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INTERVIEW RICHIE CAMPBELL
really and truly, I don‘t go into that much, but I have nothing to do with the mistakes that have been done, so why should I be paying for that? You have a whole generation of Portuguese people and Greek people and German people and whatever that are suffering from mistakes done before they were born! And we‘re trying to get jobs, we‘re studying, and we wanted to go to school because we have been taught by this European society that we should go to school to get a good job. And then we go to school, get a degree, and we can‘t find a job. And then these people come, IMF and everything come to our country and it‘s kind of Europeans coming to you and saying that you did a bad thing! Basically, my opinion is just leave us alone and let us do our change now.
With Anthony B, you did It Takes A Revolution. I was touring with Anthony B two years ago, I was the opening act for his tour. The first time I came here to Germany and across Europe. I mean, I saw him perform like over 26 times in 30 days. He was kind of a mentor when it comes to live performances. So I had to have him on this album, and obviously he was up to recording it. So when he came to Portugal one time after the tour to perform a show, we just jumped in the studio and did some work together. In the tune Society, you talk about the crisis which is happening in Europe now from a rather unusual perspective. The song is written exactly from a Portuguese perspective because right now, we the Portuguese are kind of the ghetto of Europe. We and Greece. And it‘s basically from the point of view of a person who is 26 years old, was born into the European Union, was born into this crisis, has nothing to do with it, and we are paying for the damage that has been done by people in the past. So, my opinion on it:
As a German citizen, I don‘t feel like I‘m suffering from a crisis. I just don‘t want any government to use the taxes I pay to fill the bank accounts of some rich bankers. That‘s it! You haven‘t suffered yet, because Germany is the richest country in the European Union, along with the UK. But we in Portugal are feeling that crisis, because right now we have over 17% of unemployment, and by 2014, we will have 20% of unemployment. And in Portugal, I see 80% of my friends who are working are working outside of Portugal. What you just said about you not feeling the crisis speaks a lot to this crisis, because if we are supposed to be one European Union, why should you not feel it and I should feel it? The equality is really just on paper. If you look at it, Greece and Portugal are not really a part of the European Union right now, because right now the options they are giving us are either you pay and you go through this crisis, or you‘re out of the European Union! If you look at it from a very practical point of view, you do not have to choose how your country is governed, you do not get to choose who runs Europe, and you‘re just being imposed all these kind of rules, and it just does not make sense from the point of somebody who was born after they‘ve made these decisions.