"Pankrti" belong to those rare classical cultural values that are still left to us from the Yugoslav heritage. In 1980, they released their famous album Dolgzeit (Boredom) - the first and perhaps the best punk album in the SFRY, whose engaged social-critical edge still has the power to debunk all that is false around us, and its topicality, decades later, does not run out. His explosive energy far surpasses what today's rock scene offers, so it's a real pleasure to take the opportunity to see "Pankrte" live on the "Dolgcajt 2025: Ljubljana - Zagreb - Belgrade" tour, which marks 45 years since their historic debut. Before the concert at Dom omladine Belgrade on April 11, 2025, we talked about past and present times with Peter Lovšin, the unique frontman of this legendary band and one of the most beloved personalities of the former southern rock scene.
photo: Goranka Matić...
"WEATHER" Is Ljubljana as boring today as it used to be?, When was the album created? Dolgzeit, or something has changed in these 45 years?
PETER LOVŠIN: Well, it depends for whom. Ljubljana is certainly different and more beautiful now - we used to call it "white Ljubljana", and now "green Ljubljana" (laughs) - but in the winter we still breathe worse air. So, there are minuses and pluses, as in any city. But the situation is certainly different than when we lived in 1978 in a system in which we lacked many things: not so much freedom as the possibility of choice. Now, at first glance, there are many more choices - we have multi-party elections, some parties are left, some are right... however, in the end, it all boils down to the fact that we are all puppets at the end of some higher interests.
From this perspective, it even seems to me that the former authorities had more feeling for the people, regardless of the fact that they expressed it in a slightly strange way. And today, both in our region and in the European Union, one thing is equally obvious: nobody is interested in the average person anymore. We used to have the feeling that the average person is not something he is - average. And now he is an average man and less than average.
It is the same everywhere in our region. And we lost a lot of what we gained with independence, when the powers of money came and took it back. Those who failed in this battle for the standard feel it on their shoulders the most - whoever earns money can at least travel or shop a little, but he can't hear much on television either, because all the televisions have been bought by big capital, and he can't even read much in the newspapers because only money rules there. After the enthusiasm of joining the EU, it seems that we have slowly lost the meaning of real life.
When did you first notice?, even before the Yugoslav wars, that the situation will change? Was there such a thing as a common man, and especially a musician, could see even before she came in 1990/1991?
To tell you the truth, I was sure that Yugoslavia would remain for the rest of my life and that as a journalist I would forever work throughout that country (Lovšin also worked as a sports journalist - first. aut). But instinct said something else - for the first time I felt that everything was not quite normal when I made the song "Sarajevo 1984", on our The Red Album. It seemed to me, as a reporter who followed skiing, a little strange that Sarajevo has the Olympic Games, but Slovenia, which is a skiing nation, does not. I had absolutely nothing against Sarajevo, in fact, but "Pankrti" could not play in Sarajevo after that song, until Emir Kusturica invited us, and that only at the end of our career. The most severe communists were there. Ljubljana, Zagreb and Belgrade were somehow decadent socialist centers, and in Sarajevo everything had to be flawless, in accordance with the Yugoslav idea.
I think we played smart then in Slovenia, we went to help Sarajevo as much as we could in the organization. My friend Jure Franco won the silver medal in the giant slalom, and we all rejoiced. And just a few years later, it broke...
Which international and Yugoslav bands influenced you, before you made "Pankrte"? What did you listen to as a kid? - and were they some hippies?, classic rock bands, or you have already reacted somehow to new sounds? Which one is it, in short, the first punk band you heard?
At first I listened to "The Rolling Stones", "The Kinks" and "The Troggs", so English bands. Then came the American blues, Muddy Waters and BB King first of all, and then the rock and roll of Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis. Then I slowly return to English musicians and bands such as David Bowie and "Roxy Music". I must admit that we only realized later what "Ramones" and Patti Smith meant, because for us the first ones were always "Sex Pistols" and "The Clash" and "Dead Kennedys". Also, I've always been a big fan of Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Leonard Cohen.
Have you seen the new hit biopic?-a film about Bob Dylan A complete stranger?
I watched, how could I not! It's great for me, I'm a Dylan fan, I've seen a dozen of his concerts. This guy did a great job on it - I might like some of the things he sang in the movie better than Dylan's version (laughs). We know that Dylan is a cult figure, that he can be difficult. Although he was in Ljubljana several times, I didn't even try to reach him, because he is my friend Igor Vidmar - who helped us a lot to release the debut album Dolgzeit - as the organizer of several Dylan's concerts, he said that he himself never managed to meet him and talk to him, ha-ha. But Bob gave so much to music that he deserves a lot of respect.
On the other hand, I met the Ramones back in 1988 in New York, when I did an interview with Joey Ramone. At one time, I also hung out with the "Stranglers", and I also met "Nirvana" when they played in Ljubljana in 1994, at one of their last concerts in the packed Tivoli Hall. Nirvana was totally different - basically you could see that they respected punk and everything it gave, that they came out of it, but they did it in their own way. I was a little late to their concert, but then the atmosphere and music took me away, and that performance was even better for me than their records. Igor Vidmar was the organizer again and I came backstage - I remember that Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl came out to talk to the audience, Krist even a little in Serbo-Croatian, and Kurt Cobain was sitting alone on a table and no one came to talk to him. I managed to make some eye contact at one point, but he was already a bit absent. But none of that was visible at the concert, which was phenomenal. Cobain had personal issues, for sure, and I'm sorry for that because he was a real person.
What is the situation with concerts then and now??
There were extraordinary concerts in that period, for example "The Cure" with the premiere of the album Disintegration, or "Dire Straits", who prepared the entire world tour in Yugoslavia. When you compare it with today's moment, where you can hardly see any significant concert in Ljubljana, everything is clear to you... The only one who delighted me recently was Rod Stewart (laughs). Over time, you will come to love different music, if it is played with heart and energy. That's what Rod Stewart was last year, he showed that even in advanced years you can still play and enjoy. At least you in Serbia have a big festival like "Exit" in Novi Sad. "Pankrti" played there once and we had a great time.
As for bands from other parts of Yugoslavia, I must say that I have always been a fan of the YU group! Maybe six or seven years ago, we played in Banja Luka at a festival, and it was only there that we met them and finally got to hang out. It was a big event for us. They were just as cute as ever. But the first Yugoslav hit that I fell in love with was Kornelij Kovač's song "I love Partizan, black and white colors, I love Partizan, like my eyes". My best friend was a big fan of Partizan - and I'm a fan of Olimpia, just for the record, ha-ha. But that song was always excellent to me, a model of how a fan's shout should sound - later I had the opportunity to make sports anthems myself, such as the anthem of the Slovenian football team for the 2000 European Championship.
Speaking of concerts, for us, two performances were important for the formation of the punk scene in Belgrade - concert "The Roots" in January 1980. i "Pankrti" in April 1980. And everyone here will tell you that those two events were pivotal.
I also watched "The Rutse" and they were just as good in Ljubljana then. And here is an anecdote. A few years earlier, I was hanging out with the "Stranglers", whom I met through the organizers of the concert. We had a nice talk, but when I tried to enter "Tivoli" for a performance in the evening - they didn't let me in because as teenagers we were always doing pranks there, throwing chairs and that's why we weren't welcome guests (laughs). Then the "Stranglers" told them - and they, mind you, were world stars at that moment - well, then we won't play either! We started back by bus, when the organizers came after us and still invited us to enter. And so that there would be no problem, they took me and my wife straight to the stage, so that we could watch the concert from there (laughs).
That's what punk meant, real solidarity, although "The Stranglers" were more new wave. But it was this new way of socializing, music that comes from the audience, as it were, from ordinary people. There was a much nicer camaraderie between the bands then, than with some big names from show business. And there I must also mention our performance with the Sex Pistols in 1996, again at the Tivoli, after which we talked all night, especially with Johnny Rotten. I also met the bassist Glenn Matlock, who six or seven years ago played with us in Stožice and we sang "Anarchy in the UK" and "God Save the Queen" together, I think "Pretty Vacant" was even uploaded on YouTube, which is basically his song.
photo: promo...
Sad, when you look at it from this perspective - what was really new and different in punk? And what is it?, after all, so excited at least some people that they still look at punks as a positive example?
I think that punk first of all brought awareness to people that they can be much more active participants in social processes. That it is not only politics that shapes social consciousness, but that music can do that too. Of course, it all started with beatniks and went through rock and roll and hippies, all the way to punks. Music was the real antipode of politics. Since 1955, she has been the initiator of positive changes in the world: for example, whites and blacks were together for the first time in the same hall, as equal participants in a public event - only at the concerts of Little Richard and Chuck Berry. When "The Beatles" toured the USA in the XNUMXs, they saw fences being erected at their concerts, so they demanded that they be removed or they would not perform. That's how punk created the conditions for some new breakthroughs.
Unfortunately, the "warlords" who run the entire music industry have managed to deprive today's musicians of the right to have their own audio carriers. Of course, vinyl records are still popular, but only among gourmets, those who love good sound. And once records changed the world. Let's take the example of Dylan's album Highway 61 Revisited – it's definitely a record that changed the world. How did he do it? Basically - it's just that, instead of an acoustic guitar, he started playing an electric guitar, and that's what completely changed the way we look at things.
Everything is different now - we are left with only these music distribution platforms, on which only the owners make money, and the musicians have nothing to do with it. I'm currently finishing my new solo record, and I don't even know why I'm finishing it - well, I know, out of spite (laughs) - but there are no more critics, no more album stores... When we traveled to London thirty years ago, we knew we had to go to the Virgin Megastore to buy such and such releases, we knew exactly what we had to have. And now there is no Virgin Megastore either. The ghost is gone too. Well, you in Serbia have a lot of this new spirit (laughs).
I somehow think that a lot of what was positive in the former Yugoslavia, and what remains positive in our region to this day, actually came from music... and maybe something from sports! We all have excellent athletes, and we all admire Novak Djokovic, who knows how to talk well, he is even an anti-globalist, there is also Jokic, we have Luka Doncic who is a child of this region, we also have extraordinary cyclists. We are actually much better than the West would like us to be.
My main hobby is skiing, I was also a professional ski reporter for a long time, and I still travel a lot - and I claim that all the best dentists in Switzerland are from the former Yugoslavia, but also that many of our people only work in much lower paid jobs, because we are still not equal to the Swiss. We all thought that sooner or later we would be equal in terms of income with Europe, but apparently it doesn't work somehow. On the other hand, it still seems to me that we have a much better life than them - in the sixties and seventies it was fun and easy to live in the West, but now I think it is not anymore. Their spirit was killed, as I said.
How and from what need did they arise "Pankrti"?
I played acoustic guitar, I was a fan of Guthrie and Seeger, I sang songs like "We Shall Overcome" more for myself, then in college I heard different things, and finally punk. I studied at the Faculty of Sociology, Political Sciences and Journalism, where I met my senior colleague Gregor Tomac. We came across an article in "Newsweek" mocking the new music they called punk: "No one knows how to play it, it's just noise, nothing is heard, the messages are anarchic" - and I immediately told Gregor: "Here, we could play that!". He then went to London to get some records, and I gathered a band in Kodeljevo, in Ljubljana. We started rehearsing in September 1977, and on October 17 we already had our first concert.
Did you have any problems with the militia at that time?, because of image, the topic and the noise you made?
Well, to be honest - we were sure that the band wouldn't survive the first concert (laughs). That we're just screwing around now and that it's like some kind of happening. By the way, with some of our poets, an anarchist philosopher and other friends, we made some of our happenings where we cooked spaghetti on stage. On two or three appearances of this happening, they kicked us off the stage, because it was too crazy. I was convinced that "Pankrti" would be another such happening, which would not pass. But the following happened: when we played our first concert at Moščanska Gymnasium - which we advertised as "The first punk concert behind the Iron Curtain" - so many people came that we were surprised. If members of the law and order forces stopped by on that occasion, they wouldn't even have been able to get inside, because everything in the hall was completely full, and even if they somehow got in, they wouldn't have understood anything. We were really loud and crazy. The concert was recorded for Ljubljana Radio Študent and it sounded much better than we expected. We immediately had a positive reaction - Peter Mlakar, who led ŠKUC, invited us to visit Belgrade, to be part of the delegation of Ljubljana's student youth. That was in 1977 and there weren't that many people who could follow us. Mirko Ilić, a world-famous designer, invited us to his exhibition in Zagreb, and Johnny Štulić came to the concert, who later wrote the famous verse from the track "Balkan": "I shave my beard, my beard/That I look like Pankrte".
That's how it started, and then it was difficult to stop it - things had already started to change in society, Belgrade, Zagreb, Ljubljana were waking up, it was no longer possible to easily return to the former framework. There were a bunch of bands everywhere, at least ten punk groups were working in Ljubljana alone. He was in Belgrade more new wave sound, but there were many bands in Rijeka, Istria, "Prljavci" in Zagreb, "Pekinška patka" in Novi Sad - and it was no longer possible to stop it.
Punk really brought something completely new, above all in energy, crazy, anarchic, and people felt that it was something that would push the boundaries in music.
photo: promo...
How do you remember that legendary concert in Belgrade's SKC from April 1980?, which influenced the whole local scene? Who were your best friends from the Yugoslav groups of that era??
When we played that concert in April 1980 in SKC, an unknown group "Limunovo drvo" played before us. But when we heard them, I know we just looked at each other and said to ourselves - what are we going to do on stage when they are so good, watch how they play. The whole band was talking about it! Although Borut Cinch from "Bulldozer" played with us as a guest... We were all delighted with that band! But then it was different - while they played, the audience just stood and watched them. When we came out, they went totally wild on us (laughs). Later, "Charlotte the Acrobat" was born from that "Lemon Tree"! And the next day I went to do my military service in the JNA.
Of those Belgrade ensembles, I felt the music of "Electric Orgasm" the most. We are still friends - two years ago I invited them to play with us at the Tivoli Hall, when we celebrated the 45th anniversary of the founding of "Pankrt", they had a great concert and were very well received. In Sarajevo, we were the best with "Zabranjeni pušenje", in Zagreb with Džoni Štulić - he was certainly at the most of our concerts of all Yugoslav musicians. Finally, I can't help but mention "KUD Idiots", they are always in my heart, we are great friends. "Jukebox magazine" was also very important to us, there we were chosen as the band of the year in 1982. However, we were a slightly different band from all the others - in order to even exist as "Pankrti", at that time we all had to work some other job and we all created families very quickly, I had my first son already in 1981, and the second in 1983. We lived a different life, so some later musical changes that were important to others passed us by, and they did not touch us.
What a historical place Pankrta is on the Yugoslav music scene? And why is it even important to play today? Dolgzeit?
I will answer you in a slightly unusual way - last year, the community of Slovenes from Skopje invited me to the Cinematheque there, where Jani Sever's feature film about me was shown: "Pero Lovšin - You're Easy". We as "Pankrti" played only once in Skopje - but when you come there and meet people who know more about you than you do, for whom even the language barrier between Slovenian and Macedonian is not an obstacle, and you realize that punks and critics and philosophers also came to that screening... then you really think: "Maybe we did something like 'Pankrti' after all". At the same time, we are not commercial mainstream music, but underground - we certainly wouldn't come to Belgrade so many times in the 2025st century if we didn't have someone to talk to and sing to. That's why I wanted this concert to mark all that, our togetherness, so we made T-shirts "Dolgcajt XNUMX: Ljubljana - Zagreb - Belgrade". These are the cities that meant the most to us. We are part of the generation that extinguished Yugoslavia, but which is not ashamed of Yugoslavia.
