Have you heard it on the news?
About this fascist groove thang
Evil men with racist views
Spreading all across the land
On the final night of their Los Angeles appearance at the Hollywood Bowl in September, LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy introduced a tune that the band was playing live for the first time.
“It’s kind of a fitting song, isn’t it?” he said, launching into a cover of Heaven 17‘s new wave synth classic “(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang,” along with vocalist Nancy Whang and opening act Pulp.
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When Murphy and company first recorded the the 44-year-old cover for the 2019 live in-studio release ‘Electric Lady Sessions,” they changed the lyrics from “Reagan’s president elect – Fascist god in motion” to “The orange one is president – Fascist god in motion.” The timely lyrics prompted comments like “Just when we needed it most” and “the history is repeating.”
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Now Heaven 17 co-founder Martyn Ware says the band plans to release an updated version of the song, which has become an unofficial anthem of the resistance to Donald Trump. At a recent protest sign-making party in Los Angeles’ Echo Park, it was part of the anti-fascist playlist that got neighborhood activists dancing. A few days later, the fast-paced, incredibly catchy ’80s standard could be heard blasting from speakers at the Downtown Los Angeles No Kings protest.
History will repeat itself
Crisis point, we’re near the hour
“This all started pretty much when Trump got into power, and there were protest marches. We started noticing online that there were various protests around America and people holding up the placard,” says Ware, who also co-founded Human League before moving onto Heaven 17. “It’s become like an underground kind of hymn for the movement.”
“When we wrote the piece, it was a warning,” he recalls. “I didn’t, honestly, in my heart, think it would ever happen. But now we are where we are, and that’s why people are adopting it now. Particularly at the current No Kings protests, it seems to be picking up. It’s on various playlists and such.”
Released just two months after the 1981 inauguration of President Reagan, the song was also a reaction to Britain’s widely-disliked prime minister Margaret Thatcher. But the reference to Reagan being a “fascist god in motion” didn’t sit well with the BBC, which decided the lyrics were too incendiary for radio. Despite brisk pre-orders and club play, the infectious funk-laced tune never made it higher than No. 45 on the British charts after it was banned by both Radio 1 and “Top of the Pops.”
Hitler proves that funky stuff
Is not for you and me, girl
Europe’s an unhappy land
They’ve had their fascist groove thang
Now, with another controversial president in power, Ware says it’s time for an orange-tinted re-do.
“We’ve been asked for many, many years to do an updated version of it, and very occasionally, we have altered the lyrics for different people that are in power. But for the first time, we’ve actually decided that we’re going to do a brand new version of it and change the lyrics. I’m not going to give too much away, but it definitely incorporates the word Trump,” Ware says.
“We’re not sure when we’re going to release it, because we’re actually writing a new album at the moment, so we may save it for that when it comes out in the spring. But it’s not going to get any less relevant, is it?”
Ware says the inspiration for the song came after he split from the original Human League and formed Heaven 17, and the band wanted to make music more grounded in their daily lives. The musicians came from strong trade unionist families in Sheffield, and they were alarmed when a huge amount of steel jobs were lost during Thatcher’s tenure.
“We thought, wouldn’t it be great to have something that’s really direct, rather than allegorical or metaphorical. What about a title with the music we’re all obsessed with, like Parliament, Funkadelic and soul and disco, and why don’t we do a dance track that’s firstly, too fast almost to dance to in the kind of electro-punk kind of framework, and secondly, incorporated a lot of the kind of vernacular of disco music and Black American music imports that were coming into Britain we were highly inspired by. Parliament, Funkadelic and the Black movement, social conscience songs from the ’70s were a big influence on us as well.”
“At that very moment in time, Reagan was in the news for creating the Star Wars initiative and all this insane stuff about mutually assured destruction, and we were all terrified that we may never see adulthood. It was getting towards the Bay of Pigs kind of vibe at that time,” Ware recalls.
What does the band think of the LCD Soundsystem version? Ware says, “Yeah, it’s brilliant. They are one of the few acts that have emerged from that kind of electronic dance scene that really know how to write songs and have an impact. I’m quite flattered that they understood and wanted to cover it.”
He remains stunned by how “Fascist Groove Thang” has endured for more than four decades.
“When we were writing the song and performing it in 1981, we thought we were quite forward-thinking. We thought, let’s try and make music that’s not just for now, but that people might want to listen to even as far away as 10 years in the future. That’s as far as we could imagine.”
Heaven 17 has played the song more than 600 times, at every single gig, and shows no signs of slowing down. After releasing the single “There’s Something About You” in August, the group kicks off a series of British dates in London on Nov. 6 followed by a German tour and hopefully, some U.S. shows.
“We’re hoping to come back to the U.S. soon, so don’t turn us away at the border for being for being renegades,” Martyn quips, before getting more serious.
“I want to state at this point, it’s quite important: It’s not going to alter the way that we present ourselves online or in person or in interviews. Then they won, as far as I’m concerned. So if they want to turn us away at the border, go for it!”