Interview with Billy Bragg, 2012

Below is the transcript of my interview with Billy Bragg from August 2012. The interview was for the Australian events site Everguide, which no longer exists.

Hannah Joyner: Hi, Mr. Bragg

Billy Bragg: Call me Billy, Hannah

HJ: Oh, Hi Billy

BB: I’m not your bank manager (laughs).

HJ: I was just watching you on Top of the Pops.

BB: Was I singing?

HJ: Yes, you were singing ‘Between the Wars.’

BB: God, that was a long time ago.

HJ: Yeah it was a fun time traveling experience but I got back in time, so that’s good.

BB: (laughs) Probably before you were born then ey?

HJ: (laughs) What do you think about that, that people can look up old footage of you on YouTube?

BB: I think it’s alright. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. I look up old footage from time to time. There was a song I used to know by a guy named John Stewart, a song about Neil Armstrong landing on the Moon, and with him dying on the weekend I sat down and thought, ‘I bet that’s on YouTube, ’ and it was. It was one of those videos where the footage is someone just putting the record on the player, but it was there, and I got to hear it, which was lovely.

HJ: It’s nice when people can share music like that; coming across music naturally is the only important thing to me.

BB: Yes, you’re much more likely to connect with it than if you have it rammed down your throat.

HJ: Definitely, that reminds me of how I first came across your music actually, which was when I was studying in the UK and my friend’s brother played me ‘A New England’ because I was turning 22.

BB: My theory is, folk music is always there but it’s often over the cultural horizon, it’s not often right at the forefront, but you go and find it. I found my way to Bob Dylan when I was 14 years old, and it totally blew my mind. And this was in 1972, so it wasn’t at the height of Dylan’s fame, it was like ten years after, and I was the only kid in my class who had even heard of Bob Dylan.

HJ: No Way!

BB: I know, and I swapped my friend my copy of the Jackson 5’s Greatest Hits so he could give it to his sister for her birthday present and he gave me his Dad’s copy of Dylan’s The Times They Are A Changing

HJ: Oh no, did he get into trouble?

BB: It was an original copy, but his Dad didn’t want it anymore, it was that vinyl that was as thick as a tabletop…and it just blew my mind; it was so raw and visceral and political. It was the time when Dylan was still playing solo on his records, so about 1964 and it was like me discovering the blues, or like the previous generation discovering the early blues records and thinking ‘Wow, what is this?’ I had the same reaction with the Bob Dylan record because no one had, say, ‘forced’ me to listen to him I totally identified with it. And I guess that’s how a lot of younger people find my music. I’ve got young people coming to my shows, and they can only have heard of me — cause I’m not on the radio — through peer recommendation, you know, ‘Check out this guy he’s a bit political.’ As a result, they really take what I do to heart.

HJ: Yes, I was certainly surprised with how much I connected with your songs; I had never heard anything like it before.

BB: Well that’s how I made my mark in the first place, cause no one was making music like that in 1982–1983.

HJ: What is it about that song (‘A New England’) you think, that it has endured so long?

BB: If I knew that, I’d make some more of ‘em! (Laughs)…I don’t know; you just put these ideas out there, I wasn’t even in a band at the time, I was between bands, just writing for the sake of writing cause I love writing. Maybe it’s the chorus…it’s like writing a letter. You try and put in the letter how you feel about the person you’re writing to, and it may be that they read it and just throw it in the bin or they read it and keep it in a special place and read it again when they want to re-connect with that feeling. In the end, you just write what you feel, and that’s what I felt, so that’s what I wrote.

HJ: So you’re coming down for Melbourne Festival to play some of your older hits, any new songs as well?

BB: I am yeah. The Festival show is going to be a celebration of the life and legacy of Woody Guthrie cause it’s his centenary this year (he was born in 1912). I made Mermaid Avenue with Wilco in 1999, and that record has just been released with extra tracks as well as the original sessions. So the Melbourne Festival show will be half all that and the second half will be ‘Billy Bragg’ stuff, and I will have new songs in that.

HJ: That sounds great.

BB: Well, I don’t want to be like those ’80s performer tribute acts, talking about how much we miss Margaret Thatcher and all that ‘guff. I’d rather be talking about where we are at now and pointing to where we are going, so that’s the kind of show that I am bringing. Plus next year I’ll be making a new album, so I’ll be playing some songs that might make it on to that.

HJ: Great, so what has been inspiring the new songs?

BB: Well one of the things that inspired me was a tweet that I got. Maybe it was this year…someone mentioned me in a tweet, and it turned up on my timeline. It said that this person was getting over a breakup by listening ‘to Billy Bragg — the Sherpa of Heartbreak.’ And I liked the idea of me being the Sherpa of Heartbreak. You know, carrying the baggage of their relationships up and down the mountain of despair and then back again, and all that kind of stuff. So I thought to myself, it is about time I reminded people that I do write love songs.

HJ: More people should focus on love songs.

BB: The political songs are what stands out from what I did, but they do sometimes get in the way of the fact I do write love songs as well. I don’t want people to think if me only as a political songwriter.

HJ: What’s one of your favourite love songs?

BB: ‘Tracks Of My Tears’ by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. Probably one of my favourites in the sense that it is very simple, three chords, but very powerful emotions.

HJ: Do you listen to that, or music like that when you want to write something similar?

BB: Subconsciously I think it is there, it depends on what I think I am trying to say and how I am trying to say it. When you’re a songwriter, no one starts with a blank sheet of paper; you’ve already got ideas of how to nail the point you’re trying to make. The song might start with a good line and then you kind of, reverse engineer, the song from that line. Or you’ve got an idea, and you’re trying to articulate that idea, or you’ve got a great tune, and you try and think what the lyrics might be and one day you come up with something that fits nicely and away you go.

HJ: I read once about Brian Wilson writing ‘Don’t Worry Baby’ and he said that he listened to ‘Be My Baby’ by The Ronettes up to a hundred times a day.

BB: And I imagine that by osmosis he managed to have a baby! Or write a baby song. (Laughs) If I listened to ‘Tracks Of My Tears’ a hundred times a day, my missus would throw me out of the house. I probably have listened to it a hundred times, but not in a day.

HJ: It does sound a bit excessive doesn’t it?

BB: Yeah. I’m not sure Brian Wilson is a good role model for writing songs. I’m not saying that he’s not good at writing songs, but he seems to be somewhat traumatised by the entire process.

HJ: Actually they are coming this week (The Beach Boys), have you ever seen them play?

BB: I did, a long, long time ago at Wembley Stadium, in concert with Elton John and The Eagles in 1974 or 1975 when I was at school. One of the first big rock concerts I went to.

HJ: You saw those three acts together?

BB: I did!

HJ: That’s amazing; I could only see that on YouTube.

BB: I annoy my son by this, cause I’ve seen The Who and The Rolling Stones. It annoys him. I say ‘I saw them in 1975, I bet it’s on YouTube, ’ and he’s all ‘I don’t want to see it.’ He’s annoyed that I got all that.

HJ: (laughs) Do you have any new music in common with your son?

BB: My son hates new music; he says there’s no new music out there that floats his boat at all. He listens to a lot of ’70s stuff, punk, and a lot of ska. He plays in a band and writes his own songs too.

HJ: That’s great.

BB: I always say to him, ‘If you don’t like new music, that’s a good thing, because you’ve got to make the music you want to hear, don’t wait for someone else to do it.’ Don’t complain about it make it. I got tired of waiting around for The Clash to write songs I wanted to hear and they weren’t going to do it, so I thought ‘Bollocks I’m going to have to do it.’ So I did.

HJ: There are so many bands in Melbourne, we’re known for being a live music town -

BB: Very good.

HJ: — and there was a push a few years back; it was kind of an explosion of bands who were all influenced by the 13th Floor Elevators and all of a sudden every band sounded like The Birds.

BB: Doesn’t sound bad at all.

HJ: I know it was great cause that is my style of music.

BB: you know who my son does like, he’s been talking about them the last six months, he’s become completely obsessed with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

HJ: Ooh.

BB: Cause they write simple songs that are really clever. There is an overlong, like four hours documentary about them. I, my missus and Jack (his son) happened to be watching TV one night, and it came on, so we caught the front of it, and it was all about how they formed the band as teenagers, so Jack locked onto this. So invariably I hear him playing early Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. I’ll have to introduce him to The Birds, that’s going to be the next thing.

HJ: Is there any modern artists you like? I noticed you did a cover of a Joanna Newsom song.

BB: Yeah Joanna Newsom I like, I think she’s a great songwriter. I really like listening to her stuff. (Also) I was really into the Bon Iver album last year, absolutely brilliant record. So there’s a lot of new stuff I’m listening to. Usually, it’s sort of just songs here and there. There’s a woman from Canada called Grimes that I caught on a TV program and listened to her stuff.

HJ: She’s great.

BB: Yeah, I mean…it’s not always clear exactly what she’s writing about but I love the energy she puts into it, so I kind of picked up on her and bought her album.

HJ: I watched an interview with her and noticed she has a lisp so now when I listen to her it’s all I can hear. But I like it. It’s actually what I like about her best.

BB: Yeah there’s something going on there isn’t there? There is something interesting going on. I mean, the thing about her and Bon Iver and Joanna Newsom is that they are all idiosyncratic artists, you know? You will never catch me being excited by something as bland and boring as Kasabian. For me, Oasis were a low-point in British music — only for the fact that they had absolutely no self-knowledge, they never gave you the idea that they knew what they were doing was a crazy thing and that you could be part of it. It was all just ‘me me me, I’m great you’re shit, do you like my socks?’ Forget it. I’m not interested in hearing that or those songs. I’m much more interested in trying to get my head around what Bon Iver is talking about.

HJ: How do you think you endure as an artist, without becoming very self-aware or self-involved. You know, how do you keep it about everything else?

BB: You have to choose the subjects that people aren’t talking about, and you have to bring up the things that people want to engage with. Some of the stuff I talk about at shows now is all about fighting against cynicism. I worry there’s a lot of cynicism on the Internet, and I worry that this discourages young artists from talking about politics. Particularly young, female artists who I think get much more abuse on the Internet if they express an opinion, and I find that really bothersome. I talk to a lot of younger singer/songwriters, and they say ‘whenever I write a political song I get so much shit for it Bill.’ And I’m like, yeah, I didn’t have to put up with this. When I was first making music, the music editors were people who had gotten into music in the late sixties so they believed that music should say something. So if I had something to say they would at least give me a platform to do that, they might not have agreed with me, but they would give me a platform. Now young artists do not get that benefit. If anything, the wind is against them. People may say ‘Oh shut up about politics mate’ but the thing is, things are getting increasingly more political. I mean I don’t know how old you are Hannah.

HJ: I’m 25.

BB: Well your and my son’s generation, I’m sorry to say, is going to be the first generation, since the war even that are probably going to grow up worse off than their parents. So if anyone needs to be talking about what the fuck is going on, it’s you people, and the framework for doing that started disappearing with the end of the Cold War. So I’m doing whatever I can to encourage young artists to write about what they believe in instead of what they think they should be saying because they aren’t getting that encouragement from the editors of music papers anymore and I think that’s a bad thing. I mean it is clear that they are engaged because they are writing blogs about it and making films about it and writing about it on Facebook. It is clear that they are interested in politics; they just are not getting involved to write songs.

HJ: I do feel that, though it’s something that I can never quite put my finger on that’s stopping it. I imagine it is something so ingrained that it is almost like an automatic self-censoring, perhaps out of expectation.

BB: I’m sorry to hear that. Because you only strike a chord with people when you strike the chord. Whenever you take a stand about something you are bound to get criticism for it, so you just have to be strong about the things you believe in. Look at the PussyRiot women, how inspirational is that?

HJ: True.

BB: If I didn’t play guitar I probably wouldn’t have been able to come to Australia. Some would say it doesn’t really matter whether people write a blog or do a gig but the thing is it does matter because the feeling that you get from being at a gig when someone talks about these issues — because everybody cheers — suddenly you realise you are not the only person in your town who gives a shit about these issues. And you can’t do that by getting 10,000 likes on Facebook; it is not the same feeling. It’s not the same sense of communal focus that you get. That’s the feeling that I got from going to Rock Against Racism, that’s the first political thing I ever did. And it gave me a sense that I wasn’t the only one who gave a shit about these ideas and it helped me to stand up for my principles.

HJ: I found a recent quote from you where you say you have ‘a great faith’ in my generation. I suppose you just touched on it, but what keeps you having that blind faith?

BB: I don’t think it’s blind, because you talk about this shit and people applaud, and people cheer, and people are galvanized by what you are saying and the ideas you are throwing out there. So you’ve got to yourself be inspired by that response. I have a song called ‘I Keep Faith’ which I play in my set, depending on how I set it up it could be a love song, or it could be a political song, really it is a mixture of both, but really it is about my faith in the audiences ability to change the world. Cause I think putting the responsibility back onto them can be quite empowering for some members of the audience. To say, ‘I have faith in you as an individual and as a community.’ People don’t hear that very often at a rock gig. And it’s not overly political about socialism and economics; it is subtler than that.
This is just an example, a guy came up to me at one of the festivals I played on the weekend, a big, tall, bald, skinny guy and he looked a bit fired up about something. He came up and grabbed me close and whispered in my ear that when I was singing that song, his family was there, and they hugged each other and talked about the faith they had in each other. My song brought that out for them! He said they were all in tears and that they really needed that. This guy was hanging on and grabbing me, holding me so close as he’s telling me this, so it obviously really touched something from his experience and his family’s experiences. So as a songwriter, to be able to do that, that’s what you are always reaching for, to get an emotional response like that. I’m really glad that guy shared it with me; because it underlined my belief in the ability of music to do something more than just make you feel smug on the Internet.

HJ: That would be why your son and I don’t like a lot of modern music.

BB: — because there’s nothing there!

HJ: Yeah, I don’t understand much of it at all.

BB: Me either.

HJ: A lot of it seems to be the same as a cat scratching itself against a post to get a rush. That’s not the kind of experience I want to get from listening to a song.

BB: Exactly, the music has got to portend something, like Bon Iver’s song ‘Hollow Scene’ when he says “And then I knew I was not magnificent’’ — there’s something in that that is just so emotionally powerful. Fuck knows what the rest of the song is about; (laughs) I have been trying to work it out. It is not like you have got to come down from the mountaintop like Moses with the truth, you’ve just got to make an emotional commitment to saying something. That’s all I’m doing in ‘I Keep Faith’ the punch line is just ‘I keep faith in you’ it’s not like I’ve revealed some ancient secret. Obviously, it touches people, and I’m pleased with that, and I want to do it more.

HJ: It is important then that your fans can even come up to you at your gigs. In most cases, security knocks fan back.

BB: Well when I do my show in Melbourne, I’ll finish the show, I’ll go backstage and drink a cheap Mexican beer, they rub me down with a copy of the Daily Worker and then I’ll come out to the T-shirt stall and sign CD’s and have my photograph taken with people for as long as it takes. It might take an hour or two hours. Some nights that part is as long as the gig. That’s how I learn how my music is being understood. If I didn’t do that, that guy would never have grabbed me and given me this incredible sense of emotional contact that he did.

HJ: That is lovely.

BB: Well Hannah, it all comes back to things you can’t get on the Internet. And that is why your generation needs to pick up guitars, pick up musical instruments and start getting out there. Ultimately you will get that emotional connection. I accept that Facebook and blogging are the chosen method of engagement for your generation. But standing in the dark with other people, listening to music, whether you’re playing it or hearing it, is special. The proof of that is that as people are no longer willing to pay for music — recorded music — more people are going to gigs, they need that feeling. You know it is a cliché, but I’ll say it anyway cause it is good — ‘You can experience a download, but you can’t download an experience.’ So people should still play guitars and step out from behind their computers from time to time. It is not either/or because I blog all the time, but I don’t get anywhere near the inspiration from it and the sense of fulfillment from it that I got from playing a gig in that muddy field in Cumbria where that guy and his family was.

HJ: Thank you so much for talking to me, I think we are going overtime now.

BB: Ehh, what the fuck, it’s only time, there’s loads of it.