Kula Shaker star regrets flirtation with fascism

Crispian Mills, the 24-year-old lead singer with the chart-topping psychedelic rock band Kula Shaker, has apologised for dabbling with Nazism and its most potent symbol, the swastika, admitting he had been "very foolish".

The singer, who is part of the Mills family acting clan - he is the son of Hayley and the grandson of Sir John - sent an apologetic four-page fax from the United States, where he is on tour, after the Independent on Sunday challenged him over his increasing use of Nazi imagery. "This has justifiably upset many people for which I am deeply sorry," he said.

His band, which has had five hit singles, a million-selling debut album and won the best newcomer prize at this year's Brit Awards, has a pseudo- mystical image which has seemed to revive the Sixties values of peace, love and harmony. But closer examination of its imagery, and of some of Mills' recent comments give it a more disturbing aspect.

"Hitler knew a lot more than he made out," he said in an interview with New Musical Express last month. "The Nazis studied the Vedas, the scriptures, the Holy Grail ... They were also into magic and all that."

"I'd LOVE to have great big flaming swastikas onstage just for the f*** of it, '' he added. During an earlier interview he said: "You can see why Hitler got support. It was probably the uniforms that swung it."

Mills has been interested in far-right philosophies since his teens. In the early Nineties he performed with Marcus Maclaine, his mother Hayley's partner and a former National Front member, in a band called The Objects of Desire. They shared a platform at the Wembley Conference Centre with the notorious anti-semitic propagandist Eustace Mullins, and a leading US far-right writer, William Cooper.

In his apology Crispian Mills says : "I think there is no better example of my naivete and insensitivity than the swastika comments ... my comments derive from my long interest in Indian culture, from which the swastika has its origins ...

"I apologise to those who have been offended by my comment and humbly ask that they accept that I am completely against the Nazis, their crimes and any other latter-day form of totalitarianism. For the record I have never been an anti-semite especially as my dear grandmother was Jewish ...

"I loathe totalitarianism, far right thinking, oppression of all forms, denial of human rights and all things that would limit the free spirit of humankind. I stand for peace, love, generosity and learning."