Len Liggins & Peter Solowka
Spenwood Books: isbn: 978-1-915858-23-8
In review by Alan Dearling
This is a mammoth book. A lavish, large-format hardback production with 320 pages. Essentially it is a largely chronological collection of first-person recollections by key members of The Ukrainians’ band and their wider entourage. Before it kicks off into the band history, authors, Len and Peter relate bits of their personal and family backgrounds. Then it moves up a musical gear, describing the time when the Leeds-based band, The Wedding Present played a few Ukrainian songs at the end of their session for the John Peel Show. Then, for the fourth Peel session, in October 1987 they created an entire Ukrainian set. It was also the moment that Len Liggins was invited to join The Wedding Present for their Ukrainian ‘project’. As Peter says: “If The Wedding Present hadn’t done that Peel session, there’s no way the band The Ukrainians would exist.”
Peel loved the Ukrainian show and invited the band back for yet another session in March 1988 featuring Ukrainian tunes. In essence, the band were doing something akin to what the Pogues did for Irish music, adding lots of energy, speed and punk attitude. Red Rhino Records obtained a licence from the BBC to release the Peel show as an album: ‘Ukrainski Vistupi V Johna Peela’. This was then re-released by RCA, as was the single, ‘Davni Chasy’, none other than the song, ‘Those Were the Days’, made famous by Mary Hopkin. The song itself is actually originally a Russian tune which had an entirely different set of lyrics. For a while, The Wedding Present performed in tandem with the yet to be named (and independent), ‘The Ukrainians’. They finally became a fully-fledged band in 1990, formed initially by Peter, Len and mandolin player, Roman Revkiv, aka Roman Remeynes! That was also the year that they first played in Ukraine, the country.
The rest of the book is an exhaustive and sometimes exhausting, rather repetitive, blow-by-blow, gig-by-gig, recording-session-by-recording-session account of the life of The Ukrainians from inside the band, recounted by the band members. It follows their travels and the various comings and goings of band members and collaborators right up to late 2024. It also relates the background story of the making of the ‘Together for Ukraine’ album to add funds for the Ukrainian Humanitarian Appeal. That album instead of being an album by The Ukrainians (band) was an album featuring a diverse range of bands and musicians from around the world playing and singing songs from The Ukrainians.
Some of the most interesting aspects of the book relate to the detailed information included about the way the key members of The Ukrainians learned more about Ukrainian (and eastern European) traditional music, wrote their own songs embedded with genuine Ukrainian themes, musical structures, and their use of the key instruments – accordion, mandolin and fiddle. Significantly, they erased the Russian tunes that had been included in their original set lists with The Wedding Present. Another section of the book includes the background to the punk material from the Sex Pistols which they re-wrote into Ukrainian and released as the EP, ‘Anarchy in the UK’, which in turn nurtured the punked-up traditional Ukrainian folk tunes included on the 2002, ‘Respublika’ album. Len Liggins explains: “To me, Punk was the Folk music of its time, and anyway, both the old eastern songs and the new western songs are often about rebellion…as a result of this album, we got a lot of interest in Poland, where there was a massive Punk scene.”
I’ve personally seen the band live on a number of festival stages over many years. In particular, they have been regulars at Endorse It in Dorset, Glastonbury and at the Trades Chub in Hebden Bridge. They are one of the truly exciting ‘live’ bands around the festi circuits. This is nicely summed up in this quote from Paul Briggs, one of the bands many members:
“…The Ukrainians are absolutely wonderful, and if you were to write the concept of The Ukrainians on a piece of paper, it wouldn’t make any sense whatsoever. But go to a gig and try and stand still. It’s impossible. You can’t do it.”
The book is a labour of much research and love. The Ukrainians are ‘special’ and this is a testament to their creativity, resilience and, given the sad recent history of the war in Ukraine, they are a band who have helped share and promote the culture of Ukraine to a much wider audience than would be the case if they didn’t exist.
