Gene’s Martin Rossiter believes the 90s Britpop scene was “deeply misogynistic and racist”.
The 56-year-old singer is not surprised the era has been experiencing a huge revival in recent times because of the quality of the music, but he also feels it could have been “a much richer” period if the artists being celebrated were more diverse.
Asked if he thinks the 90s revival is largely due to the quality of the bands of the time, he exclusively told Contact Music: “I think so. Although having said that, I’m going to sow a seed of caution.
“Looking back at that time, I did an interview for Kevin Cummings, the NME photographer, who released a book two or three or four years ago of photographs at the time. The book contains Gene and Brett Anderson and Damon Albarn and Sonia Madan from Echobelly and various people.
“I did this interview, and while I was doing it I went back and I looked at all the front covers of the NME from 1995, so 52 front covers. I might have my numbers slightly wrong, but there were only something like three women and one or two people of colour on the front covers of those magazines.
“That, to me, suggests actually a deeply misogynistic and racist music industry.
“I think anybody from that time, myself included, we have to understand that we come from a place and a degree of privilege of being white men.
“The music industry has a habit of doing that, certainly in this country, it’s one of the few things America is better than us at.
“I just think it would have been a much richer era musically if it included people other than white men.”
At the time, Martin was keen to distance Gene from being labelled a Britpop act, and though he can see there was some “amazing records”, he didn’t like how women and artists of colour were excluded.
He said: “Certainly at the time, I’m just deeply sort of anti-nationalist. I’m an old school lefty, what people now call woke. I’m woke and proud!
“I think it was an era that produced some amazing records, don’t get me wrong.
“I remember when Blur released Beetlebum and thinking, ‘Oh, this is fantastic.’ It was quite dark and moody and a very unusual record and it got to number one.
“And you had The Prodigy and Breathe and Firestarter were number one records.
” I’m not dismissing the era in in totality, I just think there were a lot of people left out and I think at the time, maybe I didn’t have the political nous to express it as well as I can now. And that’s just by being able to look back at the time. It did feel like people were being left out and those people had ovaries and darker skin.”
Female artists of the time felt they faced double standards.
Martin recalled: “I remember talking to Justine Frischmann from Elastica about how she was asked to do a photo shoot mimicking that Christine Keeler naked shot on the chair from the ‘60s. Nobody ever asked me to take my top off.
“I think it’s fair to look back on that time with a degree of fondness. I don’t have a problem with people doing that, but I just think it could have been a more musically richer time if the word Brit in Britpop included everybody.”
Read the full interview with Gene’s Martin Rossiter at https://www.contactmusic.com/story/470/3617994/-it-did-feel-like-people-were-being-left-out-and-those-people-had-ovaries-and-darker-skin-martin-rossiter-on-britpop-s-problems-gene-s-second-coming-and-why-the-band-can-count-prime-minister-andy-burnham-as-a-fan.