Transcript: Winston Marshall

My conversation with the musician, writer and podcaster

Without freedom of expression, there can be no great art. Artists must have the ability to express themselves fearlessly, and take risks, in order to create authentic work.

So, what happens when this fundamental value is eroded within our culture?

It’s a question that my guest on the podcast today has thought a lot about — and one he tackles in his first Substack newsletter, dedicated to a recent incident which saw London’s Field Day Festival rescind a booking request from the rapper M.I.A. in the wake of online comments.

Winston Marshall is a British musician, and a former member of the band Mumford & Sons. He’s also the host of the Marshall Matters podcast at The Spectator, and the author of a Substack newsletter called The WinStack.

This is an edited transcript for paid subscribers. You can listen to the interview for free here.

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TH: Winston, welcome to Lean Out.

WM: Tara, thank you so much for having me on your show.

TH: Thank you so much for coming on. I’ve been following your work for some time, so it’s a great pleasure to have you here with us today. You recently joined Substack and your first essay is about M.I.A.’s cancellation and how that should worry all musicians. This is about London’s Field Day Festival rescinding a booking request for the British rapper after she made online comments. The speculation is that this is about comments she made on the Covid vaccines. What moved you to kick off your Substack with this particular story?

WM: Well, this story, I think, is typical of what we’re seeing in the music industry, and the creative industries at large. So, let me just go into the story specifics. We don’t know exactly what it was that she said that made Field Day music festival rescind their offer. All they said was that her “online comments” were the reason why they were rescinding. “Online comments,” right? Most likely, it was her discussing the vaccines. But she’s also, since then, suggested it might be because she did an interview with Candace Owens. Not the content of the interview with Candace Owens — just that she had done an interview of Candace Owens, the American Conservative pundit. Now, what is very shocking to me was that that can be cited as a reason to rescind the offer. M.I.A. did not go on a Kanye-style racist, antisemitic, rant. Or anything of the sort. Certainly that’s not what happened on the Candace Owens show.

If it’s the Covid-related comments she made — whether or not she’s right, it’s sort of beside the point. She talked about her child being forced to have a vaccination. She talked about gaslighting healthy people, ridiculing her in the press on the front page of newspapers, making her feel like she was a murderer. She called out Big Pharma. Some of it is a bit punchy. Whether or not you agree with her is besides the point. How can a festival not accept people for having different opinions? Just think that through. Does that mean they only book people who think exactly as they think? If that’s the case, then no one is thinking, first of all. But also the idea that there’s diversity of thought is nonsense.

I get very frustrated about this in the music industry. Because everyone is banging on about kindness and diversity, and all of these things. But okay, so here we have someone. She’s British, she’s of Sri Lankan heritage, and she has heterodox opinion on vaccines — and that’s the reason why she’s not getting an offer for this festival. Now, you might say it’s up to the festival. It’s their prerogative who they book, they have got their own risks. I think that’s also partly true. They probably fear a media backlash. There wouldn’t be one. I don’t know how there could be one — she’s getting booked elsewhere and there aren’t media backlashes for her being booked.

So, why this is bad is because music, art, other artists will see this and think, “Oh, I better keep quiet. If I risk losing gigs because I’ve got the wrong opinions, better to not have any opinions.” And there are some level of artists … well, actually it turned out that even Kanye is cancellable. But there’s some level of artists who are somewhat un-cancellable. But the majority of artists, it’s a really difficult game. It’s very hard to make money from music. And so, the majority of artists are just not going to take the risk. Another consequence of that, by the way, will be that they take less risks with their creations, with their music. It just creates an atmosphere. And I know that. That was my experience in it. After a while of “don’t say that,” it seeps into every aspect of your creativity — the idea that there are things you cannot go towards, and things you cannot explore.

The foundational premise of the music industry, the sine qua non of the music industry, is self-expression. And you’re telling artists, by this action, that they shouldn’t express themselves. How can it last? Start with a rant, sorry. [Laughs]

TH: Not at all. It is so strange, this issue of artists and free expression. I started my career as a music critic in hip-hop. Back then — this is 20 years ago — the attacks on free speech were mainly coming from conservatives. And I think this is why you have the older guard of rappers understanding this. Ice-T recently tweeted, which you retweeted, “Artists are here to disturb the peace.” This is no longer the thinking. The censorship calls are often coming from the left. And not just the left, but from musicians themselves. Like the Neil Young and Joe Rogan situation. What does that shift mean for musicians?

WM: It’s interesting that you bring up Ice-T, because there was a song [of his] in the 1980s, it might even be called “Freedom of Speech.” He had a whole verse about the First Amendment.

In that period, it was moral majoritarians, usually the Christian conservatives, worried about obscene language. And so that’s where the free speech issues came into play. But we haven’t got quite the equivalent now. Artists can still say what they want, it’s just that there are repercussions. There are professional repercussions, in a very fragile enterprise, for saying what you want.

There’s some important nuances here. So, if you take the example of Kanye. He has said some things that I think are beyond the pale, some anti-Semitic things. I think that it’s borderline inciting violence. I don’t know if it’s technically inciting violence, but it’s on the borderline, it’s close to it. So I wouldn’t — certainly I defend his right to say what he wants as long as he doesn’t incite violence. But what’s curious about what M.I.A. has done is that it’s nowhere near that line. Even the idea of it being on that line is laughable.

I’ve had my own experience when I promoted a book that was critical of BLM’s rioting and the Antifa movement in 2020. Again, nowhere near the line. But if you break these taboo topics, there’s all sorts of repercussions to pay. So, it’s not quite how it was in the 80s, 90s. But it’s worth remembering that [time], because I also think that conservatives have a history of doing this. And it’s still happening. Conservatives are also cancelling people. That should be remembered, I think.

In Britain, there’s one example that comes to mind. There’s a football player called Trevor Sinclair, who used to play for England. He played for Queens Park Rangers, and a bunch of other teams. Now he’s a football pundit. And at the time of the Queen’s passing, he said something about the monarchy being a racist institution. I didn’t agree with what he said, and I didn’t like what he said. I think he worked at talkSPORT, and they suspended him for those comments. Now, he didn’t say anything illegal. It might have been slightly insensitive. But that is cancel culture. That is having professional repercussions for saying things that people do not agree with. But it’s not morally wrong for him to say that.

I say that because it’s worth [mentioning], and conservatives should check their blind spot. There’s a bit of a myth that this just comes from the woke left. I don’t believe that’s entirely true. Although certainly in the music industry, it’s the progressive thinking that has captured the gatekeeper’s minds. And that’s what we’re seeing with the case of M.I.A.

TH: I want to speak briefly about your own experience, which you just raised. You were a decade and a half in Mumford & Sons. In 2021, you left the band after the tweet that you just referred to. About reading Andy Ngo’s book on Antifa, and calling him a brave man. There was a huge Internet pile-on. Take me back to that time, and what you were thinking and feeling.