|
|
News
Latest
Features Mr Love And Justice Wednesday, April 02, 2008 Billy Bragg’s convictions are more relevant, and more welcome, than ever and Mr Love And Justice himself is more industrious than ever. By Martin Jones
If you thought Billy Bragg was winding down his thirty-year career by moving to coastal Dorset and releasing his chapter-closing, comprehensive box sets in 2006/2007, you would have been all kinds of wrong. Having just celebrated his 50th birthday, Bragg is the most active and outspoken he’s ever been. In an era of acute political disillusionment among Britain’s youth, Bragg is being revered as a hero – a credible, humanitarian figure that has remained in touch with current issues. To a whole new generation, he is ‘Mr Love And Justice’, the superhero of the title of his brand new record.
William Bragg began his musical career in 1977 in, not surprisingly, a punk group before joining and then escaping the army. From there, his career lurched unconventionally, recording his first release Life’s A Riot With Spy Vs Spy for Charisma, and bribing John Peel to play it by delivering him food. Bragg’s trademark of mixing political songs and love songs was there from the beginning, and the opening track, ‘It Says Here,’ to his second album Brewing Up With Billy Bragg was an outspoken reaction to Thatcher’s government in 1984. The album went Top 20 in the UK. The mid-‘80s saw Bragg active in the pro-Labour Red Wedge movement and produced his most successful album, Talking With The Taxman About Poetry, which included the immortal ‘Levi Stubb’s Tears’.
The subsequent twenty years have seen Bragg continue to record and release records, his partnership with Wilco on the Woody Guthrie honouring Mermaid Avenue a surprise hit in the late ‘90s. His political and humanitarian views and actions have never wavered and in the Bush/Blair climate became relevant and inspiration to a new generation.
Both responding to, and fostering this new wave of adulation, Bragg has been superhumanly industrious. He released his book The Progressive Patriot: A Search For Belonging and undertook an accompanying Hope Not Hate tour against fascism. He initiated the Jail Guitar Doors program, getting guitars into UK jails to assist prisoners’ rehabilitation (www.jailguitardoors.org.uk).
As well as the odd job like executing a commission to write a lyric for ‘Ode To Joy’ from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Bragg also managed to write and record the new album with The Blokes, now featuring the mighty Ian McLagan on Hammond as well as Ben Mandelson, Simon Edwards, Martyn Barker, and Lu Edmonds. Finally, Bragg kicked off a year of touring with appearances at the Big Day Out in Australia earlier this year. Phew!
Talking with Bragg gives the impression that he is so genuinely invigorated that he barely knows what to do with all his energy and anyone who met him during his recent Australian tour, as I had the privilege of doing, will attest to his vigour and charisma.
He’s undoubtedly been inspired by his relocation to seaside Dorset, where he walks his dog on the beach every day he can. But that change in social consciousness (and conscience) that is afoot in the Western World must also be a thrilling catalyst for Bragg. Young people are perhaps emerging from a fog of impotence to feel that they can effect change; that they can vote out the governments that they oppose. Young bands are asking Bragg to play with them, young fans are turning up to Bragg shows and singing all his songs. He’s being invited to perform on one of the world’s biggest youth festivals – the Big Day Out.
As Mr Bragg sat down to toast and orange juice for breakfast overlooking the southwest British coastline, I sat down with a post-dinner glass of wine thousands of miles across the sea on the Australian coast to bask in twenty minutes of his energy.
So how do you think you’re gonna go down with the kids at BDO, do you reckon you can still fire up the teenagers?
Well I think with Rage Against the Machine on the bill I think there’s a good possibility that some of them will be along to hear music with a bit of politics in it. And I can do a fast and loud set if necessary. I’ll suss it out the first couple of goes. I will also be doing my own shows to enjoy as well so I won’t feel the need to pile everything into the Big Day Out.
The Mr Love And Justice bio opens with the statement that many much younger people had discovered your music this year, does it seem that way to you?
It does seem that way, yeah. I opened for The Pogues in Manchester on Saturday night doing their Christmas tour and there was a load of youngsters down the front who seemed to know all the words to my songs so I was chuffed by that.
What do you see when you look out over a headline show in the UK?
Well, predominantly people of my generation, you know a lot of young people their opening line to me is ‘my Dad used to play your songs to me when I was younger’. Or ‘my teacher really thinks you’re great’, stuff like that. But they’re still coming along, I suppose because so few people are doing music with a bit of politics mixed into it, if you’re looking for that sort of thing you’re inevitably going to end up bumping into me.
Well in that regard, it’s good timing to be coming to Australia with the change of government.
It is, it is. Yes, everyone polishing off their Peter Garrett questions for me… to which my answer is predominantly I don’t look very good in a tie, so no I don’t want to be a politician really.
Is it something you think about at all, staying relevant to younger audiences?
Well I don’t think you can worry about staying relevant to younger audiences, I think you’ve got to make sure that what you’re writing about is what’s happening in front of you, rather than writing about nostalgia and how great it was during the years of Margaret Thatcher. Bollocks to that. I’ve got no time for that. So you’ve got try and keep focussed on what’s happening or find things to do that connect with what’s happening now.
The main project I’ve been working on this last year has been getting guitars into prisons. And that’s becoming a really big issue here. We have an overcrowded prison population and they’re thinking about building superprisons now in the American style which I think is a mistake. And these sorts of issues don’t go away, they’re not very fashionable but they are issues that are right on the cutting edge of where society’s at. So if you keep addressing those kind of issues, then I think think you will keep connecting with people… of whatever generation.
Well the last time I spoke with you, you’d only just moved to a house right on the coast.
Yeah Dorset. I’m sitting in that very house now, the sun is shining frosty over the hills, the sea is lapping against the coast and I’m about to go and walk the dog after I’ve talked with you. People say to me, ‘don’t you miss London?’ and I’m like ‘think about it. Check out where I am.’
As you attest on ‘The Beach Is Free’ on the new album, it’s one of very few things that you can’t buy; that is free for anyone to enjoy.
Exactly. Exactly. Always open, always there, always different, always beautiful.
Well Mr Love And Justice has made me embarrassed of my cynicism, because it’s an overwhelming hopeful and affirmative record, does it feel that way to you?
It does, it does. And in some way it effects the realisation that hit me a couple of years ago in that my enemy in trying to make a better world is not actually capitalism or conservativism, they’re just manifestations of a much deeper trend and that is, and what I’m finding myself constantly fighting against, is actually cynicism. So a song like ‘I Keep Faith’ is attempting to put forward an antidote to cynicism in believing in each other and our ability to work together and make a better world.
And when I say cynicism I don’t mean yours, I mean mine as much as anybody’s. I have to fight back my own cynicism when I see Labour politicians on the TV talking about having to invade Iraq and stuff like that - it’s tough. It’s tough times for true believers but cynicism ultimately will destroy your soul, it will destroy your ability to affect change. So I find myself really raging against that now and hopefully the album reflects that.
What’s your secret to maintaining hope and optimism?
Well it’s humanity I suppose. Becoming a parent you see other people as other people’s kids and that sort of, you know, you’re driven by wanting to make a world in which my kids get on with your kids. That was the inspiration spending three years writing a book; not because I wanted to make Britain into a racist free zone. I meant that would be nice but ultimately what I want is to pass on a cohesive society to our children, not a divided society. And that’s what you have to keep your faith in – that other people will want the same for their children.
But keeping that faith is still a constant struggle for you?
It is, I think for all of us who want to try and make the world a better place – the setbacks can be painful but every now and then something happens that recharges your batteries – like Howard losing his seat – that cheers you up and you push on.
Well I’m going to ask you some track-by-track questions now. ‘I Keep Faith’: what does faith mean to you?
Faith to me is a form of solidarity. It’s about believing in other people and working with them, it’s that kind of faith. It’s not capital ‘F’ Faith. Although I wouldn’t class myself as an atheist, I recognise that Faith can have a positive effect as well as a negative effect. But the faith I’m talking about, small ‘f’ faith, is that belief in humanity and that’s the thing that drives you forward rather than the political ideology. And the context in which you sing that song it takes on different meanings. When you sing it in a prison to people who have been incarcerated by society because they’ve done wrong, keeping faith in them is a very powerful message, almost a challenge really, to come back to society, to come back to mainstream society and that’s what you want, you want rehabilitation for those people. So it’s a song that works on a number of levels.
I guess that’s something you’d be aware of – that faith means something different to pretty much everybody who hears that song.
I think you have to work out the context in which you’re singing it for the explanation you give for it. It’s nice to have a song in your quiver that’s like that, that can be adapted to different circumstances.
In the midst of more Steve Earle anecdotal entertainment, the interview with Bragg is terminated at the end of its time limit, leaving the track-by-track questioning incomplete. But anyway, Bragg has a beach to visit and a dog to walk. You can read the full Billy Bragg interview by subscribing to Rhythms.
Mr Love And Justice is available through Shock Records.
|