Joe Rush first met Glastonbury founder Michael Eavis when he converted a truck into a giant skull and drove it to the main stage in 1985. After a huge argument, Eavis “fell in love” with Rush’s Mutoid Waste Company, and they’ve been taking their cast of repurposed machinery to the festival on and off ever since.
Carmen Fishwick met up with Joe Rush to talk art, Glastonbury, and politics.
Do you think it’s a good idea drinking all this prosecco in the sun?
Prosecco and jerk chicken? It couldn’t be better right? I think if we’d have gone for the spritzer we’d have been disappointed.
I see you’re not eating the plantain...
I hate it, I’ve never liked it. It’s a bit like an unsweetened banana. I always find with Jamaicans that though they live in one of the hottest countries in the world, they eat food which is like Scottish food or something – stews, dumplings. I love jerk chicken, though. I live in west London, carnival land, the smell is all jerk chicken in the sun. It’s lovely.
West London’s where it all started for you, right?
Yeah, but it’s changed so much. I used to get all my scrap metal there. Now my studio’s in Deptford and it’s still got a tat market. I love it. These people don’t bother with eBay – they just sell it cheap and cheerful. I love it, you’re fighting with all the African women to buy all these TVs. I find all sorts of bits down there. I found a little electric drill. I cut it up and made a little rock’n’ roll face. The randomness of those markets means you can make things you’ve never seen before, little animals and things. The things at Glastonbury are much bigger. See this sculpture? This is made out of my old car. I killed it. Sometimes you get some idea of what this car is doing to the planet and you’ve got to kill it.
But don’t you have a 4x4 now?
Yeah, I do, but it’s days are numbered.
Didn’t you have a huge falling out with Michael Eavis? How come he let’s you back here?
In 1985, we built this burned out bus in a squat in west London. Whilst we were finishing the build Thatcher attacked the peace convoy at Stonehenge [in the Battle of the Beanfield] so we came to Glastonbury. The front of the truck was a giant skull with no windscreens. The driver was looking through with goggles. The back was like a chicken spine. The police, when they saw us coming, thought it was their conscience for what they did to the hippies. I drove straight up to the main stage and had a huge row with Michael Evis. But he also totally fell in love with us. He loves the style of it. The we came back in 1987 and built the Stone enge out of cars.
Tell me about your sculptures for Glastonbury this year. What are the politics behind them?
I think most people are in denial about the world. I think it’s hard to know where to start. People bury their heads in bullshit. It’s depressing. Take the polar bear sculpture with the icebergs made out of old fridges –what I’m saying is that we’re heating up the planet, which is melting the icecaps, which is killing the polar bears who’d normally swim between the ice floes. They’ll swim and swim and then eventually drown. The problem is that life is so tough. Most people are just trying to get a fridge.
I took the CND logo that Michael Eavis loves so much, put it on the main stage and made a clock with wings. It’s called “Peace Time”. We’re living in a peaceful place at the festival, and in a time of peace. We should enjoy this fact. When I’m completely off my head I like quantum physics. When I go out to a party for a few days the whole concept of time has completely gone.
The whale [a balloon sculpture] is like the zeppelin. There was a time in this early part of the century that we thought we could build something mind-bogglingly big and these floating bombs that could float around the world and that will never come around again. And I feel like the whales are like this, that we’re hunting them out of existence. We’re polluting them out of the seas. Since I first became aware, I feel humans are going to destroy the world. I’ve felt that since I was 17. I’ve seen nothing yet that makes me think they aren’t.
Do you want to be more political?
I don’t like party politics, I like parties. We’re the arty-farty party people. In 1985 when Thatcher attacked the peace convoy we thought we were at war and our lifestyle was under attack. Being part of the system was impossible. Now it’s different we have to be part of the system – when we were asked to do the closing party of the Paralympics we thought long and hard about it. We are part of the culture of this country and we produce so much it’s all come out of the underground and its part of the system and we needed to be represented. This idea of freedom is a British feeling and we want to represent this.
We used to live in a zone called the alternative, but by being alternative people negated us and we negated everything mainstream did. But it wasn’t productive. By being part of the system we have a chance of changing things. This is why we have taken health and safety bullshit on board because they’ll close us down. Every time they put a hurdle up we’ll jump it.
How did you become the person you are?
I’m inquisitive, I’m always thinking. I’ve always got different threads going on in my mind. I was very sick as a child and I spent a lot of time just lying in bed on my own. I think it stimulated my imagination quite a lot. My inner world is quite rich, but the outside world is extremely big. You have to work at it. People shut doors but you’ve got to keep those doors open because every change the human race does requires just one person to say ‘Oh, maybe we can fly.’ And this is what this festival is it’s proof you can do something genuine and popular but it’s also environmentally sustainable, and financially sustainable.
Has that message been lost?
People like to talk it down and say it became commercial. But everything has. The old hippie festivals had great feelings but terrible soundsystems. But here is such a fantastic sound system, the quality of the site is immense. Someone has to get paid and make a living.
What do you really think about Kanye being here?
I liked his music until I heard him speak. No, what am I talking about? I think the guy’s an idiot. I’m going to be as far away as I possibly can from him.
Did you hear there’s a prosecco shortage?
There will be now.
