29/10/2025
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๐ฝ๐น๐ผ๐ฟ๐ฒ๐ ๐ณ๐ฎ๐๐ฐ๐ถ๐ป๐ฎ๐๐ถ๐ผ๐ป ๐ถ๐ป ๐บ๐๐๐ถ๐ฐ ๐๐ถ๐๐ต ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐๐๐บ๐ฏ๐ผ๐น ๐ผ๐ณ ๐ต๐ฎ๐๐ฒ
24.10.2025
The cognitive dissonance between rockโs rebellious use of N**i imagery and the actual horror of the N**i regime forms the emotional core of Daniel Rachelโs new book.
This Ainโt Rock โnโ Roll: Pop Music, the Sw****ka & the Third Reich (White Rabbit, ยฃ25), which will be published on November 6, shows how artists from The Beatles to David Bowie, and from Sid Vicious to Lemmy have used, worn, toyed with or referenced N**i imagery โ often without ever confronting what it really meant.
โI wanted to show how this happened โ when, why, and what the consequences were,โ Daniel told me from his London home.
โThe same way the music world has tried to challenge racism, misogyny, and homophobia, I think it is time we faced up to this, as well.โ
There are surprising details everywhere in the book.
Daniel explores the name of Manchester band Joy Division (a reference to the N**isโ forced prostitution units in concentration camps), and uncovers the extent of Bowieโs interest in N**i aesthetics: a collection of memorabilia, an aborted musical on Goebbels, and the now-infamous 1976 comment that Hi**er was โthe first rock starโ.
โI donโt think Bowie was a N**i,โ Daniel said. โHe got swept up, like many rock stars, with the allure of the theatre of N**ism.
โThe Leni Riefenstahl films, Albert Speerโs lighting, the mass choreography โ they were staging what became modern stadium shows.
โBut there is a danger when you divorce that theatricality from the atrocities.โ
In the punk years, sw****kas became shock symbols โ worn by Siouxsie Sioux, stitched on to shirts by Malcolm McLaren (who was Jewish) and Vivienne Westwood, and scrawled across flyers and walls.
Daniel explained: โThere were few voices who challenged it.
โMalcolm introduced the sw****ka to punk โ I read an 800-page book on him and it was not even questioned, although I think it is actually one of the most fascinating things about him, having been raised in a Jewish family in London.
โBernie Rhodes, the manager of The Clash, and the son of Holocaust survivors, broke ties with Malcolm because of it.โ
Danielโs life has been threaded through music, identity and history.
Raised in a Jewish home in Birmingham, the son of Judith and Paul Rachel, he went to cheder and was barmitzvah.
And one of his earliest vivid memories was accidentally being driven by his mother into a National Front demonstration in 1978.
โIt was probably the first time I understood what the duality of being Jewish and facing racism was,โ the 56-year-old recalled.
That same year, he remembered being fascinated by punk and singing along to the S*x Pistolsโ Belsen Was a Gas.
But then his mother brought home a documentary called Holocaust on VHS.
Daniel added: โShe said I could only watch it with her, but one Saturday, when my parents went shopping, I pulled it off the shelf.
โI watched about an hour of concentration camp footage. It was horrific.
โThe juxtaposition, of seeing what the Holocaust was and singing about Belsen, I couldnโt get my head around it.โ
Daniel was enamoured of music from a young age, with such songs as Mull of Kintyre and Sailing regularly played in his parentsโ car and Top of the Pops a staple in the Rachel household.
Daniel was also a huge fan of The Specials, the West Midlandsโ Two Tone and ska revival band.
It was through them that he also became politically aware and how politics could shape an artistโs outlook.
โMy mum briefly worked at the Board of Deputies in London,โ Daniel said.
โOne day, she came back with a copy of Searchlight magazine, where a piece appeared which showed that The Specials AKA had compared Israelโs role in the Lebanon War to the N**is in their song War Crimes.โ
Daniel, who wrote his first song at 16, did not receive enough O-levels to get into a sixth-form college.
But, having lied about his exam results, he went on to read theatre, film and television studies at King Alfredโs College Wi******er, in Hampshire.
Daniel did not plan to be a writer โ he was a musician first.
In the 1990s, he fronted Rachelโs Basement, whom he described as โthe biggest band in the Midlands who never made itโ.
They gigged and toured, but Daniel found more success as a solo artist.
Having moved to London in 2000, he established Dust Records for the release of his self-financed debut album A Simple Twist of Folk.
But when a single failed to chart, he became more interested in writing a book rather than writing music.
Daniel had bought a book, Paul Zolloโs Songwriters on Songwriting, which saw the author interview American music icons including Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell.
He went back to the bookshop to ask if there was a British version, only to be told there wasnโt.
And that led to Daniel penning his first book, Isle of Noises: Conversations with Great British Songwriters, which was a Guardian and NME Book of the Year.
He sat down with such names as Ray Davies, Johnny Marr, Noel Gallagher, John Lydon, Sting and Bryan Ferry, among others, who offered insights into their craft.
โAs a schoolboy, Iโd dreamed of sitting down with Ray Davies or Bryan Ferry and speaking to them about the songs they had written,โ Daniel explained.
โI remember Sting saying to me that it was really enjoyable to talk to someone who knew about music, which was really cool.โ
Further tomes followed, including Too Much Too Young: The 2 Tone Records Story; Sunday Times bestseller Oasis: Knebworth: Two Nights That Will Live Forever; The Lost Album of the Beatles: What If the Beatles Hadnโt Split Up?; Donโt Look Back In Anger: The Rise and Fall of Cool Britannia; and Penderyn Music Prize winning Walls Come Tumbling Down.
In writing his new book, Daniel โ the father of three girls with partner Susie McDonald โ reached out to many of the artists he writes about.
He said: โThe ones who got back to me were the ones who had tried to work against this stuff . . . who had taken a stand.
โBut mostly I realised that what was needed was a documented history and what were the justifications.โ
This Ainโt Rock โnโ Roll is structured around several questions: how and why rock artists flirted with fascist iconography; what it means; how the industry, the media and the audience bear responsibility; and how it matters now in a world where far-right resurgence is real.
The book is arranged chronologically across seven decades of pop โ from the post-war birth of rock, through glam and punk, to the 21st-century digital age.
One notorious โ and undoubtedly iconic โ talents he writes about is Eric Clapton who, in recent times, has shown his anti-Israel views and support for the Palestinians.
In 1976, while playing a concert at the Birmingham Odeon, he identified the โw*gs and c**nsโ in the audience and told them to โgo back homeโ.
Clapton, known as Slowhand, also labelled controversial politician Enoch Powell โ of โRivers of Bloodโ fame โ as a โprophetโ.
โClapton repeated the claims two years later, in a Melody Maker interview,โ Daniel said.
โHe has also never apologised for that behaviour and, on the Today programme a couple of years ago, passed off the comments as being โfunnyโ.
โI think his behaviour was abominable.โ
The Beatles were not immune, either, with John Lennon and Paul McCartney performing a Sieg Heil at the premiere of Hard Dayโs Night and Lennon owning N**i memorabilia, as well as regularly making antisemitic comments about the Fab Fourโs Jewish manager Brian Epstein.
And, launching Hey Jude in 1968, McCartney scr**ed the words on to a paint-coated window โ without realising the connotations.
The next day, the owner of a Jewish delicatessen in Marylebone phoned The Beatlesโ office and threatened to send his son to โtake careโ of Paul.
Daniel also surmised the uncomfortable fact that antisemitism is often treated as a โlesser form of racismโ in rock culture.
โThere is a fine line with the embrace of the theatre of N**ism with accusations of antisemitism,โ he added. โThat extends to the fine line between anti-Zionism and antisemitism.โ
He pointed to Primal Scream and its lead singer Bobby Gillespie, who, in 2000, considered replacing the 50 stars on the American flag with sw****kas for the cover of Sw****ka Eyes from their album XTRMNTR.
It never happened, but Gillespie, in an interview with NME, described the sw****ka as a โgood image, a great insult applicable to any authoritarian figureโ.
Then, at Glastonbury, Primal Scream were invited to sign a โMake Poverty Historyโ banner โ but Gillespie altered the wording to read, โMake Israel Historyโ.
โIt is another reason why I thought, โletโs put all these things together and lay it out as a historyโ, which I have done with the book,โ Daniel said.
Danielrachel.com
Daniel Rachel Author
White Rabbit Books
