Jiří Popel

“I was kicked out of school in my sixth year. I had brought my father’s Scout fleur-de-lis to show my classmates. The chairman of the Pioneer troop council confiscated it, saying it was a forbidden item and how could I dare bring it. So I put out my hand like us for him to give it back. Except he stabbed it with a fountain pen against the desk. I looked at my up-turned hand, saw the blood mixing with the ink, and I got really angry. I jumped up, grabbed a chair, and gave him a proper beating with it. And then I was expelled from school.”

“There were Czech policemen there, the slightly post-revolutionary kind. They still wore those green uniforms with red epaulletes. Normal cops, right. They made a cordon through the closed off part where there weren’t any people any way, and the band was supposed to go through there. That they’d protect them, like. I went with Soundgarden through the cordon of policemen. There was one there, a tubby sort, sweaty armpits in that green coat-shirt. He turned to his mate, and because he thought I was an American like the rest of the band and that I wouldn’t understand him, he said: ‘Shit man, this is effed up. A few years ago we’d be giving these machos a mashing, and now we’re protecting them.’”