SUCK

linernotes by Roger Browning
South Africa, 1970, and the country’s white minority had everything firmly under control. The black nationalist movement had been emasculated years earlier as the prison doors on Robben Island slammed shut on Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo and other leaders of the ANC and PAC. The most powerful army on the continent - manned largely by conscripts called up for nine months once they turned 17 - was itching to take on any guerrilla wanting to change the political order. The sports boycott against the country was ignored by the west, the consumer campaigns that would eventually squeeze the economy had not been devised. For English-speaking whites, largely made up of immigrants from Europe who fled south to warmer climes after the second world war, life could not get much better. True, there was a secret society, the Broederbond, that parcelled out top jobs in the civil service and in business to Afrikaner cronies, bypassing the newly arrived rooineks (red necks). And there was apartheid, the odious - but very convenient - political system that denied a decent wage, dignity and justice to all black South Africans as they toiled for their white masters. But these were minor inconveniences, easily ignored as the high life was lived on Africa’s southern tip. As the words of a successful advertising jingle had it: ‘We love braaivleis (barbecue), rugby, sunny skies and Chevrolet’. And then along came Suck.
 
Suck - the barbarians at the gates. Four rebellious youths playing the music of the devil very loudly, with a stage show to match. The stuff of nightmares. Suck. The very name sparked outrage; the band’s shows fuelled it. Town halls were trashed, mothers rushed to lock up their daughters when the boys were back in town, the good burgers of cities across the country threw up the barricades. The clean-cut Calvinist utopia engineered over decades was under siege, and from home-grown ‘longhairs’ - the enemy within. Nothing had prepared the country for this. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, a national scandal.
 
The establishment spat back. The print media mobilised to denounce the threat, venues slammed their doors shut against Suck’s outrageous antics, police turned the band away from smaller towns, and local radio, never quick to promote home-grown talent at the best of times, pulled the plug. In the face of such hostility it was no surprise when, about eight months after it all began, the light went out as Suck disintegrated and allowed respectability to return to wealthy suburbia. Punk arrived in due course. But white middle-class rebellion was irrelevant by then - the Soweto uprisings had begun, the murder of Steve Biko had focused western anger against the injustices of apartheid and South Africa had unknowingly and, for the white elite, unwittingly embarked on its long march to freedom.
 
It had all been planned, of course. The band had begun to coalesce early in 1970 in Johannesburg when bassist Lou "Moose" Forer teamed up with fellow South African Andrew Ionnides on flute and vocals, guitarist Steve Gilroy from the UK and Italian-born drummer Saverio "Savvy" Grande. They fell under the influence of Clive Calder, an ambitious young producer who had the local market in western-influenced prog and psychedelic rock sewn up with Suck’s EMI stablemates Freedom’s Children, Otis Waygood Blues Band and Hawk. Suck’s on and off-stage antics quickly marked them out. "We wanted to be as controversial as possible", says Forer. Recollects Gilroy: "Moose carried a bowie knife and I had a claw hammer, which were our weapons of choice. Andy carried his beloved Colt Python .357 Magnum and a cat-o-nine tails, which he brandished with much relish on stage." Time to Suck, the band’s sole album and recorded in just six hours, was a howl of grinding, grungy rock that gave no quarter. With just one self-penned track, The Whip, the remainder of the album was drawn from the toughest rock acts around - Aimless Lady from Grand Funk Railroad, King Crimson’s 21st Century Schizoid Man, Free’s I’ll Be Creeping, and War Pigs by Black Sabbath (although released only on EMI’s ‘Rock Today with the Big Heavies’ compilation album).
Subtle it was not, but to judge Suck in strictly musical terms is to lose sight of what they represented. They were a product of a unique time and place, hitting out at an oppressive and brutal regime - whatever the consequences. Rock rebellion was nothing new: the Stooges, MC5 and Fugs had led the way in the US, the Sex Pistols were to refine the process five years later in the UK. But Suck took on a far more dangerous beast and the fact that they are still the band most fondly remembered from that period, even though their contemporaries were musically more adventurous and sophisticated, is testament to their success. They raised two fingers to those leading the country down the path to political and economic ruin, and for a glorious few months all young South Africans held their breath to see what would happen next.
 
Suck’s rebellion was insignificant in the greater scheme of all things South African - a country never short of socio-political upheaval But in a small way this band of rebels did play a part in bringing about change. They stood up and waved their freak flag high. And who can tell how many young South Africans, inspired by their defiance, turned their backs on the old corrupt order and refused to toe the line.