Josef Rössler

“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.’”

“The one stetsec [State Security officer - trans.] said: ‘Such a trifle, you disappoint me, I thought goodness knows what...’ They really expected to find some seditious activity [and they found marihuana - ed.]. True enough, they did rustle up some foreign magazines that I had there, a letter by Václav Havel, that was in seventy.´-six, the Plastics were already locked up by then. And now they wanted me to collaborate, otherwise they said they’d hand it over to the criminal [police], the weed. I was completely dazed after the whole day, so I reckoned the only thing important to me at that moment was to get out of there. So I signed it, the collaboration, and they started giving me instructions, which way I should go home, what I should do. I came out of the house and said to myself: ‘You ass, now you can just about go jump under a train.’ So I first went to the pub, where they had draught Krušovice, there were some boys sitting there who said: ‘You look a bit green.’ I was completely out of it, and as I walked back home, I reckoned: ‘This won’t do, this just won’t do.’ So I went to Dana Němcová in Ječná [Street], and I puked out the whole story to her. She said: ‘So we’ll spread the word everywhere that you signed it, and they’ll find out, and then you’ll see what they do with you.”

“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.”