Penny Rimbaud

Penny Rimbaud

Penny Rimbaud is the pseudonym of Jeremy John Ratter, a drummer, writer and poet from Northwood, United Kingdom, born in 1943. He is a former member of the performance art groups EXIT and Ceres Confusion, and is best known as a co-founder of the anarchist punk band Crass, which he forms with Steve Ignorant in 1977.

Early life and influences

Ratter studies at the South East Essex Technical College and School of Art in the early 1960s, where he shows an interest in tailoring. In the same period, he appears on Ready Steady Go! and receives a prize from John Lennon for a competition to create artwork based on The Beatles’ song I Wanna Hold Your Hand. His stage name pays tribute to the poet Arthur Rimbaud, while “Penny” is a pun on the British ha'penny coin.

Dial House, free festivals and Crass

In 1967, inspired by the film Inn of the Sixth Happiness, he and Gee Vaucher set up the anarchist and pacifist community Dial House. Together with his friend Phil Russell, also known as Wally Hope, he helps to instigate the free festival movement at Windsor and later at Stonehenge in the early 1970s. Rimbaud later says that his anger over unanswered questions around Russell’s death helps drive the formation of Crass. Although Crass disbands in 1984, he continues to write and perform both solo and as part of the Crass Collective with former band members including Eve Libertine, Gee Vaucher and Steve Ignorant, as well as other artists and musicians.

Writing and recorded work

His work includes Reality Asylum, first self-published and later appearing as a two-minute track on Crass’s debut album The Feeding of the 5000, as a longer single, and as a 45-minute spoken-word monologue. He also writes Rocky Eyed, an extended poem attacking Margaret Thatcher and her government after the Falklands War, which is recorded as the Crass album Yes Sir, I Will. Other works include The Death of Imagination, described as a musical drama in four parts; The Diamond Signature, published by AK Press; and Oh America, a response to the events of 11 September 2001 and the War on Terror.

Later projects

From 2003 he works as part of Crass Agenda, later called Last Amendment, performing live and releasing material in CD format. This period includes Savage Utopia, a collaboration with Coldcut’s Matt Black and other jazz musicians, and How?, a reworking of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl recorded live at the Vortex Jazz Club. He also completes This Crippled Flesh, a philosophical work on politics, punk and pigs, and appears in Dominic Thackray’s short film Girlfriend in a Kimono. He writes introductions to books including The Evil Empire: 101 Ways That England Ruined the World and Graham Burnett’s Earth Writings, and works on a Jazz Requiem with saxophonist Ed Jones. He is also a regular columnist for the Stoke Newington magazine N16.