Josef Rössler

“That was the only way how to get out of it. Basically I did very well. The stetsec who was my contact bloke, as they called it, hassled me a few times on the phone, he always wanted to meet up somewhere, I always excused myself that I was ill or couldn’t come. After about half or three-quarters of a year they discovered that everyone knew I had signed it, so they as if gave me peace. I think he gave me a dressing down one more time. I was a complete wreck in that period. That year, that was crazy. I got stomach ulcers from it, of course, people knew about it, so some of them didn’t trust me, so I was kind of half-outcast. I know that around that time Loony [Ivan Magor - Loony - Jirous, a prominent figure of the underground culture - trans.] came back from some prison, and I was in Ječná [Street], we were waiting for someone to bring him there, and Věra Jirousová came up to me and said: ‘If you’re a cop, get the hell out of here. If you’re not, you can stay.’ So I stayed.”

“All of the buses from the pub in Postupice suddenly stopped, the cops chased us out, checked our ID. I still reckoned it was no big deal, eh, just the cops playing up. Around that time they had already started forming a database. Still nothing happened to me, I guess I still wasn’t interesting enough to them, so then in seventy-six, after Bojanovice, when the arrests began, I lived in the fear of when it would be my turn to be interrogated, but still nothing happened. I guess I still wasn’t quite important enough to them.”

“I already described this first experience of mine somewhere, perhaps it’s even in my book, that it was like a revelation. Because of course, when they began to play, I sat down on the stairs so as not to disturb, because Mejla didn’t like it much when someone else attended the rehearsal, but I gaped at them because I’d never heard music like that in my life. I was completely taken away. And it occurred to me: “Damn, I’d like to play with them sometime.’”