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Billy Bragg
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Article
written by Paul M
May 2, 2004.
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Where do you start with Billy Bragg? Over twenty years, he has travelled the world, guitar in hand, seemingly no cause or venue too small, proclaiming unity with miners, dockers, peace activists, textile workers, anti-racists… you name them, he’s been on their side. But for every stirring political song, he’s produced another so tender, yet so simple; a song capable of bringing a tear to the eye of even the most hard nosed misanthrope. Has the man no flaws?
Long term Braggites, Paul M and Kev O from SoundsXP had the good fortune to have a lengthy chat with him to try to find out…
SXP -What are you up to at the moment?
Billy - Just been doing some demos in the studio the weekend before last and I’m just gearing up for the summer tours. I’ve got a few special ones, a gig on Saturday a May Day gig in Italy. In fact most weekends for the next 3 or 4 months I’ve got a gig somewhere.
SXP -Is that with the band you toured with?
Billy - the Blokes? Yeah, in the studio but the gigs I’ll be doing on my own.
SXP -So you’ve started recording some stuff then?
Billy - Well yeah, I have started laying a few things down but I won’t actually record it this year. It depends on when Mac’s around. Ian MacLaggen.
SXP -I notice you’re down to do a Lonnie Donegan tribute night?
Billy - That’s right.
SXP -It says you’ll be just doing one song though. Can you tell us what that song is?
Billy - Well his widow came to see me when I was gigging in Newcastle and she wanted me to come and perform cos she felt I represented that Woody Guthrie element, which was quite important in Lonnie’s career. I’ve always been interested in the roots of English popular music if you like and I suppose Donegan’s right there at the beginning, so I was up for a bit of that.
SXP -Do you think there’s still a place for traditional folk music now?
Billy - I think it’s always been there whether people notice or not and every now and then it spills over into the mainstream. It has an audience that allows it to carry on. There are huge folk festivals all over the country in the weekends in the summer. We have one down here, close by in Devon, in Sidmouth, where they just take over the town for a few days. They’ve been doing that since the 50s and I’m sure they’ll carry on doing that till the 2050s.
SXP -You mentioned a second ago about Woody Guthrie. How did you and Wilco go about sharing out the lyrics between you?
Billy - It was a case of going to the archive and having a look what’s there. I gave a few to Jeff to start with to whet his appetite but I thought in the end it was really important that he went into the archive himself and chose his own songs. I thought it just made it a broader idea of who Woody Guthrie was cos it was quite easy to just go in there and choose Billy Bragg sounding songs like “All You Fascists Are Bound To Lose”, and stuff like that.
SXP -Have you ever been approached to do one of those Under the Influence or Back to My Place albums?
Billy - Oh a long time ago. It didn’t happen I don’t think.
SXP -Would you be tempted to do one of them?
Billy - Well if I could get the material. It’s about getting the rights to the material.
SXP - What, would the stuff you’re trying to get hold of be obscure 60s stuff?
Billy - Well it’d be obscure stuff, I don’t know about 60s stuff.
[Laughter]
SXP - In “I Don’t Need this Pressure, Ron”, you sang “I like toast as much as anyone but not for breakfast, dinner, and tea” and you get newspaper articles with pictures of your home and headlines like Bragg Mansions… do you worry about people thinking “he’s a hypocrite”…?
Billy - Well there’s not many things you can do in this job really. There’s one, you can buy a nice house for your mum or two, you can buy a nice house for yourself, or you can stick it up your nose [laughter]. You know, you run out of things to do. I’d rather spend it on bricks and mortar and if you could see the view out of our window here it’s so beautiful… It’s just one of those things I think that people expect you to live in a garret but as we say in my country, fuck that.
SXP - No, totally agree.
Billy - Weller’s always had problems. He got outraged at people complaining that he had more than three pairs of shoes. Really upset him. I think it’s about how you engage rather than whether or not you’re ideologically and politically correct. I’ve never been much for that.
SXP -I think none of your fans would ever question that. There’s enough causes that you have supported that you don’t need to justify anything…
Billy - Well if there’s an opportunity and you’ve got the time, and you can’t do everything, you know you learn quite early on in your career to make records or keep doing everything that everyone ever asks you and in the end people want you to make new records and stuff. You can’t do everything that everyone wants you to do and you end up doing the ones that are the right causes on the right day in the right place. They kind of select themselves really.
SXP -Things like the miners strike commemoration events that you’re doing, you clearly think they’re still relevant today. To younger people who perhaps think this is ancient history, before they were born or whatever, why do you feel that it’s still important?
Billy - On a particularly personal point of view to give some context to my music. If you’re a Billy Bragg fan and you’re listening to Between the Wars or There’s Power in A Union and you’re actually only 20 years old it must be frankly ridiculous the idea of a bunch of pop stars getting together to support the Labour Party. Imagine trying to do that today so the media and the miners strike gigs allow me to give some context as to what we were doing back in the day and I think that the connections that I made back in the 1980s to do with the Trade Union Movement are still quite strong. I’ve just been finalizing the arrangements for my appearance at Glastonbury and now I just play in the left field tent which is the trade union tent, as part of their presence there. Now whether they’re getting me in or I’m getting them in you’d have to ask Michael Eavis about that but the point is we still have that presence there and that’s really important.
SXP -How many times have you done Glastonbury now?
Billy - Too many times [laughs]… Nah must be 11 or 12.
SXP - So you’re part of the furniture now?
Billy - I must be really, and it’s only just up the road now and my son won’t let me go through a summer without going to Glastonbury, it’s very important to him.
SXP -Didn’t Juliet and your son turn up one year but they couldn’t see you because they couldn’t actually get into the tent cost there were so many people packed in there.
Billy - Well they go off and do things cos there’s so much interesting stuff.
SXP -And you obviously didn’t count as interesting enough… [laughs]
Billy - Nah well there’s a lot of hanging about in my job, so they thought we’ll just pootle off and pootle back when it’s time to see you play and they pootled back but they couldn’t get into the field cos it was a bit packed so they had to come all the way back round and come in the back way. Nah, Juliet’s a bit more blasé, in fact just as I was going to go on stage last year she went off with Phil Jupitus to see the Skatelites. It was like yeah, just look after Jack. [laughs] Jack’s just kind of like really groovy, he’s cool, he just enjoys the whole vibe of Glastonbury.
SXP -I believe you took part in a tour called Tell us the Truth. Can you tell us a bit about that?
Billy - It was basically organized by an American group of media activists who are concerned about conglomerate ownership of radio stations in America, specifically by an organization called Clear Channel, and I suppose they wanted to bring in someone with an international perspective, and I suppose that I’ve had some experience with them in that my agency was bought by Clear Channel and I had to move, and Clear Channel are beginning to get more active in the UK and Europe.
SXP -I believe a couple of your songs are about to be put on a compilation as well…
Billy - They are talking about putting together a live bootleg and someone made a film which will hopefully come out before the election but it’s all about them getting the money to finish it and stuff like that.
SXP -Any idea what tracks will be on the CD?
Billy - No, I guess it’ll be whatever sounded best on the night. It’ll be Help Save the Youth of America, Wolf Covers His Tracks, Waiting for the Great Leap Forward… me, Steve Earle and Tom Morello, we only played about six songs each every night, sometimes cut down to five, we all agreed to play the same amount of songs. It was nice, like working in a little co-operative for a while.
SXP -Are there any plans to bring out a DVD Best of, or even a live performance?
Billy - We’re talking about bring out a DVD of the videos we made in the 80s.
SXP -You didn’t make that many did you? I believe you were a bit anti first the singles and then the whole promo video thing..?
Billy - Yeah I was a dreadful Luddite. I think Levi Stubbs Tears was the first one. Me and Dave Woodhead on a single shot. I think I did one for Great Leap Forward. Generally there were clips where the record company would get a clip of me playing somewhere and send that out and then when we made Don’t Try This At Home the record company said look we’ll make three big videos and we made that great video for Sexuality that Phil Jupitus wrote and Juliet produced and that was kind of fun, my auntie Grace was in it, Kirsty was in it, if I remember rightly, and we made three videos for that album. The last one we probably did was a video for Boy Done Good, at Craven Cottage, with all my nieces and nephews running around playing football. They always seem to have all my relatives in the videos, don’t know why maybe they’re cheaper…
SXP -You couldn’t do Upton Park?
Billy - The reason we wanted to do Craven Cottage was because we got GMB football shirts. It was a GMB shoe-in I’m afraid.
SXP -If you do put out a DVD then, and hopefully you will, will it include your Top of the Pops appearance for “She’s Leaving Home”?
Billy - I’m not sure we’ve got the rights for that one?
SXP -I’d like to see it obviously cos of the…
Billy - ..ladder falling over?
[laughter]
Billy - It was awful… it was awful.
SXP -You had a few problems with the lyrics as well?
Billy - Yeah, obscured by dry ice. It was catastrophic. It just goes to show, the heady heights of number 1, I don’t feel comfortable there at all. Everyone else enjoyed it. Wiggy, Dave Woodhead, Cara played I think. Wiggy and Woodhead played recorders and Cara played piano and I did an approximation of singing.
SXP -What’s this about you writing a book?
Billy - Yeah, this is very true actually, I’m just working out how to turn this PowerBook on.
SXP -Is it a novel or an autobiography or…?
Billy - Nah, the last couple of years I’ve been talking a lot about identity and the politics of identity and I think that as the BNP raise their ugly shaven heads these issues get more and more important and I’m forever riffing on that idea. For instance last week I did something for the Guardian on St George’s day and I think it might be an idea to get all that down in one bite and go out there and take on the Simon Heffers and Peter Hitchens of this world and have a scrap with them for the soul of English community if you like. It’s interesting, it’s something I’ve never done before, I’m not even sure I know how to do it, but someone came along and said they’d pay me to do it.
SXP -I noticed in the Andrew Collins biography there were key emotional events in your life such as the relationships with Wiggy and Mary that weren’t glossed over but there was no in depth analysis of what had happened and I just wondered if this was because you are basically a private person and didn’t want to talk about it…
Billy - Well you know I spoke to Wiggy yesterday and I don’t think he’d argue that he felt disappointed that what we were doing couldn’t carry on but I needed to do something else. I needed to rethink what I was doing because of course Jack came along and it’s difficult because I guess what happened to Wiggy was tantamount to me firing him in the worst case scenario and I know that it upset him and I’ve been told that a few times and I made as stern an effort to sort out his sense of grievance and I think he was justified in having that but there’s no dirty linen in that sense between me and Wiggy. With Mary it’s a personal relationship and she’s got her own life now, there’s no point in dishing the dirt and it’s all there anyway in the short answer. There’s not much more to say, we’ve all aready had a long chat about it all.
SXP -Sure. I wanted to ask you about your Englishness, and the whole thing in the Guardian about St George’s Day, how does that fit in with your professed internationalism?
Billy - Well that’s very very interesting. Obviously I am an internationalist, I’m going over to Italy to celebrate May Day, the international workers day. I wholeheartedly believe in all that but I came into politics through Rock Against Racism and I’m always looking for ways to deal with those fascists and racists, so to me making a case for an inclusive sense of English identity is just another way of confronting the racists and I think that as an internationalist that’s something I’ve always wanted to do. So if that seems strange, it’s like I alluded to in the Guardian thing, nationalism is not something we have a choice about it’s on the agenda I’m afraid. The end of the Cold War, the politics of whether or not we should be in the European union, devolution, asylum seekers, all these things have put nationalism on the political agenda and I think if we run away from them and don’t confront them, people who have progressive beliefs believe it will be left to the racists and the xenophobes to define what is or isn’t English an dI think there’s a great danger in that. We have to find a way of engaging with them, I know it’s on their turf, but we have to find a way of engaging with them on our terms, as in the end that’s the way we’re going to disarm them.
SXP -You know that Rock Against Racism has been re-activated under the Love Music Hate Racism mantle, and we went to a gig recently which had the Buzzcocks playing with the Libertines, and there were a lot of references back to Victoria Park and in a way it felt like going back in time, and we’ve had 25 years and we’re more or less back where we were.
Billy - Well if you put on the Buzzcocks and Stranglers… [laughter].. it’s like a fuckin’ cab drivers convention… [laughter]… lot of bald fat geezers down the front. The point for me was better brought home when I did the Unite Against Fascism gig in London, the launch party, and for that I was on a bill there exclusively with young urban acts. There were dancers, DJs, rappers and me… [laughs]..
SXP -Did you stand out at all?
Billy - Dreadfully but I should mention the audience were very young too, mainly black kids under the age of twenty and I said look you know if this is your first political act, that’s great, because Rock Against Racism was my first political act and I’m now of an older generation but I’ve a message for you from the 1970s and 1990s that these people have been here before and we beat them before with our culture and our music and our energy. And I sang a verse from the Internationale and all the mums and dads at the back stood up and stook their fists in the air and I was off. I was something for the mums and dads.
SXP -When I was at that gig an Asian guy got up on stage and said that he went to the Victoria Park thing in 78 or whenever it was and it really opened his eyes because before that he had thought all white people were racists.
Billy - Well that’s the importance of Rock Against Racism, it gives people the opportunity to manifest their opposition to racism. Paul who works in our office is a black guy and I spoke to him on Monday morning and he said you know I didn’t even know Le Pen was in the country and so those activists who went down there and chucked all that rubbish at him, they did a really important service because they highlighted it, got it on the news and got the word out. So to me it’s the same struggle, it carries on, it’s no different, maybe the risks have changed and the haircuts have changed but the fascists haven’t changed at all.
SXP -When most people see Billy Bragg now, it’s on Newsnight or whatever, do you think politics is more important to you now than music?
Billy - I think being engaged is what’s important, Paul, to be honest with you, it’s finding ways to be engaged and the media is a very good way to do politics. I work quite closely with a number of Labour party politicians, most importantly, Paul Stinchcombe, who’s the MP for Wellingborough and has been working very closely with me on the Lords reform thing, and in some ways he’s got as much to say as me, if not more. He’s volunteered in Africa, he’s done much more important political work than I’ve done. Nobody asks him to appear on Newsnight cos he’s just a quiet little backbencher from Wellingborough, whereas the celebrity that I’ve got gives me… you know people ring me up with all sorts of dumb arse questions [laughter] about the postal service in Dorset [laughs]. Today it was the Independent ringing me up about libraries so I think if you’ve got an opportunity to engage you should take it and I’m fortunate that I’ve carved myself a niche which gives me access to Newsnight not just by writing new songs, the crucial thing is that I’m out there banging at the doors of New Labour with Lords reform particularly saying “Come on get your fuckin’ arse in gear over this”. Not just passively turning up and singing my songs. I’ve tried to keep the feelings that I had in Red Wedge which is whilst these people are interested we’ve got to push them as far as we can and not become cynical. I’ve tried to keep that ideal alive cos I want my audience to do the same and I can’t expect them to do that unless I’m showing them that I’m doing it. I’ve got to walk it like I talk it so the most important thing is to engage, not to be a politician, but to engage.
SXP -Was that behind the appearance on the Weakest Link then?
Billy - Oh that was because it’s my mum’s favourite programme. I couldn’t say no to that. I did say no to Celebrity Mastermind. I don’t want to get on a lot of those programmes but I tell you what nothing I have ever done has been so popular with the mums at the schoolgate. [laughter] All the other stuff means nothing to them but that yeah they all want to talk about that. Every time it gets repeated they all come and tell me.
SXP -So you wouldn’t do Celebrity Who Wants To Be A Millionaire then?
Billy - No I think I’ve done my celebrity thing [laughter], I don’t think I can keep saying that’s my mum’s favourite programme [laughter]. It is true though that Weakest Link is my mum’s favourite programme, she watches it religiously, and she thought it was so funny because I was staying with her anyway, and the thing is cos they don’t broadcast it for another three months, you’re not supposed to tell anyone when you win but she wouldn’t stop asking me, so I said “Oh I won” and she said “Don’t be stupid! [laughs] How can you win, stupid boy!” Juliet was like “I knew you would, such a show off!...” she said she could see the bit where I started to take it seriously when there was just a few of us left.
SXP - Do you think you’d ever be Lord Bragg of Barking?
Billy - There’s already a Lord Bragg isn’t there? Don’t need another one! [laughter] Nah nah, I’ve got a title, they call me Mr Bragg.
SXP - Just one more really stupid question. Are there any plans for Nux Vomica to reform?
Billy - That’s a really stupid question! [laughter] As it was me, Wiggy and Wiggy’s little brother and I haven’t see Wiggy’s brother for yonks [laughs] I’m not even sure he still lives in the country.
SXP - I’ll take that as a no then... [laughs]
Billy - Yeah I should if I was you. Maybe I’ll release a bootleg at some point [laughter]. Keep pestering, it’ll turn up I’m sure on Braggtopia...
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