proverbial lead balloon.

Like in The Blues Brothers, in a cage with beer bottle being hurled at you?

Not quite that bad but getting onto it. It’s one of the only shows I’ve seen Mark just walk off stage; “Fuck you cunts” and he just walked off. That has never really happened before or since. And that was in Nashville the home of country music. It was educational, definitely.

Very few bands that have been around for any time have mixed age groups of fans. How about The Levellers?

There’s a broad spread. Because we’ve been going for so long, it’s the people who got into us in the ‘90s… and then their kids. There’s a surprising amount of young people, then there’s a lot of older fans and some original guys who came and saw us when we were unknown. People get their own lives, drift off, then come back. Its mental and it’s lovely. I’ve done it myself with bands. You can meet your mates and have a beer, that’s half what it’s about for the older guys. The younger ones just want to be blown away by a great live show.

Very few successful bands retain the same line-up, decade after decade, but you lot have have. Is there a secret to your longevity?

Yeah, the total is bigger than the sum of its parts and we’re very aware of that. Ever since the start we’ve all been paid equally, we distribute everything equally, doesn’t matter who wrote the song, so we don’t argue about money. We’re very aware that the noise we make is bigger than any individual.

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Overleaf: watch the video for the single "Drug Bust McGee" by The Levellers

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Middleton first came to the attention of music fans as a member of pithy indie observational duo Arab Strap with Aidan Moffat. By the time they wound down in 2006, he had already launched a solo career defined by literate, downbeat indie/acoustic songs. He released five albums in this vein then changed musical direction, swerving into the more abstract, experimental Human Don’t Be Angry project. In 2014 he made the foul-mouthed, funny Music and Words album with the artist David Shrigley, and in 2016, after a seven-year break, he released a new solo album, Summer of ’13, only this time bedded in his own brand of off-kilter electro-pop.

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Listen to "The Ballad of Fuck All" by Malcolm Middleton

THOMAS H GREEN: Are you and David Shrigley friends?

MALCOLM MIDDLETON: We did the album in 2014 but we’ve been mates for longer. He did the artwork for my album A Brighter Beat in 2007 (pictured below right) so we’ve known each other since then. I originally got in touch with him because I liked one of his photographs and wanted to use it for an album cover. I emailed him and he came round. The plan was to do a new piece for the album cover and we tried a few things but I wasn’t really into them so we went with the balloon image.

What are your plans for the Brighton Festival show?

It won’t be anything unique. I don’t do unique. He’s asked me to come down and play an acoustic show of my songs.

I thought you’d knocked acoustic shows on the head?

Did I say that? I probably did. I think that was back in 2009-10. I got a bit sick of it so I did some Human Don’t Be Angry stuff and the David Shrigley record, then I did my half-electronic album a couple of years ago, so I certainly knocked it on the head for a while, but in the last year I’ve been picking up the guitar a bit more and enjoying it. Saying that, I’m just going into the studio to record a new album which is song-based, but apart from this Shrigley thing in Brighton I’m not really into the idea of playing the songs live too much. Sitting on stage with an acoustic guitar doesn’t really thrill me. Even though I’ve done the record I’m not too much into doing live stuff.

But on a practical level isn’t that how you earn money?

Not really. It can be. I like writing songs and recording them but I don’t like performing them. I’m trying to think of other ways to do music that isn’t sitting with my guitar on stage.

I recently bought a 2004 7” single of yours, “Ryanair Song/7” Cigarette”, that isn’t on any album. How did that come about?

I have fond memories of that. A guy called René over in Amsterdam had this label, Nowhere Fast Records, and he wanted something original after my first album came out. They were songs that were quite throwaway and “Ryanair Song” was quite funny and youthful, even though I wasn’t that young. They sound raw because they were recorded in my house… badly.

What is your impression of Brighton?

There isn’t anything much I can say, on the record. The first time I went was in ‘96-‘97 when we [Arab Strap] supported Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, or maybe it was Mogwai, Last summer Arab Strap played there and we had a day off so we went down the beach; however, we’d come straight from Scotland and weren’t dressed for sun, sitting there in black jeans and black shirts.

Listen to "Solemn Thirsty" by Malcolm Middleton

What book are you currently reading?

Oh God, do I have to say? I’m reading a book called How to Stop Time by Matt Haig. My wife gave me it. It’s a Sunday Times bestseller which I wouldn’t normally pick up because it’s got an introduction by Richard & Judy but I’m enjoying it as throwaway pulp. It’s kind of a thriller about a guy who doesn’t age very quickly.

For your last solo album. Summer of ’13, you worked with the electronic artist Miaoux Miaoux and it was a much more synth-led work than anything you’d done before. Will we be seeing more of that?

I hope not. There are a couple of songs on my new solo album that are electronic things but I’m trying to stay away from it. It’s always hard talking about your previous release because you need 10 years to go back to it and warm to it. Right now I’m not that keen on it but at the time I remember thinking it was good, just before I released it. After that, it involved me learning how to play keyboards for about three months, fiddling about with leads and stuff, which I didn’t enjoy, so I’ve knocked all that on the head.

How would you feel about a jukebox musical being made from your songs?

I’m not sure that’s possible. The songs don’t have that vibe where they could be played at family fun days. I don’t have a repertoire of happy songs so people sometimes book me but then look at me as if to say, “Why are you playing these songs?” while I just think, these are the songs that I write. I can’t imagine there being any need for a musical or it being that popular. You think of a musical being something to go and see and enjoy and I don’t think my songs are about enjoyment. Maybe some of the songs… maybe you could look into that and come back to me…

Finally, when you look at the drawing of you on the album Waxing Gibbous (pictured above left), do you like it?

No, no, but, also I can’t not like it, it’s of its time. It’s better than the first version which looked a bit more like Frank Bruno. I like it, it’s funny. I showed my son it and he didn’t even know it was me, didn’t recognise it. I like the way the art was done but its certainly not an iconic cover.

• Find out more about Brighton Festival 2018

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