Beats of Freedom (2010) - full transcript
A history of Polish rock and independence.
Police officers! Move into
action! Arrest anyone who resists!
Each thing has its form, lizard, leaf, tree,
Water in the seas, as if cast under a spell
Fire in the hearthplace safely burning
Earth spins in its orbit, locked in the word
Explosion
Explosion
Defendant Dolewski testifies.
He claims he was not the one
who raised the price of school
notebooks by 300 percent.
Dolewski and Rozmanit
were sentenced to death.
The march of friendship will never be stayed
Not by high mountains, not by deep seas
I'm the same age as
the Palace of Culture.
My strongest memory of the
place was the Rolling Stones.
It was April 13, 1967. Along with ticketholders,
maybe ten or fifteen thousand young people came
and gathered round the building,
because they just wanted to be there.
The Rolling Stones came for one
day only, and tickets ran out.
But even those with a
ticket couldn't hear much.
From the very beginning, rock music was more
than just the music, more than just songs.
First, it expressed a certain
dissatisfaction with the world around us.
Second, it stirred people to
take action and change things.
At Thine altars we raise our supplication:
Bring freedom, 0 Lord, once more to this nation
Strange is this world
Where there's still So much evil
And strange it is
That for so many years
Man has despised man
Strange this world,
The world of human affairs,
It's shameful to admit
But so often it is That an evil word
Kills like a knife
But there are more people of
good will And I firmly believe
That because of them
This world will not die
No! No! No!
Hippies were people who wanted to be free in
an unfree country, in their appearance at least,
so their freedom often met with a quick response from
the authorities, people on the street, the schools.
They were trying to carve out
some freedom forthemselves,
but freedom in their way of being, not
political freedom, in this totalitarian world.
But it was instantly interpreted
as political by the powers that be.
According to the powers of the time, these
were people who had no place on the streets.
Things often ended with temporary
arrests, forty-eight hours in lockup.
You always come to
me As darkness alights
You light the river's
rainbow Burst into the night
Lublin was full of characters that were
really colorful, considering the times.
0ne time the commies
did a really funny thing.
Nixon was supposed to be coming to Poland
and he was supposed to visit Lublin.
So they rounded them all
up and gave them haircuts.
The Party ordered the security
services to carry out the operation.
I managed to locate the instructions they
wrote about how to break up the movement.
It was mostly by expelling people
who were studying at university,
forcing them to join the army,
intimidating their parents.
In music I was looking for freedom. Whatever
music it was, jazz, rock, or any other kind.
I was looking for freedom,
and for me that freedom
was about finding an outlet through which you could
express your emotions in a completely uninhibited way
Like Hendrix did, like Coltrane.
You said in a recent radio
interview that in the sixties,
while the band Czerwone Gitary were
singing "Because you're afraid of mice,"
Bob Dylan was singing about much more important
things. That remark caused a lot of controversy...
I don't understand why
it was controversial.
I wasn't telling a lie. I don't remember any
songs about what was really happening in Poland
in the sixties and seventies
- for obvious reasons, right? You couldn't sing songs like that.
Beyond a forest of anger and falsehood
Beyond a mountain of fear is our love
Strange, strange, strange, strange times
Strange, strange, strange, strange times
We're against everything
that is against us.
Against everything that in
any way limits our own freedom.
How can we not speak about pessimism when so
many strange things are happening in the world,
when it's ruled by such
strange politicians.
You keep shouting at me
It's crowded everywhere
No one can breathe with liberty
No one can die with dignity
I'm tired already
I'm tired already I've
had enough of you all
These are times of killers
of fools and dealers
emptiness in every face on
the beach there's no more place
I'm tired already I'm tired already
I'm tired already I've
had enough of you all
We're waiting, we're
waiting, we're waiting
The first stage is won, but the
second stage is much, much harder.
I'm actually afraid of it.
There are bound to be slips, someone's bound to try and lead us astray
- that's the truth of it.
But we won't let them, because
we all take responsibility.
Not me on my own, but all of us together,
that's strength, that's power, and we will do it.
Forthe first time under
communism in Poland
there was close collaboration between
the intelligentsia and the workers,
and the authorities failed to divide them.
That was the source of strength of the strike.
We are many, we are many,
we are many, we are many
They are few, they are few,
they are few, they are few
They're afraid of us, of our music without
words They're afraid to sleep at night
They're afraid when they see two of us
They're afraid of themselves, of all of us
We want to be ourselves,
to at last be ourselves
We want to be ourselves,
to always be ourselves
We want to keep rocking
We want to keep rocking
The mood that could be expressed in songs
showed me it was possible to be a free person.
And it was something
that couldn't be stopped.
Like when you show someone
a beautiful new invention,
and new possibilities, that person never
forgets it, it's already part of them.
They taught us lots of rules, lots of
dates Forced learning into our brains
They told us what we couldn't, what we could
Convinced us what was bad, what was good
They measured our days all the same
Told us when to work, when to dream
Every detail you could conceive But
we still don't know how we should live
Grown-up children, they're angry now
at the way of the world and its making
Grown-up children, they're angry now
that so much of their life has been taken
You felt a kind of freedom
when you arrived there.
The first time I was at Jarocin, I
thought it was just an one-off adventure.
Because it was 1980. No one knew what was
going on in the country politically speaking,
but the situation was dramatic
even when it came to food.
So when I think of the festival I think of everyone
taking a loaf of bread and a bottle of milk.
What was the biggest
discovery of Jarocin?
For me it was the fact
that there were so many superb artists in
Poland that I'd never come across before.
I never realized there were
so many wonderful people
writing songs that made my flesh
tingle when I listened to them.
They say we're all free, that we can do what we please
They say it'll always be so, our lives will be easy now
They say the people want it, they fought for it so long
They say they all want to be united by victory's song
Citizens.
A heavy responsibility weighs on me at
this dramatic moment in Polish history.
Today, at midnight the State Council
introduced martial law throughout the country.
My dear fellow Poles, I address you today
on a day deeply rooted in Polish tradition.
We are celebrating this year's
holiday in special circumstances.
I'm aware that the stringencies of martial
law have made everyday life more difficult.
0ne, two, three, four
War! The slaves are marching
War! They're going to chase you!
War! They're going to suppress you!
Paranoid hallucination
Political degeneration
That was the exotic nature
of communism in those days.
General Jaruzelski holding
society by the throat,
tanks on the streets, and here you had the
band Brygada Kryzys, public enemy number one,
making a record with songs like "Babylon
is fallen," or singing songs about ganja.
In the seventies I mostly listened to British
music, because Polish music didn't have much to say,
and I only got to know Polish
rock when I was interned.
and at the time there was a lot of rock
music that was a real discovery for us.
Because I saw then that there was a new
quality, a cutting sound, cutting lyrics,
it was something out of the ordinary.
Somehow what they had in the West in the
sixties repeated in Poland in the early eighties.
The situation was what it was, martial law
had ended, people, at least young people,
felt lost, and that music, those lyrics,
in some way brought them together.
When we'd play "Night Patrol" everyone
in the audience at certain moments
would take off their glasses or
put them on, it was a kind of game,
kind of choreographed, and I
didn't need to say anything.
I think that after 1980, afterthe
appearance of Solidarity the authorities,
the security services had their
hands full with preparing martial law
and arresting those people
and invigilating them,
and they didn't have the strength
left to keep an eye on rock music.
I think they wanted to control
it but they weren't able to.
When a band wanted to make a record,
the first thing they had to do was show
all their lyrics to the censor's office.
It was only if the lyrics were passed that
the band could go record in the studio.
I was called to the censor's
office, and the censor says:
"Paramilitary doves.
What paramilitary doves?"
"It's the dove of peace.
Picasso." Chop, it's cut.
Next one: "There's a pink glow." "What the
hell kind of games are you trying to play here?"
"0K, let it be a green glow."
"What do you mean, green?"
Processions, processions of
elephants Fountains, fountains of sand
Billows, billows of clouds
"Elephant procession" was a song written on a high, I
wrote it after I'd smoked a huge amount of marijuana.
It was sheer poetry. But right when the song
appeared, the Russians invaded Afghanistan.
And so obviously the elephants were tanks,
fountains of sand, billows of clouds,
that was the tanks crossing the desert
and sending up fountains of sand.
That was why they didn't allow it.
When Lech Walesa won the Nobel Prize
we had to remove all the Norwegian songs
from the music library at the radio station.
We were trying to figure out if Abba was a
Norwegian band, because Frida was Norwegian.
So should we remove
Abba as well, or not?
I left myself so vulnerable
When you heard that out of the top
forty songs three of them were by Maanam
it was, well, it was
deadly for a show like that.
How can I say all of a sudden: all
three songs by Maanam are out this week?
So what I came up with - it seemed a natural
idea to me - was, I cut out the drumbeats from
"It's just a tango" and put them together
so they went on forthirty seconds,
and in place of Maanam
I played the drumbeats.
And it was allowed, but the
listeners got it immediately,
they knew what was going on and it had the opposite
effect from what the authorities had intended
Maanam became even more
popular than they'd been before.
In eighty-three we had this long
tour round Poland with the U.K. Subs.
Their singer, Charlie Harper,
read Grzegorz's lyrics and said:
"Damn, you guys have it good, I let it all
out, I write as well as I can, whatever I want,
because no one's stopping me, whereas
you here, you're forced to write poetry."
My blood That flows in secret
deep inside a body hiding
Deep in darkened hallways and
in alcohol in lips of women blood
The life beneath my skin that's measured out in
liters flowing in a common stream into a sea of blood
My blood My blood
That's frozen allocated and collected
in the blood banks bankers pour it
Into secretive accounts a
secret weapon With my blood
A secret weapon built to manifest in a
much lovelier more painless manner blood
My blood Drunk by
priests upon the tribunes
My blood
My blood And yours as well
My blood And yours as well
All yours as well All yours as well
And mine as well All yours as well
And yours as well All yours as well
The Hit Parade on Channel Three
is hosted by Marek Niedzwiecki.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the
hundred and thirty-first Hit Parade show. Today...
That's right, I heard it said that we were keeping people
off the streets, keeping them listening to the radio.
That it was a safety valve, that we
attracted people, it was easierto subdue them
with a really cool radio show instead of
them throwing explosive devices at the police.
Maybe that was true, I can't say.
The Hit Parade on Channel Three, and that
whole program "Welcome to Channel Three",
it was fundamental, because practically speaking it
was really only there that Polish rock music was played.
0therwise we would have had the same situation
as in the other socialist bloc countries,
where if you weren't a so-called pop
star, there was no point in even trying.
"There's only one record for every four
Poles. What's the reason forthis situation?"
"The record press has failed to produce its quota
forthe month due to a shortage of raw materials.
In this way the hits
die their own death."
There was a line several hundred yards long. People
waited from six in the morning to buy a record.
"Sorry, we're short of granulate.
You know, we have our difficulties."
You could have been mine My crisis babe
We'd stand in line
Drink whateverthey made
In those days musicians hardly
got any money at all from records.
A whole record would earn you enough
for a dinner in a third-rate restaurant.
Me, I was living in a tiny apartment, five hundred
square feet, and I drove a fourth-hand baby Fiat.
When it came down to it we
were famous, idolized paupers.
You're a big star but you live on the
fourth floor of a regular apartment block,
and everyone knows your address.
These crazy people come and hunt you
down when you're throwing out the trash,
and either insult you orthrow
themselves on you. It was awful.
What kind of career was that? You
were completely out in the open.
0ne time I went to see what was new
at the store, and from the line I hear,
"Get the fuck back to the end of the line, mister
frigging rock star. Who the hell do you think you are?"
In the struggle for food
there aren't any stars.
You could have been mine My crisis babe
Live a little each time
Like we're told we may
You could have been
mine We'd be poortogether
Instead of sending a postcard
With a picture of wherever
Poverty ruled everything.
Saying, Merry Christmas to you
We recorded our first single
on instruments I carved myself.
I made the bass, I made
a guitar forthe guitarist.
The bass was made out of a stand
for pot plants, it was this thick.
So I had something to work with.
A guitar like a Fender Stratocaster
- we'd have had to starve for five years to be able to afford one.
First, you weren't allowed to make them,
second, there was nothing to make them from.
There was no sheet metal, so for instance
you'd buy a big aluminum cooking pot,
cut out the bottom, flatten out the metal, and that
for example was where your first amplifier came from.
We have the day, we have each night
We have our dreams and our paths
Just like you we look around
We want to know the final truth
We're being chased by a lucrative pig We
wish everyone ill you can see it in our eyes
I came here because you can meet lots of
people, and most of all listen to the music,
which we really enjoy. And...
these days music is all we
have left, we have nothing...
I'm a free person, right
at this moment I'm myself
Don't give in, don't
give in, don't give in
You all know how Jarocin
has been portrayed on the TV.
Do you want that to continue?
Because I for one don't.
Polish TV showed Jarocin
as a bunch of runaways,
"they've run away from home,
we're looking for a girl,
there's all these strange things
scattered around the tent."
That was how Jarocin was
depicted, in this negative way.
I went to Jarocin, I said, it's got to be really
cool there if all that illegal stuff is happening.
Let me tell you About my street
When you listened to all those songs being sung at
Jarocin, there weren't any boring lyrics, no bullshit.
They were all really smart, engaged, they spoke of
the pain of the individual in the face of the crowd,
and they were aimed at people
who immediately understood.
0n my street No one's
surprised by anyone
0n my street No one
Is surprised by anyone
0n my street Christ has moved away
And Satan's gone too
0n my street There's
the building's chill
The chill of ever fewer living tissues
The chill of ever fewer living tissues
The chill of ever fewer living tissues
Because my street Is
in the heart of the city
Because my street Is
in the heart of the city
Because my street Is
in the heart of the city
Because my street Is
in the heart of the city
Because my street Is
in the heart of the city
The Jarocin festivals, the R?brege
festivals, "0ut of Control,"
in the eighties these were powerful signals
that young people were thinking differently,
that we had a new generation that
couldn't be stifled so easily.
I am a soldier in the army of this
world I am a crumb in the dragon's mouth
I'm left at the mercy of destiny I want
to be the morsel that poisons the beast
I want to break loose from the grip of despair
I want to shake off the shell of servitude
I want to stand on the far side of the river To
be a deserter with a chance of getting through
a chance of getting through,
a chance of getting through
0ur reality is our illusion We're
the ones that made all this damn stuff
0ur imagination won't give us freedom There
isn't any freedom 'cause there is no us
There is no us, there is no us, there
is no us, there is no us, there is no us
Sure, we turned our lyrics in to the
censor's office, but we sang what we wanted,
because that was our basic principle, either
we sing what we want or we don't sing at all.
And even if the censor comes to the
concert, and that sometimes happened,
so long as no one said " Down
with communism" between songs,
even if you sang it they
wouldn't have heard it.
They didn't know how to
listen to that kind of music.
Let's give the cameraman a
goodbye round of applause.
There was no rebellion, it was a total
rejection of the system and an attempt,
quite successful I think, to
live completely outside it.
The morning sun rises over me As I
walk through Sopot down by the sea
And on the dirty beach as well
The Baltic has a crude oil smell
The sidewalks in the morning
sun 0n my way I talk with no one
If it's a Sunday morning, look
- the sidewalks are covered with Saturday's puke
Poland I live in Poland
I live in Poland I live here, here, here
Bottles of milk at the all-night store
I see what's happening by its door
The crowd has their fists under someone's
chin Calling forthe death penalty for him
0nce again the morning trains Those
people in uniforms look so strange
Have you ever been at the station at night It's so filthy
and ugly you lose your sight, your sight, your sight
Poland I live in Poland
I live in Poland I live
here, here, here, here
here, here, here, here,
here, here, here, here
SURVEILLANCE REP0RT
DIS0RGANIZED MAJ0RITY 0F PARTICIPANTS
I guess the powers that be were most
afraid of what they didn't understand.
Forthem this was something
strange, incomprehensible,
but that attracted
large numbers of people.
The authorities were wondering
if it might be somehow dangerous.
PREPARATl0NS F0R "P0G0"
"DESTR0YED" SUBTYPE CREW
WITH LEADER IN BACKGR0UND
"TRAINEES" SUBTYPE WITH LEADER
CREW 0F "TRAINEES"; LEADER IN BACKGR0UND
"TRAINEES"
- CREW 0N M0VE WITH NEWLY CH0SEN LEADER
MEMBER 0F "BLACK" M0VEMENT
GENUINE R0CK MUSIC FAN
"HEAVY METAL" GR0UP ENTERING
STADIUM IN 0RGANIZED FASHl0N
Understanding the slogans of the punk
movement, understanding these young people,
the purposes they gathered for, what they sang about
- none of this fitted with their way of thinking.
Hence the the surveillance of subcultures,
counting how many punks there were,
how many skinheads, how
they differed in appearance,
how they behaved
- because really that was all they were capable of doing.
N0TE PANT LEGS TURNED UP
APPR0X. 1.5 IN. 0VER B00TS
Chasing after punk rockers was beneath
the dignity of the communist government.
So they trained their own bandits
who did their dirty work forthem.
Toward the end of the eighties a
Nazi skinhead movement appeared.
The skinheads burst in and right
away it was Heil this, Heil that,
I knew there was no point
talking with pricks like that.
They started invading concerts, attacking the
audience, beating people up, robbing them...
We've come to listen to
music here, stop fighting.
It was obvious they
were being protected.
0f course the police would come, and they'd
arrest the people that had been beaten up.
I don't know what's going to happen now.
Next yearthere's going to be such huge disturbances
here that I don't know if the event'll take place at all.
Jarocin attracted the most radical youth,
who were definitely outside the system.
I went there with a
backpack full of leaflets.
There was a national
information campaign going on.
Above all we were demanding
the introduction of something that in the
West was called alternative military service.
0n the third day of leafleting I was
arrested by a secret police officer.
There was a medical station,
something that made you feel safe.
But it was a trap.
The first room really was doctors and nurses,
but the next room was all security services.
They handcuffed me to a radiator.
The officerthat arrested me dialed a number
on the phone and said: "We got him, boss!"
Go out on the street with your head held high
Always be yourself, don't give up the fight
Be your own man, don't fear anyone Fight
to the end, till your fighting is done
Fight, fight
Quiet down, please!
The night of May ninth to tenth saw the appearance
of the 0range Council for National Salvation.
Listen, my van's completely full...
Above all I was fulfilling myself as an
artist, fulfilling my need for freedom.
We had a cry: "We're here, we're against
it," and most of all we did it our own way.
We weren't imitating anyone, we
made our own 0range Revolution.
The system was coming to an end. It was
obvious it wouldn't create anything new,
but it could till destroy a great
deal. We chose the best possible route.
After I got arrested I
started thinking about
how to actually spread political
ideas underthe cover of a rock band.
The towering building a monument in
stone Jabs its needle into the sky
The middle of Europe
crushed by communism's fist
And I'm at the foot of the
palace My eyes fixed on the top
I'm lighting the fuse with glee
I'm wanting to blow it all up
I'm lighting the fuse with glee
I'm wanting to blow it all up
action! Arrest anyone who resists!
Each thing has its form, lizard, leaf, tree,
Water in the seas, as if cast under a spell
Fire in the hearthplace safely burning
Earth spins in its orbit, locked in the word
Explosion
Explosion
Defendant Dolewski testifies.
He claims he was not the one
who raised the price of school
notebooks by 300 percent.
Dolewski and Rozmanit
were sentenced to death.
The march of friendship will never be stayed
Not by high mountains, not by deep seas
I'm the same age as
the Palace of Culture.
My strongest memory of the
place was the Rolling Stones.
It was April 13, 1967. Along with ticketholders,
maybe ten or fifteen thousand young people came
and gathered round the building,
because they just wanted to be there.
The Rolling Stones came for one
day only, and tickets ran out.
But even those with a
ticket couldn't hear much.
From the very beginning, rock music was more
than just the music, more than just songs.
First, it expressed a certain
dissatisfaction with the world around us.
Second, it stirred people to
take action and change things.
At Thine altars we raise our supplication:
Bring freedom, 0 Lord, once more to this nation
Strange is this world
Where there's still So much evil
And strange it is
That for so many years
Man has despised man
Strange this world,
The world of human affairs,
It's shameful to admit
But so often it is That an evil word
Kills like a knife
But there are more people of
good will And I firmly believe
That because of them
This world will not die
No! No! No!
Hippies were people who wanted to be free in
an unfree country, in their appearance at least,
so their freedom often met with a quick response from
the authorities, people on the street, the schools.
They were trying to carve out
some freedom forthemselves,
but freedom in their way of being, not
political freedom, in this totalitarian world.
But it was instantly interpreted
as political by the powers that be.
According to the powers of the time, these
were people who had no place on the streets.
Things often ended with temporary
arrests, forty-eight hours in lockup.
You always come to
me As darkness alights
You light the river's
rainbow Burst into the night
Lublin was full of characters that were
really colorful, considering the times.
0ne time the commies
did a really funny thing.
Nixon was supposed to be coming to Poland
and he was supposed to visit Lublin.
So they rounded them all
up and gave them haircuts.
The Party ordered the security
services to carry out the operation.
I managed to locate the instructions they
wrote about how to break up the movement.
It was mostly by expelling people
who were studying at university,
forcing them to join the army,
intimidating their parents.
In music I was looking for freedom. Whatever
music it was, jazz, rock, or any other kind.
I was looking for freedom,
and for me that freedom
was about finding an outlet through which you could
express your emotions in a completely uninhibited way
Like Hendrix did, like Coltrane.
You said in a recent radio
interview that in the sixties,
while the band Czerwone Gitary were
singing "Because you're afraid of mice,"
Bob Dylan was singing about much more important
things. That remark caused a lot of controversy...
I don't understand why
it was controversial.
I wasn't telling a lie. I don't remember any
songs about what was really happening in Poland
in the sixties and seventies
- for obvious reasons, right? You couldn't sing songs like that.
Beyond a forest of anger and falsehood
Beyond a mountain of fear is our love
Strange, strange, strange, strange times
Strange, strange, strange, strange times
We're against everything
that is against us.
Against everything that in
any way limits our own freedom.
How can we not speak about pessimism when so
many strange things are happening in the world,
when it's ruled by such
strange politicians.
You keep shouting at me
It's crowded everywhere
No one can breathe with liberty
No one can die with dignity
I'm tired already
I'm tired already I've
had enough of you all
These are times of killers
of fools and dealers
emptiness in every face on
the beach there's no more place
I'm tired already I'm tired already
I'm tired already I've
had enough of you all
We're waiting, we're
waiting, we're waiting
The first stage is won, but the
second stage is much, much harder.
I'm actually afraid of it.
There are bound to be slips, someone's bound to try and lead us astray
- that's the truth of it.
But we won't let them, because
we all take responsibility.
Not me on my own, but all of us together,
that's strength, that's power, and we will do it.
Forthe first time under
communism in Poland
there was close collaboration between
the intelligentsia and the workers,
and the authorities failed to divide them.
That was the source of strength of the strike.
We are many, we are many,
we are many, we are many
They are few, they are few,
they are few, they are few
They're afraid of us, of our music without
words They're afraid to sleep at night
They're afraid when they see two of us
They're afraid of themselves, of all of us
We want to be ourselves,
to at last be ourselves
We want to be ourselves,
to always be ourselves
We want to keep rocking
We want to keep rocking
The mood that could be expressed in songs
showed me it was possible to be a free person.
And it was something
that couldn't be stopped.
Like when you show someone
a beautiful new invention,
and new possibilities, that person never
forgets it, it's already part of them.
They taught us lots of rules, lots of
dates Forced learning into our brains
They told us what we couldn't, what we could
Convinced us what was bad, what was good
They measured our days all the same
Told us when to work, when to dream
Every detail you could conceive But
we still don't know how we should live
Grown-up children, they're angry now
at the way of the world and its making
Grown-up children, they're angry now
that so much of their life has been taken
You felt a kind of freedom
when you arrived there.
The first time I was at Jarocin, I
thought it was just an one-off adventure.
Because it was 1980. No one knew what was
going on in the country politically speaking,
but the situation was dramatic
even when it came to food.
So when I think of the festival I think of everyone
taking a loaf of bread and a bottle of milk.
What was the biggest
discovery of Jarocin?
For me it was the fact
that there were so many superb artists in
Poland that I'd never come across before.
I never realized there were
so many wonderful people
writing songs that made my flesh
tingle when I listened to them.
They say we're all free, that we can do what we please
They say it'll always be so, our lives will be easy now
They say the people want it, they fought for it so long
They say they all want to be united by victory's song
Citizens.
A heavy responsibility weighs on me at
this dramatic moment in Polish history.
Today, at midnight the State Council
introduced martial law throughout the country.
My dear fellow Poles, I address you today
on a day deeply rooted in Polish tradition.
We are celebrating this year's
holiday in special circumstances.
I'm aware that the stringencies of martial
law have made everyday life more difficult.
0ne, two, three, four
War! The slaves are marching
War! They're going to chase you!
War! They're going to suppress you!
Paranoid hallucination
Political degeneration
That was the exotic nature
of communism in those days.
General Jaruzelski holding
society by the throat,
tanks on the streets, and here you had the
band Brygada Kryzys, public enemy number one,
making a record with songs like "Babylon
is fallen," or singing songs about ganja.
In the seventies I mostly listened to British
music, because Polish music didn't have much to say,
and I only got to know Polish
rock when I was interned.
and at the time there was a lot of rock
music that was a real discovery for us.
Because I saw then that there was a new
quality, a cutting sound, cutting lyrics,
it was something out of the ordinary.
Somehow what they had in the West in the
sixties repeated in Poland in the early eighties.
The situation was what it was, martial law
had ended, people, at least young people,
felt lost, and that music, those lyrics,
in some way brought them together.
When we'd play "Night Patrol" everyone
in the audience at certain moments
would take off their glasses or
put them on, it was a kind of game,
kind of choreographed, and I
didn't need to say anything.
I think that after 1980, afterthe
appearance of Solidarity the authorities,
the security services had their
hands full with preparing martial law
and arresting those people
and invigilating them,
and they didn't have the strength
left to keep an eye on rock music.
I think they wanted to control
it but they weren't able to.
When a band wanted to make a record,
the first thing they had to do was show
all their lyrics to the censor's office.
It was only if the lyrics were passed that
the band could go record in the studio.
I was called to the censor's
office, and the censor says:
"Paramilitary doves.
What paramilitary doves?"
"It's the dove of peace.
Picasso." Chop, it's cut.
Next one: "There's a pink glow." "What the
hell kind of games are you trying to play here?"
"0K, let it be a green glow."
"What do you mean, green?"
Processions, processions of
elephants Fountains, fountains of sand
Billows, billows of clouds
"Elephant procession" was a song written on a high, I
wrote it after I'd smoked a huge amount of marijuana.
It was sheer poetry. But right when the song
appeared, the Russians invaded Afghanistan.
And so obviously the elephants were tanks,
fountains of sand, billows of clouds,
that was the tanks crossing the desert
and sending up fountains of sand.
That was why they didn't allow it.
When Lech Walesa won the Nobel Prize
we had to remove all the Norwegian songs
from the music library at the radio station.
We were trying to figure out if Abba was a
Norwegian band, because Frida was Norwegian.
So should we remove
Abba as well, or not?
I left myself so vulnerable
When you heard that out of the top
forty songs three of them were by Maanam
it was, well, it was
deadly for a show like that.
How can I say all of a sudden: all
three songs by Maanam are out this week?
So what I came up with - it seemed a natural
idea to me - was, I cut out the drumbeats from
"It's just a tango" and put them together
so they went on forthirty seconds,
and in place of Maanam
I played the drumbeats.
And it was allowed, but the
listeners got it immediately,
they knew what was going on and it had the opposite
effect from what the authorities had intended
Maanam became even more
popular than they'd been before.
In eighty-three we had this long
tour round Poland with the U.K. Subs.
Their singer, Charlie Harper,
read Grzegorz's lyrics and said:
"Damn, you guys have it good, I let it all
out, I write as well as I can, whatever I want,
because no one's stopping me, whereas
you here, you're forced to write poetry."
My blood That flows in secret
deep inside a body hiding
Deep in darkened hallways and
in alcohol in lips of women blood
The life beneath my skin that's measured out in
liters flowing in a common stream into a sea of blood
My blood My blood
That's frozen allocated and collected
in the blood banks bankers pour it
Into secretive accounts a
secret weapon With my blood
A secret weapon built to manifest in a
much lovelier more painless manner blood
My blood Drunk by
priests upon the tribunes
My blood
My blood And yours as well
My blood And yours as well
All yours as well All yours as well
And mine as well All yours as well
And yours as well All yours as well
The Hit Parade on Channel Three
is hosted by Marek Niedzwiecki.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the
hundred and thirty-first Hit Parade show. Today...
That's right, I heard it said that we were keeping people
off the streets, keeping them listening to the radio.
That it was a safety valve, that we
attracted people, it was easierto subdue them
with a really cool radio show instead of
them throwing explosive devices at the police.
Maybe that was true, I can't say.
The Hit Parade on Channel Three, and that
whole program "Welcome to Channel Three",
it was fundamental, because practically speaking it
was really only there that Polish rock music was played.
0therwise we would have had the same situation
as in the other socialist bloc countries,
where if you weren't a so-called pop
star, there was no point in even trying.
"There's only one record for every four
Poles. What's the reason forthis situation?"
"The record press has failed to produce its quota
forthe month due to a shortage of raw materials.
In this way the hits
die their own death."
There was a line several hundred yards long. People
waited from six in the morning to buy a record.
"Sorry, we're short of granulate.
You know, we have our difficulties."
You could have been mine My crisis babe
We'd stand in line
Drink whateverthey made
In those days musicians hardly
got any money at all from records.
A whole record would earn you enough
for a dinner in a third-rate restaurant.
Me, I was living in a tiny apartment, five hundred
square feet, and I drove a fourth-hand baby Fiat.
When it came down to it we
were famous, idolized paupers.
You're a big star but you live on the
fourth floor of a regular apartment block,
and everyone knows your address.
These crazy people come and hunt you
down when you're throwing out the trash,
and either insult you orthrow
themselves on you. It was awful.
What kind of career was that? You
were completely out in the open.
0ne time I went to see what was new
at the store, and from the line I hear,
"Get the fuck back to the end of the line, mister
frigging rock star. Who the hell do you think you are?"
In the struggle for food
there aren't any stars.
You could have been mine My crisis babe
Live a little each time
Like we're told we may
You could have been
mine We'd be poortogether
Instead of sending a postcard
With a picture of wherever
Poverty ruled everything.
Saying, Merry Christmas to you
We recorded our first single
on instruments I carved myself.
I made the bass, I made
a guitar forthe guitarist.
The bass was made out of a stand
for pot plants, it was this thick.
So I had something to work with.
A guitar like a Fender Stratocaster
- we'd have had to starve for five years to be able to afford one.
First, you weren't allowed to make them,
second, there was nothing to make them from.
There was no sheet metal, so for instance
you'd buy a big aluminum cooking pot,
cut out the bottom, flatten out the metal, and that
for example was where your first amplifier came from.
We have the day, we have each night
We have our dreams and our paths
Just like you we look around
We want to know the final truth
We're being chased by a lucrative pig We
wish everyone ill you can see it in our eyes
I came here because you can meet lots of
people, and most of all listen to the music,
which we really enjoy. And...
these days music is all we
have left, we have nothing...
I'm a free person, right
at this moment I'm myself
Don't give in, don't
give in, don't give in
You all know how Jarocin
has been portrayed on the TV.
Do you want that to continue?
Because I for one don't.
Polish TV showed Jarocin
as a bunch of runaways,
"they've run away from home,
we're looking for a girl,
there's all these strange things
scattered around the tent."
That was how Jarocin was
depicted, in this negative way.
I went to Jarocin, I said, it's got to be really
cool there if all that illegal stuff is happening.
Let me tell you About my street
When you listened to all those songs being sung at
Jarocin, there weren't any boring lyrics, no bullshit.
They were all really smart, engaged, they spoke of
the pain of the individual in the face of the crowd,
and they were aimed at people
who immediately understood.
0n my street No one's
surprised by anyone
0n my street No one
Is surprised by anyone
0n my street Christ has moved away
And Satan's gone too
0n my street There's
the building's chill
The chill of ever fewer living tissues
The chill of ever fewer living tissues
The chill of ever fewer living tissues
Because my street Is
in the heart of the city
Because my street Is
in the heart of the city
Because my street Is
in the heart of the city
Because my street Is
in the heart of the city
Because my street Is
in the heart of the city
The Jarocin festivals, the R?brege
festivals, "0ut of Control,"
in the eighties these were powerful signals
that young people were thinking differently,
that we had a new generation that
couldn't be stifled so easily.
I am a soldier in the army of this
world I am a crumb in the dragon's mouth
I'm left at the mercy of destiny I want
to be the morsel that poisons the beast
I want to break loose from the grip of despair
I want to shake off the shell of servitude
I want to stand on the far side of the river To
be a deserter with a chance of getting through
a chance of getting through,
a chance of getting through
0ur reality is our illusion We're
the ones that made all this damn stuff
0ur imagination won't give us freedom There
isn't any freedom 'cause there is no us
There is no us, there is no us, there
is no us, there is no us, there is no us
Sure, we turned our lyrics in to the
censor's office, but we sang what we wanted,
because that was our basic principle, either
we sing what we want or we don't sing at all.
And even if the censor comes to the
concert, and that sometimes happened,
so long as no one said " Down
with communism" between songs,
even if you sang it they
wouldn't have heard it.
They didn't know how to
listen to that kind of music.
Let's give the cameraman a
goodbye round of applause.
There was no rebellion, it was a total
rejection of the system and an attempt,
quite successful I think, to
live completely outside it.
The morning sun rises over me As I
walk through Sopot down by the sea
And on the dirty beach as well
The Baltic has a crude oil smell
The sidewalks in the morning
sun 0n my way I talk with no one
If it's a Sunday morning, look
- the sidewalks are covered with Saturday's puke
Poland I live in Poland
I live in Poland I live here, here, here
Bottles of milk at the all-night store
I see what's happening by its door
The crowd has their fists under someone's
chin Calling forthe death penalty for him
0nce again the morning trains Those
people in uniforms look so strange
Have you ever been at the station at night It's so filthy
and ugly you lose your sight, your sight, your sight
Poland I live in Poland
I live in Poland I live
here, here, here, here
here, here, here, here,
here, here, here, here
SURVEILLANCE REP0RT
DIS0RGANIZED MAJ0RITY 0F PARTICIPANTS
I guess the powers that be were most
afraid of what they didn't understand.
Forthem this was something
strange, incomprehensible,
but that attracted
large numbers of people.
The authorities were wondering
if it might be somehow dangerous.
PREPARATl0NS F0R "P0G0"
"DESTR0YED" SUBTYPE CREW
WITH LEADER IN BACKGR0UND
"TRAINEES" SUBTYPE WITH LEADER
CREW 0F "TRAINEES"; LEADER IN BACKGR0UND
"TRAINEES"
- CREW 0N M0VE WITH NEWLY CH0SEN LEADER
MEMBER 0F "BLACK" M0VEMENT
GENUINE R0CK MUSIC FAN
"HEAVY METAL" GR0UP ENTERING
STADIUM IN 0RGANIZED FASHl0N
Understanding the slogans of the punk
movement, understanding these young people,
the purposes they gathered for, what they sang about
- none of this fitted with their way of thinking.
Hence the the surveillance of subcultures,
counting how many punks there were,
how many skinheads, how
they differed in appearance,
how they behaved
- because really that was all they were capable of doing.
N0TE PANT LEGS TURNED UP
APPR0X. 1.5 IN. 0VER B00TS
Chasing after punk rockers was beneath
the dignity of the communist government.
So they trained their own bandits
who did their dirty work forthem.
Toward the end of the eighties a
Nazi skinhead movement appeared.
The skinheads burst in and right
away it was Heil this, Heil that,
I knew there was no point
talking with pricks like that.
They started invading concerts, attacking the
audience, beating people up, robbing them...
We've come to listen to
music here, stop fighting.
It was obvious they
were being protected.
0f course the police would come, and they'd
arrest the people that had been beaten up.
I don't know what's going to happen now.
Next yearthere's going to be such huge disturbances
here that I don't know if the event'll take place at all.
Jarocin attracted the most radical youth,
who were definitely outside the system.
I went there with a
backpack full of leaflets.
There was a national
information campaign going on.
Above all we were demanding
the introduction of something that in the
West was called alternative military service.
0n the third day of leafleting I was
arrested by a secret police officer.
There was a medical station,
something that made you feel safe.
But it was a trap.
The first room really was doctors and nurses,
but the next room was all security services.
They handcuffed me to a radiator.
The officerthat arrested me dialed a number
on the phone and said: "We got him, boss!"
Go out on the street with your head held high
Always be yourself, don't give up the fight
Be your own man, don't fear anyone Fight
to the end, till your fighting is done
Fight, fight
Quiet down, please!
The night of May ninth to tenth saw the appearance
of the 0range Council for National Salvation.
Listen, my van's completely full...
Above all I was fulfilling myself as an
artist, fulfilling my need for freedom.
We had a cry: "We're here, we're against
it," and most of all we did it our own way.
We weren't imitating anyone, we
made our own 0range Revolution.
The system was coming to an end. It was
obvious it wouldn't create anything new,
but it could till destroy a great
deal. We chose the best possible route.
After I got arrested I
started thinking about
how to actually spread political
ideas underthe cover of a rock band.
The towering building a monument in
stone Jabs its needle into the sky
The middle of Europe
crushed by communism's fist
And I'm at the foot of the
palace My eyes fixed on the top
I'm lighting the fuse with glee
I'm wanting to blow it all up
I'm lighting the fuse with glee
I'm wanting to blow it all up