Boff Whalley, guitarist

When Chumbawamba started in 1982 we were all squatting in a big, empty house, doing part-time jobs and sharing our money. We were an anarchist collective, influenced by the Sex Pistols and the Clash, but right from the start we wanted to sing harmonies and have singalong choruses.

We didn’t make any money for at least 10 years because we played benefit concerts all the time – strikes, picket lines, anti-war events … But we had a real laugh.



Before we released a Chumbawamba album there was a musical movement around called Oi!, championed by the music journalist Garry Bushell. It attracted lots of fascists. We invented an Oi! band and he invited us to record a song in these posh studios in London; instead we just shouted “I’m thick!” 64 times. That album actually came out…

Tubthumping was written as a collective – like everything else. We wanted to make a very English album and the song is about the resilience of ordinary people.

At the time we lived near a great pub called the Fforde Grene in Leeds. Irish, Afro-Caribbean, Asian, white, everyone went there. Our next-door neighbour, who was Irish, would come home drunk every weekend from there and try and get into his house, fall over and shout for his wife – it was a weekly ritual.

Everyone said the single was going to be big, but the first time I realised that was when I was in Burnley football club having a piss and it came up on the Tannoy. I almost fainted.

It was number one all over the place and we had a brilliant time for two or three years. The 1998 Brits was a high point for me. Being hounded by the Daily Mail and the Sun for attacking the deputy prime minister [drummer Danbert Nobacon threw a bucket of ice-cold water over John Prescott ] … I wanted to be able to do this all the time! It was bizarre, too. We were watching all these young things around us getting really excited about every TV show with their PR and makeup people. We had been making music for 15 years so nothing fazed us. We supported Aerosmith and their show was full of bombast and laser effects and we knew we couldn’t compete. So we gathered round one microphone and sang an a cappella song about fascism.

Everyone threw money at us for a while. There was a big car company in the US who were in a dispute with their workers. They gave us a stupid amount of money to play our song in an advert, so we rang the workers’ representative and asked if they wanted the cash instead – so they could go to the papers and highlight their cause.

To 99% of people we just had that one song, but there is always the 1% who listen to the rest of the album (Tubthumper) and like it enough to listen to more. I still really like Tubthumping. I don’t feel embarrassed by it at all. I know some bands who hate their songs being popular, but I just think, “Get off your high horse!” The whole point of art is to have an audience.

Chumbawamba performing in France, c.1998. Photograph: David Redfern/Redferns

Dunstan Bruce, vocalist

The song changed everything. Before Tubthumping I felt we were in a mess: we had become directionless and disparate. It’s not our most political or best song, but it brought us back together. The song is about us – as a class and as a band. The beauty of it was we had no idea how big it would be.

Suddenly we were a political band who were being listened to; people were coming to us to ask what we thought of New Labour or Tony Blair. Especially after the Brits. Alice was doing all the press and interviews. Whatever we got up to she would have to get up at 5am and defend it the next day. She charmed the pants off Jeremy Paxman, and ended up on Newsnight two or three times.

Deputy prime minister John Prescott had a bucket of cold water tipped over him by Chumbawamba’s Danbert Nobacon at the 1998 Brit awards ceremony. Photograph: PA

The weirdest moment was in Japan, though. Danbert and I were in a lift in Tokyo on our way out to get something to eat. This young guy got in, saw us and started hyperventilating – he was really excited and kept saying “Chumbawamba!” and gasping. We didn’t speak Japanese so didn’t know what to say. When we got out we just looked at each other and said: “How did this happen?”

I never gave a shit about people saying we had sold out. It was much more important to be part of popular culture as a political band. We gave a lot of the money away and it was a real opportunity to do something positive. I am making a Kickstarter-funded film about it – what you can do as a political band when you make it into the mainstream.

We are all still friends and I am massively proud of that song. If someone texts me and says they have heard it somewhere, I love that.