Billy Bragg

Listen as Billy Bragg tells the story of growing up poor and rejecting his preordained future at Ford's to become a part of the political fabric of the U.K., all via music. Billy tells a great story, you'll become a fan even if you're unfamiliar with his music (and learn a lot about Brexit too!)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to The Bob Left Set's podcast. My
guest today is singer political rock auteur Troubadoor Billy Brag
Billy Glad to have you here. Okay, now, you're in
here for a three nights stand at the Troubadoor, and
each night is different material. Can you explain that? Yeah,

(00:27):
it's really something that I developed over the last eighteen months.
Last time I came through town through Los Angeles, I
was on a fly plate too, which is basically every
day you fly and play. That's hard than it used
to be. I mean partly because I'm over sixty now,
so it's harder than me. Let's just be clear, how
old are you? Sixty one? But also the airlines don't

(00:51):
operate the way they used to it. I think it's
a mixture of um, the corporate attitude, but also the
weather is much more inclement than it used to be,
and it only takes a storm in the Midwest to
knock their schedules out a little bit and you're in
danger of losing a gig. I know agents who won't
book bands who've played in Nashville a gig the very

(01:14):
next day in New York, because the possibility of them
missing the gig because the flights are canceled is too high.
So when you take all that into account, UM you
need to try and think about new way of touring.
And for me UM, I got invited to play at
the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto a couple of years ago

(01:36):
three nights stand there for their seventy five I think
seventy fifth anniversary. I used to play there a lot
in the eighties, and I came up with this idea
that the first night I would play my current touring set,
which is a you know songs right across my career,
the tour, the show I did last night I was
in town, the show I would do if I was
just doing one night in a city. But on the

(01:59):
second night, I would only play songs from my first
three albums. Just for those who were uninitiated, how many
albums do you have? Double twelve? So just from the
first three years US three, yes, So that would take
me up to about night and eight six. And then
on the third night, the final night, I would only
play songs from my second three albums, so that would

(02:21):
take me up to so classic early brag and then
the sort of poppy middle period, and it's it's kind
of interesting for me because, um, I think for a
lot of younger audiences, it was Murmaid Avenue project with
Wilco that put me onto their radar. When you did
Mermaid Avenue that was around the turn of the century.

(02:42):
But those earlier records play into the crowd that kind
of got into me through college radio and near the
people who are coming along. And I can tell it
then because the middle night the first three albums always
sells out first, that was my question exactly, and the
other two eventually sell out. But which do you which
do you enjoy playing the most? It depends what kind

(03:04):
of mood I'm in. I think the first three album
stuff Is is exciting. You gotta remember, Bob, my first
album was only seventy minutes long. I can and have
played it as an uncle the whole album. I don't
need to, um, you know, rent the Royal album Hole
and get an orchestra. Can just bash it out if
I feel like it. But having said that, um, in

(03:26):
the context that we're currently in the political context, a
lot of those songs still resonate. But then the second
three records, when I was trying to be laughingly trying
to be a pop star. They're interesting to kind of
reconnect with as well. And then the last of those
three albums, William Bloke, is my kind of parenthood record,
and it's always nice to go back to that. That's

(03:47):
sort of rebirth. Now even you you're you're a third
generation or depending on how we want to kind of
You're not the Beatles, You're not a seventies act. But
in today's scattered landscape where it's hard for anybody to
get traction, there's that affect your motivation to rate songs
and record song It does. It's not so much the traction,

(04:07):
it's the cost as an independent artist behind making a
full blown album that can actually engage in the mainstream
on Spotify. The last album made, which was recorded here
in Los Angeles at Joe Henry's place. Um, you know,
I I recorded the album in a week, and then

(04:29):
I had to spend a year earning a war chest
to take it on the road with the band, because
it felt to me that if I wanted to step
up a level, it would need a band. But yeah,
I spent a year to wait with the album and
spend a year getting together because I have no record
company behind me. I do have a record company, um

(04:51):
Cooking Vinyl, but I have a kind of licensing deal
with him, so I pay for the records, I pay
for the promotion, and as a result, I owned my
back cattle. So yeah, it's it's a point out. A
full service album is a big, a big task in
terms of blood and treasure. Okay, can't you can't do

(05:12):
it every every couple of years. Now, if you did
it with Joe Henry, how much did it cost it
cost like a proper album. I shouldn't really say that
much it costs, but it did cost, you know, full
blown six figures. Um yeah, not quite no, no, okay,
so we get we get the ball, not quite, but
a lot of money for me, I have to say
for someone. Of course, of course you have to make

(05:33):
the money, but you also but you should know that
I've always made a living doing gigs. I've seldom made
a huge living Sullen records. I had some gold records
in the UK in the eighties, which is a hundred
thousand copies. But really, I'm a I'm a My bread
and butter is doing gigs. Okay, but what about the
concept of recording with the band and economically going out solo,

(05:56):
or do you felt that the only way to do
justice to this material to have before being the only
the only reason to make a full service album is
to try and push what you're doing up or notch,
to get too slightly larger theaters, to get too slightly
broader audience, to try and reach out. There's no point
in just going in and just doing whatever you want
to do. You gotta think what do I want to
achieve with this record? So getting the band together was

(06:18):
part of that. You know. I did a third in
week North American Bus too, which I've never done before,
and it's I think I needed to show willing. I
was still willing to two at least I have a
have a crack making. Now that that was said and done,
do you believe you achieved your goal of widening your audience.
I think I achieved my goal of broadening people's perception

(06:41):
of who I am and what I do. Working with
Joe was was really howd you hook up with Joe?
I'm known for years, known for years. I've always been
a big fan of his and whatever I bumped into him,
he's always said, you know, you could come and make
an album in my basement for a week. And towards
the um end of eleven, my mom had passed away

(07:04):
in the March of eleven and I really needed to
not not for any other reason than just I needed
to do something else, and you know, I sort of
cleared her house out, I'd sort it out the world
and everything in the state, and I needed to do
have a project to do. My partners suggested, he said,
why don't you go and see Joe make a record
with Joe, and that that seemed like a great, great

(07:25):
idea to do so. So, but working with Joe kind
of brought me a lot closer to the nascent Americana
scene because he's got good connections in that department. So,
you know, I was the Americana Music Association invite me
to Nashville to give an award. Obviously I had some
connection there with the Wild Coo Woody Gutic thing, but
they invited me to come along and and I'm you know,

(07:48):
I'm happy to be part of that. Obviously. It's like
my relationship with folk music in England. I'm not of
the folks scene, I'm not of Americana, but I am
in some ways part of it. Well today anyway, with
every with the evolution of these scenes. Yeah, I think
American is a good place for singer songwriters. Now I
know a lot of British maybe the only place it
possibly Yeah, a lot of British singer songwriters. They're looking

(08:10):
to shift to Nashville, go to Nashville to look for work.
So that's a positive thing I think. Okay, Now, when
you came in, you just said you got off the
Cyomo cruise talking of Americana. Okay, so tell us a
little bit about what that experience was like. Oh, I've
never been on a cruise ship before, so the idea
of going out on one sounds a bit strange. But
when okay, just so I know, I have been on

(08:32):
a few cruise ships. Did you have did Kayamo have
the entire ship? The entire ship? And do you remember
what the name of the brand was, you know, Holland
America Princes the Norwegian Pearl. We're in the Norwegian Okay,
I have actually been on a Norwegian ship and it
was gigantic, like yeah, like a city block sailing around
the Caribbean. And um, my partner Juliet was actually born

(08:57):
in the Caribbean. She was born in Trinidad and she
never have been back there, so she wanted to come.
And she's also my manager, so that made a lot
of sense. And for some reason which I can't understand,
my son suddenly decided he wanted a roady for me,
so he came as well, and we had the best time.
We had a really great time. There's like there must
have been about I would say maybe thirty to forty artists,
most of them solo artists. UM. The headline acts for

(09:21):
Jason Isbell and he's a four hundred unit. His banned
Emmy Lou Harris was keb mo Uh Indigo girls UM
and a lot of other great North American and some
European singer songwriters and about I think there was probably
about twelve hundred hunters on the boat with it. Okay,

(09:44):
so how many days was the cruise and how many
times did you perform? Performed three times solo. I organized
a Woody Guthrie event. I saw who else was on
the buildry go to the Cashy Chambers UM justin towns oh.
I kind of knew these guys will be into doing

(10:04):
something around Woody UM and also being a little bit political.
I wanted to kind of make a point of doing
something of that. Ilk Um and our guy would talk
about skiffle because I thought that audience who are into
their roots music would be interested too. Here I did,
you wrote a book about skiffle. Now I understand this
was really a big thing in the UK and it

(10:25):
inspired a lot of rock artists. But Americans are clueless.
Not that this not that I haven't heard from English listeners,
but relatively briefly, explain what skiffle is. Skiffle is English
schoolboys in the nineteen fifties picking up acoustic guitars to
play lead Belli's repertoire. Okay, I don't know this is

(10:46):
too deep because we always hear about Liverpool being a
seaport city and a lot of the acts from they're
getting American records from the seamen. How did these, if
you know, these skiffle players find out about belly? Well,
in the years after the Second World War, the American
government had a department called the US Information Service, and

(11:09):
if you went to the US Embassy in Crown Square,
there was a department there where you could go and
borrow books. American books are promoting American culture. In the basement,
there was a record library which contained the whole of
the Library Congress recording so everything from you know American

(11:30):
classical music, you know Copeland and stuff like that, all
the way to um the Parchment Farm recordings that John
Alan Lomax did with Muddy Waters, and so people like
Londie Donegan, who had a hit with Rock, Ironline Librities
Rock Online, could access those records and that is how
they found them. That is how they found them. So
Lonnie Darnigan actually went to the record collection. Londie Donigan

(11:54):
didn't only go to the record collection. He regularly stole
the records because people would go there to borrow the
records and they would say, I'm afraid this record has
been taken out by someone called Tony Donegan. Donegan realized
that if he um, if he stole the record, the
Americans could just get another copy. You couldn't buy a

(12:14):
lead Belly record in England, so so he often stole
the records. And when I went to the Library Congress
in to talk about Skiffle, they looked in their records
and found a memo which discussed the fact that books
and records were being stolen, and the attitude in Washington,
d C. Was well, we're trying to promote American culture.
I guess this is part of the process. Let's not

(12:34):
worry about it. I guess it's working. There are more
latent exactly. So here's the here's the thing. Donegan has
a hit with Rock hard Line fifty six. He goes
on the road in late fifty six playing vaudeville circuit.
So he's doing two shows a night, six nights a
week in major cities. When he plays in Liverpool, George
Harrison goes every night of the week. Paul McCartney goes.

(12:59):
John Lennon. We don't think he does go Here's the
really significant thing about this. Harrison is thirteen, McCartney's fourteen,
and Lennon is sixteen. These are the people that Donnegan
has the effect on, not people who are buying African
American roots music from sailors in the ports. We're talking
about kids. In some ways. Skiffle was like the fidget

(13:20):
spinner craze that has been in playgrounds over here and
in my country in the last five years. It was
a school school boy phenomenon. What they did those kids
was they picked up the acoustic guitar as a symbol
of their difference from their parents generation. Because these kids,
John Ian was born in nine and forty, he's in
the first tranch there there there there are first teenagers.

(13:44):
And until when Leonard's fourteen, there was food rationing in
my country, including sweets. So John Lennon couldn't go in
a sweet shop till he was fourteen and buy what
you wanted. And a year later he left school and
you know, I was going to college, so it was
quite almost an adult before he could buy what he wanted.
And it's these kids, and they're uh young, their lives

(14:08):
being deprived of those things that blong onto African American
culture so strongly as something that's there's it hasn't been
handed down to them by the state or rational to
them by the government and the BBC. So they learned
to play guitars. And so by the time American kids
are white American kids anywhere learning to play acoustic guitar

(14:31):
during the Folk Revival, which starts in fifty nine, our kids,
their contemporaries, they were the same age as them. They're
already in Hamburg. And the result of this is that
when the Beatles break the American charts in janu there's
a huge number of already road hard in British groups

(14:52):
ready to come in behind them. Skiffle is the nursery
for the British invasion of America. It's not what they
did in in the fifties. These kids, what they do
in the sixties that counts. So you were born in
fifties seven, I was born at peak skiffle. Were you
aware of any of this? You're too young. When I
was a kid, I was aware of Donegan, but only

(15:12):
in terms of his um novelty records like myle Man's
a Dustman and your Chewing Gun. So when did you
get turned onto? Amount of time of punk? Because what
happened with punk was all the old guitars that had
been there during skiffle, which were most the old arch
tops were back in the junk shops and the old
really early a hollow body electric guitars in the U

(15:36):
coach are made by the Hofner company. They were they
were all buying for ten quid and they became kind
of part of punk. They were so fabulously retro and
punk had a lot of similarities with UM. Skiffle in
that it was a do it yourself uh genre. You know,
you made your own music. You in many ways you

(15:56):
were self empowering. Because that's the thing that was most
revolutionary about Donegan. The message that he took around the
country when he when he went out in fifty six
was firstly, you don't have to be a trained musician
to make music, and secondly, you don't have to be
an old African American guy at seeing the blues. And
this is probably the two most revolutionary ideas ever imparted

(16:16):
to British youth. It was just, you know, because Van Morrison,
when our interviewed him for the book, told me the
problem with Elvis was you couldn't be Elvis if you
were British. It's just impossible. You could be Learning Donegan.
So Donegan kind of was the catalyst for for for
these kids too to learn the three chords necessary to

(16:37):
play all of Lead Bellies repertoire, which also, by concidence,
happened to be the three chords necessary to play all
the Chuck Berry's repertoire. Okay, and the punk scene, you know,
it starts in America with the Ramans and seventy five
they don't get any traction. When do you become aware
of the pug scene? And I go and see the
jam They were kind of retro band. Where were you? Okay,

(17:00):
so where were you living at the East London a
place called Barking in Northeast London industrial borough. I was
educated left school at sixteen, and I was educated to
work in the car factory which has dominated our town. Okay,
a little bit once again. If you leave at sixteen,
what do your parents say about that? Are they're cool?
My parents have both left school. I have a working
class upbringing my parents. And so do you go to work?

(17:23):
What is your gig? You go to work in the
car country. I'm determined not to work in the car
factory because we get from school. We go to the
car factory every year for careers advice. And when I
tell the the careers officer that I don't want to
work for Fords, he says, your free options son in

(17:43):
the Army to Navy of the Air Force. That's it.
So I manage what happens. It is just as I
leave school, the Port of London is being containerized, and
so I get a job with one of the new
container companies. As a kind of office boy, which is
kind of well, that's what I wanted, you know, um,
because in many ways I kind of picked up the

(18:04):
guitar to avoid working in the car factory. But they
were the main ways to escape. Be good at football,
good at boxing, or play music, and I wasn't good
at the first two. Okay, let's go back a little bit.
So if you're turned out of the punk scene and
you've got to see the with the GM in seventy seven,
are you someone who's addicted to the radio before that? Yeah,
from the age of about twelve, I had had a

(18:24):
real to real tape machine usually, yeah, sort of a
domestic one. Domestic, real to real. My parents. I think
my parents realized if they brought me a real to
real machine, this is before the days of cassettes, I'll
be able to tape stuff from the radio and they
wouldn't have to keep spending money buy me records. It's
quite clever, really, and did is that what happened? It
was better than that. My friends down our street all

(18:45):
had elder sisters and their record collections, which is brilliant.
So very soon I had the entire Simon and Garth
Uncle catalog, and Motown Chartbusters Volumes three, four, five, six,
and seven on tape. And that provided me with the
basis of my knowledge of music and my skill as
a songwriter. And when do you start to play. I
start writing songs on about twelve. I can't play until

(19:08):
I leave school. Okay. But if you're writing songs, you're
writing them on what paper? Really? You're just making the
melodies up in your in my head? Yeah? And are
those moon June songs or well? I wrote a poem
um at school the when I was twelve that the
English teacher was very impressed with and he wrote to

(19:30):
my parents and asked if I copied it from a
book and I hadn't, so that that impressed him. And
then I got to read it out on a kid's
radio program, a local radio program. So I kind of okay,
let's go a little bit slower. Here was this for
an assign? Yeah? Okay, do you remember what the assignment was?
A poem? Okay? And was this relatively brief or you know,

(19:52):
three or four verses here? Three or four verses? You
remember any of them today? Not? Really? It was it
was it was kind of apocalyptic in its nature. I
think that you know there's no hope for mankind or
something like that. Okay, And was it something you dashed
off or something you took seriously, this is my chance.
It's something I did for homework book and just worked
out really well and that kind and then I got

(20:13):
the I failed all my exams except English. You get
to read on the radio. That must be big, you know.
It was a big inspiration. It inspired me. Inspired me
because I always liked to sing a songwriter, you know.
I started with Paul Simon and graduated very quickly on
the Bob Dylan. I had a job in a hardware
store on Saturdays, and the hardware store had a record

(20:34):
shop in the basement, so I spent all my money
on discounting vinyl and earlier and I got Bob Dylan's
Greatest It's the original version, which has all the early
stuff on it. And that really that really inspired me. Okay,
So you're writing songs. Are you gathering together with friends
to play these songs? Well, this is the thing. The
kid next door. When I turned sixteen, I can hear

(20:54):
the kid next door playing his electric guitar through the war.
He's fourteen and he's working his way through the watch
Shoot Songbook. So I get my dad to buy me
a Nylon strong Spanish guitar, and I get the kidnext
or to teach me how I played. I remember that's
how I started the nightline. They're not easy to play, No,

(21:16):
they're not. And it's you know, it's the just thing
of get one end to do this and the other
rand to do something completely different. It's not easy. But
as I say, I was learning songs I really loved
at the watch Shot song But because he covered they
learn and he covered a lot of great songwriters, so
I was quite into these songs. And let's stop here
for a second. A lot of punks had a negative

(21:38):
attitude towards what came before, and were you part of that?
I was when it got to ninety seventy seven, year
I was. I was a year zero kid, although it
wasn't everything. I remember I gave all my Eagles albums
to the woman in the post office who I liked.
She was a good friend. She was into the Eagles
and I used to see her and I was like,

(21:58):
I've got to get rid of these. I cut my hair,
I got some narrow legged trousers. It's got within my
flares um. But by this time I was in a band.
I was playing you hear the Electric Guitar, through the Door,
through the Wall, You buy the Nyeline guitar. Then what well?
Me and the kid next door, Wiggy, were playing the
back room with friends around the corner, and we went

(22:20):
to school. It was a year older than me, plays drums.
We start, you know, hanging out, and we've become a
little gang in my back room. We're predominantly playing the
Faces the Stones, a lot of old rock and roll songs,
and writing our own songs as well. That's yeah, this
is like an apprenticeship, you know. I worked out out

(22:42):
how some of the Faces songs were basically guitar riffs
that they just attached words to rather than verse chorus things,
and explain this to Wiggy and he came up with
riffs and I just attached words to him. So that
sounded like where is Where is Wiggy today? He's living
still where we grew up, not very far away. His
dad still lives in the house next door to the
house I grew up in, although my since my mom

(23:02):
passed away, my nephew loose there now, so I see
him quite regularly. Okay, so you're playing Are you playing
out or you just no, no, no, no, nothing like that.
We're waiting to be discovered, but we're trying. But the
dream is intact. Yeah, okay, you think, Yeah, the dream
is forming. The dream is forming, and it's punk. I
saw you move your hands, and that's something to do

(23:24):
with the money that the dreamer is that money, it's that,
it's attraction. It's some kind of traction for a dream.
Dreams need traction. Um. It's punk that makes us realize
that the way to be in a band is to
be in a band, not to wait for someone to
come and tell you of being a Bandnestly, the clash
more than so than the jam. I don't know what
I think the clash think about the clash was they

(23:45):
did all the things we like to the rolling stones,
but about the ronges size. But they were our age,
so we kind of some of us more than others.
I think I was more into it than the other. Well,
that's my question. You're forming this band, and did you
quickly realized wait a second, I have more desire than
the other. Oh no, we were at the same desire.
We just didn't want have the same aircrat and I
think that's always a problem in the band. But what

(24:05):
happened was in the summer of seventy seven we decided
we were all wanted to go on holiday together somewhere
where we could stay up and make music all night,
because we couldn't do that our parents. So we found
this um rehearsal studio demo studio in the country and
we went there for a week out of the country
with We're in Northamptonshire, which is how far from East London. Oh,

(24:28):
I would say it's two hours. Were okay, you know,
but we were all completely We're all, you know, not
nothing for miles around it but fields and forests and
what is paying for this our work? We're all worked
Pard I'm nineteen and seventy seven, WIGGI will be seventeen twenties,
so we're all at work. Um And we kind of
went to the studio and never really came home after

(24:50):
after going back and forth there a few times. The
people who ran it were really great for us because
they they gave us a confidence. You know, that week,
I must have written a dozen songs while we were there.
We did stay up all night. We did well why
why did the people give you confidence? Well, because our
parents were like, you know, we might as well be
uh collecting stamps. As far as my parents concerned, it

(25:13):
was a hobby and I should get a proper job,
you know. Okay, So at this point, yeah, the office job,
office boy down at the ducks. The office. It was
in the central London, in the City of London. It
was cut down the docks. It was that. It was
the I think I maybe by then I was even
a bank messenger. I think I've moved up. It was
a bank messenger and you're still living at home? Yeah,
what the cusure thing that has happened? Since getting the

(25:36):
first guitar and going to the studios and my father's
passed away in Nix when I was eighteen years That
must have really fun Well, it kind of did, Bob.
It was a long time coming. He had lung cancer.
But as he died and I had to sort of
get to grips with not being a kid anymore, punk happened,
and punk became the sort of life raft that I

(25:56):
sailed away from my childhood and that terrible period where
where my dad was getting worse and worse and worse
and worse. It was almost like everything stopped in my life,
just stopped while that was going on. And then it
ended and there was punk was there, and I was
able to step onto that and and sort of right
away to the next part of my life. So I

(26:16):
was very fortunate in that. Okay, so you're working as
a as a bank messenger and you're making music, and
what's the next step. Next step is that we move.

(26:36):
All the guys in the band we decided to move
to the farm, to the to the studio, except the
guy who has an apprenticeship at Fords. He decided to
stay at Forwards, which is understandable. And we live up
in easternalth, Camptainshire for eighteen months and you do what
for a living, nothing, So you're living off what of
the government's unemployment benefit, which in those days was not

(27:00):
not not a bad thing. A lot of people are
on the dolls. So the taxpayers kind of pay for
my apprenticeship. That's why I don't mind paying my taxes.
I think it's only fair to pay some back. Um.
And yeah, we had a great time up there. We
were legendary in that town when you obviously played live
there all the time. Yeah, We had a residency at
a pub Sunday afternoon residency where local punk bands would

(27:22):
come and play. And in that town, in that community,
we were the punks, but we meant absolutely nothing outside
that community. But there were great people and we really
had it. It's very formative. My mole manager Peter Jenner,
used to say that I didn't go to university. I
went to riff Raft. That was the name of the band,
and that isn't deed true. Okay, a couple of things.

(27:44):
Didn't you go on the military at one? That's why
happens next? The band breaks up? Why does the BM
break up? Well, we had to move back to London
and the drummer winner to stay there and me and
we wanted to go back, and so we got a
couple of other guys in. But it weren't the same.
This wasn't the same, and the venues we played in

(28:05):
were disappearing, and a new breed of pop stars was
coming along who put style over content, and we've always
been content of his style for punk rock. And in
order to get gigs, you have to have a sympathizer
and a funny haircut, and I've never had either. Our

(28:26):
time had come and gone, and did you literally literally
give up the dream? Say, you know, time passed me by.
I didn't make it, kind of joined the army to
press the eject button on my previous existence. That was
the aim of it. Now, if you join the army,
theoretically you get your ass shut off. Well, yes and no,
it depends what you do. I mean, basically, at the time,

(28:47):
the only place you get yours shot off was in
Northern Ireland. But I told him I didn't want to
go there, so they put me in an Irish regiment.
Because the Irish regiments didn't go there. Because you don't
want to take some guy off the streets of Dairy
and teach them how to shoot and then send him
back to harass his neighbors. It's not a good idea,
so I kind of mitigated against that. But a terrible
thing is bob. But once you've driven one tank, you've

(29:07):
driven them all, to be honest with you, So well,
let's start for the beginning. Did you drive a tank
here for a while? Really, And you're saying, I just
want to understand, because you know, I grew up in
the air of the sixties when we were all anti
military it's hard to see it flip in front of
my eyes now. But are you saying there was no
room for growth personal growth or you're saying what what

(29:30):
in the army? No, there was. There was a realization
quite early on that this wasn't going to cure me
if wanted to be a singer songwriter. In fact, it
maybe wanted to write more songs. So because we have
a volunteer army, you can buy yourself out at any time. Well,
it gets harder and more trained you are. But I
brought myself out more or less at the end of
basic training, so I'd barely driven a tank. And how

(29:52):
long was basic training? All? It was about four months? Okay,
I gotta ask, though you're in the army, can you
relate to any of these people? What a lot of
working class lads like me it were nowhere to go.
You know in those days if if you you couldn't
read and couldn't write, but we're physically fit, there was

(30:12):
a job there for you. Now you can't do that anymore, okay,
So you buy yourself out of the army. The dream
is rekindled and you do what. I spend a year
working out out how to start doing gigs again, solo
with an electric guitar, start writing songs and that in
that style, and playing anywhere anyone would have me for nothing,

(30:37):
just carrying a little a little practice amp. And then
did you have a da job? At that time? I
was very fortunate and I bumped into an old mate
of mine from the basement record store in the Harbord shop.
He was running a record shop, and he gave me
some work, okay, and he got to listen to the music.
Did yeah, okay? It was interest you because it was
an entire chain of records record stores that sold only cutouts. Really, yeah,

(31:03):
there was a guy had a big church and these
most people who don't know back in the days of
physical when something was deleted from the catalog, when they
weren't going to manufacture it anymore or they had overstocked,
they literally put a cut in the cover and they
would sell it at a discount and there were no
royalties to the acts to boots, that's right. And so
he had and he hired me the boss because I

(31:24):
was the only one who knew anything about punk, and
he would take me to bankrupt record stores and asked
me to value of the punk stuff. Look at the
punk stuff, so you knew the other stuff you didn't
know show about punk. I would have to go in
and one day I found one of our records of
raft records. Made me laugh. But I get a lot
of a lot of stuff you have was white labels,
get boxes of white labels. And I would spend a

(31:44):
lot of time during the day in the shop while
there were customers in the shop, planning the white labels,
trying to work out what they are and writing on
them what they aren't, setting them for a quid or something.
So it was it was good. The dangerous thing was
going to the warehouse. You know, if you went to
the warehouse where the records were kept. Another thing from
the days of physical your listeners might not know how
heavy records were. There was always a danger that there

(32:06):
could be an avalanche of copies of all this and
World War two the soundtrack you could get buried under them.
There were a lot of those in the warehouse. Do
you remember that record, yes, exactly, so, yeah, those are
the days. Those are my days in the bowels of
the record industry and all this entire chain run on.
You know, what was the name Low Price Records run

(32:27):
on nothing more than the detritus. You run a whole.
I think had six shops run just on the detritus
of the record industry. I gotta ask, because that's the
second word you used, which if you're an American, that
would be evidence of higher education. You said, as you
pronounced an inclement, we might say inclement here, and you

(32:48):
said the traders. Would these be words come up casually
in the UK? Or are you separate from the average
working Oh no, almost. I'm a wordsmith. I do have
a you know, previous collection of archaic words because I
need him to rhyme with things. But I was trying
to I was trying to um by saying to try this.

(33:09):
I was trying to suggest that these songs, these records
one rubbish. I've got some I've got some great white libelar. No, no, no,
I know exactly what you're talking about. You know, you said,
just not the issue. It's just you don't get the
average musician using those particular terms. Anyway, you're playing and
you're slinging the cutouts, and what happens after that. I

(33:30):
start too, of the guy I work with who's also musician.
He's a bass play of jazz funk band Steve Goldstein.
He buys a Reporter studio, which is like a little
recording deck that you can Most people don't know there
are four tracks on a cassette, usually two in each direction,
and I don't know if Tiak was the first one

(33:52):
that was you know, yeah, and they used all four
tracks in one direction. So it's kind of like recording
the garage ban today but on a primitive, very primitive.
But he bought this. He was so excited about it
and he wanted to test it out. So he invited
me to come and make some demos his mum's flat
where he lived. And I totally up for this because
I was writing the loads of his solo songs. So

(34:14):
I went along and demo my songs and I sent
them to The Melody Maker, which was a weekly newspaper,
one of four we had music papers in the UK.
It was Melody Maker, Enemy, Sounds in Mirror, and the
They had a page called Playback where they reviewed demo
tapes and a guy named Adam Sweeting gave mine a

(34:36):
fabulous review. Absolutely, did you think it was as good
as his review? I had no idea, mate, but I
can tell you that when my then girlfriend who worked
in the in the West Ends, so I've got the
newspapers a day early and we got him in the
suburb the music papers read it to me over the phone.

(34:56):
Almost wept. I'll tell you why, because it was the
US intimation I got that I might actually be able
to do this job and it might work. It really
was like a validation the like of which no reviewers
ever had. The same fact just I'm cheering up a
little bit now just thinking about it. That moment it
was I just closed the shops. That must have been

(35:17):
around six some was setting so the shop was full
of beautiful light. It was almost like, you know what,
this might actually happen. It might actually happen. So it was.
It had my phone number on the bottom of the review,
and I was phoned by a guy who worked for
Chapel Music Publishers named Jeff Chegman. He invited me to

(35:39):
come and make some demos. Nobody else there was particularly interested,
but he gave me a day in their demo studio
with their engineer. We record a dozen songs and um.
Around the same time, I had a residency and a
rather sort of rough spit and sawed US joint called
The Tunnel in Southeast London, a pub, and I was

(36:05):
I was doing pretty well there, but I started sending
this the original demo type that I had made on
the Port studio. I sent out to record companies but
not got any anywhere. And I started going to record
companies and going in reception, and I'd get a few
names and try and ask her see someone. I didn't
know anybody, and I went on. One day, I went

(36:26):
to Charisma Records. I was looking for a guy named
Peter Jenna. Okay, I mean I know Peter Jenna, original
manager of Pig Floyd. Certainly you're a manager. Did you
know who he was? At that point I met I
got his name from a guy who painted backdrops from
the clash who I know. And when I said I
was looking for a manager was political and like a

(36:47):
father figure, he said, I know blow like that Jenna,
That's who he is. Yeah, exactly, And it was in
my career um, but at the time he was a
and R and for Charisma. So I went there with
my demo and I asked for him a reception. I
was it in there and I was not really getting
any looked like I wasn't going to get in same
as everywhere else. When someone put their head around the

(37:07):
corner and said to me, are you the guy who's
come to tune in the video? Now? At the time,
I was working with Wiggy sort of part time. Wiggy
was doing audio visual presentations for companies, and not many
coupanies was two. Not many companies had video machines, so

(37:29):
we would take a video recorder with us, and while
Wiggy was doing the warm up, I'd crawl under the
telly and tune in their TV to this video machine.
So although I wasn't the person who had come to
tune in the video, I was capable of tuning in
the video. So without a moment's thought, I said, yeah,
I am so. She said great, come this way, took
me into the recording to a record company, crawled under

(37:53):
their telly, tuned in their video. I think they were
watching Peter Gabriel, who was on the first edition. So
you actually did do the show for sure. It wasn't
a complete blag. I've done it, so I don't feel
I don't feel guilty about lying because I did do it,
all right, let's get that straight, um. And then I
said I said to um, we're all standing around watching.
I said to this woman, he's Peter Jenner about there.

(38:14):
So I went over and laid my tape on him
and bless him. He came to see me at the tunnel. Okay,
did he play it while you were there? But he
came to see me at the tunnel and he he
later said that when he came to the town there
was an electric atmosphere in the room. While I was

(38:34):
on stage, he spoke to a woman at the bar
and she said, I was. I was brilliant. And when
I finished, because he was late, he'd gone there's two
tunnels under the river gone he'd gone through the wrong one,
So he was typical Pete Starle. He was late, so
he didn't see the gig. He just saw the end
of it. But he's he He said to me, we
must do something, however trivial. That was his line to

(38:56):
me as he left, because he left straight away. What
he didn't know was just before he'd arrived there'd been
a and the reasons for the electric app here was
I was trying to hold the room, if you know
what I mean, stop it breaking out again. The woman
he spoke to the bars and my then girlfriend so
and amongst all this, we kind of we kind of
and only got sacked. He got sacked by Charisma after

(39:16):
we put the record out. Uh, he put the record
out and he just gave me twenty five and says,
if youn't get any radio plays on that, I'm not.
I thought that you were supposed to do this. He said,
get out, go to the BBC. So I went to
the BBC and I left some copies. I left a
copy for John Peele, famous most famous DJ and the
nighttime g J who had the ability to break bands

(39:38):
and give your sessions. I left it there and that
night I was in Hyde Park, which is the other
end of oxfor Street from Broadcasting US, playing football with
some mates and afterwards we were having a few beers
and we were listening to the BBC the program before Peel,
which is Kit Jensen, and Peel came in to talk
about what's on his show, and he's it Ki Jensen.

(40:01):
I would do anything for a mushroom bery. Ay, it
is the form of a curry So a light went
on in my head, so I went down. I walked
down the back of Ox Street, bought the curry berry.
Only went to broadcastings and said to the concierge curry
for Mr Peel. They rang him. He come down. He
physically come down to take the curry off me. So

(40:21):
I was able to say to my man's Billy Bragg,
I left a record for you today life The Right
spy Us is by great if you could ever listen
to it, it's like fine took the bury ony I
tuned in that night. Not only did he play the record,
he said thanks very much for the buryany Billy I
would have played it anyway. And it was the beginning
of I'd like to think of a real friendship between

(40:42):
myself and and the great Man. Okay, so now you
have your start. Is it a relatively you know, it's
hard to do on the radio talk about graphs and engles.
Is it steady going up or is it ups and downs?
That's about ups and downs to start with, because particularly
because Charisma the record label, so it's taken over just

(41:04):
after my record comes out on on the Utility label.
The record labels taken over by Virgin, So everything goes sideways,
including my record. But a guy named Andy McDonald um
ran a label Leslie Simmons and together they rescued my
record and rereleased it later that year, and by the

(41:24):
time we get to the new year, it's number one
in the independent charts, which was a big deal in
those days. How do you think it got there? Well,
partly because of I was really really working hard doing gigs.
Peel was playing it put he put New England in
his Festive fifty in the top five. I think it's
Festive fifty, um Andy and um go this we're doing

(41:48):
a good job with it. Was he was a good
promotion man him unless he did a really great job
on it. And Pete Janna, you know, was old hand.
So it's like a collaboration. Everybody put their reference. Yeah,
my willingness to do as many because they threw at
me and to go and literally, I mean it literally
was um out on the road with a amping one
hand guitar, only having a pack on my back on

(42:09):
trains so I didn't drive in and my agent would
just put set me up with um support acts for
bigger bands, and I was just try and steal the audience.
So by the time we got to Christmas, I was
doing my own headliners. Okay, that record is successful, what's
the next step? America, America. I get a shout in

(42:30):
this in this August night, four do I want to
come to the unit sets of America and open for
that kind of moneyment on their first American tour? So
I do so I get I'll call Wiggy say, Wiggy,
this is it, mate, I'm going to tour America for
a month. I may never do this again. You've got
to come with me. You've got to come with me.

(42:50):
This is what we dreamed about doing. Come on, let's
do this. I'll pay for it. I'll pay for that,
you know, I'll pay you to do it. Come and
roady for me. Play a couple of songs, get on
the back of the bus with Bunnyment, and that's what
we did. We went coast to coast, north to south.
It was just amazing, and to do it with Wiggy
really was for me. It was the the sort of
combination of ever we went. We got to. We got

(43:16):
to Los Angeles at the end of the tour the
Bunnyment and we were there for a couple of days.
We went to the car, drove to the end of
Sunset Boulevard, end of Root and walked down to Paddle
in the Pacific ocean and had a moment like our
sort of sixteen year old selves kind of saw us
there or we saw them, and we we came off
the We've all got very emotional in weeks. Someone's going down.

(43:39):
We saw as we came off the beach an English pub,
which is too good. So we went to go and
have a point to celebrate. And it wouldn't let us
think because we didn't have I d totally killed it.
We're like, you don't have to have idea in English pub?
No idea? No, Okay. At what point do you make
a deal with the Electra? Oh? That comes shortly there

(44:00):
after Pete, because I go back to America about three
times in the following year, and Pete gets me to
deal with Electra on tax mouth. I think it's a taxi. Okay,
So in this period we will call your heyday. Do
you achieve your goals? Yeah? I do. I mean lots

(44:20):
of very interesting women, have very interesting conversations with them
with no clothes on. That was one of my goals
I'm not ashamed of. So wait, wait, wait, wait, so
you're not a closer. You said no, no, no, without
any clothes on, Bob, I'm trying to put it in
a nice way, One of the reasons why I wanted
to be in a band was was to impress girls.
So you know that kind of well that worked once

(44:43):
you're on stage. We know that's an established formula, but
one has to ask. I mean, you're a very verbal guy.
Was your act working before you had some level of
fame on the stage? Yeah, it was, it was, it
was working, but the the guitar and the English accent
really kind of helped. Okay, any of these women you

(45:03):
have contact with today, Yeah, I do quite a few
of them. Actually, I'd like to think I've remained friends
with with with quite a few of them. You know,
it's what you do when you're in your twenties. You know.
That was my my kind of period of heightened sexual activity.
What happened to be on the road, So it had
a had a double edge sort because I was learning

(45:24):
a lot as I was traveling as well. You know,
it wasn't just me in one particular area. It was
it was a great time to be out in the road.
And at this point, are you're touring solo mostly? Yeah? Completely, yeah, okay,
and then you ultimately have a backpack and amplifier. No, no, no,
I don't ultimately have that pe Jena dream set up

(45:45):
as a way of getting people's attention. It's a complete
pain in the ass because it weighs a ton, it
feeds back, and it's the most of the weights across
your diaphragm. It's like a backpack, so you can't really
get along full of I complained about it mercilessly. It
got me a bad back. But Jenna damn him said

(46:06):
at the time that but people will remember this bill,
and you're comment there that annoyingly proves him right. Okay,
so the down term in term, you know, everyone's got
a relatively brief window where they are the center of attention. Now,
would you say the moment passes or you would say

(46:26):
the internet comes and decimates. No, no, the moment the
moment passes. Basically my my, my, heighter that would be
working with in the UK with a Labor Party around
red Wedge and the minor strike. That that very particularly
that very political um opposition to Margaret Thatcher and policies

(46:50):
and in the in the US to Ronald Reagan um,
and that was kind of that's that's what defines me
for a lot of people still, and I'm cool with that.
I don't mind being called a political songwriter. I write
more love songs than I write political songs. My problem
is being dismissed as a political songwriter, people thinking they
did you weak? Did you grow up in a political house? No?

(47:11):
I don't really know. So how did you become, you know,
inspired to speak out on your political It's all down
to the inspiration of one person I knever forget her name.
It was Margaret Thatcher of my time. If you look,
if you look at my first couple of albums, the
politics is personal. Just because you're better than me doesn't
mean I'm lazy. Tax Man, I'm writing songs that's a

(47:32):
message we need more today than ever. Yeah, exactly. But
by tax man, I'm writing there is parent union. I'm
writing songs called ideology. What's happened is the minor strikers happened.
And for my generation, the minor strike, what do you
experienced upon that? For those in the Conservative government provoked
the National Union mine workers into a year long strike

(47:55):
that ultimately uh led to the not just a defeat
of miners, but the defeat of organized labor in my country.
And it was a destructive uh um, destructive of unions,
but also destructive of communities and spirit broke the working
class spirit in my country. And so uh you know,

(48:19):
having grown up listening to all those political singer songwriters
in the nine in sixties, when the strike happened, I thought, okay,
well this is where I get to find out if
music and change the world. So I did everything I
could two use the tarant that I had the platform.
Not I had to make the case for not just
an organized labor, but for a compassionate society, which is
what you run up against internal pressure not to do that. Yeah,

(48:43):
of course the um. One of Thatcher's ministers used to
complain to the BBC if they put me on air.
You know, he's a guy named Norman Tebbitt. Was complained
and how much Once again, you're in a different market
place than America and we're a very ethnocentric and self obsessed.

(49:05):
How much exposure do you get in that era of
the minor strike? Quite a bit? Quite a bit really,
because um we got remember we've got four weekly music papers. Um,
and during the strike everybody was talking about it. It
was not something you could avoid. So um, young people

(49:28):
were galvanized by opposition to Thatcher in the way they've
been galvanized by a position to Trump and opposition to Brexit.
So to be a young person and to be making
culture for young people, you know, I wasn't alone in
the way arms. Were you political before this or just
this issue struck you in such a way? I was.
I was personally political, Bob. You know, my my politics

(49:50):
were broadly you know, anti racist. Um, I'll be honest.
Before the minor strike, I didn't have much grasp of sexism.
It was that experience to introduced me to to those issues.
But I've been politicized by Rock against racism, so that's
where my politics kind of came from. Um. But the

(50:10):
ideological politics so I started. The minor strike caused me
to defined myself as a socialist rather than just someone
who was in favor of good things. I started trying to,
you know, bring that in. For a lot of us,
it was it was definitive. Okay, We're in a you know,
very tumultuous globe at this point in time. There's been
a lot of rightward movement, although recently a little bit

(50:31):
of a pushback to left. Do you have hope for
society at large. Yeah, of course, as I say, I
describe myself as a socialist, And unless you can see
that the glass is half full, you can't really be
a socialist because you have to believe that if the
majority of people have to say that the things will
work for the better, you've gotta be able to wake
up in the morning and think that broadly speaking, humanity

(50:53):
leans towards a much more compassionate society. Um. And I
think we live in time with even a time when
there's like a war on empathy coming down from on high.
You know, anyone who expresses any sort of you know,
respect for people outside their own racial or cultural or

(51:14):
ethnic group is sort of dismissed as virtue signaling or
political correctness. These people who use those terms of trying
to police the the limits of social change by their
dismissive language, and we have to, you know, we have
to take them on as best we can. Well, war
on empathy, that's a good, uh way to put it. So,
what is really going on with Brexits prior to this

(51:36):
being published? I am sure there'll be other movement, but
give us the insight into how this happened. Braxit is
a manifestation of the inability of the neoliberal economic model
to deal with change. And it's not isolated. I think

(51:56):
the election here in the United States America in UH
was also the election of Donald Trump was also a
result of the other candidate, Hillary Clinton, being unable to
offer any real change, economic change that will help ordinary
working people. She couldn't do that. She was just offering

(52:18):
more the same people. If you've um not benefit from
the economic model, then then the the impulse to protect
that econonomic model by voting to remain in the European Union,
forget it. You know, you've made my life a chaos.
I'm gonna make your life chaos now. And I think
that's the lesson from Trump and Brexit is that unless

(52:41):
ordinary people are offered meaningful change, they are willing to
vote for the kind of you know, damn the lot
of u chaos that we see with Brexit and with Trump. Okay,
so a noo that the election of the Brexit electors
essentially three years old. Um, there's been a lot of
talk about people who just in a lot of working
class people who literally voted against their interests because there

(53:04):
were plants in their societies that were funded by European Union. Um,
they talk about a nationalism. The people missed a national
identity leading in the UK. So what degree is that
a well, nationally you know, I'm a socialist and as
a result that, Bob, I know, there are many different

(53:24):
types of socialism. It's not just one type. You know,
you have democratic socialisty in the United States of America,
the social democracy. It's the same with nationalism. You know,
in my country we have the British National Party you
are led by a man who denies the veracity of
the Holocaust, and the Scottish National Party, who are more
left wing than the Democrats and the Labor Party. So
you know, nationalism is not always a negative form civic nationalism,

(53:46):
loving your country and wanting it to be better. It's
not always negative. But what's going on I think, both
with Trump and with Brexit is an attempt to return
to the way things were before women, people of color
and the lgbt q I community made it in road.
How much of it is that and how much of

(54:07):
it is what you steated earlier, the lack of economic opportunity.
Well that the one is a reaction to the other.
You know, the two big slogans from Trump and Brexit
were make America great again and take back control. It's
not like a moving forward idea where we're all going
to move together. We're going to go back to our
things were before all these upty people got their their

(54:31):
place in society. It's a it's a you know, almost
a nostalgia trip. And in my country it's underscored with
imperial nostalgia, and I fear in your country it's it's um,
it's run through with the nostalgia for Jim Crow. I'm

(54:52):
sorry to say. Um. Now you can you can put
that down to nationalism if you like. There's a nationalist
element in there. But nationalism isn't always negative. But what
is clearly is negative is people who don't feel that
they have a place in society anymore. You know, some
of the Brexit people say that they don't feel that

(55:16):
Britain is their country anymore. Now I have some empathy
for that because I felt that way during Attache years.
So I'm not willing to dismiss them all as being racists.
You know, not not everyone who voted for Breakfast is
a racist, but every race is definitely voted Breakfast. But
the point being. You know, these are people who are
don't feel their voices heard anymore, and Brexit was their

(55:38):
opportunity to be heard. And I think there's an element
of that within the within the Trump vote as well.
And the question then becomes, how do we accommodate those people? Okay,
so how do we? Well? I think we have to
give them the thing that seems to be lacking to
me in their lives and listen to what they say
is a sense of some agency over their their environment.

(55:58):
And one of the reasons for that, I think if
the prime reason for that, I think is that the
lack of accountability in a voting system in your country
and my country that doesn't um make everyone's vote count.
If we lived in countries that add proportional voting systems
where every vote results and representation, we might be able

(56:19):
to get to grips with some of these issues. I mean,
what's been happening just recently in my country with members
of parliament splitting from the two main parties is the
stress being put on a system that is unable to
accommodate meaningful change. Let's go back just for a second.
You go a little deeper. Proportional voting meaning proportional voting,

(56:42):
meaning that that the members of Congress will proportionally reflect
the number of votes counted there in their election or
in their viewpoints expressed in their in their election, in
the number of votes Canada. In my country, we have
a system called first pass the post. So if there's

(57:05):
there's three of us, Let's say there's three of us
in the election, and I get the most votes, I win,
even if I don't get the majority. You know, if
I get um Let's say I get and the two
other candidates get each I win, and what apps to
the six of the votes that are against me? They
go in the trash. That's you know, you keep doing

(57:26):
that for twenty thirty years. Those people who going in
the trash of your time, they're going to get angry.
Where I live in a rural constituency, we call them
out parliamentary constituencies. I live in a rural community where
the Conservative Party have been the MP since six and
where I live in East London, where I grew up. Rather,

(57:46):
Labor has been the member of Parliament there since the
borough was created when my father was a child in nine.
So I mean I'm a Labor supporter but I reckon
just talking about the constituency you live in now. Is
there any opportunity for labor or a third party that
that second party? Even previous elections, I've had to campaign
for the only party that the party that comes second,

(58:08):
even though I don't support them, I've had to encourage
people to vote for them in order to defeat the
Tories and to stop the Tories winning at westminth said
didn't work. UM, But in a fair voting is a
system system. Our votes will be reflected. You know, there
will be a threshold. Parties that got more than five
percent would get some kind of representation. They do have it.
I mean most European societies have it. It's not a

(58:32):
UM solve all your problems, but it does ensure that
everyone's votes get Okay, that's that's talking about government. What
about economics in the fact with you know a lot
of the economy, certainly in america's driven by technology, and
there aren't enough jobs, never mind well paying jobs for people.
How do we address that? Really easy but great new deal?

(58:57):
You know, the New Deal that Frank Loos got used
in the nineties thirties to re re engage American workers
greening the American economy would have the same job because
although yes, technology will be important, you will physically have
to change the way that you know, every house is insulated.
You will physically have to change the way that that

(59:20):
automobiles work. You will physically have to change the way
power is generated. These are all labor intensies, right, But
those would cause employment for a period of time, just
like the Alaskan oil rush of the seventies. But it
does not speak to the billionaires who ultimately control these
large corporations and wield their power to the detriment of

(59:41):
the working class. In middle class. Well, we're back to
the A word again, but accountability. And I think this actually,
I've just been proof reading a polemical pamphlet. I've written
fifteen word pamphlet about accountability. Because I believe very very
strongly that it's going to be published later this year.
I'll be leave very very strongly that um our obsession

(01:00:03):
with free speech as the definition of freedom is to
the detriment of other dimensions of freedom that are equally important.
And they are equality the right of everybody to express
their opinion. More importantly, though, accountability, because it's accountability that
gives the individual agency over those corporations that you're talking about.

(01:00:24):
So I'm in my in my book, I'm arguing that
equality and accountability to give given equal prominence and equal
respect that we give to First, let's say, you know,
there are there are certainly bad actors in corporate world,
but there is a spectrum. So for those people who
are paying those corporations that are paying their taxes but
still eliminating jobs, what's the accountability there. Well, the accountability

(01:00:48):
there is that the corporations have to be responsible so
that the profits, some of the profits that they have
have to go into the communities where they work to
create space and create a um a sustainable model of
growth that helps those communities in some way. If everyone,
you know, maybe we go into a four day working
week or something like that. Because the real big problem

(01:01:09):
is that the globalization of the economy has made it
possible for for um an extractive model of capitalism that
allows a corporation to make its money in one country
and then pay taxes somewhere else that if they pay them,
if they pay them at all, And unfortunately, the only
way to deal with that is to have some kind
of global deal and again, Unfortunately, voters tend to be

(01:01:31):
shying away from that kind of international collective action that
the you know, globalization is here to stay. It's just
like an America. No one wants to be four thousand
dollars for a flat screen if it was manufacturing America.
But there hasn't been a good trickled down or understanding
for those people left behind. The trickle down don't really matter,
don't really work. But the economy works not by entrepreneurs

(01:01:55):
making loads of money and trickling it down. The economy
works by you and I am every other average Joe
and you will going out every day and buying stuff.
That's how the of course, that's what the New Deal
was about. The New Deal was about putting money into
the pockets of ordinary American workers that they could buy
automobiles in America, so they could buy fridges, so they
could buy houses. As you don't if you don't have

(01:02:16):
these people at the bottom spending their money, that's when
the economy. That's one of the things that bothers me.
You have all these corporate titans, it's all based on
consumer spending that they don't make the money in the
vat you know, so The question is, then, how do
you get that model to be sustainable? How do you
get it to be more accountable? And I believe you
do that by giving the consumer, the individual, greater agency

(01:02:39):
over the process. So that involves a form of regulatory democracy,
more regulations, not less regular in America, and I agree
with you wholly. Uh. The right wing has done a
excellent job of demonizing the word regulation. Well, of course,
no one wants to live in a building the collapse is,

(01:03:00):
it's setera. But you know, maybe there's a change now,
just like when the anti Pelosi they demonized her and
they you know, turned one e. Brexit, the hard Brexit
is what march. I mean, that's driven by the regulations.

(01:03:23):
We'll just add driven by the people behind that were
pushing hardest for exactly those kind of people, extractive capitalists
who are trying to get out the European UNI. Because
the European Union is now starting to pass laws which
you'll know about copyright and such issues that have international
implications for corporations, not just manufacturing corporations, but people on
Facebook and Google. Okay, so how do you predict this

(01:03:47):
will play out? Well, Brexit, Bob, mate, it's like trying
to say who's going to win the World Series in
ten years time. It's everything you say you think we'll happen,
doesn't happen, or something weirder happens. It's really what Brexit
has done is totally fractured the idea of left right

(01:04:08):
politics completely, so you can't predict anymore the way people
are going to respond to two issues in the way
that you could before. Brexit is like a faultline that
runs through our politics, and it's in some ways it's
a bit it's a it's a bit like Trumpism in

(01:04:28):
that way. You know, it's split families and it's split
I mean, I know people who don't talk to their
parents anymore because their parents voted Brexit. As it's impossible
to protect likely what is likely to happen. I think
it's likely that we the British government, will have to
ask the European Union to postpone kick the bottle down
the the field. Yeah, there's a there's a I think

(01:04:51):
called Article fifty, which is the process that we're in
at the moment that could be extended. What I would
like to see is um an independent review of it.
A lot of people at home want there to be
a referendum, another referendum. The referendum was the most divisive
day in British post war history, the most divisive day.

(01:05:14):
And you want to do it again, come on, you
know it would just be it makes winners and losers.
What we need is a consensus. So um, the Irish
recently convened a a people's Forum to decide the issue
of abortion. They put people, um, ordinary citizens elected like

(01:05:37):
a jury. I think there was a hundred of them,
and they took evidence from experts. No politicians were allowed
talked and I took evidence from experts and submissions from
the general public. They deliberated for months in a hotel
every weekend. It was all broadcasts online so people could

(01:05:57):
see the deliberations and they came up with recommendations which
the Irish government then ratified and put to a vote.
And the vote of the Irish people was the same
as the vote of the public form, which is more
or less sixty five in favor of abortion and against.
Now what that did was it involved everybody in the

(01:06:19):
country in a debate. It went on for a period
of time and the conclusion was consensual. Everybody could say
that everybody's voice had been heard. Whereas the referendum on
one day, on on one vote and one outcome has
not resolved an issue that has divided British politics, the

(01:06:39):
issue of all the misinformation, the original Brexit vote. How
do we would this process eliminate that? Yes, because because
we would then have to put those questions to the test.
Before Brexit was an abstract. Now this close we can
starting to see the lie of the land. So yeah,
I mean, the fake news thing is also part of

(01:07:01):
the accountability agenda, you know, the loss of accountability anymore.
I mean, um, And it's not just the that the
neoliberals don't want to accept facts. They don't want to
accept being challenged. One of my real problems with the
so called intellectual dark Web, these freedom of speech warriors,

(01:07:26):
is that they simply will not countenance a challenge. It's
not free speech they want, it's free reign. They want
to be able to say whatever they want and have
no comeback. And that's the difference, and this is the
key difference between liberty and freedom. Liberty the idea that
you can say whatever you want to whoever you want,
whenever you want, and and you know, not be held

(01:07:49):
accountable for it. If that was the definition of freedom alone,
then your president will be the paragon of freedom because
that's exactly what he does. But it's not that they're
finition of freedom. It's actually what he's doing is an
abuse of his freedom. He's he's um, you know, using
his privilege in order to make those points. And you

(01:08:11):
need equality, everybody's right to express their point of view.
And then on top of that, you need accountability, the
ability you know that your ability as an individual to
hold people to account, but also your willingness to be
accountable yourself. It's reciprocal as well as empowering, and these
things are lacking. This is the case I'm trying to
make in this uh this pamphlet, the Three Dimensions of Freedom.

(01:08:33):
Just to be clear. So you're against this political correctness,
I don't think. I don't believe political quickness exists, Bob.
It doesn't exist. You know, it's it's a projection of
the powerless or powerlessness of people. You know, if you
look at the people who are are most angry about
political correctness, they tend to be academics. And what they're

(01:08:58):
pushing back against is people bringing in different metrics with
which to deal with subjects. I think what's the academics
are afraid of is that the um the standards that
they were raised with that have allowed them access to
uh places of privilege. If the metrics are changed, they

(01:09:19):
will no longer be able to just walk through those
doors that the rest of us are kept out of.
They are defending their own privilege. You know, there is
no such thing as political correctness, and yet your president
was elected after saying that he thought political correctness was
the thing that was the biggest thing that threatened America today. Okay,
let's switch in gears a little bit. Where does this

(01:09:39):
leave you, Billy Bragg? At least me with on a
with a platform. That's what this job has always given me,
a platform in a bottom line. But I think I'm
a communicator. So you're sixty one in a change universe,
and when you started primarily because technology means of communication,
what are you envision going forward the twenty or thirty years?
Hopefully you're left owner's playing it. Let's hope. UM, Well,

(01:10:04):
I'm I'm hoping that. Um. This is personally for your career,
personally for my career. If I carried on doing what
I'm doing now, which is more or less what I
was doing in the twentieth century, I'll be happy. I mean,
I'm feel immensely privileged, Bob. I've been coming to America
for thirty five years, and people are still interested in
what I'm doing to the extent I've sold free units
out at the Troubador, and I've got other shows like

(01:10:26):
this lined up, you know. And that's down to a
number of things. You know. My management gave me good
advice and I took it. My agent, Steve Martin has
been with me all the time, and you know, he's
been He has a great vision for what I try
and do, and and my sort of urge to try

(01:10:46):
and communicate, try and make sense of the way the
world is um as still motivates me. You know. It's
it's just I think, what what what's different now is
that there are other ways, that are other platforms. So
to sit down and write a book, it kind of
gets you know, sort of after thirty five years, you

(01:11:07):
need a break from to and around in a van.
That's why I went on the Kayama Cruise. As much
as anything, you know, if five years driving around America
and a people carry on, I'm ready for okay, but
also getting your message out in a tower of babel
society where it's harder for any voice to be heard.
Does that uh? Is that a weed on your shoulders?

(01:11:30):
Not mine? No, because unfortunately I got an audience together
in the in the days of college radio, when the
music industry was stratified, there were people at the top
who were making huge amounts of money playing stadiums. There
are people at the bottom who were going to open mics.
A lot of us were kind of in the middle,
you know, making a living, never gonna trouble the top
of the child and never going to play the stadiums,

(01:11:51):
but could go out there and play the circuit and follow.
You know, it's a very twentieth century thing. I have
a son who's in a band now it's twenty five
years old. There is no middle ground anymore. You're either
busted through and gone gangbusters, or you're playing for a
pittance somewhere. That sustainable middle middle of the road where

(01:12:13):
record label lets you make free albums of seatley work out.
That model is absolutely shot. And I'm sorry about that
because although I don't necessary want there to be another
clash or another punk rock. I just wish every night
in your could feel like I felt when I saw
the Clash and then go out and be able to
make a living on their own creativity. That's what's missing.

(01:12:35):
You know. All of the new pop stars that are
coming through in the UK tend to have been privately educated,
which means in my country, means they're not working class
kids like me and almost everybody else in British rock
was in the in the twentieth century. And that's my
real concern. If, um, you know, the ability to have
a career in music or any creative industry just becomes

(01:12:56):
the preserve of the the upper middle class, then you
will really lose lose something important in the in the
experience of life for for our young people. You've been
listening to Billy Bragg on the Bob Left Sets podcast.
We could literally go on for hours, both through his
catalog and through politics, but we don't want to wear

(01:13:19):
either the audience or Billy himself out. Billy's been wonderful
to have you here. Thank you very much for having me.
But I've been very very interesting. Okay, A lot of
stuff that we touched, a lot of stuff that we
have in touch. But you've certainly been very stimulating question.
I'm a big believer that one person can impact society.
You know, we're seeing that with AOC in America changing

(01:13:39):
the debate, and musicians used to be the people who
impacted society most not right now that we can hope
it happens again, Well, the thing is happening, just finish off.
Is the fan about IOC is she is organized. The
key is if you want to change the world, you
can't just sing about it. You gotta get organized. That's
the key thing about IOC And for all the work

(01:14:02):
I do in the end, in my experience, only the audience,
only the audience really can change the world by going
out there collectively and working together. And AOC is a
really good example of someone who's an expression of the
collective will of her people and hopefully of the American people.
Let's just go back the book that you're writing. What
are your plans for that that will be coming out

(01:14:23):
in May maybe I think in August and the United
States America. It's only it's like a pamphlet, it's fifteen
th words, it's an essay. Really, that's just making the
point that accountability ultimately is what's missing in this will
be sold. It's by Favor and Favor. I'm British publishers.
They published my skiffle book. They're doing a series of them.

(01:14:44):
It's their nine Anniverse when they're doing a series of them,
and they've asked me to write the first one. Do
you remember who the other people are? The mostly musicians,
mostly people working in the grave and will you be
promoting it? Would indeed? Okay, till next time And listening
a Billy Brow Go Bob Left Sets podcast m HM