Billy Bragg

Billy Bragg came up in East London—Barking, Essex to be exact. It's fitting given the characteristic howl of his vocals. Listening to him these days, it’s hard not to recall the late-great Joe Strummer or the modern brilliance of Archy Marshall, a.k.a. King Krule. In the mid-80s, a musical era driven by production, Billy Bragg was all about songs. He was one of the great standard bearers of political music carried on from both the folk and punk traditions.

On today's episode Bruce Headlam talks to Billy Bragg about using music as a political tool, and whether it can truly affect change. Billy also reminisces about his first trip to the U.S. in ‘84 opening for Echo & the Bunnymen, and his collaboration with Wilco to bring unpublished Woody Guthrie songs to life.

You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite Billy Bragg songs HERE.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Billy Bragg came up in East London, Barking, Essex
to be exact, which is fitting given the characteristic howl
of his vocals. Listening to him these days, it's hard
not to recall the late Great Joe Drummer or the
modern brilliance of Archie Marshall aka King Krule, but Bragg's

(00:36):
musical output stands apart from an above comparison. In the
mid eighties and era driven by production, he was all
about songs and was one of the great standard bearers
of political music, carried on from both the folk and
punk traditions. In his conversation with Bruce Headlam, Bragg talks
about music as a political tool and whether it can
truly affect change. Reminisces about his first trip to the

(00:59):
US and eighty four opening for Echo and the Bunnyman,
and his collaboration with Willcoe to bring unpublished Woody Guthrie
songs to life. This is broken record Lander notes for
the digital age. I'm justin Richmond. Here's Bruce Headlerman conversation

(01:20):
with Billy Bragg.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
You're touring right now.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
I am, yeah. I'm basically doing a week of shows
before a Newport Folk Festival. That's what this trip is about.
And then I'm coming back in the autumn, late September,
October and starting in actually starting in Vancouver, down the
West Coast, up through the Midwest, over to the East
Coast and down to finishing off in Washington, DC. A
four months on tour. So that's the kind of fortieth anniversary.

(01:47):
So it's forty years ago next month that I first
came to America to open Frek Underbunnyman.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Amazing. Yeah, how is it this time compared to forty
years ago?

Speaker 3 (01:55):
You got to remember, I'm someone who'd never been on
a plane before I got this job. I was twenty
five years old. And we come across the Atlantic and
I'm on the left hand side of the plane. So
it's coming to JFK. So we come down Long Island.
You can't receee anything apart from ocean, and then it
starts banking to you know, coming to JFK, and I
start to see America and I see these rows of

(02:16):
houses and I'm like, okay, this is amazing. So coming
in yesterday, I was the same side of the plane.
We come through the clouds and as the plane banked
I'm not a happy flyer. So I listened to music
when I'm not watching films, particularly landing and takeoff, and
it's just on random. It just goes for I don't
like the track, I'll just bang forward till I find
something like a scarboroughfare come on by Simon and Garfank call.

(02:39):
And as it did, the plane banked exactly the same way,
and I looked down. I thought, I got it. I'm
getting a thingle talking about it now, thinking back to
that first time we came to the United States of
America in August of nineteen eighty four. It was swotering
hot and the Olympics were on the La Olympics, I think,
and we stayed in the Iroquois Hotel in Midtown and

(03:05):
I had four or five nights performing on the roof
of the dance Materia, which was an amazing introduction to
life in America, not least because looking uptown from the
dance Materia from where I was standing on the stage,
the vista was absolutely dominated by the Empire State Building,

(03:25):
which lit up as the sun went down, the lights
on it. It was like, Okay, this is it, this
is America. Here we are let's do this. So yeah,
I'm very happy memories of toom of our under bunnyman
in nineteen eighty four because I stayed on the bus
where the bunny men were on the bus the first half,
and then they got bored and started flying. But I
had me and my best friend from school, WIGGI came

(03:46):
with me, and we stayed on the tour bus and
as a result saw a lot more of America than
if we had just seen the airports and the hotels.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
What stands out from that from traveling around in a bus.

Speaker 3 (03:59):
We did a shower in Chicago, and we went asleep
on the bus, and when we woke up, I was like, Okay,
I wonder where we are now. So I went up
and sat next to the driver and I said where
are we now? Man? He said, we're in Illinois. I said, no, no,
where are we now? Said yeah, we're in Illinois. I
said no, no, we started in Illinois, Chicago. Where are
we at the moment? And he's like, we're still in Illinois.
I'm like, how can we be in illinoy, I've been

(04:20):
driving for twelve hours. He looked to me like, you
don't know half of its son. So yeah, that the
vastness of America.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
That was one, Well, I hope you stuck with it,
because once you hit Saint Louis, there's a little bit
of a hill.

Speaker 3 (04:34):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's that as well. And the other
one was we realized in that that drive was Chicago
to New Orleans NonStop drives. We realized you would have
to stop somewhere somewhere, You're gonna have to stop. I said,
and where are you Where are you going to? Where
are you going to stop? Said? Oh no, somewhere around Memphis.
I was like, oh, interesting, any chance you could stop

(04:57):
at Gracelands And he's like, no, I'm not going into
not going into Memphis. This is a total a nightmare
driving in and out of Memphis. Forget it. We'll just
it will just be a truck stop somewhere. You'll be fine.
You'll be able to get a meal and a coffee.
And I was like, So I went back with the crew,
the lighting crew and the sound crew, and I said, look,
there's nine of us. If we all put ten bucks
in remember this nineteen eighty four as well, we will

(05:19):
put ten bucks in and give him ninety bucks. We
might be able to bribe him to go asleep for
four hours in the car park at Gracelands, and I
was like, that's got to be worth ten parks. So
we put it together. We made him off. He was
very grumpy about it, but he did do it. I
remember him saying to us, remember where we parked, and
so we got that. We actually got to go around

(05:40):
Gracelands before Priscilla tided it up. So we saw the
kind of the depths, the pile of the carpet in
the jungle room, the room with all the gold records
down the side, and the costumes reminded me of how
a Carter said when he opened two chunk Harmen's tomb.
Everywhere a glint of gold. It's like we would come

(06:02):
to see, you know, the Pharaoh Memphis as well. I
mean that kind of yeah. That kind of made it
even more like we were come to see the boy King.
And then when we got to New Orleans, we woke
up on the band decided to go to Bourbon Street.
So I went with them and we saw this guy playing.
I'll think of his what was his name. I'd never
heard of him before or since, Mason Rufner. I think

(06:24):
his name was slick back guy, skinny guy playing its
black telecaster. Incredible thing. But he did this thing where
he went down the notes in the basstring of the
telecaster with his elbow while pointing at the audience like
that thing like it. And you remember, this is all
in one day. This is the day where we woke

(06:45):
up still in Illinois. So that passage of time where
we went from the Great Lakes to the Gulf. You know,
I've never done anything like that. Again. I've traveled, you know,
I've done some huge drives, I've done some great journeys.
I've been in some amazing situations, But in twenty four hours,
I don't think I ever did anything as mind blowing
as what we did in that drive from Chicago to

(07:06):
New Orleans.

Speaker 2 (07:07):
Were you an Elvis fan?

Speaker 3 (07:09):
I was, Yeah. I mean I think from my generation,
it's hard to get to rock and roll without going
through Elvis. I mean, if you think of the cover
of London Calling, it's a homage to Elvis's first album graphically,
you know, and I think there's so many different Elvis's.
You can choose your Elvis, you know, for some people
it's Sun Records Elvis. I mean, that's why I wanted
a lot of echo on my first album, so it

(07:31):
sounded like Elvis's Sun Records. But my favorite Elvis is
political Elvis. You know Elvis that for his Christmas Special
in nineteen sixty eight has specially written for him if
I Can Dream, and sings it at the end of
the Christmas Special in front of the big words Elvis
and looks into the camera and sings this incredible song,

(07:52):
which in the wake of nineteen sixty eight, which is
in the year where Dr King was assassinated and Bobby
Kennedy was assassinated while they were making the Christmas Special
while they were filming it, to say to talk about
a dream, you know, having a dream in which our
brothers walk hand in hand. I mean, that's that's pretty brave,
that's pretty political. And then he comes out within the

(08:12):
ghetto and goes to that run of great thing was briefly,
you know, there's a there's a moment there where you
might think Elvis could pick up the mantle of the
the Kennedy Brothers and unify America. Because he doesn't. He
goes to Gracelands and takes loads of amphetamines. But the
possibility of that is interesting. It's it's a really it's

(08:34):
a really great moment in pop history as well. And
it's he does he does it because he I mean,
he specifically asked to do it. Colonel Parker wants him
to finish with I'll behind by Christmas, a dreadful you know,
sort of modeling Christmas song, and he's like, I need
something else, so he gets his musical director to come

(08:57):
up with this if I Can Dream, and and he
really goes for it. If you watch the clip it's
on YouTube, it is even.

Speaker 2 (09:06):
When you said political Elvis, I was like, he olviously
don't know.

Speaker 3 (09:09):
Yeah, yeah, A fucking dream is a in its context.
In its context, it's Elvis connecting with that. I mean,
I think he felt Dr King being assassinated in his
town as well. I think he felt that, he really
felt that. And that year was such a tumultuous year
in the United States and Elvis had something to say

(09:30):
about it.

Speaker 2 (09:31):
M hmm. That's interesting because even even the sixty eight
Elvis from Me was almost betraying the sort of Sun
Records Elvis I loved so much, you know, rushing through songs, yeah,
finishing everything with a karate chop or something.

Speaker 3 (09:47):
The thing about Elvis is he's the first one. You know,
he doesn't know how to do this. It's like Lonnie
Donegan in England. You know, he was the first guy.
He wasn't really prepared for what was going to happen
to him. You know, He's out there on the ice,
taking one step after the other, never knowing when it
was going to break. Everyone who came in his wake,
including the Beatles, you know, including everybody, have at least

(10:09):
that had an idea model. You know, why didn't the
beat was going to films because Elvis did. Even Lonnie
Doneghan made a film, you know, that's what they did.
They they followed his route, but he was just making
it up as he was going along. And I think
because he's shone so brightly, he was ultimately consumed by
his own his own fame, his own image, his own elvisness.

(10:31):
There's never been anyone touch what he did and who
he was and what he meant to people. And I
think for my generation, as I say, if you're going
to take on that rock and roll mantle, you can't
ignore him.

Speaker 2 (10:46):
You know, Paul Simon said when we were talking to him,
his favorite record, and he's obsessed with the production of
records is a mystery train. Yeah, And he said every
song he's ever done he tries to get a little
of that mystery.

Speaker 3 (10:58):
I totally agree with him. That's for me, that's the
key moment when the synthesis of country music and blues,
of African American roots music and European American roots music
comes together. Is in Mystery Train. They captured lightning in
a bottle there. I mean, obviously that's all right, it
is incredible, But there's something about Mystery Train. It just
kind of appears over the hill coming out of nowhere.

(11:18):
It's like it doesn't it even seem to have a start,
and it trails off at the end and it's gone.
It's really gone, gone, gone, you know.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
And I have that incredible slap that's from the studio.
There's no drummer, no.

Speaker 3 (11:31):
I mean, that's the really interesting thing about the Sun Sessions.
They're so similar to Skiffle in that they have no drums,
no augmentation, no pianos or brass or anything like that.
You know, it's all just guitar driven slap bass and velocity.
It's about speed, you know, he speeds, he speeds up
those old blue songs, those old country songs like Blue

(11:52):
moona Kentucky. He just you know, revs them up and
off they go, which is exactly what Lonnie Doneghan was
doing with lead Belly staff in the UK. Weirdly, almost
at the same time. I mean, that's all right, mama. Obviously,
his first recording came the fifth of July in nineteen
fifty four. Lonnie Donegan recorded rock Online a week later
on the thirteenth of July in London. I mean, how

(12:14):
that was just out in the air somewhere something so
in sinjury could happen at the same time.

Speaker 2 (12:19):
Here's the difference.

Speaker 3 (12:20):
To me.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
This is something I've thought a lot about, which is
when you listen to Lonnie Donegan, you listen to a
lot of performers, you love what they do, but then
you want to go here, the original Elvis, you don't
do that. I think maybe he shone so brightly that
when you go you know, for example, when I went
to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I don't

(12:43):
know if you've ever been there, but he is presented
as the first rock and roll star, and a lot
of the people who were called rock and roll stars
before him like Big Joe Turner and Ruth Brown are
just considered these sort of the pioneers they like to
call them. And by the way, Elvis, the Elvis Enterprises
owns that part of the rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Ye,

(13:05):
so I'm sure it's presented the way they want. Nobody,
but I thought, well, and you know, you have this
little thing like who do you think should be in
the rock and Roll Hall of Fame? I thought, well,
Arthur Croud up because he did the original version. And
if you hear the original version, it's got a lot
of the the elements. It's not that totally transformed. And
you're like, nobody knows him. No, nobody knows Mabel. I've

(13:32):
forgotten her name, my accent, pardon me my action. No,
the did the original hound Dog.

Speaker 3 (13:38):
Yeah, yeah, I'll can't take one name on them.

Speaker 2 (13:40):
To be fair, written by two Jewish guys from Long Island.
But there you great, But there's something about you know
even uh and Malcolm and I did an episode about
this once. You know, Little Richard actually was grateful to
Pat Boone because people listened to Pat Boone and then
wanted to hear Little Richard and uh, you know, Fats

(14:03):
Domino felt the same way with Elvis, and I don't
think it was deliberate on his part, no, but.

Speaker 3 (14:11):
Well he's a complete package. Oh anyway, it was sixty
something about.

Speaker 2 (14:15):
It that he, uh, you know, all evolution before him
kind of gets discarded somehow, and he's like.

Speaker 3 (14:23):
Well nothing, we know, nothing comes from nothing comes from nothing,
does it? It happened these things, you know. That's one
of the things that led me to write the book
about Skiffle were roots, radicals and rockers. I was fed
up with the idea that Lonnie Donegan recording rock on
online was a singularity that just happened. It didn't just happen.
It was a load of forces coming together around that

(14:44):
time in the UK culturally among young people, and I
was looking for a book that explained how happened, and
no one had written it, so I ended up writing
it myself, and it was that urge to find it out.
I think that really really helped. I'm really proud that
in the book Rock Island Line doesn't come out until
chapter thirteen.

Speaker 2 (15:03):
But your book also, it's another chapter in this English
fascination with American music.

Speaker 3 (15:09):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (15:10):
And you know, as many books as I read about
music or you know, there's that apocryphal story that when
Paul McCartney first came to the US, he asked an interviewer, well,
where's Ray Charles. The guy said, I don't know where
Ray Charles is because he just assumed in the United
States Ray Charles was as important as they were in English.

Speaker 3 (15:30):
Yeah, I mean as straight as when I first came
to New York in nineteen eighty four, friend took some
I said, take me to a great record shop. It
took me to a great record shop. Was full of
depeche Mode impulse. I'm like, mate, this is not a
great record you know. I mean, the average mom and
pop store in America back then was a great record shop.
We had a gospel section. We never have anything like

(15:50):
that at a Latin section, you know, at a country section,
with real proper obscure stuff that you never find a home. So, well,
what is.

Speaker 2 (15:58):
That in the English it's and it's it's famous stuff.
It's obscure stuff. You know. The Beatles did an Arthur
Alexander song who you couldn't find anybody in the streets
of New York who remembers Arthur Alexander. But they do
a tribute album, and people in England, you know, Nick Low,
Graham Parker are lining up to do Arthur Alexander. It's

(16:19):
like a cargo cult or something like.

Speaker 3 (16:21):
It's well, it's really I think appreciation of the great
performances oars Alexander was a great performer. You know, I'm
scratching me out now for the name of the guy
who originally recorded at the Dark End of the Streets
something Carr. I can't but the people who around the
time said he was the greatest soul singer of all

(16:42):
time and his performances are great, but he just didn't
get the get the profile.

Speaker 2 (16:47):
That's what fascinated me, both the skiff and they were
you know, I hadn't realized, you know, in my mind
skiffle was kind of like a like almost a kid's
version of sort of pop songs country mainly. Instead, they're
really diving into.

Speaker 3 (17:02):
They really are diving into African American roots music, to
the extent that one old guy who was a skiffler
in fifties told me that the average skiffle player felt
they have more in common with an African American sharecropper
that they've never met anything than they did with their
own dad, you know, because their parents had lived through
the war, and the Skiffle Kids were the first bunch

(17:26):
of youngsters to define themselves. It's different. And the way
they did that was by playing the guitar. Just there
weren't many guitars in British popular music prior to the
mid nineteen fifties, and it's Donnegan and then Elvis that
kind of brings that in, you know, but it is
school kids, I mean is it's like a playground craze.

(17:46):
You know. When Lonnie Donegan plays in Liverpool in nineteen
fifty six, George Harrison goes every night. I think he's thirteen.
McCartney's fourteen, he goes one night, and Lennon who's sixteen,
don't know if he went, but in the weeks that
followed he formed the Quarrymen. So we are talking about
school boys. And the reason why that's significant is because

(18:09):
by the time they were twenty one, twenty two and
twenty three, those Skiffle Kids have been playing live music,
mostly chuck Berry rock and roll type music for five
or six years. They were kind of road hardened. So
when the Beatles break America in nineteen sixty four, there's
a whole cadre of British bands ready to follow them,
you know, and every single one of those British Invasion

(18:30):
bands were all skifflers, and I think that didn't happen
to white American use until the folk boom, which is
later fifty nine sixty, you know, until you get to
Kingston Trio and acts like that.

Speaker 2 (18:43):
Weavers.

Speaker 3 (18:44):
Yeah, well, no, I think the Weaver was I think
the Weaver's really I think they were gone. I mean,
the idea of young people playing guitars comes with the
folk boom, and that doesn't really get going until the
late fifties, whereas these British kids are already, you know,
by the time someone like you know, Paul Simon is
learning to play the guitar, the Beatles already in Amberg,

(19:04):
so that they're although they're the same generation, our kids
are that bit ahead, and that's what makes the British
invasion possible. So skiff al was the nursery of the
British invasion.

Speaker 2 (19:16):
It's interesting how again, things that we think seem spontaneous
have these strange origins.

Speaker 3 (19:25):
You know.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
One of the great things about Motown was that a
lot of those kids went to pre integration schools where
they had great music classes. Like a lot of them
went to Northern in Detroit, but they had music teachers
who were teaching them counterpoint and teaching them, you know, notation,
and teaching them classical music. So Barrett Strong, a lot

(19:48):
of those guys, Norman Whitfield, when they showed up, they
were they knew music, very small range, and so we
tend to think of, you know, music as some sort
of primordial scream.

Speaker 3 (20:00):
It's like, no more than that.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
Yeah, we'll be right back with more from Billy Bragg
after the break. We're back with more from Billy Bragg.

Speaker 2 (20:13):
Speaking of guitars, I thought I read that you started
writing songs before you played an instrument.

Speaker 3 (20:18):
It's true I did. Yeah, Yeah, what.

Speaker 2 (20:20):
Were you writing too? Were you writing to a tune
in your head?

Speaker 3 (20:23):
In my head? Yeah? Tunes in my head. Yeah. I've
got notebooks full of songs where I still could look
at the lyric and remember what the tune was.

Speaker 2 (20:31):
Really.

Speaker 3 (20:31):
Oh yeah, yeah. When I was twelve, I wrote a
poem at school and the teacher wrote to my parents
to ask if I copied it from a book. And
when I found out, I hadn't, and they kind of
got me to read it out on the radio London,
the local radio station, and I took that as a
kind of recognition that I could do this, I could

(20:53):
be a songwriter. I thought, this is you know, this
is really good and I don't know anyone else's ever
done this. So I started, you know, just writing sort
of songs that were broadly imitative of the music that
I was into, which was American singer songwriters and Tamla motown.
You know, they're the two things that I listened to
most at that age.

Speaker 2 (21:11):
Do you remember what was the first song that do
you remember just moved you musically?

Speaker 3 (21:17):
Do you remember as the Box of by Simon and Garfunkel? Really, yeah, yeah.
I heard it on a school trip in a must
have been eleven years old, so that would be sixty nine.
We're on a school trip somewhere, and it was one
of those moments where I was it just I don't know, somehow,
it just it was on the radio on the bus
on the trip and it just it was a I

(21:40):
don't say it's slightly but it was a transcendental moment
for an eleven year old. It took me out of
my little world into a completely different world and something
magical in it, the storytelling, the sound of it, and
I kind of started, really, I must have been really

(22:01):
into music. My parents that following Christmas brought me a
real to real tape recorder so I could record songs
on the radio. Have to buy me records basically, which
is smart. And if I lug this around the corner
to my mate's house, his sister Leslie, who was probably
fifteen at the time, older than us, but she had
a brilliant record collection. She had quite a few Simon

(22:23):
and Garfuncle records and several Motown chartbuster compilations. And I'm
more or less taped Leslie Charmer's record collection, and that
served me my apprentices that I then started trying to
write songs like Paul Simon and Smokey Robinson and still
do some days.

Speaker 2 (22:40):
Older siblings with good taste are a crucial part of
the music.

Speaker 3 (22:44):
Except I never had one. I never had an older
sibling of good or bad taste, so I was kind
of blind until my friend's older sisters because basically, when
I worked my way through and I've got older Simon
and Guardfunkal albums because Simon and Garfuncle were very popular
among Wins young adolescent schoolgirls at the time, you know,
Sound of Silence and all that kind of stuff, you know,

(23:07):
and the chart buster albums were massive as well at
the time, So that kind of brought me into the
whole notion of the craft of songwriting. You know, I
will take songs apart me and think about tracks of
my tears as three chords. It's possibly the greatest three
card trick of all time. You know.

Speaker 2 (23:23):
It's funny you mentioned the sound of the Boxer because
when we did the project with him, you know, you wonder,
what is it the words that move you? Is it
the music? For him, it's all the sound and he
obsesses over production. And even now if you listen, if
you've listened to that poor record, it's a stunning sounding,
right it is.

Speaker 3 (23:44):
It's an incredible album to be obsessed with, which I
was for a long time. I was obsessed with that record.
It kind of I mean the thing about I eventually
ended up becoming obsessed with Bob Dylan subsequently, kind of
Paul Simon led me into Bob Dylan and English folk
music as well via a Scarborough fair in a rather
ironic way because Martin Carthy, who Paul Simon was inspired

(24:09):
by hearing Martin place garboroughfare to record his own version,
was playing in a folk club not a mile from
my house around that time. But it took these two
guys from Brooklyn recording this old English folk song to
turn me onto my own folk music, which is a
weird paradoxical way. What goes around comes around with saying
folk music.

Speaker 2 (24:28):
So your musical inspirations were Paul Simon, Paul Simon, Smokey Robinson,
Smokey Robinson, Eddie Cochran and your what were your lyrical inspirations?

Speaker 3 (24:39):
Well, again, you know, I was trying to write knock
off sing, a songwriter song, so a bit of a
bit of Paul Simon to start with a bit of
Bob doing, a bit of Jackson Brown. I was big
on Jackson Brown. I still think it's a great songwriter.
And you know, I think you when you're learning your craft,
you're always writing songs that in some ways have their

(25:00):
framework from music you like. I always say to people
they want to start writing songs, take your favorite song,
take the words out of it and write your own
words because it's your favorite song. You'll know exactly how
the words are supposed to fit. And then you that's
how you know, make your own words, make you know,
maybe keep the chorus and change the words to I
will Always love you, to give it a happy ending
or something, whatever you want to do, that's how you

(25:22):
start to do it. That's what I did, basically. You know,
you just take a Chuck Berry song apart, and that's
my simplest thing, and then put your own words on it.
And then eventually, when I was about twenty I suppose
maybe twenty one, I wrote a Billy Bragg song. I
wrote a song that didn't.

Speaker 2 (25:40):
Have the first Billy Bragg song, Richard.

Speaker 3 (25:43):
Which ended up on the first album because I was
very proud of it because it didn't sound like anybody else.
I thought, this is actually me in this song. And
once I'd worked out how to do that. This is
towards the end of the period when I was in
a little band called riff Raff, which is kind of
like a punky new wavy band in the seventies or
late seventies, and I started writing songs that were more

(26:07):
had more me and him. I worked out to get
me into the songs. Also read somewhere that you were
bullied as a kid that kind of yeah, I was
sort of. You know, it got a bit towards the
end of our school years. It all got a bit
larry at school, so I tended to not go in
so much. You know, it's too much mm hmm, too
much grief. It just made me. Gave me a lot

(26:30):
of anxiety around town. So you know, the sort of
things that other people, other kids my age did not
go out to the pubs and go out dancing and stuff.
I just didn't, you know, I just gave me, just
give me too much anxiety. So I was fortunate. I
had a couple of mates who had a guitar and
a drum kit, and we sat in my mum's back
room and wrote songs and played music. It's saved my

(26:51):
own life.

Speaker 2 (26:51):
Is that when you started guitar? Did that give you
some confidence a lot?

Speaker 3 (26:55):
Yeah, a lot, huge amount self expression? Bruce. You know
you got your writing it, putting it all out there,
you know, you this is how I feel. Music is
a form of therapy, whether you're listening to it or
writing it or making it or playing it, a repeutic
effect because you're you're putting yourself into it. And I

(27:16):
say this not just as a musician, but that can
also be as a listener, because I think the currency
of music is fundamentally empathy. You're as a writer, you're
asking the listener to listen to this person in this
situation and feel something for them in a situation you
might not have experienced as a person. But this person here,

(27:37):
you know, listen to that. Or there's another way whereby
the person who's written the song has somehow touched a
nerve with you, and in that case you draw empathy
from the song. You're getting some of yourself, you're feeling
and you're not alone. This song, you know, is somehow
articulating something you can't put into words. We all have

(27:57):
songs like that, you know, and that, and that's really
really valuable because I think, you know, the the sense
of isolation that we have in society, which is always
been that's not just a manifestation of the digital wage.
I've always been there. And when people come together to
celebrate and to sing, whether it's in church, at soccer games,

(28:21):
it happens people sing, you know. Obviously music concerts, you
get a moment where you feel you're not alone. You're
not the only person who cares about this thing, whatever
this thing is.

Speaker 2 (28:31):
Did you need the feedback of an audience to feel
that way about your own songs? Or did you feel
that way in the back room of the house.

Speaker 3 (28:37):
I felt that way in the background of the house.

Speaker 2 (28:39):
Really. Yeah, did you feel the anxiety about being around
other people and get you could put your feelings out
in a song?

Speaker 3 (28:45):
Yeah? I could not not. I don't think so. I mean,
you know that's the trick of it, isn't it. You
learn you learn to put into song the things that
you find yourself struggling with, you know, the reflection of
who you are, and you think the song's about somebody else,
but actually it sends out to be about you actually
when you admit about it and that. You know, when

(29:08):
we started doing gigs, when when punk happened and it
became possible for you just to turn up and play,
it became much easier. You didn't have to justify being
in the band. Everyone was in a band. Uh. Then
there was a there was a confidence in that as well,
because it was like our generation were coming to the fore.
Now this is who we are.

Speaker 2 (29:27):
You know.

Speaker 3 (29:27):
My political uh awakening was going to rock against racism.
That's the first political thing I ever did, and that
that was an incredible experience because it gave me the
courage of my convictions.

Speaker 2 (29:39):
You know, that's interesting to me. I had always assumed
that that your politics informed you becoming a singer and
a songwriter, that you're what we would call here a
red daper baby.

Speaker 3 (29:50):
No no, no, no, no, no no no. The town
I grew up in, East London has always been labor
since my father was a kid, so there was no
real politics around. It was just labor. That was what
it was, and everyone was labor. My parents weren't particularly political.
I got my sense of of policy by osmosis from

(30:11):
listening to predominantly American soul music from the Civil rights period.
You know, if you get them Motown chartbuses albums, they're
great pop albums, and they're you know, they're amazing. And
then you get to volume five, I think, and all
of a sudden things start. Something's changed. You get you know,
Ball of Confusion by the Temptations, You've got War by

(30:34):
Edwin Starr, you know, and there's a change of tone.
Something's happened, and the clue is in the record Marvin
Gaye sings Abraham Martin and John and what has happened
is Dr King has been murdered and along with the
rest of African American and culture motowns reflecting that. So
I kind of picked up on on that politics, the

(30:57):
politics of civil rights and as also doing a singer
songwriters that I listened to as well. You know, the
early Dylan records. You know, my huge record for me
was The Times They Were Changing That album. I swapped
it with mate of mine at school for his dad's
copy of No I got it. I got his dad's
copy of The Times They Were Changing in exchange from
my copy of the Jackson Five's greatst Hits. It was

(31:20):
a brilliant deal and.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
I think you both want on that one, but he thought.

Speaker 3 (31:25):
He wanted to give it to his sister as a
birthday present, so anyway we did it. It was it was,
It just blew my mind. It was so raw, it
was so visceral, all that album, The Times They Were Changing,
and that Bob Dylan, not the later Blonde on Blonde
type I was sixty one, but that early you know,
blowing in the Wind Bob Dylan was really inspiration to me.
As while I'm talking about when I'm like fourteen fifteen now,

(31:47):
So I got my politics from that, but you know,
my politics were broadly I suppose humanitarian. But where I
was you know, when I went to Rock Against Racism,
I was working in an office in London and the
men I worked with were you know, casually racist, casually sexist,
casually homophobic, and I really you know, didn't ever say
anything or raise any questions. But going to Rock against Racism,

(32:11):
see the clash we're playing, and that's kind of what
got us to go over the step. But going there
and getting to the theres a park in Hackney called
Victoria Park where it happened, and seeing eighty thousand kids
just like me, I kind of realized that this issue
is going to be what defines my generation, like Vietnam

(32:31):
had defined the previous generation. We were going to define
ourselves in opposition of an opposition to discrimination of all kinds,
not just racism, but homophobia and sexism and everything else.
We were going to be the generation of two Tone.
We were going to be the generation of artists against
aparthe That's who we were going to be. And when
I went back to work on Monday. The world hadn't changed,

(32:54):
but my perception of it had and I knew why
I was different from these arshols at work, you know,
And so I'd stopped laughing when they made those comments,
you know, I stopped joining him with you, pastor and
the secretaries and stuff like that. I like, Okay, there's
something different now, you know. And that and that informs
how I understand how music works when I'm doing a gig.

Speaker 2 (33:18):
Now that's interesting to me because you, of course, are
always called the political songwriter, although the vast majority of
your songs are about love and human relationships and other things.
Does a song have to be explicitly political to be political?

Speaker 3 (33:34):
No, it really really doesn't. I have a song called
I Keep Faith, and I can introduce that as a
love song. Ostensibly it works as a love song, but
I can also introduce it by talking about my faith
in the audience's ability to change the world. And if
I do that, men cry. They come up to me

(33:54):
at the end and say, I really moved, you know,
it was really moved for that, And I'm not good mate,
you know, I was talking about empathy back then. That's
that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for that empathy,
you know, mate, Malcolm was listening to him on the
radio one time and he talked about the ability to
make people move people to tears without hurting them. You know,

(34:18):
the ability to move people by emotion to tears is
a very powerful thing. And then he played levs Stubs tears.
That made my ears pick up, I'll tell you. And
it's very insightful, Malcolm, the touch on that, because it
gave me a you know, a sudden flash of how

(34:40):
the process works.

Speaker 2 (34:41):
I would say a couple of things. First of all,
I always felt that song was quite ironic, not that
you don't like Levi Stubbs, but that the comparison of
her life with with a sort of motown fantasy was
quite bleak.

Speaker 3 (34:58):
Well. Yeah, the thing is, the song is about the
redemptive power of soul music. You know that the pain
that Levi Stubbs has, the pain that he expressed, is
the tear in his voice, the sob in his voice.
She draws from that a sense that someone understands where
she's coming from. She draws some empathy from from his pain.

(35:23):
His pain somehow is her pain. She's got to pick
herself up and put herself back togethering in now and
Levi's obviously felt that as well, because you can hear
it in the way that he sings, you know, when
he cries out for Bernadette, you know, when he talks
about the seven Rooms of Gloom. You know it's there,
you know, very operatic. Yeah, just incredible voice. Incredible voice.

Speaker 2 (35:46):
Are you the person who's jotting things down when a
line occurs to you? Is it something you're very conscious
of injecting into your records?

Speaker 3 (35:55):
I think if you're going to do politics, you have
to leave it up a little with some rye Humer.
You know, you can't just go storming in there, putting
people in the chest all the way through a gig.
And I do a little bit of that, you know
sometimes talking about the election on this tour, I'll be
doing a little bit of fingerpointing maybe of the British
election the American election in November. Oh okay, yeah, yeah,

(36:16):
the British election I will talk about. But obviously, you
know what's coming in November is very contentious at the moment,
so I doubt let's be talking about that.

Speaker 2 (36:25):
I haven't been reading about it, so I have no
idea what you're talking about.

Speaker 3 (36:30):
But the I found that when I was you know,
my political crucible was the UK minor strike in nineteen
eighty four and you played there, Yeah, loads of times. Yeah, yeah,
I would play What was that like? I was mad?
It was absolutely mad?

Speaker 2 (36:48):
Well did did they know you were coming? You would
just show up?

Speaker 3 (36:51):
And well I used I used to go up to
the coal fields because I was solo, so I could
literally wed go around with a small amp, a little
sixty what amp and a guitar.

Speaker 2 (36:59):
What was your guitar back then?

Speaker 3 (37:00):
Oh? It was a copy of a Gibson less Paul
made by a company called Arbiter. It was a sort
of one. It was my punk guitar.

Speaker 2 (37:08):
Right, you're not one of those guys with a lot
of guitars.

Speaker 3 (37:11):
I'm not.

Speaker 2 (37:12):
No, I'm not really no, because Johnny Marz Yeah yeah.

Speaker 3 (37:15):
End See I did a gig once with Steve Earl
in Montreal and he was opening for me. He had
twelve guitars could get on stage. I was like a
guitar shop on the Wing song exactly it was. Anyway,
So I'm not that guy. No, No, I do have
a I carry a couple of guitars I've probably got
home not more than a half a dozen knocking around

(37:37):
and you you.

Speaker 2 (37:39):
Know when I when I would first see you play,
he would play what are called cowboy chords. Yeah, but
you'd strum the whole thing, which nobody does.

Speaker 3 (37:47):
Yeah. Well, I'm basically a rhythm guitar player in a
punk band. That's why basically I'm not a lead guitar player.
I never was a lead guitar player. I'm a rhythm
guitar player, and I think I'm pretty good at that.
But it's very percussive. You know. The guitar heroes that
I have for people like Ray Koda and Ronnie Wood
and there John Lee Hooker, the guitar star, is pretty percussive.

(38:07):
It's about the rhythm, you know. So that's where I
get my licks from, get my ideas from.

Speaker 2 (38:12):
I don't know how we got in that, but oh no.
He was asking what was it like to.

Speaker 3 (38:16):
In the miner Strike? Yeh yeah, Well, first of all,
it was it was amazing to see because the audiences
would be my generation. But the people who were making
the speeches at the gigs to when they put round
the bucket to raise a bit more money would often
be the wives of the miners. So these were women
who were perhaps ten or fifteen years older, sometimes twenty

(38:36):
years older than the audience, working class women who probably
never spoke in public before. Talking to all these little
punk rockers, it was an amazing thing to see because
their husbands were either on the picket line or in prison. Right,
that in itself was amazing to watch.

Speaker 2 (38:49):
This is the eighties, yeah, nine eighty four. It's almost
all coal mining.

Speaker 3 (38:52):
It's all coal mining.

Speaker 2 (38:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (38:54):
It's predominant in the North of England, South Wales, some
in Scotland, some in Kent, but predominantly the North of
England and South Wales, heavy heavy working class areas. You know,
villages where the pit is absolutely everything, you know, the
whole village, and they're like under siege from the police
and the state. And you would go up there and

(39:15):
the audiences were really really up for it and it
was just incredibly invigorating, and then you'd very often be
keeping on their sofa or in their spare room. You know,
you go back and you know, you go back to
their assimate your cup of team, maybe a bacon sandwich,
and then they sit down and talk politics because they
wanted to know why a pop star from London was

(39:38):
doing this. Is it just for the fame or you
actually walk the walk and talk the talk. So very
quickly I had to sort of because I didn't I
left go when I was sixteen, so I didn't have
a political education. I had to sort of learn the
language of Marxism to be able to put across my
ideas and define where I was coming from. That was

(39:59):
a real sharp learning curve. But you know, it was
a genuine radical situation. It was class. It was my
class against the state, really, so I couldn't not take part.
And also I'd listened to all these solo singer songwriters
in the nineteen sixties trying to change the world through music,

(40:20):
and now I had opportunity to see if you can
actually change the world. Does it actually work this? Can
you go and sing songs and bring about social change?
Because that's what the clash told me you could. Music
will change the world, and I kind of believed that.
Now I had a chance to find out if that
was true or not. It turns out it's not.

Speaker 2 (40:39):
Was that a whole lesson?

Speaker 3 (40:43):
Initially? Maybe I suppose, But thinking about it, you know,
logically music has no agency, you know, it's not going
to win the election. It has the ability to bring
people together, and that in and of itself is a
positive thing because change happens, I think in you know,
is catalyzed by two events. Firstly, your realization that things

(41:08):
and not right, and then secondly your realization that other
people have already realized that things are not right. You
realize you're not the only person who cares about this thing.
And music can bring you together into an audience where
you suddenly realize that like, ah okay, like as me rocking,
it's racism. When I speak from experience here, that's what

(41:30):
happened to me in Victoria Park in Hackney. I realized
I wasn't the only person who cared about these things,
you know. And you know, when I make my pitch
for a solidarity with the trans community, when I sing
sexuality on these shows, they will undoubtedly be people my age,
because my audience predominantly my age in you know, sixties,

(41:51):
who probably haven't given the issue much thought. It's not
that they're anti or pro and even it's just something
like they're like it's too much trouble, but they see
themselves in an audience who are expressing solidarity with this,
who are responding positively to what I'm saying, and they
look around him and they think, Wow, maybe I should
get off the fence on this, maybe have a think
about what's going on here, because clearly this is an
important issue to these people who I have so much

(42:12):
in come with. And that's how music can affect change,
not directly, not storm the barricades' way, but just by
planting ideas in people's minds, introducing them to different concepts,
challenging their perceptions music. That's one of the things that
music can do. It doesn't have to do it all
the time. It's not the defining aspect of it, but

(42:33):
it's one of the many things it can do. And
I think coming from a twentieth century music culture in
which music was our social medium, which I had to
articulate everything that my generation thought through music, and we had,
you know, three four weekly music papers in the UK
to thrash these ideas out. The idea that music should
be something more than I'm great your shit, you like

(42:55):
my socks to paraphrase Oasis is still important to me.
I don't know if younger people feel that way. It's
not something that I'm going to say, listen, this is
the way it should be. It's not my job to
do that. I hear young people write songs about the
pressure that they feel under. That's enough for me that
they are talking about that, they are using music to
articulate their feelings about that. I'm not going to start

(43:17):
leaning them and say, why don't you write about trade unions.
I'm not going to write that because they have not
been through the minor strike. They've had a different cultural perception,
put culture experience to the one I've had.

Speaker 1 (43:29):
After this last break, we'll be back with the rest
of Bruce Headlam's conversation with Billy Bragg. Here's the rest
of our conversation with Billy Bragg.

Speaker 2 (43:41):
The album with Trust Tank Part Salute, Tank Park, Salute,
Pardon Me.

Speaker 3 (43:47):
Don't try this own?

Speaker 2 (43:48):
It was was Yeah, I thought, are you saying that
about me trying to say Tank Park.

Speaker 1 (43:54):
At home?

Speaker 2 (43:55):
It was much more a bigger musical.

Speaker 3 (43:58):
It was yeah, did you like that?

Speaker 2 (43:59):
Because people are like, oh, finally you know, Billy Bragg
has discovered the eighties?

Speaker 3 (44:05):
Well that was that was about being doctrinaire as well
in some ways, you know.

Speaker 2 (44:09):
But there. You know, when I think of the song,
you know everywhere Sindy of a thousand lives very different sounds.

Speaker 3 (44:17):
Well, you've got to progress, haven't you one, you know,
that's that's my thing. But what happened was I wrote
Sexuality and it kind of sounded like Louis Louis and
Johnny mar got hold of it and made that track
that you now hear and it was a shining pop
monstrosity and when it came back, me and my producer
Grant Showbiz were like, oh damn, you know, now we're

(44:40):
going to have to make the album a that that
sits on. But it was good. It was a challenge,
you know, and coming as it did, I think, I think,
if you're really really lucky, you get ten good years
where people are interested in what you're doing, and you can,
you know, you can feel that when you do something
the media will be you know, give you a front
page and stuff like that. If you get ten years,

(45:01):
you're really really lucky. And that comes at the end
of kind of that period where I was, you know,
I got me on top of the pops. Everybody at
home thinks it was a huge hit record, which actually
I only got to number twenty six in the charts.
But you know the perception of it is that that's
what it was.

Speaker 2 (45:16):
If you're going to sell out, you've got to get
to the top ten.

Speaker 3 (45:19):
Yeah, exactly. And consequently, after that record, I had a
grumble appendix. I was off the road for a while
and I got together with my partner and we you know,
we became parents and everything and everything changed. So but
it was also an aspect of that where I kind
of painted myself into a corner because I can't really
be a big production pop star. That's not really who

(45:41):
I am. I can do it. You want me to
do it? Here, here we go, I can do it.
Check out this Ciddy of a thousand Lives. This is
a song about an American photographer that you've never heard of,
who does incredible images that are all of herself. Here
it is Sherman. Yeah, Cindy Sherman, the great Cindy Sherman.
And so yeah, I was. I was incredibly and still

(46:02):
am incredibly proud of that record, but I couldn't carry
on a natural dijectory. You know. It was sort of
like who want me? So fortunately then I made William Blake,
which was a much more personal record, much more a
post parenthood record which I'm which I'm very proud of

(46:23):
as well.

Speaker 2 (46:24):
And I do want to ask you about Tank Park.

Speaker 3 (46:28):
Sure, Sure, Tank Park salute was. I had a very
strange genesis. Let's start by saying that when I was eighteen,
my father died of lung cancer, who was fifty two
years old. The hospital when he got ill told us
the best way to deal with this would be not
to talk about it, not to talk about it in

(46:50):
front of him, and not to talk about it among ourselves.

Speaker 2 (46:52):
So I have to stop you there, because that is
so English.

Speaker 3 (46:56):
I know, it's terrible, isn't it, But it's also it's
also so my father's generation. And looking back now, I
it was a mistake. My mother really regretted it. She
really regretted it till the day she died. When she
got cancer and I went to see her in the hospital,
she said to me, we're going to talk about this,
and I'm like, we are, of course, we are, we are.

(47:18):
She hated it. My father had every opportunity to say
to me, son, I think I'm dying. Look I'm coughing
up blood. Look I'm dying. He never did. He never
said it, so I don't know. My brother, who's five
years younger than me. He was at school at the time,
and I was there when my father died. My brothers

(47:39):
never asked me about it. And I respect that. I'm
not going to suddenly turn up and say to him
and listen, I'm going to tell you what happened that day.
If he doesn't want to know, he doesn't want to know,
and I respect that. But I was in a very
weird situation where I never spoke to it about anybody
I ever. I spoke to it what happened to anybody.

(48:00):
And then one day I was writing a song and
a line came out. I closed my eye and when
I looked, your name was in the memorial book. And
now where my father's ashes are scattered, they have a
book there on the anniversary of the day of his death,
which opens on the page and his name's there. And

(48:20):
I used to go to it my mum on the
anniversary and look at the book and go and visit.
That's what we did. And this line, I was like, oh, now,
this is interesting. If I go down this path, I'm
going to be in a situation where I have to
talk to strangers about what happened. How do I feel
about that? I wasn't really sure how I felt about that,

(48:43):
but nonetheless I wrote that song in the next hour.
It just came out. Who like a there. It was
fully formed around that old who had that guitar lick.
That's what I was writing the other song to that
guitar lick. So the next time was rehearsing in my
keyboard player car TV I taught at the piano part
played the song. She said, Oh, that's about your dad,

(49:05):
don't it. I said, yeah, it is Cary. Yeah. So
I thought, well, if she didn't get it like that,
obviously it you know, it's hits the mark. So I
started playing it live and it had that effect. People
would come and talk to me about someone that they
had lost, and still do. People write to me and say,

(49:26):
you know, your song really helped me to process things
about how my father or whoever lost, and it's great
to be able to write back to them and say,
you know what made it. It had exactly the same
effect on me. It helped me to process how I
felt about the loss of my father, to the extent
that I can now talk about it without being overcome

(49:49):
with emotion, and so, you know, I'm really pleased to
have a song about that. My mum, whenever I played
in London or where she came to see me play,
she would always say, before you're going to play that song,
aren't you. I don't think she even knew what it
was called, play that song. And I would play the song,

(50:10):
of course. I would play the song nervously while she
was there, you know, so self consciously. And then my
nephews will say to me, why do you keep playing
that song that makes Nan cry every time we come
and see you, And I'll be like, boys, Asher Nan,
all right, And then I tell you, yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:29):
I have to say and this is inappropriate. But the
comic version of the we're not talking the English, we're
not talking about it, yeah, is and it is my
favorite line in Spinal Tap Yeah, when they're talking about
one of the drummers died. Yeah, and the phrases said
the police said best left unsolved, the most English line.

(50:52):
That whole thing is that how songs come to you
a phrase or two, and then that opens up the
idea you mentioned you wrote a song about. I had
no idea. Cindy of a Thousand Lives was about Cindy Sherman.

Speaker 3 (51:03):
Oh yeah, Cindy Sherman was a big part of my
realization of America. On that first trip, I bought loads
of postcards to send home. But then I just started
buying postcards that just had images. You know, you can
get postcard with James brown It, you get a postcard
with you know, Smoky Robinson the Miracles. And I found
there's a famous Cindy Sherman photograph of like a child

(51:30):
with a pig's head eating an apple, and it was
so weird. It was so weird. I saw it and
I bought it, and I thought, what the heck, kiss this?
What madness? What strange weirdness. I mean, America's a weird
enough place if you've never been here before, but that's,
to me, summed up the weirdness of America. And I

(51:52):
subsequently found out what it was and who she was,
and I bought her, you know, coming to the US
back and forth in the eighties, I was able to find,
you know, books about her exhibitions and stuff, and it
always intrigued me what she was doing that, you know,
putting herself in the in the absolutely in the art

(52:14):
as a songwriter, that's something that you try and do.
You try and put yourself in there, even subconsciously. Sometimes
you don't realize you're doing it, putting yourself in there.
So I was very much attracted to that, and when
I got those weird chords, the song kind of sort
of developed out of that. Going back to those, I
think they call them a murder pictures, a kind of

(52:37):
like weird scary periods she went through, which I think
it comes after the original, sort of like cinema scenes,
untitled pictures that are really really There's something about the
United States America that's very strange to people coming from
my country is the vastness of it and the fact

(53:00):
most of it isn't inhabited. Well Springsteen referred to as
the darkness on the edge of town. We don't have
much of that in my country. You might have the
darkness on the edge of town, but you can probably
see another town just up the ways a bit. You
don't have that bit where the town ends and there's
the piney woods, and the piney woods go on for

(53:22):
miles and miles, and you know, when you're flying in
over New Jersey sometimes it's piney, piney, piney, piney woods.
And then while there's New York, it's that like it's
like the moors around Manchester. You know they're coming there,
kind of stand around, and as a European you get
that weird in the pines thing and something that those

(53:42):
Cindy Sherman postcards from that period of her her art
really spoke to me about that, that you know, what's
out there in the majority of on any given night,
the majority of the United States America is in complete
and out of darkness. That's a weird thing to someone
coming from a little island off the coast of Europe.

Speaker 2 (54:03):
Have you met her?

Speaker 3 (54:04):
No, No, I've never met her, but weirdly, she was
interviewed in The Guardian last month and I was, I was,
it's always great to read about what she's doing and
see what she's up to. I don't know if she
maybe shows an exhibition. And then the very last paragraph,
the journalist asked her if she'd ever heard the song,
and she said no. She was very flattered by it. Particularly,

(54:26):
she said particularly I've never met him, as if I'd
need to meet her to be able to write a
song like that, because I don't really need you.

Speaker 2 (54:34):
You're an artist.

Speaker 3 (54:35):
I mean, it's there. It's about how what she did
move me and I'm responding to that. So it'd be
lovely to meet her. But whether that would help me
understand better or anything that she's done, probably not. You know,
sometimes it's it's lovely to know that she's flattered by it,
because sometimes you know, people don't. You don't want the attention,

(54:56):
but a huge respect for someone who can have a
vision like that and communicate it so powerfully.

Speaker 2 (55:05):
I should ask you, I've never heard you talk about Springsteen.
You just mentioned it. Are you a fan of a
huge fan? Huge fan?

Speaker 3 (55:13):
He has that redemptive power as well, like soul music.
You know, whatever happens for the characters in his song,
there's always the possibility that they can ride to the
sea and wash these sins off their hands. You know,
they're doing racing in the street. I mean darkness on
the edge of town. We were just talking about about that,
you know. I mean, is there is there any great

(55:37):
opening line in pop music? Then they blew up the
Chicken Man in Philly last night? I mean, what a
great line that is. It's such a great line. I
saw him at Meadowlands on born in USA, too blew
my mind. He made it feel like a club, just
did my head in completely. I was like, I mean,
the trouble is I think maybe it's just I don't know,

(55:57):
it might just be me. Maybe all performances like this.
But when you go and see a songwriter or you know,
somebody who does a job similar to your job, you
spend all your time analyzing what they're doing, how they're
doing that, why are they doing that, what's going on there?
You know, it gets in the way of watching Elvis Costello.
It's impossible for me to enjoy Bob Dylan gig. I'm
trying to all the time think you know what's going
on here? But Springsteen was just like.

Speaker 2 (56:19):
I think he's so connected to the audience. There's no
like I was used to English bands or kind of
nodding at each other somebody ironically, there's none of that.

Speaker 3 (56:26):
No, he totally He's all there and he doesn't leave anything.
He doesn't leave anything backstage. It's all there out front.
You get it every time, and it just gives and
gives and gives.

Speaker 2 (56:38):
Yeah, after you did William Blook, you did Mermaid, the
first Mermaid Abby, Yeah, And I think people know the
sort of genesis of the project that you got all
these lyrics of Woody Guthrie's. When you saw these archives,
what surprised you what jumped out.

Speaker 3 (56:59):
How much there was three thousand complete lyrics boxes and boxes.
The start off pulling out the songs you think are good,
and you realize, actually, there's amazing songs in there. And
you pull out the amazing ones and you realize there
are brilliant songs in there, and you have to go
back put some back in the box they come out
of and you realize that, and then you get on

(57:20):
a thread, and then you realize that, yeah, you get
a bit of paper and it's got written on the
bit of you know, it's a song here, but the
top of the bit of paper someone what he's written
way over yonder in the minor key. You're like that,
what does that mean? You go through morning and you
see again, you know, way over yonder in the minor
kin and maybe a little bit more of a scrubble lewick.
And eventually you come to a song that says, let's

(57:41):
got way over yonder in the minor key in the chorus,
and you realize it, he's left your paper trail. They
kind of find somebody to find and connect with his song.

Speaker 2 (57:50):
I think as a listener, what surprised me the most
was how modern the songs sounded, because I'm not a
would he got through affection auto he I think to
many people just seemed like a character from the Grapes
of Wrath. It's this sort of Sepia toned hobo crossing.

Speaker 3 (58:11):
The country, of course.

Speaker 2 (58:13):
And so the songs were so funny, yep, which surprised me,
but not funny in the way that you know Christ
for President or some of his kids songs were. And
Walt Whitman's niece.

Speaker 3 (58:24):
That's why we opened with it, so everyone knew where
we were going. Don't think you're going to get the
dust bowl balladi in mate, this.

Speaker 2 (58:29):
Is well, that's what.

Speaker 3 (58:31):
There's a couple of reasons for that. There's a couple
of reasons for that. Firstly, Norah Guthrie, Woody's daughter, who
was running the archive at the time, who asked me
to come and look at the lyrics. She was concerned
that this is like the late nineties, her father was
becoming a bit of a two dimensional figure who you know,
was only kind of up on a pedestal. It was

(58:53):
the dust Bowl balladeer, and she rightly pointed out that
he actually lived half his life in New York City,
down on Coney Island, at a time when New York
City was perhaps the most exciting cultural city in the world.
You know, from nineteen thirty nine until he died in
nineteen sixty seven, he was here in New York. So

(59:15):
she wanted that aspect of him to come out. You know,
everyone had heard the dust Body was one song early on.
Because Woody often wrote the tunes to traditional tunes, there
was one song called My thirty thousand that was clearly
because the lyric, the opening line was written to the
tune of an old American folk song called Jesse James.

(59:35):
Jesse James was the man that Lay's children. They were
brave that tune. And I very proudly, when I'd got
the first stuff, played it to her and said, yeah,
look I've got the and she was like, yeah, We've
got plenty of songs like that. Billy. I was like, oh, okay,
you want me to, and she was frying songs at
me that were, you know, totally contrary to people's perception

(59:59):
of Woody Guffrey, and it was her generosity and encouragement.
That led me to choose songs like Ingrid Bergman, where
he talks about making love to the Swedish film star
on the slope some Italian volcano, My Flying Saucer where
he goes for a ride on a flying saucer. Not
things you would think about, would he Gusriye. But to
take Woody on board, I mean you mentioned the Grapes

(01:00:20):
of Wroth, the movie Henry Fonder in the Grapes of Wrath.
Perhaps in people's mind they associate Woody with that Sepia
tone period, but yeah, he was there. He did write
songs in there. But he also lived in New York
in the forties, so you also have to imagine him
in the movie On the Town with Frank Sinatra and

(01:00:41):
Gene Kelly, the two sailors who are chasing women around
New York City in nineteen forty in technicolor in full color,
which incidentally ends in Coney Island. They chase the girls
to the Coney Island funfair. Wood he lived in that world.
He wrote many of those songs in that world. That's
why Nora chose to call the album Mermad Avenue, because

(01:01:03):
to focus on that world. So we were out to
challenge people's perceptions too, as Norris to reboot a father's image,
and that's why we kicked off with what Whitman's niece.
So nobody would have any preconceptions that we were going
to be reverent with the little guy. That's not what
Laura asked us to do. She asked us to shake
him up. And with regard to it sounding modern, one

(01:01:25):
of the you know, there wasn't many templates for doing
a project like that, But Jeff and I, I think
at the time Grail Marcus book Invisible Republic had come
out about the recording of the Basement Tapes, and I
certainly read it. I know Jeff had read it as well,
and I said to him, look, you know, we're this
is a bit like the Basement Tapes in the sense

(01:01:45):
that I don't know if your listeners are familiar with.
Many of the songs in the Basement Tapes were old
timey songs. They weren't all Bob Dylan songs that Bob
had written. A lot of the songs they played were
old folks songs they were messing around with. And I
said to Jeff, this is kind of what we're doing
we're kind of we're kind of messing around with these
old songs. But the thing about the basement tapes, you

(01:02:06):
knew that the although they were playing these old timey songs,
the people that were playing them had heard Little Richard,
you know, they'd heard rock and roll. They were in
that vernacular. So we got to make these records and
people have got to know that we have heard the clash.
People have got to know that we've heard cheap trick.

(01:02:26):
You know, the Wilkos were big cheap trick fans. I'm like, yeah,
bring it on, you know, bring it on. We've got
we've got a opportunity here to take these songs and
kind of like dress them up anyway. It's like going
to the dressing up box every day and who we're
going to be today. Let's be Tom Waits today on
Meanest Man, you know, let's be Vanilla Fudge, Let's be

(01:02:49):
you know, let's just be weird. Let's just take these
songs apart and put them back together again in a
different way. And the freedom to do that is why
we ended up recording fifty three tracks rather than fifteen tracks,
which we were contracted to do, not least because nort We
were in Dublin, Nora. We invited Nora over for a
holiday for a week. She bought another sheaf of songs

(01:03:10):
and started the old bloody process. Yeah. Yeah, she suddenly
turned up with you know, another Man's Done Gone. What
an incredible song that is? You know so and it
was a joy to do. I mean, I really enjoyed
the whole process because hitherto I'd been the guy in
the studio where everything had to go through me. We had,
you know, every decision, what songs next, how do you

(01:03:31):
want to record it? When are we having a t break?
What biscuits are we having? You know everything. Whereas in
that process there was it was a you know, a
two andre if not a three andder with Jay Bennett
as well, between me, Jeff and Jay and the band.
You know, we were taking it in turns. It was
what we're going to do next?

Speaker 2 (01:03:48):
Did it change your rating?

Speaker 3 (01:03:50):
After all? It did? Yeah, it did. Because one of
the things I realized looking through Woody's work is that,
and he said as much in his writings that you know,
he never wrote a cynical song in his life. He
never wrote a song that put people down. I think
that's where I kind of started to understand what a
corrosive thing cynicism is. If you know, you know, would

(01:04:10):
famously add on his guitar, this machine kills fascists. If
I had to have something written on my guitar, we'll
be death to cynicism. And by cynicism, I don't mean skepticism.
I think that's healthy, it's helpful. I don't mean doubt.
Never trust anyone who has no doubts. I'm talking about
those people who've given up and they want you to
give up as well, and it makes them feel better about

(01:04:31):
the decision they've made. I've no time for those people,
you know. To me, you know, cynicism is what makes
you think nothing will ever change. Cynicism is what makes
you fear that nobody else cares about this stuff. It's
what Fox News want you to believe. And I'm, you know,
like Woody, I'm you know, committed to destroying that feeling

(01:04:56):
in people then kicking it to the curve as often
as I can not to say that I'm not prone
to my own cynicism. How could you not be? The
way politics have gone in the last thirty years, But
you have to fight it all the time in order
to recognize that the glasses half full, and that if
ordinary people are given the opportunity to pull the leaves

(01:05:16):
of power, we would live in a better world. You
have to believe in people and what they what they do.

Speaker 2 (01:05:20):
I want to ask you about two projects you did
because it was with one of our favorite people here.
It was Joe Henry.

Speaker 3 (01:05:26):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:05:27):
And first of all, and this gets to the sense
of place, the field recordings. You taped train songs from where.

Speaker 3 (01:05:34):
Was the Chicago to Los Angeles?

Speaker 2 (01:05:36):
Chicago to Los Angeles new tape. I don't know how
many you tape. There's about ten on the record.

Speaker 3 (01:05:40):
Yeah, yeah, I think it's what was he?

Speaker 2 (01:05:43):
How did that come about?

Speaker 3 (01:05:45):
Well, it's a bit convoluted, but I'll try. While I
was writing the Skiffle book in Touch by Aperture Photography
magazine and they wanted to send me out on the road.
It was a the anniversary of The Americans, the photo

(01:06:05):
book by.

Speaker 2 (01:06:07):
Robert Frank.

Speaker 3 (01:06:08):
Thank you very much for Robert Frank. I'm so bad
with names. I do apologize everyone. Robert Frank's great book
The Americans, which is amazing photography book. They wanted to
send someone out on the road. A photographer out on
the road with me, and so I had a chat
with him and I said, you know, that's really boring

(01:06:29):
being on the road. Really, I'm just like, you know,
I'm in the van and I'm at a gig, And
I said, can't we do it? You know, it would
be more interested to do a road trip somewhereere I've
never been in America. And they said, well, where would
you like to go in America that you've never been.
I said, I'd like to go to Rock Island, where

(01:06:50):
the Rock Island Line comes from. And the guy said
to me, where's that? I said, I don't know. It
turns out it's in in the far west of Illinois
on the border with Iowa. It's the mississ the Mississippi divides,

(01:07:12):
and it's where they built the first bridge across the Mississippi.
So we went there, and we drove down to Arkansas,
where the song Rock Island line comes from. And when
we went to the railway station there, we wanted to
get the midnight train to come in. So we do
a photo with the midnight train and it come in

(01:07:33):
and it sat there for forty minutes, just sat there
and what's that about and it turns out that there
are so few passenger trains outside the Northeast corner that
when a passenger train like one a day really on
that line through Little Rock where we were, they have
to stay in the railway station let the freight train through.

(01:07:54):
They used the railway station almost like a side in.
And it turned out I got the schedule, and it
turned out it stopped in every big city forty minutes.
And it occurred to me that you could use that
time to record a song. You get off the train,
go into the waiting room, find a suitably acoustic corner,
play a train song, jump back on the train, and

(01:08:16):
keep going, play some on the train maybe you know.
And so you know, Joe Henry had produced my album
before that, Tooth and Nail, and he's a dear friend
of mine, Joe, I love him the bits, and I
came up with this cockamaney idea and he said, yeah,
that would be brilliant. So over the course of three
or four days we were on the train, and it

(01:08:38):
was it was a revelation because the train comes through
the kind of what was it, iggy pop call at
the ripped back sides of the city. Because you're you know,
you're you're slowing down to go over the roads. Yeah,
you're slowing down to go over the roads. And you're
looking in someone's backyard in their parlor. You see them
all sitting there having a dinner. It's in America. I

(01:08:59):
certainly never seen. And my compadres who are working with me,
Joe and the guy who recorded it and the guys
who took some photos and did some filming, they were
blown away by this. And they've never been on a
training before, I don't think. Really, Yeah, it's really strange.
They were like, wow, this is like a completely different
you know, it kind of comes down the from Chicago,
comes down to San Antonio and then it kind of

(01:09:22):
follows the Rio Grande and uh and then off across
Arizona into into Union Station in Los Angeles. And we
had the best time in the trains had you know,
they have a shower on there. We have a dining
car and they always sit here on a table with
people that you haven't sat with before, so that that's
always someone who and who's on the trains. The people

(01:09:42):
on the trains are either tourists, people who worked on
the railways or their father worked on the railways, and
people who don't want to show their idea an airport
are on trains. So it's a really interesting trip. When
you sit down and talk to people at the table,
you know, it's what you're doing and we are you know,

(01:10:04):
you learn, We learn a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:10:07):
Was it easy to find places in the train stations
where you could get good acoustics?

Speaker 3 (01:10:11):
Yeah, generally. Yeah. We obviously we told the crew that
what we were doing. Well. I had a guy I
had a contact at Amtrak who was a musician, really
fortunate and he set it up for me. We met
him in Union Station in Chicago. So they have all aboard.
They have three all the boards. The first all the boards,
the general all the board, the second all the board
is better, get the board, and then the last all
the board is goodbye. So we just had to listen

(01:10:33):
out for the second all the board and make sure
we were on our way back to the train so
we didn't get left behind. One of the things about
Amtrak is their schedule was a bit a bit hit
and miss. Yeah. One of the guys English guys said
that they got in twenty four hours late to Union
and it's only a forty eight hour train journey. They

(01:10:55):
got in a whole day late due to problems with
freight trains on the line, and we were do to
get into Union Station, Los Angeles at kind of seven am.
We've got it at four am, and the one time ever
they were early, we got it at four am. But
it was cool because we ended up finding nobody about.

(01:11:16):
We found this loveliest space to record our last song,
which was Early Morning Rain by Gordon Lightfoot, which compares
the jetplane to the railways. A brilliant, brilliant song. And
where we sang it was behind us there was a
little garden square and as we sang it, the birds
began to wake up. They must have heard us, and

(01:11:37):
they started singing, and you can hear them just in
the background starting to sing in the bushes behind us
as he's starting to get light. It was a brilliant,
brilliant experience, and I encourage any of you out there
we want to see a different kind of America to
take the trip. There's another route to Los Angeles goes
through the Rockies, the California Zephyr. We went on the
Texas Eagle, but it really is an amazing experience and

(01:12:00):
it's and given the grief you have to go through,
to go through airports to get around America. I don't
know why there isn't a high speed train link, you know,
San Francisco to Los Angeles, a bullet train, you know,
as the atmosphere gets more turbulent, the possibility of high
speed trains, I think you really should check it out,
because the trains that make America. America before the trains

(01:12:23):
is a completely different place to America after the training.
Before the train, it was only really feasible to build
settlements inland on rivers because you just couldn't get the
stuff there was, you know, too many piney woods in
the way, you know, so all the big towns and
the big cities are all on the great rivers. Once

(01:12:45):
the railway comes, then you know, it opens the whole
continent up. And I don't think doing the record and
doing the research that went with it, I don't think
there's ever been a more transformative technology for humankind than
the railroad. The change it brings for thousands of years

(01:13:07):
of nothing being able to go faster than a horse
could gallup or ship could sail, suddenly to have something
that not could only go at a higher speed, but
could connect you directly to anywhere in the continent, so
that you could order something from Chicago and it would
arrive two or three days later, it would physically be there.

(01:13:27):
It's so much more, I think, so much more revolutionary
than the Internet what we've experienced in our lifetimes, which
is in itself revolutionary. But you know, Amazon is nothing
to the ability of people to order something from a
catalog out east and it end up in this tiny
little town in wherever, you know, Nevada or whatever, something

(01:13:48):
like that, and also people could get on it. I mean,
so many of those those blue songs about the railroad
because that was another level of emancipation for African Americans
to get to the big cities up north where you
weren't constantly you know, there was of course there was
still racism. Of course there was still discrimination, but it
wasn't the Jim Crow type up there. That emmancipatory nature

(01:14:12):
of the railroads in America was That's why we wanted
to take them songs back there.

Speaker 2 (01:14:16):
It was also the way people told time back then. Yeah,
you knew that was the three or four.

Speaker 3 (01:14:21):
In my country. That's when they had to synchronize all
the clocks in the country because before and they just
did it when it was got darker, when it got light.
But once the railroad come, everything had to run on
a scheduled timetable. And it's like, it's interesting, you know,
if you if you go back to the story that
made Charles Dickens the Pickwick Papers, it's about the pre

(01:14:44):
industrial age, you know. It's why we Brits are all
obsessed with Jane Austin. It's all going back to that
prelapse area period before the Industrial Revolution, before the railroad came,
there was this kind of you know, dizzy kind of
Garden of Eden vibe with the aristocracy and all that
kind of stuff. It's very interesting how the railroad comes

(01:15:05):
to symbolize modernity and any on dynamicism, and particularly in
this continent, it changes everything.

Speaker 2 (01:15:16):
Well, you woke up the birds in Los Angeles. It's
a very woody Guthrie image. I think we should end there.
Thank you so much for coming in well.

Speaker 3 (01:15:23):
Pleasure, thank you having I've been great chatting with email.

Speaker 1 (01:15:28):
Thanks so much to Billy Bragg for stopping off during
his tour to chat with Bruce Headlam. Here a playlist
of some of our favorite Billy Bragg songs. Visit the
link in our show notes or at broken Record podcast
dot com, and be sure to follow us on Instagram
at the broken Record PI. You can follow us on
Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced by Leah
Rose with marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan.

(01:15:51):
Our engineer is Ben Tollivian. Broken Record is a production
of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others
from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is
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(01:16:13):
please remember to share, rate, and review us on your
podcast app.

Speaker 3 (01:16:17):
Our theme music's back Anny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.