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 jeffrey lewis interview and session
 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.Home boy. We're in Battersea Park, the balmy spell of Indian summer broken by the screams of children dressed as fairies and superheroes, playing upon the Peace Pagoda. Moments earlier, New York singer/songwriter and comic book creator Jeffrey Lewis and his friend Helen Schreiner had treated our cameras and a smattering of curious promenaders to a couple of punk rock covers and a song-lecture upon The History Of Writing, illustrated by Jeffrey's own comic-book panels. But before the duo could clamber down to terra firma, pint-sized escapees from a nearby birthday party clambered up the Pagoda, drawn to Jeffrey's performance as though he were the Pied Piper. Jeffrey's banking upon this charisma to win unsold ears over to the uncompromising brilliance of Crass, the anarcho-pacifist punk collective who proved so epochal during the punk era. "Reading through Crass' lyrics, they're just so smart," Jeffrey marvels. "They're like fully fleshed-out theses upon the problems we have, offering ways to confront those problems, and better ways of existing." Jeffrey has been a Crass fan since his skinhead college room-mate played him their 1978 single Do They Owe Us A Living?, but understands they are an acquired taste. "We were on tour, listening to some live Crass recordings, a particular blitz of noise. The non-Crass fan in the van couldn't understand this barrage of aggression. I was trying to explain how fantastic the songs were, and got the idea to re-record the songs solo, with my acoustic guitar." Upon discovering how well these songs lent themselves to these new arrangements, Jeffrey decamped to a friend's studio and spent several months recording his new album, 12 Crass Songs, re-imagining these legendary punk screeds as endearingly lopsided, adventurous, playful noise-folk. "I'm trying to keep the spirit of the originals, but translate them for a new audience," he explains. "Songwriting transcends the boundaries of style. But then I've always been more content-over-style. Maybe because I have no style..."  This, of course, is nonsense, as Jeff's beguiling records and comics attest. Not-exactly-fresh off that morning's flight from New York, Jeffrey yawns in the sunlight. He admits he'd rather be at home drawing comic books; but then, he grins, he'd always rather be at home drawing comic books. "I guess that people who don't feel the need to prove the worth of their existence doing creative stuff probably have a higher sense of self-esteem," he laughs. "If I'm not making something that I'm happy with, what else would I be happy with?"
Stevie Chick
Jeffrey Lewis - 12 Crass Songs, released 01 October 07 on Rough Trade.
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