Lead Kula tries to shake Nazi allegations

For the past six months, the British pop quartet Kula Shaker has garnered rave reviews in the music press for its unique blend of pretty melodies, propulsive beats and Eastern-influenced guitars. A more recent development, however, casts the band in an extremely negative light, one that may cause irreparable damage to its burgeoning career.

In a story related in the May 7-13 Metro Times, the British political magazine Open Eye named Kula Shaker one of the New Age Nazis in Britain, based on the group's statements in a March edition of the New Musical Express. Kula Shaker's guitarist and lead singer Crispian Mills was quoted as saying, "Hitler knew a lot more than he made out. Hitler and his whole gang weren't just a bunch of fucking psychos. I love the swastika! It's a brilliant image. It symbolizes peace and the sun and illumination - it's everywhere in India."

Furthermore, Open Eye discovered that Mills' unsuccessful previous band, The Objects of Desire, used the motto "England will rise again," and also played at a 1993 conference at London's Wembley Stadium called "Global Deception," at which infamous anti-Semitic speaker William Cooper gave a lecture. Cooper is a visible Nazi supporter who reprinted "Protocols of the Elders of Zion." The book describes a conspiracy in which a handful of Jewish men control the world's money supply and power. Cooper can also be seen on the cover of Kula Shaker's debut album, "K," as well as being thanked the liner notes.

After getting hammered by the press, Mills offered a grammatically flawed apology (left as originally written) in a letter to The Independent, a British newspaper. "My comments derive from my long interest in Indian culture, from which the swastika has its origins ... in Indian culture it actually represents wholeness, spirituality, and good fortune," said Mills. "It has been unfortunately stolen by the Nazis who transferred it into a symbol of hate, racism, death, destruction and evil.

"My comments were not in any way a support of the crimes that are symbolized by the Nazi use of the swastika, especially the Holocaust genocide in which so many innocent Jews were tortured and murdered," said Mills before adding, "For the record I have never been an anti-Semite especially as my dear grandmother was Jewish and I am thus Jewish by blood."

Asked to explain the Wembley rally, Mills wrote, "The Objects were invited to play at a bizarre alternative conference in Wembley ... somehow the organiser who was a most eccentric woman thought that we were a famous and successful pop-band. A gig was a gig, especially then, and so we played two sets. We had very little idea what the conference was about and so we thought, 'let's have an adventure and do it.'"

Mills distanced himself from William Cooper by saying, "I have no admiration for Cooper or his ideas." While this condemnation may sound genuine, Mills also completely misinterpreted Cooper's motivation for reprinting the infamous anti-Semitic book. "His reprinting of the reprehensible and specious 'Protocols of Zion' is, if I am not mistaken, his attempt to show how there is a conspiracy against the Jews and not a justification of a Jewish conspiracy."

Mills lastly offered an explanation why Cooper is on the cover of "K." "The theme of the cover played with the ideas of conspiracy and remembering him as a proponent of conspiracy theory we put him on as a joke - that's it." This, however, does not explain why Cooper is also thanked in the liner notes, nor why Mills believes that Hitler was more than a "psycho."

Despite Mills'rather honest apology to those offended by his earlier comments, it may take a full-blown public relations makeover for Kula Shaker to shake this dodgy charge and right its favor in the eyes of the press - and the public.

Crispian Mills (second from right) tries to explain the charges against him.

05-14-97