Skunk Anansie’s Skin: ‘We got slated when we were booked to headline Glastonbury’

​​The backlash to Skunk Anansie being announced as Glastonbury headliners in 1999 made the band feel as though they had something to prove, lead singer Skin has said.

The pioneering rock band topped the bill on the Pyramid Stage at the storied festival during the final throes of Britpop, while Skunk Anansie were dismissed as “not real rock music”.

Skin reflected on the history-making performance, in which she became the first Black woman to headline the festival, during a keynote conversation at The Great Escape festival in Brighton, recorded for The Independent’s Good Vibrations podcast.

“We were never a Britpop band,” she explained. “So when Britpop started, all that positive press [we were getting] suddenly turned to s***.

“We were a massive band at this point, big in every European country… and I think Michael Eavis was quite brave to put us [as headliners]. But yeah, we got slated. NME slagged us off, everybody slagged us off. ‘It’s not a real band, it’s not real rock music.’ And we had that our whole career, simply because [it was] me fronting it.”

Skin said she believed one of the reasons they weren’t regarded as a Britpop band was because “we weren’t British enough – I was always perceived as being scary, not British enough, [I was] female, gay… Things that make me fantastic.”

As a consequence of the backlash, Skin said that the band felt like they had to defend themselves in the run-up to the headline show on the Pyramid Stage.

“We were so f***ing ready for it,” she said. “We were like, ‘Come on then!’ Because you know, when you get slagged off or when people are negative, there are two ways you can deal with it.

“You can take it on your shoulders and take the weight and crumble and get smaller and smaller and try to appease people. Or you can just be like, well, you know what? I’m going to weather it, and fight for it.”

Skin described the Glastonbury audience as “like gunpowder” as they walked out, while recalling her outfit made of cassette tape that trailed behind her.

“We felt like we had to fight to deserve that gig,” she said, “in a way that a lot of bands didn’t have to. But you know what? That made us, and it continues to make us to this day… I’d rather be a band that fights for things, rather than going along with the status quo.”

In the same interview, Skin spoke about the difficult process of creating Skunk Anansie’s new album, The Painful Truth, which began during lockdown before the band grew frustrated with trying to write over video calls.

Around the same time, they were dealing with the aftermath of their longtime manager’s decision to retire, as well as changes in each member’s personal lives. The band were also determined to make something that felt fresh and different to anything they’d recorded before, or else decide to call it a day.

“The minute we started writing in our little shed in Devon… the first song we wrote is ‘An Artist is an Artist’, and that was when we were like, ‘This thing’s got legs!’” she said.

The blistering single “An Artist is an Artist” was described by Skin as a riposte to the incessant commentary on music and art, and a call to artists not to let those outside voices influence them: “We are the band, we create the music, we are the ones who are in charge.”

She added: “It’s our job to give [our fans] something exciting, something from our heart, something they didn’t even know they wanted.”

Skin grew emotional as she spoke about how two members of the band, bassist Cass Lewis and drummer Mark Richardson, had been diagnosed with cancer. Lewis was diagnosed during the recording process, while Richardson shared his diagnosis of prostate cancer last month, and recently underwent surgery.

“We call ourselves the cancer band… if I don’t laugh about it, I’ll cry,” Skin said. “They still manage to play like complete fire on tour.”

She praised Richardson for urging his male followers to get checked, which it turned out had encouraged two of her other friends who had since had their own diagnoses caught early.

“[Richardson]] is kind of the emotional heart of the band, someone anyone of us can go to with a problem… he’s an unbelievable character,” she said.

Later that evening, Skunk Anansie headlined The Independent’s stage at The Great Escape, where drummer Hayley Cramer filled in for Richardson. They performed a number of songs from The Painful Truth, including “An Artist is An Artist”, as well as some Skunk Anansie classics such as “Weak” and “Little Baby Swastikkka”, both from their 1995 album Paranoid & Sunburnt.

They were supported by rising indie-rock duo SpaceAcre, who quoted the Skunk Anansie song “Yes It’s F***ing Political” from their 1996 album, Stoosh, as they told the packed audience how some of their male fans had advised them to “keep the politics out” of their music.

Skunk Anansie’s new album The Painful Truth is out on 23 May. Listen to the episode of Roisin O’Connor’s Good Vibrations with Skin wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks to Fiona Garden Photography and Studio by Sea in Brighton.