Geoff Francis: 55 Years Vegan - Music, Art & Activism

[Music] Hello and welcome to The Vegan Part with me, Damien Watson. Now this time around we're going to mix nostalgia, music and art and much more, as we have a look back at the relatively early days of veganism, and how one man's commitment to the cause helped spread the vegan word around London's creative scene, and beyond in the 1970s and 80s. Jeff Francis describes himself as a writer, artist, filmmaker and long-time ethical entrepreneur, whose work has spanned music, publishing, visual art, environmental campaigning, and creative activism for more than five decades. Jeff has been vegan for 55 years, and he's been involved in a wide range of influential projects connected to animal welfare, and the environment and music and the arts. Early in his career he worked with Friends of the Earth, he was also a social worker for a time, and then he went on to build a successful chain of independent record stores, all change records, in London's West End during the 1970s and 80s. Alongside opening a vegetarian restaurant in Baker Street, way before even vegetarianism became a thing. Throughout the 1980s, Jeff became increasingly involved in animal advocacy and ethical creative projects. He worked alongside names such as Linda McCartney and Carla Lane and Captain Sensible from the Damned, Good Old Captain, and then turned his focus to working as an artist, author and filmmaker. These days, Jeff collaborates with the American musician Darren Gin on a project called Love Songs to a Mother, which explores humanity's relationship with animals and the natural world through a music storytelling and social commentary. But Jeff can tell us all about this, so let's get him on. Welcome to the vegan part, Jeff, it's nice to have you on. Thank you very much. Let's go back to the start of your veganism, Jeff, if we can, which by my reckoning would be what, 1971 or thereabouts. It was. Clearly, veganism was a very unusual choice back then, so what made you go vegan? I presume it was something to do with your time at Friends of the Earth. Not so much, actually. The Friends of the Earth came a little later, '71, '72. But I've always been concerned about what's happening to animals and what's happening to the planet in a sort of naive way when I was much younger obviously. And it became a very natural choice. I became a vegetarian at 19 and then I went on to start to understand how that in itself involved a deal of cruelty. And once you know those things, you can't unknow them, and you have to act on it. So that's the way I came to veganism. Was there an epiphany for you, Jeff? A lot of people who've been on the podcast have said, "Yeah, there was one moment that made me realise I had to do this. Was there one for you?" It was more the amount of information that was coming my way, stuff that I was ignorant of. I had become a vegetarian. I was in pursuit of a very important relationship with someone who was in North America. But I wasn't able to pursue that properly, but I did to North America on a Greyhound bus. The student used to be able to get a $50-day $50 ticket. And at the end of it, I came out of vegetarian definitely. I'd always avoided even from a very early age given the choice I wouldn't eat animals. But my parents were very loving people and you never thought that they would do anything that was unkind or cruel. They didn't see that till later in their lives. But I did. So where did you grow up on what kind of background did you have? I'm a Cockney Ball. I was born in the, what was then the London hospital in White Chapel. For two years we lived in Vietnam Green. And then I was very lucky that my father was a member of what was at that stage, the biggest boys club in Great Britain. And they were given the opportunity to move out to South Woodford. And I was really blessed because I grew up in a sporting community. If you look for Eaton Manor on Wikipedia, you'll see that it was meant to be an organisation that had elite sportsmen involved with it. And dad in fact had been with Chelsea for two years after the war. And his choice was take a five-hound a week deal or go and work for Hackney Barrow. And that's what he did because he just had me born. But being part of that community was a wonderful blessing. And it gave lots of advantages, including some educational advances as well. Do you still live in that part of London? I live in Swanage in Dorset. Lovely. And at what point did music come into your life? Well music of course is always there. From the earliest my father was a great fan of Sinatra. So I grew up listening to that sort of music. And I still like that form of jazz. And in fact it was that thing that got me together with Darren. We clicked six years ago now on LinkedIn. And he sent me some recordings of his piano playing. And I just said, well that really is my style of piano. Let's come back to this towards the end of the podcast. I want to try to keep it vaguely chronological just vaguely. Yeah sure. Okay. I'll talk about the 1970s because as I said before being vegan then was not usual. You must have been in a very small minority. Was there a small community of vegans in London in the East End at that time? No. There wasn't anyone that I was aware of. There were odd people who were running the vegan society of course with the Janaways. And some other nice people all Quakers. And then there are other fine people like John Winn Tyson who wrote food for a future. That came out in '76 and reading that widened my understanding of the other parts of veganism. John Winn Tyson was his mother Esme was the closest friend to Noel Coward. And so he was brought up in that sort of rich area. And I mean that intellectually rich area. And he's one of the people who held to that way of approaching veganism. There was a lot of deep thought that went on in those days. What about the practicalities of being vegan in the 1970s? I mean we take it for granted now because it's so easy to get vegan food. We know so much about nutrition. We did podcasts recently on the importance of vitamin B12 which I don't think had even been identified in the 1970s or if it had it wasn't common knowledge that we needed it. What about the practicalities of living as a vegan in London in the 1970s? How difficult was it? It was just a question of not eating animals. That's the way I lived my life. And other people who one got to know they lived the same way. It was avoiding animals flesh on your plate and the other cruelties that went with a dairy industry. That bit's quite easy but staying healthy and making sure that you're getting the right nutrients. That's the difficult bit. I mean you're living proof that clearly you got through it so it can't have been that bad. I always used to say when I was heading into my forties that I could reckon I could run a mile against any meat eater. Of course you know what happens they tell you that are you going to die in five years? As you say I'm living proof that that doesn't happen. Can I be really cheeky and ask how old you are now Jeff? I'm 76 now. Okay and you went vegetarian at 19. Yeah. And then vegan so I'm going to work this out in 1971. Okay 1971. Yeah well but where'd you get your protein? It was all pulses in those days. I want to talk about music. I'm a terrible man. music. Oh me too. I'm really glad that you're on the podcast because I want to talk about the music scene in the 70s and 80s and how all change records came about how you you you you fitted into that London music scene because you know for people listening of a certain age this will all be great fun but for those under a certain age they won't know what it was like to go into a proper record shop. I was terrible I used to I'm I'm in my late 50s now so my I think I read some research once in a former life that people are most influenced by music i.e. they develop the tastes that will stay with them for their lives when if their female it tends to be about 12 or 13 years old and because boys develop a little later it's 13 or 14 so when I was 13 or 14 this is in the late 70s early 80s I would and I hope my parents aren't listening. It's to bung off school on a Monday morning too it'd be the first person in my school to have the latest single by the jam so right then I turn up at school at 10 o'clock with the new single by the jam and everybody had crowd-round to have a look at it but the experience of going to a record shop was just so exciting for me as a teenage boy I just loved it and that's gone now hasn't it what's it like then for you what has it gone I mean the vinyl shops are very much coming back aren't they well that's true but only for people of a certain vintage really no I don't think teenagers are rushing off to record shops to buy the latest edge shearing single or whatever it might be you know whereas we were but yeah maybe I'm being a little bit unfair and there's certainly been a comeback in vinyl but in those days it was all we had yeah well you had an album and you want it's people have been wondering along the street with the album showing because it was a work of art and a complete work of beautiful stuff and the same sort of I did the excitement around getting a hold of something like that but I started it came out of my involvement with friends of the earth because I set up and ran their paper recycling campaign and I was being funded to work with them by a guy called great artists called Ed Fairfax Lucy and a very nice human being Ed was paying me eight pounds a week and even in those days it wasn't it wasn't a lot of money so since we had a shop front I asked Ed was it okay if I put some records and books in there I just told my money and he was fine with it as I say it was delightful human being I borrowed 150 quits worth of second-hand records from a friend I was paying for them but I didn't pay him at the start this guy Steve he was a follower of the Maharishi yogi and he wanted that shop for a centre for the Maharishi and he lived above a shop in Goldborne Road and he said I can introduce you to the guy who owns all this he was sort of a local Irish Mafia in Westbourne Park so I went and saw the man and we shook hands on 12 pounds a week I can remember the first Saturday because the Goldborne Road is a market in just off the Portobello so you get a good throughput but I remember the first Saturday I took 35 pounds it was a cool area it's still a very cool area and we started I took in a friend I was at university with and we started to buy review copies and that led us into being involved with a lot of really interesting people in the music business I won't name them. No you've got to sorry you can't come on the podcast if you're not going to name them. But they were all radio 1 DJs I don't name all of them no no whether they were the original ones the interesting ones the ones actually all the guys who became our friends are very close friends I mean there was a chance of opening a play to turn a restaurant in Hampstead with Pete Drummond and Alan Black who were I don't know if you knew them at all but they were radio 1 they were delightful just a few little bit before my time. Yes I just a little bit. How quickly did all change records begin to not just become a successful business but a real sort of community music and creative hub or hubs. Yeah we had some amazing people who we come in and buy things listen to things be introduced to things bias when we move to bait the first one in Baker Street I gave literally gave that one away to a guy called John Claire which became honest John's records across from us there was a little stall and that was run by a guy called Ted Carroll and Ted Carroll was the manager of Thin Lizzie at that time and in one of their songs you will hear the verse that says we buy all our records from the rock on stall Teddy boy he's got them all and I believe Ted's still still running rock on as a male order set up. I do like a bit of Thin Lizzie most rock bands these days ain't got that swing. They used to be down in Goalborne Road lots of people were hanging around that area. Okay so that's the music side of it and the creative side but how did your veganism fit into this? Did you have an evangelical role to play here where you were trying to convert people or did they not need to be converted in some case? People who knew me knew what my ethic was and it's interesting over the years it has rubbed off on a few people you know some people it takes a very long time other people sort of get it in one. How did your activism grow in that period? There was a difficult period that shifted me out of the record business but not entirely because you know it's like it's like a walking through a tree called you're never going to get free of it and I have used it to communicate my ideas so doing what no meat with a captain and these. Right okay well as you mention it then let's let's talk about this this was now captain sensible for people who don't know Raymond Burns is his real name and he was the bass player then the guitarist then the bass player again and I forget what he's doing now with the damned the punk band the damned who released it and they the very first punk record in 1976 it was new rows it was before the sex pistols and before the the clash and all the other punk bands and captain sensible was vegetarian then wasn't when again it wasn't particularly fashionable in the punk scene I guess to be to be vegetarian what was your link with captain sensible Raymond Burns? Right well the album the damned was put out by Ted Carroll on jizic records and I had come back from India with hepatitis and it took me a long time to get over that but Ted being the friend he was offered me the chance to have a job with him on a daily basis so two things happened the first was that I said I'd known that country Joe McDonald was the you know hero of Woodstock and recently died sadly from Parkinson's but I would would have counted Joe as a friend even at the end of these years I knew that he had written the most songs about what was happening to the environment and what was happening to animals so I said to Ted you got any links with Joe and he said oh I know the bloke who represents him over here and we got in touch I put the idea to him that we do an album so we actually became the first animal rights label in the country and possibly globally and this was when 19 this was 1981 and we brought Joe over and played the seal rally in Trafalgar Square and we ended up making enough money off that from the sale of the albums to pay for his fair to come over and again though Jeff for those people who are not of a certain age you better tell us what the seal rally was briefly right well I'm sure people know that every year the Canadians go out and kill the baby seals it's a very much a political thing these days, but the people who represent that area as in politics can't afford to lose their votes, the sealers votes. But Joe had done a song called Blood on the Ice and we put that out as a single for the seal Riley. On that he had Paul Cantner from Jefferson's Starship and Jefferson Airplane and we got it out. I managed to get it on radio too. How many seal rallies were there? How many people were at this particular one as well? Well they were always packed. I thought we were running them, International Fund for Animal Welfare and everything was very open in those days. They'd let anyone have come and have a stool if you're involved with animal rights. The next one, again Ted was involved because I said to him, you know, any of your bands come along and he had Johnny Moepe and Ray was involved because they all came from that area. I got to know Ray pretty well. Now you're talking about Ray Boenze, so we're back in Tencentible, who wasn't still as a big star of the Yeah, it's a big star. Apparently Chris Packen was saying that he's living in Portugal now. How is he? Okay, let's hear a little snippet of your collaboration with Captain Sensible. It was 1984 and you co-wrote this single called What No Meet. Let's hear a bit of it now. The world going on between men and the first piece of cattle. The front line is there in your eyes. Then do all of the things you've just lies but all you can change it. So Jeff Francis and Captain Sensible there, What No Meet 1984 and Captain Sensible had had a couple of, well he had a very big solo here. He had a version of Happy Talk from South Pacific, which was number one in the UK and various countries and one of his follow-up singles was called What W-O-T. So this is a bit of a play on that title What No Meet, which was shortly after the Captain Sensible single. So tell me how this came about Jeff. Well, I said to, because we had the label, I said to the captain, would you think about doing something on the vegetarian theme? And he booked a studio, I paid for it, but he booked the studio in Lloydon. And when over there, and he had the chorus, we didn't have any verse. And this was my introduction to songwriting because I sat down with Rachel, who was Captain's girlfriend at the time. And we knocked out the two of the words. The words were basically mine. I was running a thing called the Enough Project at that time, which was all about the waste of human resources, food resources that could have been fed to human beings directly. And we were in a situation where there was the Ethiopian starvation going on. And they were shipping rain from Ethiopia to be fed to cattle over here. Of course, this was the time of Band-Aid, wasn't it? 84 or 85? Yes, it was. Yeah, we did have. The more things change, the more they stay the same, Jeff. Absolutely. And a slightly later date, we did have some conversations with Band-Aid about what they were doing. But anyway, yeah, so he went in the studio and recorded it. And then we released it through Southern, who were very influential in punk. They had people like Crass on their label and those guys, dead Kennedys, all those guys. Ray and I then went round the country doing some promotions. But he and I developed a very good friendship and he used to come and stay with me on the Isle of White. And when I did the 1990 Isle of White Festival, he came and played for me for three as well. So that was the 20th anniversary of the original? That was, yeah. Is your involvement in that? I organised it to celebrate the 20 years since the Hendrix Festival. I had eight weeks to organise it. Once again, I relied very much on Ted, who knew lots of people and other people that I had known. Boy George was the top. And it was a very nice day, but unfortunately it was very badly affected by local politics. This is 1990 by this point. This is 1990. We've jumped over quite a lot of what you did in the 80s and tell me about Animal Line. When I was running the enough project, I had the idea of possibly doing a celebrity vegetarian cookbook, which was the first. I wrote to a number of people who came back very positively in terms of support. We even had something from British Abado. In fact, there were conversations going on to see if we could do, Animal Line could do something with her. The other person in Animal Line was Rita Tushingham, who did some wonderful work, particularly to get the chimps off the beaches in Spain. And we worked with Monkey World, with Jim at Monkey World. I mentioned in my intro, didn't I? I mentioned the camera. You missed it. It was a trilogy. What happened was that basically there was a wonderful day when I got a phone call in from Carla, who spoke to me for about an hour and a half about what's happening to animals. And then I put the phone down and there was Spike Milligan. It was that sort of energy that was flowing. And again, just very briefly, for those people who don't know, I'm sure most people will know. Everyone know Linda McCartney, of course. Carla Lane, the great TV writer and animal activist of that time. Yes. And I got to know Carla, but we initially, we were just friends. And then bread was huge, absolutely huge. That was one of her shows. And again, we have an international audience for the vegan part, of course. A bread was a massive TV show in the UK from when 19 about 86, 87. So she said she got invited to go to America and, you know, they like to steal. And she went there and it did relieve the phrases reboot. They, it didn't work, working with a team. I mean, Carla was just her and all this wonderful stuff going on in her head. She would be able to draw comedy and paythos. That was her real strength. She had paythos and then she'd hit you with a comic line and it would be even funnier. She said to me, oh, when I break America, I'll be able to start my own organisation. And I just said to with a good will towards you, we can do it now. And she said, well, if we do it, I've got two people that have to be involved. The first one was Rita, Rita Tushka. Then one day we went up to St. John's Wood and went to see Linda. And we thought that we would get charity status easily because it was a Liverpool office that we're dealing with the charity commission there because we had Rita, one of Liverpool's favourite daughters. We had Carla who was top of everyone's list. And of course, we had Linda. So I thought it would be easy, but they refused us because we were too campaigning orientated. So I ran it for four years as a campaigning organisation. And then at that point, humanities in humanity just grouted me right down. And I resigned, that had to resign as director. I was skeleton almost emotion. You were chipping away at this point and whether you knew it or not, what you and your friends and your contacts were doing was part of the bigger picture. And it was beginning to have an impact. Did you feel that at the time? Well clearly, Damian, I didn't at the end there when I resigned after four years, but we were all trying. I mean, the girls couldn't have been more committed. And we did two some very interesting things like when we went down to the Buley sales and exposed the meat man down there and stuff like that. We bought 20 and lots of interesting people interests who paid for me to bid for the various animals, Chrissy Hine and people like that. Interested on the music side as well. Carla and Linda did a single. One side of it was called "White Coded Man". I think I remember some sort of mild media controversy about it at home. Oh yeah, there was a lot of that and we couldn't get it away in this country, but the guy I'd worked with, a Dutch producer who had number ones in the low countries, a guy called Chris Pilgrim when we did the chimp rap for the Monkey World campaign. There's a video on Bonobo TV if you'd like to see it. Well, let's hear a bit of it, Jeff. And then you can tell us a bit about what led to this being released. This is a little bit of chimp rap. There was a great deal of problems with chimp on the beaches in Spain and they'd be being used as photographers models. The photographers had various very nasty tricks to make the chimp's behave and freeze for the photograph with the quality makers. One of them was that they would be tapping a cigarette packet and the chimp knew that they were going to be burned and the burns were horrendous. Some of the rescued ones were covered in cigarette burns. The other trick they had was holding a newspaper and in that newspaper was an iron bar and they used to beat them with that. And of course the holiday makers were innocent of this. They just said, "Oh, it's cute." And they'd seen all the chimp tea parties and the typhoo, adverts and stuff like that. And it was just meant to be fun for them. So I wrote a single and Chris Pilgrim got a band together called Pump Up. So we got together with Monkey World and put the thing out and Rita came down, did a video, built drivers and Virginia McKenna and Will Travers all turned up and they're all on the film with footage of the chimp's that were rescued. A common theme that we've had on the vegan part with some guests is that you get a bit of burnout. You get a bit of emotional burnout when you're so heavily invested in animal welfare and animal activism. Was this the kind of point where you began to feel that because you stepped away from the music business by this point and you turned more to art. Was that a kind of a kind of therapy for you in some way? Well, I'd always wanted to be an artist, to be a painter, but I was also a campaigner. I'm a typical gem and I got to communicate and it did mean a way of expressing what I felt inside without having the weight of people's inhumanity coming to me day on day. I used to get it all because I was franting it. You get people coming along and say, "Oh, you've got to buy this pig from this farmer because otherwise he's going to die." You try to point out that you give the farmer that money, he's going to go and buy a load more piglets and he's going to raise them and you're not beating the system. But that sort of thing would come at us day after day and that was difficult to deal with, very difficult to deal with. So I resigned, but Carla then managed to get herself charity status. So perhaps it was me that was keeping it. I'm sure it wasn't. We are fairly short for time here unfortunately, but I think what I'm going to do is direct people towards your website, Jeff, which you can give it a good plug yourself at the various websites. So we haven't even spoken about Bonobo TV or much about your restaurant either. You've done so much, we can't really cover everything. We'll talk a little bit in a minute about what you're doing now, but what can people do to find out more about your. Yes, it's well. It's so interesting and so varied. Yeah, please do have a look at Bonobo.tv and there you'll see very much the involvement with music, but also you can have a look at my website for. It hasn't been updated for a long time, but artist JeffFrancies.com and there's much more of the story on there. When did you start to get back into music? Well, that was when I met Darren or connected with Darren six years ago. I mean, you never get clear of music. It's in you. It moves your soul, doesn't it? But it moves my soul. What I'm trying to do is move other people's souls as well. So I've got all these lyrics. We've just done a. There's probably a thousand songs I've written over the last three years. And now there's prolific and there's. Well, at the moment we just released our on Bonobo.tv. If you go to the Bonobo.tv jukebox, you can actually listen to samples of at the moment 400 songs. As always with these podcasts and especially when we talk to somebody like your good self who's done so much in their lives, I've just thought of another question. The vegan society is based in Birmingham. But most of us work remotely these days and vegan part HQ is actually in Norfolk which of course is farming country. But it's also Norfolk. The home of one of the countries, one of the worlds leading animal sanctuaries which is hillside in Norfolk. And I think I read somewhere that you're involved with hillside as a volunteer. What do you do for them and how did you get involved? Well, I've been involved since almost the inception in 1995. And what happened was that Wendy Valentine who runs the whole thing and most amazing woman, she had also set up another organization who we won't name at this point and was having great deal of trouble. And she. the person who I did the syllabatory vegetarian cookbook with Janet Hunt was a supporter of this particular organisation. And she suggested that the book that we had done together might be helpful for them. So my mother had just died actually and my father and I took her journey up to at Vretna in Norfolk. And we delivered an enormous number of these cookbooks which Wendy was able to sell and raise money for her organisation. So that's how I got to know. But I thought I was going to get 20 minutes with her. And she took us to lunch and sat down and told me exactly what she wanted to do for farm animals and for the vegan cause. And day or so later I said to her, well, I've not been campaigning for a little while because I'd finished with animal line. But I think I could work with you. So what we did was I used to do things like writing the newsletters and stuff like that. And I used to go to all the animal rights events and I used to promote hillside there to the animal rights movement. And of course you know that they campaign and they do some amazing investigations which all brings to the public eye what happens in the farming industry. Well I think most people within the vegan community will know about the work of Hillside and of course I do but despite living not too far away I've actually never been, I've actually not been back in Norfolk or in the UK for that matter for too long I used to live overseas but I'm fully aware of Wendy's work and of Hillside's work and it's really interesting because it's a fantastic setup as you say and of course there are lots of fantastic animal sanctuaries doing wonderful work along similar lines and I'm just wondering here maybe if we could do something a bit more on this at some point do you get to Norfolk that often or do you work remotely for them? I work remotely but I can certainly get up there and let's do a face to face. That would be fantastic. Well let's um we'll hold that thought for the moment but it's a good shout out for those wonderful people and volunteers at Hillside and the wider animal welfare and sanctuary movement so that's fantastic Jeff we've got to really must wrap things up now but just one quick final thought for you I mean you've been doing this now for so long more than half a century if you were starting out in your activism today very different world what would you think you'd be doing? I think I'd be doing much of the same. I suppose it's easier but then an easy life isn't what we always want is it I mean the animals certainly don't have an easy life. Well you're not finished yet Jeff as people will find out if they go to your website artist JeffFrancis.com or to bonobo.tv where they can find out much more about what they're doing at the moment and what you've done in the past which is play a really important part in not just the vegan movement but in the creative movement in London and beyond as well so Jeff it's it's been a real pleasure to have you on the podcast I wish we could talk for longer but our time is up but thank you very much for joining us on the vegan pod thank you you'll be singing this old name