EP.207 - BILLY BRAGG

I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin.

Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening.

I took my microphone and found some human folk.

Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke.

My name is Ad Buxton, I'm a man.

I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan.

Hey!

How are you doing, listeners?

I'm just doing a quiet hay there because Rose doesn't like it.

And I don't want her to stop walking as she has now done.

Come on, Rosie.

Come on, sweetie.

Let's go.

There you go.

It's nice out here, Rosie, honestly.

Look, I mean, we're pretty lucky.

What are you eating?

You're...

Oh, Rosie.

You hound.

Don't eat that.

That is literally the plops of another creature.

We can get you some stuff that's at least half as good as that when we get home.

Come on, sweetie.

Don't eat plops.

Don't tell me what to do.

I didn't want to come for this walk, and the very least you can do is allow me to enjoy some of these little malteses of plops.

Have you finished?

I have.

Oh

man.

There's a lot of negotiation to be done with dog legs these days.

It's really quite a lovely morning out here in the Norfolk countryside in the early part of October 2023.

I wanted to put up this podcast on the weekend, but it wasn't possible because

we were hosting a big birthday party.

for my daughter who was 15

and so she had quite a few few of her pals from school and her various sport teams over on the weekend.

And you can imagine what that was like, podcasts, especially if you have children of your own and you have hosted a teen party.

Or maybe if you don't have children, you can remember what those parties were like.

15 as well.

I think maybe they're the gnarliest ones

because you are, in so many ways still very much a child.

And yet it feels as though all the most exciting, verboten parts of adulthood are within your grasp.

And one way for you to express that

is to just drink too much booze.

And the phrase pre-drinking is one that I hear from a lot of teens.

So they turn up to the party already pretty well oiled and then it's puking time.

No serious casualties, I'm happy to say.

And I think a good time was had by nearly all.

But it certainly didn't make me miss those days, I have to be honest.

I mean, yes, it would be lovely to be 15 again in some ways,

but those Lairy parties are not the part that I really miss.

Okay, let me tell you a bit about podcast number 207, which features an enjoyable and rambling conversation with English writer and musician Billy Bragg.

Bragg facts, Stephen William Bragg was born in 1957 in Barking.

That's in the county of Essex, which hovers above the east of London.

Billy has been described by the Daily Mail newspaper as a left-wing rabble-rousing singer-songwriter, which, given that he must have roused a rabble or two in his his time, is true.

Billy learned to play guitar in his teens with the help of his friend and next-door neighbor, Philip Wigg, aka Wiggy, with whom in 1977 he formed a punky pub rock band called Riffraff that recorded a few singles but split a few years later.

Odd jobs and even a short stint in the army followed, but Billy's frustration with the kind of music clogging up the charts in the early 80s that, to to his ears, wasn't really saying anything.

I imagine he was talking about quite a lot of the music that I absolutely loved at the time, encouraged him to start playing again and making the sort of music he wanted to hear.

This time it was just him and his electric guitar under the name Spy vs.

Spy, a nod to a strip in Mad magazine.

Billy's demo tape caught the attention of AR man and sometime Pink Floyd manager Peter Jenner, who, fun fact, went to the same posh school that I did, Westminster, although a bit before I was there.

And in July 1983, Billy's first album, Life's a Riot with Spy vs.

Spy, was released.

That record featured music that blended elements of folk and punk in the service of songs like New England, later a hit for Kirsty McCall, which were less polemical and more personal.

But his next album, Brewing Up with Billy Bragg, in 1984, reflected the anger he felt at the Thatcher government's handling of the miners' strike that year.

And 1985's Between the Wars EP cemented his profile as an explicitly political songwriter.

Oh, I just stung my calves on some very bi-nettles.

Whew!

Spicy.

In the mid-1990s, Billy was given the chance to engage with his love of traditional American music when Nora Guthrie, the daughter of folk legend Woody Guthrie, asked Billy to set some of her father's unrecorded lyrics to music.

And with the help of the band Wilco, Billy recorded the album Mermaid Avenue, released in 1998, featuring original music by Wilco and Billy, with lyrics written years before by Woody Guthrie.

The record, which includes the Wilco/slash Bragg favorite California stars, was a hit, and two more volumes of Bragg Wilco Guthrie songs followed.

In addition to music and Billy's ongoing political activism, obviously usually in support of the Labour Party, occasional boosting of the Greens, smattering of sympathy for the Liberal Democrats, but so far nothing solid for the Tories, Billy has written several books, including The Progressive Patriot, published in 2006, in which Billy considers what it means to be English, his book on Skiffle, Roots, Radicals and Rockers, How Skiffle Changed the World, which came out in 2017, and in 2019, The Three Dimensions of Freedom, about how freedom of speech has become a battleground in an era of growing authoritarianism.

In November this year, 2023, that's the future as I speak, Billy is playing music across the UK and Ireland in support of the Roaring 40, a career retrospective collection released later this month, October.

And you can find tour dates on Billy's website.

There's a link in the description of today's podcast.

My conversation with Billy took place in London at the beginning of August this year.

And he arrived before me.

I was late that day.

Bad organisation as per.

But I found Billy in a buoyant mood watching the Women's World Cup game against China on an iPad.

We had a good chat about things things including manners in social media, the challenge of being a progressive patriot, what posters Billy had on his wall as a boy, a couple that you might not expect, why Neil Young and Stanley Kubrick made their way to barking, the fondness that Billy and I share for a certain brand of pudding, how Billy's approach to politics has evolved over the years, the fascinating place that Skiffle holds in music history.

There's a great little overview of that from Billy at one point.

That's like a kind of feverish conspiracy theory, but real.

And Billy tells me about close encounters with Bob Dylan and David Bowie.

But I began by reminding the barking bard of the only other time that we met, a long, a long time ago, when Billy was keeping some surprising company.

Back at the end with a small waffle slice, but right now with Billy Bragg.

Here we go.

Do you remember the first time that we met?

Maybe the only other time that we have met?

Was it in, was it when you were in Brixton Prison?

I brought some guitars.

That was it.

But before then, it was Glastonbury.

Oh, mate.

What happens in Glastonbury?

Stays at Glastonbury.

2000.

Do you know how many Glastonburies I've done since 2000?

Yeah, I know you've done it.

Probably 23, I would imagine.

Well, if there had been 23, yeah, but there haven't.

There have only been 18, and I have done all of them.

Okay, good.

So, yeah, so forgive me if I don't.

No, that's okay.

Me and Joe Cornish were there, and we were doing coverage for BBC3,

and you were there with your pal, Boris Johnson.

Oh, I do remember that.

That's one thing I can't forget, unfortunately.

What was the deal?

Someone had hooked you up to do some kind of wacky opposites attract kind of TV show.

Yeah, let me just just

rewind a bit.

The firstly, I want to assure your listeners, at the time he was merely the editor of The Spectator.

He was a harmless buffoon.

Harmless buffoon who had appeared on Have I Got News for You and got himself some notoriety for that?

Exactly.

In many ways, Adam, he was in the same constellation as you.

Quite right.

You're very, you know, you were in Joe.

Although he was, we were more harmless, I would venture.

Just because you didn't go to Eaton.

But anyway, let me just...

He was making a programme for Radio 4 called Why People Hate the Tories.

So obviously I was a prime interviewee for that.

And in the course of that conversation, I said to him, you know, arguing that you don't live in the real world, you people, I said, you've probably never even been to Glastonbury, have you?

I said, no, no, I haven't, no.

I said, well, how old are you?

And you've not been to Glastonbury.

Anyway, the producer said to me, oh, you know what?

We should get him down to Glastonbury.

So I thought that was a jolly jape as well.

I thought it would be a laugh.

So the next Glasto, they got him down there and it began awfully.

He forgot to get off the train at Castle Carey.

That was the start of it all.

There is a video on YouTube.

Unfortunately.

I think there's a couple of videos.

There's one that I will post a link to in the description of today's episode where you can see me and Joe interviewing you and then it cuts to some footage of you and Boris meeting at Castle Carey and then wandering around a little bit.

And then you play a song for me and Joe.

You played

some Lewis Carroll there.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

That's why I have a snark.

We went to the poetry tent.

Right.

And I sort of blagged us at a, you know, a five-minute spot.

I did, I can sing the Jabberwocky.

Uh-huh.

The whole thing.

Yeah, like a country song.

Twas Brilligan the Slythy Tools.

Did Guyer and Gimbal in the Way.

Like Johnny Cash, you know, like that.

It's easy.

And he did some of the Iliad in the original Demotic Greek, which just sounded like a man growling.

It was most off-putting.

But at the time,

because he had his kind of Avogad News for You fame, people were like pleased to see him.

I mean, imagine if you there now.

You know, they'd put him in the wicker man, wouldn't they?

Well, would they?

This is the question about Boris Johnson.

Because, I mean, you felt the warmth of his personal charm, right?

I did.

And because me and Joe, Joe dressed up as Boris Johnson, I forgot.

He had a silly sort of blonde wig on, and we made some big goofy teeth out of cardboard.

And so that's how we started our conversation with you, with Joe pretending to be Boris Johnson.

And then I think we were anxious not to be too buffoonish buffoonish ourselves.

So we kind of pivoted to asking slightly more serious questions about what are you doing with Boris Johnson?

Is Joe's grotesque parody of Boris Johnson accurate or not?

And you were saying, no, it's not really.

Don't underestimate the guy.

Was the thrust of what you were saying.

Scary, huh?

Yeah.

Yeah.

The things we do at Glastonbury, see, this is the thing.

This is why what happens at Glastonbury should stay at Glastonbury.

You know, we've all done things at Gloucester we've been somewhat ashamed of, even if it's just pooing in the hedge.

Not that I've done that, I should add, but you know, the stain on my Glastonbury experience is

I took Boris around.

But you did have an insight into it.

Some bastard filmed it.

Several bastards.

That's right.

You had an insight into his most powerful weapon.

I did.

And the thing that has enabled him to do what he's done, really, which is to come across as a kind of likable guy.

But there was something that did happen.

It was more telling about him, really, and who he is.

All the time we were there, we were under real pressure to get him back on the train for a certain time and he was constantly giving me the watch so i've got to be on that train whatever happens and i'd organize there to be a jeep come and get him to get him to the castle all the way through all the way through he's like you've got to get me i've got to get back blah blah blah as it happened where we were when we finished filming i said to him you know boris it will be quicker if we walk back from here you know it'd be about a 10 minute walk we'll probably have to wait ten minutes for the jeep to get if that might be 15.

why don't we just walk so he's like yeah fine we've got the stone circle we swept down through the stone circle we were coming down through the i think we were coming down through the markets and there was a guy a greenpiece guy or something like that one of those guys handing out flyers who boris went to school with went to eaton with and he's he was like oh wow mate and he's talking i'm standing there talking and i'm talking and talking and i'm like boris mate tapping the watch tapping the watch yeah it's time mate he's like yeah yeah yeah i'll be a minute and i'm like look boris i'm really so arrested i've got to go now because i've got something to do so i'm gonna have to leave you here on your own to make your own way back to the pyramid stage and he's like yeah and that says more about him that he's only in the minute Whatever responsibility he has to anybody else outside of that minute is overridden by the minute that he's in.

And that is a kind of annoying trait in a mate, but it's a really dangerous trait in a Prime Minister.

And I think having, you know, seen what he went through with Partygate, clearly when he was in that moment, that's what all he was thinking.

He wasn't thinking about any of the ramifications, but what it means to anybody else was he certainly wasn't thinking about his PA who was pestering me all the time to get him on the train when he was talking to his mate.

And that to me was the thing most strongly that at the time I thought that was a bit out of order.

You know, you're supposed to be somewhere else at a certain time.

You do your best to get there.

I felt irresponsible leaving him there, frankly.

He didn't feel irresponsible at all.

He's not a big picture thinker.

He's not very accountable.

And I think accountability is one of the things that are starting to seep away from our discourse, our political life,

you know, Trump, Boris, people breaking the rules and not caring what the consequences are.

I find that really, really troubling, you know, and that was in that was in a microcosm.

That's what he kind of did to whoever it was that he was supposed to be with at that particular time.

I saw you, I actually didn't see the tweet because I am no longer on Twitter, but I read about you retweeting a talk that Graham Norton had done at the Cheltenham Literary Festival this year, 2023.

And Graham was talking about reframing cancel culture as accountability culture and just taking the emphasis off the whole cancellation thing.

I'm big on that.

I think cancel culture is a form of accountability.

You know, there has to be a balance, Adam.

There has to be a balance between free speech and accountability.

You know,

free speech, express your opinion.

But if you can't express your opinion without being abusive, then that's when accountability comes in.

So it needs to be a balance.

You can have too much accountability.

You know, revenge is too much accountability.

And the thing it pivots on is equality.

Equality in the middle so that you get a balance.

And it's treating the person you're talking to with mutual respect.

Then you have an opportunity then to disagree with each other without it all falling apart.

And I think there's not enough of that, especially not on Twitter, but throughout our social discourse.

And it's a real problem going forward, I think, because

it keeps people, particularly women, women, put up with a huge amount of abuse online for nothing more than expressing an opinion.

And it's just not acceptable.

And another talk that happened this year, which you were part of, was at the Light Gets In

Music and Philosophy Festival.

And the talk was called Manners Maketh the Man.

Yes.

And what was your position then?

So it was presumably that we need more of those kinds of manners.

Yeah.

More respect, I think, a little bit more responsibility.

But really, I think the real problem is accountability, because I think responsibility and accountability are two different things.

We say, you know, I take responsibility for that.

And by saying that, you're articulating that it's you that's got to change your views, right?

But when you say you hold someone to account, the implication is there's another person involved saying this is not acceptable.

You're, you know, in that sense.

So I think accountability is more important because if it's always you taking responsibility, you end up in the Boris Johnson situation where you can mess around with it and you can get away with a, you know, a kind of like a sheepish grin and a fluff of your hair and you can get away with it.

Whereas if it's accountability that is the red line, then there's always someone to say, I'm sorry, that's not acceptable.

And I think we just need a little bit more of that in our discourse, in our political life, just to balance things back up again so that we get back onto a playing field that's kind of based in fact, based in, you know, broadly accepted truth.

Because truth is obviously, you know, it's all to do with perspective.

But trying to get in an area where we agree with each other, that's what we're talking about.

Or if not agree, at least be able to talk about it.

I don't mean agree on the issue.

I mean agree on the framework.

One of the the things about socialism in the old days when things were ideological is it gave you a framework to discuss things.

You know, we live in a post-ideological world now.

Whether that's better or worse, I don't really know.

But at least it gave you a framework to have a discussion around.

If you don't have some parameters, if you don't have, you know, liberty, equality, accountability as the framework, three-dimensional space in which to have a discussion, then you're all over the place, aren't you?

You know, if you think that the definition of freedom is being able to say whatever you want to say to whoever you want to say it, whenever you want to say it, and no comeback.

That's not really freedom, is it?

That's just John Trump's Twitter feed, and we all know where that leads to.

So consequently,

things

have to be balanced up with a bit of accountability.

How do you think we got to that point?

I mean, do you think that really the internet and particularly social media just blew it all up?

Or were we heading that way anyway?

I think every time there's

a new medium, people have to find out where the parameters of that is.

You know, when newspapers came in and there were newspapers everywhere, you know, people were getting libeled.

You know, they had to bring in libel laws.

They had to bring in limits to freedom.

You know, one of the great things about liberty is it doesn't work for everybody unless there are hard, fast rules.

If you don't have any rules whatsoever,

then you're really in trouble.

If you're a free speech absolutist, then whoever's got the loudest voice and the most money, and it's called Elon Musk, is going to dominate the discussion.

Whereas if we really want to have a discussion, then there has to be a space where we can speak without being shouted down.

It's hard to do that online, you know.

I mean, you talk about that, Graham Norton.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I retweeted that.

What he also said in there is that perhaps if you want to learn about trans rights, it might be better to listen to the parents of trans kids and trans kids rather than an author of a book about wizards or words to that effect.

Which I retweeted that as well, because I actually happen to agree with that.

And J.K.

Rowling, the wizard writer, came back and accused me and Norton of being in favor of rape and death threats, which I'm absolutely the opposite of that.

I mean, you know, nobody, nobody,

definitely not J.K.

Rowling, definitely not.

As a woman, you know, just as a woman, she should not have to face that kind of stuff online.

And I would never, ever endorse that.

But that's what she accused me of.

And it's that excalation.

Rather than accept and reasonable, say, well, you know, she could come back and say, well, it's not just about trans kids.

It's also about, you know, young cis girls.

You know, she could have engaged in that way.

She went straight in and

didn't play the ball, played the player.

Yeah.

And it's that.

I mean, she's been forced into an impossible position now.

She's kind of dealing with a kind of mania that has been.

Nobody should have to face the kind of abuse that she faces.

It's totally, totally unacceptable.

By the same token, you do look at some of the things she says and you just think,

what are you doing?

Yeah, yeah.

So you have to, I mean, I really, you know,

we're all capable of doing it.

You know, firing something off that you think is absolutely fair and someone else has a different perspective on it and you actually realize you've inadvertently offended them now if I do that I do my best to respond and apologize that's not my intent I didn't really mean to you know that's not what I was getting at and and if people keep coming back at me I just keep apologizing there's not much else I can do but if if I see someone make a you know a racist statement or something and rather than apologizing or trying to correct it they double down don't i think you have to think to yourself well hang on a minute there is something wrong.

You know, if someone apologises and puts their hands up and says, look, you know, I mean, on my Twitter feed, it says, you know, beware all you enter here,

you know, on Twitter, it's always going to be that perception trumps intention.

Because when I hear people talking about cancer culture and say, you know, you're not allowed to say these things anymore, it's such

tosh.

Of course, you're allowed to say them, but you just have to think about it.

You have to think about these things.

And as someone who's been writing for a long time about English identity, that's a dynamite thing.

That's a really, you mess around with that and it will blow up in your face.

Yes.

Particularly if you've got left-wing followers like I have.

So you've got to be really, really careful how you're articulating it, how you're putting out those ideas.

You know, because I'm trying to put them out there, I believed in the

around the turn of the century that the failure of the left to talk about identity, particularly the English identity, had left a vacuum which the British National Party had filled and it left them with the ability to be able to kind of dictate who does and who doesn't belong.

And we need to, you know, we of the more progressive politics, we need to be articulating a sense of Englishness that people can feel that they belong to that.

And if we don't, if we just say, I'm not talking about that, you know, I don't want to go there.

There's loads of different types of socialism.

Anyone on the left recognise that.

And there's different types of patriotism.

Yeah.

People have different reasons why they love the country.

And it's only when you have to

adhere to someone's narrow idea of what that is, because I think the traditional patriot, the things that they love are in many ways immutable, you know, their institutions, the monarchy, the flag.

Yes, it's more a fear of change.

Well, it's just a stability thing, isn't it?

And hierarchy.

I think hierarchy plays a big thing in it as well.

Whereas for myself, it's values, you know, the values that we're supposed to uphold, which are the ones that they ask people who are getting British citizenship to understand, which is, you know, the rule of law, nobody is above the law,

tolerant.

society, you know, all these things are positive things, you know, respect for people's freedom, all these positive things.

They're the things that i think are best about our country they don't mean they only belong to our country this other country's got them as well but in that if we're going to try and uphold those values when we fail to that's when i get angry and that's because i'm a patriot because i love my country and i hate to see it failing to live up to those ideals that i believe that we you know we all of us should be trying to to live up to yeah and yet in a glib way it's very easy for the internet to kind of recast that as like, oh, it's a certain type of lefty nationalism.

Yikes.

Yeah, yeah, well, it's the whole woke thing, isn't it?

Yeah.

I think there's a fear

among some people on

the right of,

and I don't wish to put this question in a pejorative way, but I think that they perceive things like empathy as

not the sort of thing that a man should express.

Yeah.

unmale things, you know,

empathy, compassion, not owning the gun, these kind of things.

They see them as, if not feminine traits, because I don't think they are feminine traits, I think they're universal traits, but they see them as not the sort of thing that makes what they define as a man.

Yeah, I guess a certain type of...

Yeah, yeah.

Well,

these are the guys who are always banging on about woke.

These are the guys who are always trying to, you know, because when you look at what it is that is woke in inverted commas, it's always...

things that are based in empathy, feeling for other people, compassion for other people.

It seems to me

where it's put into policy, they're trying to push back the progress we've made in individual rights over the last 60 years.

Because I think it's clear to most people that if anti-trans campaigners do manage to make it impossible for transgender people, non-binary people to live their lives, they'll then move on to gay marriage, they'll move on to trying to push gays and lesbians back in the closet, and if they win that, they'll move on to abortion rights like they have done in the United States of America.

They're just moving wherever they can to push back against any kind of

idea or expression that is not what they consider to be heteronormative.

So

that's the extreme on the right but then but then I was thinking of like people on the left who look at you and go, oh I don't know about this, I smell nationalism.

Oh yeah, of course.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There definitely is some of that.

There are some people who still can't be dealing with that, won't be doing with that.

And that's why I say when you talk about it, you have to be very careful with the language you use.

You know, you can talk about it, you can address these things, but you have to make sure that what you're talking about is in a way that takes on board the fact that you can both be a nationalist and an internationalist.

You know, I totally reject this idea that people are either people from somewhere or people from nowhere.

You know,

I'm a classic cosmopolitan, me.

I work all over the world.

I go everywhere and I feel a citizen of the world.

You come and see me play live and at the end of the night I'll say, thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.

My name is Billy Bragg.

I'm from Barking Essex.

All right?

Because I know where I belong.

I know where I'm from.

And those two things are not, you know, the opposite ends of a scale.

You can be both of those things.

You know, I spent the entire lockdown putting together a huge, one of them online photo books about our family history.

Because my nephew's...

My brother's oldest boy lives in the house we grew up in now.

My mum passed away and he's moved in there.

And he was asking me who lived in the house before and a bit of the history.

And I thought,

I must put all the old photos in a book for him.

And then I thought, well I could actually write everything I know about the family history in there as well and put it into a narrative and explain to him you know like what his granddad did in India in the war and where he what his great-granddad did in the First World War and you know what I know about where they were living in Barking and East Ham and why his great-great-grandfather came out of Essex and you know whatever I knew about family history so I sort of put that together and knocked up a few of those for the family that's great yeah it's sort of you could almost almost say it's my hobby I suppose that sort of I just kind of get into that family history thing did Did your parents talk about their history a lot?

Did you know about it when you were a teenager?

Well I did this project we had calligraphy lessons and I thought well a family tree will look nice.

So I sat down with my with my dad and he sent me around to see my great or his aunt, my great aunt.

So that would be my grandfather's sister who's the last of her generation or the only one of her generation I ever knew.

She was born in 1888.

And she lived around the corner from our house in a house that was exactly the same as ours, built at the same time, top two down.

But she lived in the upstairs and she still had gaslight right so this is like this would be 71 72 so just going to see her was like going to back into victorian times and if you took the photos what she could remember who was who and all that stuff i mean she died in 73 my dad died in 76 so just before it all disappeared i managed to make notes the basics you know so i kind of know who's who in the photos your dad was a milliner is that right no he was

where did i get that He did make hats.

Yeah, he worked for a hat company.

But most of the time I knew him, he was a warehouseman.

But when I was growing up, he worked...

For Amazon?

Not quite, no.

Where I grew up in Barking,

everybody worked for Ford's, or one of the ancillary companies.

So yeah, he worked in a warehouse.

That's what he did.

Did your mum have a job?

Yep.

Yep.

When I was in my school days, she was in charge of a gang of women who put leaflets through doors.

A girl gang?

Yeah, they were, yeah.

She'd go around and make a chalk mark on the corner where she'd been and off that.

What kind of leaflets?

It wasn't always leaflets.

Sometimes it was samples of things.

Okay.

So the leaflets were just a sample.

It wasn't rabble-rousers.

No, no, no, no.

It was like, you know, five pence off of Daz.

Yeah, okay.

Things like that.

But sometimes it was physical samples.

So

one time we had,

when you know, tuck biscuits.

Sure.

When they first come out, we had just boxes and boxes of these crackers.

Yeah.

We lived on them for a while.

They were great.

And

TUC, I always say.

Yep, indeed.

TUC.

And then trades you.

But yeah, how you will put that through someone's letterbox, I don't know, about crushing it.

I don't know.

Did you all talk and stuff?

And did you have supper together and chat about the world and politics?

No, we didn't talk about politics at all.

Ah, did you not, right?

No.

In Barking,

the Labour Party getting whatever.

I mean, Barking's been...

you know, Labour since 1935 when it was invented.

It was chopped out of Essex as a constituency, which is not unusual.

I mean, where I live in West Dorsey, it's been Tory since 1886, so it's not a weird thing.

But everything was labor where I lived.

What kind of things would you chat about, do you remember?

Yeah, I would talk to my dad about what he did in India during the war.

I talked to him about that.

I talked to my mum sometimes about

her Italian ancestors.

Her grandfather came from a place called Minori in Italy.

Talked to her about her upbringing, these kind of things.

And just generally family chit-chat.

You know, my nan as well.

I had a conversation with her and three of her sisters once in which they had a fabulous argument about whether this event we were talking happened in the First World War or the Second World War.

And she was like, No, no, no, that was the First World War.

And it was resolved by Aunt Lil saying, No, that's when Albert came home and he had that big black thing on his shoulder.

And when it burst, it was full of soot, don't you remember?

And they all went, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I'm sitting there like, this is just gold.

This is just gold.

Wow.

So those kind of things, I've always been into family history, you know, I've always been looking in boxes upstairs, always looking in photos, trying to work out who's who and all that kind of stuff.

So I have a really strong sense of belonging for a cosmopolitan person like myself, which is why

I feel totally at ease either way, you know.

I mean my brother, as I say, my nephew lives in the house we grew up in.

My brother's just been down with his grandkids come down for it because we live in Dorset now by the ocean.

And the little one's got my old box room, poor little thing.

I said to her, is the wall still damp?

Where you used to have your Olivia Newton John posters?

Indeed, my Olivia Newton-John posters I had, I also have the Marx Brothers, I had the Easy Rider poster.

Because I had a Saturday job in a hardware store, which had a record shop in the basement.

So I'd go in there and spend all my money down in the record shop.

I'd get my lunch hour in the booth, sitting in the booth with a record on it.

And they sold posters as well, did they?

Of course they did.

Yeah, record shops always sold posters.

Right.

So I had Olivia Newton John.

I had Simon and Garfunkel.

Posters were such a big deal,

big deal, weren't they?

Yeah, they were a really big deal.

And Joe used to spend like whole afternoons in the West End in all the super nerdy film poster shops.

Yeah, yeah.

And also, I would go out at the back of the record shop on Saturday, and the back they had like a skip there.

And in the skip, they had the promotional material for the record.

So,

yeah, so I would go in there and I got a triangle thing

that sort of hung and spun in the shop.

That had on one side, Simon and Garf Funk, on the other side, Bob Dylan, which if I had Smokey Robinson in there, that would have been my entire life.

I had that hanging in my bedroom for a while, and I had a great sticky fingers kind of fold-out thing.

Rolling stones.

Yeah, yeah.

I framed it and gave it to Wiggy for his 40th or something.

Wiggie's your best mate.

He is.

And do you still see Wiggie?

I do.

I still see him.

He's around.

Yeah, yeah, he is around.

Yeah.

In fact, the last thing we did before the lockdown was Wiggy's 60th birthday.

Yeah.

We got together, Riffraff, the whole band, and we'd done a gig at Dingwalt's.

This is your first band that you formed with Wiggy, who taught you how to play the gig?

He did.

He did.

Oh, it's just terrible.

Animal God.

Oh.

50 years ago next year.

Oh, my God.

Ah, you know,

Christ.

Yeah, he did.

He taught me.

I wanted to play guitar so much that I couldn't master it.

And then Wiggy, who's two years younger than me,

he got hold of it.

He got electric guitar.

I could hear him playing electric guitar through the wall.

So I'm like, I've got to have a word with him.

Rod Stewart songbook.

That's what he got me.

He got me to buy the Rod Stewart songbook.

I said, look, we like these songs.

We love these songs.

Let's learn these songs rather than learn Do-Ray Me and all that.

What's the first one you tackled, remember?

Oh,

probably something like Ooh La La, pretty simple in it, two or three chords, you know, those kind of songs.

Nothing.

And also, the Rodshutt songbook, because it was based on albums, had Dylan songs in it as well, because he always covered a Dylan song.

So I was kind of, that's what I was interested in.

And then I got a Dylan songbook, and Dylan's songs, it turned out, were all G

F and C F and G seven.

Difficult strumming, though, with Dylan, isn't it?

No, really straightforward.

Is it?

Oh, I guess like that.

But then sometimes.

His phrasing is weird, though, isn't it?

My phrasing is weird, Adam.

Okay.

Shouldn't worry about it.

Yeah.

Basically, what happened with me was I didn't have an older sibling to turn me on to music, so I had to rely on my mates' elder sisters.

My parents didn't buy a record player.

We never had a record player, but they bought me a reel-to-reel tape machine.

Big old thing it was.

And I taped a lot of stuff off the radio, obviously.

But...

What was just with holding the mic in front of it?

Sometimes with my mum saying things on it or, you know, someone ringing the doorbell or the phone going.

Have you still got any of those tastes?

I have.

I've got them all sadly.

Yeah.

I dread to think what they sound like.

But more importantly than that, I had a mate around the corner, Paul Charmin, whose sister Leslie had impeccable taste.

And she had Motown chart busters, volume three, four and five.

I went around and recorded those.

And then he came around one day with Bridge Over Troll Water and he knew I was obsessed with Simon Garfunkel.

And he had Bridge Over Troll Water and he just came around with it like that and went like that with it on the door and I was like, oh my God.

He said, yeah, come around tomorrow.

We'll go down the, he had like a lean to at the bottom of his garden.

We went down there and

recorded through the air as well, you know, with a mic by the dance set.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you can, I always thought it was on the record, but actually it's me and Paul Charmin talking in very high, squeaky voices, quietly in the background.

It sounds like birds.

And it was one of those things you could flip over, you know.

And then a few other friends,

elder sisters, had other Simon and Garfunker records.

So I was in pig heaven with those, just listening to those.

That would be good to hear that version of Bridge Over Troubled Water with like extra production layers.

That's right.

Yeah,

yeah.

With the birds as well, the Bomb Paul Chalmers Garden, because it backed onto Barking Park, like all our houses backed onto the park, which was a boon when we were growing up.

So, yeah, so that was kind of my introduction to writing.

So, I was writing songs then before I learned how to play the guitar.

I was just obsessed with songwriting.

You know, I was one of those kids who wrote poetry at school, like we all did, but I just didn't stop.

Yeah, everyone did, didn't they?

They had to in English.

But everyone else stopped.

Well, I didn't stop.

I don't know why everyone else stopped.

But I didn't.

Because poetry was always seen as the most cringey thing, wasn't it?

Like, er.

You've obviously never given a girl a poem.

Actually, I have.

I have.

I do like poems.

I gave my wife poems, and she, but they were sort of silly poems.

They were tongue-in-cheek.

Oh, mate.

Don't be doing tongue-in-cheek with me.

Mate, I've done a whole life of tongue-in-cheek, Billy.

I'm trying to get out of it at this late stage.

Too much tongue, not enough cheek, I would say.

I want to clarify, though, the sentiment was not tongue-in-cheek.

It was just there were they were humorous and

they weren't totally heart on sleeve.

No, no, I've written poems like that as well.

Yeah.

In the old days when we used to communicate over vast distances by facts, I would, on a flight, I would write her a poem or something like that.

And facts would, of course, all just disappeared now.

I know.

Well, just talking about all this stuff, to someone aged, you know, the age of my son, who my eldest son is 20,

none of that computes at all.

the idea of sticking a microphone in front of some speakers to record a song and that was the only going to be the only way you i also explained to her about dial a disc as well when you could when you had a phone number was it 176 175 you could ring up and hear a particular song that's right mad and we did it why did we do that what was that was i told someone about that the other day and maybe it was even my wife my wife and she she just said what yeah that didn't exist she'd never done that she was like why would you do that I was like to hear the song and she's like and so how do you hear the song I was like down the phone she's like what just down the earpiece of the phone I was like yeah yeah I remember listening to souvenir by orchestral maneuvers in the dance I bought that single yeah that's a great single it's a peach isn't it what a riff and even down the um phone i was like yeah this is doing this is doing because you couldn't just call stuff up like you do now you couldn't just put it in there and up it comes yeah yeah i guess lots of producers do this now is to have a little shitty speaker in the middle of the mixing desk.

And then famously Phil Spector would do that.

Yeah, yeah.

So he had just a tiny crap speaker.

So he'd be able to hear the mix through that.

This is what I said to Jack.

Jack, unless you've listened to something like, you know, tumbling dice

or jumping jack flash through a car radio speaker, you've not really heard what it was mixed for.

I know even then you've got the big speakers in the door now.

It's like, that's not what they were mixed to do.

You need to get a dance dance set or something and plant on a dance set.

That was the great thing about

the reel-to-reel tape machine.

I listened back to it about 10 years later.

I probably haven't listened to it, as I say, for 40 years, but 10 years later, I fixed it all up.

It probably doesn't run now.

The heads have probably died.

But it was, the Motown stuff was,

the beats,

it was so trebly, but it was just straight in, you know, it got right into my head.

It was just all.

I just loved that sound.

Wow, if you listen back, that would be trippy.

That would be like a time machine.

Really weird, because you know who I was on there.

Aunt Anna's voice is on there from I was born in 1888.

She speaks to me.

Yeah, I haven't heard that for a long time.

My dad's voice is on there.

I haven't heard that for a long time.

I have a sound.

Oh, man.

That is weird, isn't it?

To go back into that.

What would that do to you?

How do you deal with things like that?

I get very sentimental.

Yeah, I am a very sentimental person.

I am a sentimental person.

But yeah, it would be nice to hear that again.

You know, there's not many, there's no film clips of Aunt Anna.

There's precious few film clips of my my dad so yeah you know anything like that I'm always up for a little bit of that yeah you don't mind going back that's not too painful your dad died when you were young yeah he did I was 18 he had cancer for 18 months yeah he died well it was you know it was terrible absolutely terrible and it kind of shattered our little family unit but within about three or four months of my dad dying punk come along Like I was standing at a bus stop.

I got on the bus and it was a different life.

I was a different person.

I literally was a different person.

Before I was Stephen Bragg, that Wally I went to school with, you know, never had a proper haircut and couldn't afford to get a Ben Sherman.

And then I got on the punk bus and all of a sudden I was Billy Bragg.

I was writing these songs and fronting this band.

A completely different person.

So the remorse I felt for it all, I just boxed that away and I didn't really, I was in a strange situation where I didn't talk to anybody about it until in the early 90s I accidentally wrote a song about it.

I was writing a song about about something else,

and this line came through.

I closed my eyes, and when I looked, your name was in the memorial book.

And I thought, oh,

that's a bit weird.

Because

where my dad's ashes are cremated, there's a memorial book there that's open on the day that he died.

And you can go and see his name.

And we always used to always go with my mum.

I would always go on that day.

I'd go and see him.

We'd go over there.

And that line came through, and I was like, oh, if I go down this one, if I go down this line, I'm going to have to go, not only am I going to have to go back and revisit all that, I'm gonna have to be able to talk to absolute strangers about it.

Yeah, because you talk on stage, right?

Well not just that.

You've sung a song and someone comes backstage, you sung a song about how you felt about your old man dying.

It's one of those songs that I'm very, you know, I don't do it intro, I don't intro, I just play it.

I just play it.

That's called Tank Park Salute, by the way.

And

it was my mum's favourite song.

Out of all my songs.

I'm not sure she even knew many of them, but she would always come and see me.

And if I I was doing a show and she'd come along, she'd seen me before, she'd, you're going to play that song, aren't you?

And I'd be like, yeah, I'm going to play the song.

And then my nephews would be like, why do you always play that song that makes man cry?

Ask you, Nan.

You're Nanatoya.

Wow, that's heavy.

It is.

It's good, though.

It's good to be able to

have a song that allows you to do that.

Yeah, I mean, it's heavy in a lovely way.

Your mum was able to appreciate it.

Because I think my...

sense about what business I'm in is I'm in the business of empathy.

Empathy is the currency of music.

You You know, whether you're listening to what the person's singing about and thinking about yourself being in that situation and empathising with someone in that situation, whether it's political or love song or whatever, you know.

Or the other way around,

the person who wrote the song has somehow touched on something very close to you.

And you're drawing empathy from the song in the sense that you feel you're not alone.

Because

that's the power that music has.

The power to make you feel that you're not alone.

You're not the only person who's ever felt this way.

And that, again, is another great power because it's not the power to change the world.

It's a strange job to be in a political songwriter where people think that music changes the world.

And I tell audiences that it don't and they like, it's an audible sigh when I say it.

It's like, you know, it's like telling them there's no Santa Claus.

But

it's the truth.

If anybody, you know, generally

I'm the only person who's been trying to change the world through music for 40 years in the room when I say it.

So if anyone's got the authority to be able to say it and the perspective, it's me.

But having said that, what I can tell them is that the power that music has is the power to make you believe the world can be changed.

And that is itself a great, great power.

It brings people together.

It allows them to express their emotions about something, their solidarity about something.

And you're in a room, you know, you go and see your favourite band or your favourite artist and they're singing a song that you've invested so much into.

And then...

you know, you're singing along with them and they're singing it and a thousand other people singing it.

Whatever it is that you feel is accepted.

Whatever it is that you've put into that song feels like you're part of it.

That's the reason why they sing at football.

It's the reason why they sing in church.

They're looking for a communal experience that makes them feel that they're not alone.

And that's why I was never worried during the lockdown that we would all come back to be able to play gigs again.

Because people need that.

People really need that experience in the dark together.

How was your lockdown?

Well, it's the thing, you see, the problem for me was I did a load of things that I'm not sure if it was a lockdown, if it was being in my 60s.

It could have just been I'd have done these things anyway in my 60s.

Right, okay.

So

I happened to be that weird age.

But yeah, I got a lot of stuff done.

I emptied out the basement, moved house, did the family history thing.

And eventually, when I run out of things to do and I was starting to think, oh, I am starting to wonder if this is ever going to come now, I suddenly realise, oh yeah, make an album, write some songs and make an album.

So I did, I made an album while we were at it.

So yeah, I kind of respect it was a really, really tough time for a lot of people.

But in my situation, I mean, I lived on a beach,

which no one could come to, apart from those of us who lived in the village.

So

perfectly positioned.

I can't complain.

Yeah.

I can't complain, mate.

We're halfway through the podcast.

I think it's going really great.

The conversation's flowing like it would between a geezer and his mate.

Alright, mate.

Hello, Giza.

I'm pleased to see you.

Ooh, there's so much chemistry.

It's like a science lab of talking.

I'm interested in what you said.

Thank you.

There's fun chat and there's deep chat.

It's like Chris Evans is meeting Stephen Hawking.

I was at school with a guy called Ben Walden.

He was one of our best mates, our little gang.

And he loved your stuff.

And

we,

the rest of us, were kind of into very different music.

We were into what I would,

you know, there's two kinds of music fan, I think, at that age.

Either you're you're a sort of fantasy music guy or you're a reality music guy right and I was more a kind of escapist type person and that was reflected in the sort of movies that I liked as well you know and I liked David Bowie but I like Thomas Dolby and the Thompson Twins and Synthesizers and Gary Newman and Echo and the Bunnyman great band and in 1984 when I was listening to them you were on tour with them I was I'll I'll return to Ben Walden in a second, but what was that like briefly?

Well, I'll tell you what that was like.

It was my first time in America.

Yeah.

So it was not just being out with the bunnymen, who were a great bunch, particularly Will Sargent.

Yeah.

Really lovely guy, really bonded with Will, smashing guy.

But sitting on the back of their tour bus watching America go by, and we did go north, south, east, west, and we went everywhere on that tour, on that tour bus.

And you took Wiggy with you?

Wiggie.

Well, this is what happened.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I got this gig literally probably, I mean, I know, because I subsequently spoke to him, it was Bill Drummond.

Right.

He wanted me on the, not the Bunnyman so much, but Bill Drummond.

Because he really thought what I was doing was interesting and it would be interesting to throw me in front of an American audience.

So, this is Bill Drummond, known to a lot of people from the KLF.

KLF.

Bill then, the manager of the Bunnyman.

Yeah, a real mover and shaker.

Lovely guy.

He thought it'd be good to put me out there in front of them.

And I was really cheap.

It was just me on the back of the bus.

You know, they paid my hotels, they paid me a wage, they gave me PDs, and they said I could bring a roadie.

So I'm like, okay, this could be the only time I ever tour America, ever.

This could all just go tomorrow.

I was still in that phase, you know?

You released one album at that point.

Yeah, two.

One.

This is

summer, August 1984.

This is still in my first flush.

So you never know.

It's just the ground's going to disappear in front of you.

I was still buying two copies of The Enemy if I was in it in case I lost the first one.

It was that kind of time.

I rang up Wiggs and said, look, Wiggs, how many times do we sit in?

my mum's back room and dream about touring America.

This is it.

You've got to come with me, mate.

You've got to come.

It's going to be, be, you know, me writing to you and telling you about it.

Come on, we've got to do this, mate.

So we did.

So Wiggie came with me.

And it was just the whole thing was super enhancing because I had someone to laugh about it with.

I had someone to, you know, walk around and say, a fire hydrant.

Oh, my God.

You know, the whole thing was that.

And we kind of had a sort of spiritual moment where we sort of somehow connected with our teenage selves sitting in back rooms and barking, dreaming about this.

It was kind of like a really

sort of wow, you know, we've actually done this moment.

it wouldn't have been anything like the the amazing experience it was if Wiggie hadn't had been there too yeah I did a thing a couple of weeks ago

in Barking Town all they were unveiling a plaque to Neil Young because he recorded one of the tracks from the Harvest album in Barking Assembly Halls in 1972 while I was in double physics yeah a man needs a maid was recorded yeah was recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra in Barking Assembly Rooms which is now the

Broadway Theatre in Barkin, yeah.

Good fact.

With the London Symphony Orchestra and Jack Nietzsche.

Right.

And Glynn Johnson and the Rolling Stones Mobile was parked outside for a week.

Wow, I didn't know that.

Isn't that incredible?

Yeah.

I can imagine Neil Young walking around Barking, going to Peske's Fish Bar and getting 74 cod and chips for the London Symphony Orchestra.

It just blew my mind.

Although I suppose you would have probably gone to Wimpy's at the railway station to get some similar, something like a hamburger or something.

It just does my head in.

Neil Young filmed the making of Harvest.

There's a movie that only got released just recently, and it's all in there.

And they showed, we went, Wiggy and Bob, who's the drummer,

we went to watch the film, and the whole process was just pretty mad.

I mean, what else was recorded there?

Apparently, he had the best acoustics for orchestras in London.

I'll tell you what else was recorded there.

The orchestrated tubular bells was recorded there.

But even weirder, the soundtrack for Psycho was recorded there.

Wow.

Parking Tanner.

Wow.

Isn't that incredible?

Yeah, that is.

That's really amazing, isn't it?

But yeah, Harvest, Neil Young, A Man Needs a Maid.

That whole orchestra.

That was recorded

in Barking.

I want to see that film.

That sounds great.

Yeah, I can't remember what it's called now.

You know, Full Metal Jacket was filmed in Barking as well, didn't you?

It was the old Beckham Gas Works, which weirdly is where my great-grandfather came from Essex to work in the 1860s.

And they

were knocking it down.

So it was kind of like they'd blown up a few of the buildings, and one of the buildings had kind of blown some of the legs away, and it tilted that way.

And so the battle scenes, all the battle scenes,

where the sniper shoots cowboy.

Yeah.

All that was filmed there in those places.

And I had a friend who was a.

And to be fair, it does look like barking.

Don't you think?

The palm trees.

There's a couple of palm trees.

You can see, if you look closer, you can see in one scene, you can see Shooter's Hill in the background, just on the other side of the river.

But that was pretty weird, wasn't it?

The idea of Kubrick.

Yeah.

Right at the end of the Doctors Light Railway.

It is so weird the thought of him being in the UK for all that time

and being exposed to British culture on a daily basis.

It is weird, isn't it?

He used to apparently come down to West Bay.

They had a family place, which is near where I live, the next village along from where I live in Dorset.

The family had a place at West Bay.

He might have been on the beach there when we first went down there, just sitting there, Kubricking away.

I used to arm wrestle with my boy when he was younger.

He went to film school for a while, my boy.

Oh, yeah.

And he was a big Spielberg spielberg fan and i'm like kubrick kubrick every time

so after now now now he's seen paths of glory now he's seen you know we watched that the other day what a great film holy yeah what an amazing film what a film and except our experience of watching paths of glory was somewhat affected by my wife's insistence at a certain point i mean it's complicated because we had friends, family friends, staying with us and they'd been having a hard time.

My wife said, Let's all watch a movie together.

I said, What about Paths of Glory?

I mean, I gave them some options, I gave them some light comedy options plus Paths of Glory.

And they said, Yeah, let's do Paths of Glory.

You know, I said, It's pretty fucking good.

Paths of Glory.

They're like, Fine, let's watch that.

So we watched that.

But then, you know, this is, for anyone who hasn't seen it, one of the most intense, powerful films ever made about war in general and the madness thereof.

Anyway, my wife was just feeling how intense it was and I think didn't like the idea of the friends that we had watching feeling uncomfortable or something.

And so like at the absolute most tense part, firing squad scene.

Yeah, the firing squad scene, yeah, yeah.

She goes, Would anyone like a goo pudding or a magnum?

I've got some in the fridge.

Oh, I'll tell you what.

And I was thinking, I'll have the lime goo pudding.

Well, you would have been sorted.

I was just sitting there thinking, is this really happening?

And then it took ages for everyone to go, no, I'm fine.

Most people didn't want.

A couple of said, yeah, I'll have a magnum.

It's like, Jesus,

it's the firing squad scene.

Yeah.

I'll tell you, those goo puddings are really...

The glass thing they come in, the glass receptacle.

The ramekin.

Yeah, the ramekin, thank you.

The ramekin.

Wasn't that a movie by spider.

No.

The ramekin, yeah, Chris.

Is

absolutely brilliant for catching spiders.

I've got several of them around.

My dear partner is absolutely terrified of spiders.

I often get a shout to come and catch a spider and throw it out.

And I find a postcard and a goo ramekin.

So I constantly have to keep eating goo because they get used for other things.

Someone takes me out of the cupboard and puts their trade union badges in it.

Sure, you know.

Absolutely.

Stuffed with trade union badges at our house.

Plectrums.

Plectrums.

Plectrums.

You've got your cashew nuts.

Piercings.

For the smokers, it's a wonderful ashtray.

It is, it is.

It's done.

They've served all the households.

They have.

They never get recycled in our house.

I'm not going to recycle it and they go in the cupboard, the ramekins.

Yeah, I finally did recycle.

Is that true?

No.

I had a bit ages ago in my stand-up thing where I would show, I would talk about goo puddings and talk about how the experience of eating a goo pudding, one day it suddenly occurred to me when I was halfway through eating this goo pudding and trying to make it last.

It suddenly occurred to me like, shit, this is like my life.

And this is the age I'm at now in middle age.

I'm halfway through my goo pudding, probably more than halfway through the goo pudding.

And now I've really got to make these last few bites last.

Oh, what about if you're only half of it and it's all base?

Don't mind.

No sweetness.

Oh, but well, no, because there's just deliciousness in the basement.

There is, you're right.

You're true.

It's true.

And then, well, what you do is also you excavate the chocolatey bits under the rim.

Oh, yeah.

As well.

That's a whole other chapter.

The rimming of it.

To the goo experience.

The rimming of the goo.

It is.

It's a nice phrase.

I think it's pronounced gnu, isn't it?

No, there's another thing I had to stop buying because it was too sweet.

But then again, I did.

I was looking, what do I have?

Oh, I've got a lovely thing from my mum's.

It's absolutely hard to describe and I've no idea what it is.

But it's like,

it's almost like a bowl that's melted.

It's pottery.

But it's a 96, and it was on the living room table in our house.

So when my mum passed away with all the things, I thought, I'm going to put that out of my office and just, so I'll put back, you know, someone gives me a badge or a pick or I've got a bit of change in my pocket.

It all goes in there.

And every now and then I have to empty it out and start again.

So that's, I use the spider catch ramekin and I'm like, now I've got nothing to catch spiders in.

So I was in Morrison's the other day.

I was like, oh, good excuse to get some goo.

And now they're sitting in the

partner's looking at me like, goo in the fridge?

I'm sure you'll get it.

Yeah, spiders.

You'll get roasted for that somehow.

No, I'll catch bigger spiders.

Although I

went for one in the bathroom yesterday.

I'm really sorry to say this.

And I unfortunately such a small spider and it was right up against the edge.

And as I was trying to cup him, I

you can't really squash someone a bit, can you?

I totally squashed him, but he was, you know, I was trying to throw him out rather than squash him.

Yeah, definitely, definitely.

I accidentally trod on a frog once.

Isn't that a euphemism?

I was trodden a duck.

Sorry.

What's trod on a duck?

Oh, that's a far.

No, trod on a frog.

It was like it was, I was staying at a girlfriend's house and I went downstairs for a pee in the garden.

I guess someone was using the toilet, or I don't know what, but I went out in bare feet.

Oh, you frogged in bare feet.

And I felt it crunch.

Oh,

it was awful, awful.

I couldn't sleep.

That is sad.

Oh, I had a dream.

I was back at school,

putting on a play with my friends.

It was the opening night,

But I did not know my lines

We had spent months and months painting sets and making costumes and posters for the play

But we had not rehearsed the play

I didn't know what I was supposed to say

And yet the rest of the cast knew all of their words and their moves and the songs in the play

And they were shaking their heads as the curtain went up.

And I was still asking what I should say.

And suddenly I knew what to do.

I sat on stage and did April.

Now, I mentioned my friend Ben

tantalizingly.

Yeah.

Yeah, he was such a good mate.

And he's one of those people I don't see enough of now in later life.

But I got in touch with him when I knew I was going to talk to you.

And I said, Guess who I'm going to talk to?

And he's like, oh man, I'm jealous.

He says, please thank Billy for speaking out for a lot of what I felt as a teenager, both emotionally and politically.

And, you know, we were at a public school, myself and Ben, and we had been sent there by our parents who felt that, you know, they wanted to give us every advantage in life, having struggled their way up to...

the position where they could afford to send their children somewhere like that.

Ben's dad was the political interviewer Brian Walden.

Oh, wow.

I remember him on Sundays.

Yeah, he was a big fan of Mrs.

Thatcher, wasn't he?

Well, he was, and he was.

Eventually.

Like, he did he start labour.

He started labour, yeah.

Yeah, he went there and then became a bit, yeah.

I remember his voice in my head now, yeah, yeah.

That's Ron.

Ron Baldwin.

Very distinctive voice, yeah, yeah.

And uh, he's a great interviewer, for he was.

I mean, he gave her a hard time a couple of times.

He did, yeah.

But yes, I think he drifted over right in his later years.

It does happen to some people, I don't know how, but it does happen.

I've just dripped, I've just drifted to

broad strokes.

Whereas I used to talk ideologically now, I find myself talking so much more about empathy and accountability.

And if Woody Guthrie famously had, this machine kills fascists on his guitar.

If I had to paint a slogan on my guitar, it would be deaf to cynicism.

I think cynicism is, you know, undermines anyone who wants to make the world a better place.

Their own cynicism is their biggest enemy to that sense that nobody gives a shit about anything and nothing will ever change.

That's what Rupert Murdoch wants you to believe.

You've got to get over that.

So yeah, so I'm, I don't, I haven't drifted off right wing, but I have drifted, you know, my Marxist friends from the 80s who I knocked around with during the minor strike would, you know, would have scoffed if I'd have talked about those kind of things back in the day.

Yeah, I was going to ask you how you feel different to the person who

released Life's a Riot with Spy versus Spy and then

I think politically.

I think I'm a bit more pragmatic than I was.

I mean, when you're younger,

your radicalism is pretty sharp, isn't it?

Yeah, I mean, you wrote, you know, a song called Which Side Are You On?

I didn't adapt that.

That was written by a woman named Florence Reese in the 1930s in the United States of America.

But yeah, I did,

you know, and I still do use that song.

Absolutely.

I've seen you singing that on picket lines.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

I think it's still a valid song.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But that's why I like you and find you intriguing because one of the reasons.

Yep.

Because you are able to have that political passion that's fairly fundamentalist in some ways but still be a big advocate for empathy and for talking to everyone.

Well, what is socialism about if it's not about empathy, Adam?

What is socialism other than an organised compassion?

If it's not, then it doesn't look like socialist to me if it's some other

ideological thing.

Ultimately, it's got to be about...

hasn't socialism got to be about holding capitalism to account?

Socialism got to be about a society based on equality and liberty.

So what's changed is the the way I articulate my politics.

That's changed.

I was never someone who understood the Marxist way of talking about things because

I didn't go to uni, I didn't learn politics.

They'd be using the language of Marxism, which at the time I didn't really think was relevant to what I was doing and I don't think it's relevant to what anyone's doing anymore.

The language of Marxism doesn't mean shit to anyone anymore.

But unfortunately, the things that Marx was right about haven't been resolved.

So we're in a situation where we have to find other words and other means to articulate these ideas.

And as someone with a poetic bent, I've tried my hardest to come up with other ways of talking about socialism.

For instance, I have a song called Upfield, which talks about socialism of the heart, which is compassion, rather than socialism of the head, which would be ideology.

You know, and I was trying to write, you know, I rewrote the lyrics of the Internationale to make them less

ideological and more, you know, have a green dimension to them, you know, to bring them into the post-ideological period.

We needed to throw away and throw into the dustbin of history the totalitarianism that came with Soviet communism.

But the fundamental ideals of fairness, of liberty and equality and accountability, we needed to find a new way to articulate them.

We can't let them go into the, you know, throw the baby out with the bark for there.

So I'm trying to make sense of shit.

Adam, that's all I'm trying to do.

Whether I'm writing a book or whether I'm writing an article for something or writing a song, you know,

I've got a perspective that I'm trying to put across and it's usually because I don't see that reflected somewhere else.

You know, that's how I ended up writing a book about Skiffle.

You know, it was an area that I've, something I felt really passionately about and I felt that the books that have been written about it were written by people who were there at the time, like Chas McDavid's book is brilliant, and it tells you what happened to him while he was at Skiffle, you know, while there.

But I felt it was,

in its context, was much more important than that because it was really the music that introduced the guitar into British pop.

It was the music of the first generation of British teenagers.

It was a music made by African-American roots musicians in another country that wasn't on the radio, yet these kids were able to connect with it and feel some of them more in common with an African-American sharecropper in Mississippi than they did with their own dad.

You know, that's more than just, oh, I saw Lonnie Donegan and we've done some lead belly songs.

No disrespect to Chaz and his book because it's really, really great.

But in its context, Skiffle in its context is bigger than punk, more important than punk, greater than punk.

And punk was everything to me.

Punk was like the, you know, year zero, be-all and end-all.

You know, and I still live by those ideas of do-it-yourself and that.

But I always had this sneaking feeling that skiffle was somehow more important than that.

And where's the insight and the book that puts it in its proper perspective?

So when my publishers asked me if I was interested in writing about something,

it seemed to me it'd be interesting to...

Skiffle time.

Yeah.

Have you done a skiffle Spotify playlist?

Of course i have of course you

have all right i'll put a link in there yeah of course i have yeah yeah yeah for sure that's good i need to investigate yeah what qualifies as skiffle then what do you need to be have you got to have a washboard have you got you need a guitar you need a t-chest base if you know a t-chest bass yeah so you get you know what a t-chest is sure turn it upside down yeah you put a hole in the middle yeah you put a bit of bailer twine or a very strong string yes through the hole in the middle of a knot on it so it pulls and you get a broom pole you stick the broom pole on the the on a hole in the corner of the tea chest and you put a bit of string to it and it makes a bit of a

noise depending on how much string you hold down to the brum pole like a rhythm then you get a washboard

uh and uh that's it really no drums no brass instruments no keyboards just those all the percussion is coming from the washboard yeah well if you think about elvis presley's sun session recordings who played drums on the sun sessions i don't know nobody all the percussion is coming from the bass from the slap bass.

There's no drums on them at all.

Really?

Yeah.

It's just three guys.

It's two guitarists.

Mystery train, isn't it?

Yeah, mystery train's got no drums.

Wow.

It's all Bill Black playing the bass.

Right.

And in that sense, rockabilly is the equivalent in America.

Not in the same sense culturally, but in the same kind of, as I say, they're synonymous and they kind of come and go in the same period between 56 and 59.

They're gone and it's moved on to other bigger things.

But skiffle doesn't happen in the United States of America at all.

Because what skiffle is, it's basically a playground craze.

I mean, you know, when Lonnie Donegan has a hit in 56, early 56 with Rock Island Line, and he goes on the road, he's playing...

Was he a Brit then?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Born in Scotland, but he's lived most of his life in the East End of London.

Hence the name.

Lonnie Donegan, his mum's Irish, his dad's Scottish.

He's in a trad jazz band with Chris Barber.

He's the banjo player.

And

because

they're learning these songs from the original recordings, there's no way to learn these songs other than listening close to the original recordings.

Recordings made in the 1920s

in America, those were made on one microphone.

So consequently, the musicians had to blow really hard to

get on the recording.

So these guys, 20, 30 years later, in the UK are listening and thinking, oh, that's how you do it.

You blow really hard.

So they're doing the gigs.

They're blowing the shit out of the instruments.

Consequently, after about 30 minutes, their lips are so numb, they can't play.

So not to lose the audience, they put down their brass instruments, they pick up acoustic guitars, guitars and they play lead-belly songs.

And this is what becomes Skiffle, this so-called breakdown session, playing these lead-belly songs.

So Donegan records Rock Island Online on a Nornes jazz record with Chris Barber in 54.

But when he goes out on tour, Donegan, after he's had a hit with it, because it doesn't sound like anything else on the radio, he's playing variety hauls.

He's playing two shows, five nights, two shows a night.

George Harrison is 13, he goes every night.

McCartney's 14, he goes on the Friday night.

And Lenin's 16, he doesn't go, but he forms his skiffle band a week later.

And multiply that by 1,000.

And they're all in that age group.

They're all in that age group.

And so consequently, when Chuck Berry turns up six months later, and all these songs are just three chords, the transition is seamless.

But what happens then is, in the United States of America, white kids don't start picking up acoustic guitars and learning forests in them until the folk revival, which doesn't happen until 59.

Okay.

so what you've got is you've got a load of British boys who are 18 months to two years ahead of their white American counterparts.

So when the Beatles break the US in 1963,

there's already a road-hardened cohort of bands who've been playing since they were 13, 14 years old

to come in behind the Beatles.

The whole of the British invasion of the United States of America is based on the nursery of skiffle.

There you go.

Without skiffle, none of that.

In fact, I would argue everything up to punk is its roots in Skiffle because one of the guys in ABBA was in a Skiffle band.

Dr.

Fieldgood was made of an amalgamation of two Skiffle bands.

Jimmy Page, famously, there's a clip of him on TV, age 14, playing Mama Don't Allow No Skiffle playing around here, with Hugh Weldon interviewing him.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yep, yep, yep.

You know, so Skiffle is the.

You can blame Skiffle for everything.

Everything, mate.

Everything.

Social media, Skiffle.

The Vietnam War.

Brexit.

Yep.

Skiffle.

Schiffle.

No, Skiffle is the...

And the reason they don't talk about it is because they were all 14.

Yeah.

You know, if you're Jimmy Page, right?

And you go to America in 68, 69 with Led Zeppelin for the first time, and the Rolling Stones say, who inspired you to pick up a guitar?

You ain't going to say Lonnie Donegan, are you?

You're going to say Muddy Waters.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know?

Wow, that's amazing.

Yeah, it is.

And

that story needed to be told.

So in a nutshell, that's what I'm trying to do.

I'm trying to light on things that I think are important that aren't getting attention and try, and whether I'm writing a song, as I say, or, you know, it might be the fact that I know all of the words to the original greatest hits of the Carpenters album, which I was sorting out in my lock-up and I was driving back and forth, singing along, you know,

oh, Rainy Days and Mondays always get me down.

What a great song that is.

What a great song.

Funny how I always wind up here with you, you know, come and find the one who loves me.

You know, it's just

great, great song.

Great songwriting as well.

Yeah.

And beautifully sung by Karen Carpenter.

What a voice.

You know that song was originally called Groupy.

Right.

No, I didn't know.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's written by Leon Russell.

Ah.

I'm reading his book at the moment.

Yeah, he wrote it with...

Come on, what was the woman that he had a scene with?

Rita Coolidge.

Rita Coolidge, okay.

They wrote it, and it's originally Groupy, yeah.

There's a great version by Delaney and Bonnie.

If you've not heard it, oh man, you've got it here.

It's got Bronny Brown.

She's singing it like a wreath.

I was in a record store in America somewhere and it was on.

and I'm like, I'd only heard the Carpenter's version.

She sings, you know, What to Do to Make You Come Again.

It's kind of like, it's a completely different angle.

It's actually called Groupy.

I mean, Cameron Carpenter is a beautiful version, but Bonnie Bramlett, it's one of those times where you have to, you know, tip your hat.

Yeah.

I'm checking my account at the memory bank.

The memory bank, the memory bank.

We're thanking you for backing all your memories.

I'd like to take out a happy memory Thanks.

The memory bank, the memory bank.

Oh, sorry, but you very drunk.

I will repay with interest when I get back up on my happy feet.

The memory bank, the memory bank.

You very sorry, but we're closing your account.

My what?

Where am I?

The memory bank, the memory bank.

We're the nice bank.

Would you like to bank with us?

Can I ask you finally, though, about your opportunity to meet Bob Dylan that you ran away from?

I did.

and explain how and why you felt you had to run from Bobbles.

Bob Dylan is a giant in most of our lives, isn't he?

He's kind of like too much.

He might be too much.

And

I don't know.

What would you say if you met Bob Dylan?

Hi, Bob.

I like your records.

What would you say to him?

I'm purposefully not gone to see Dylan.

I don't want it spoiled.

You've never seen him live?

Yeah, I have, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

But up to this point, I'd not.

Oh, I see.

So I get some tickets to go and see my Amher Smith Odeon.

And

my drummer at the time was going out with Chrissy Hind.

Chrissy Hind was there.

She disappears off backstage.

And she comes back before the show starts.

And she said, you know, you must come and see Bob after the show.

I'm sure he'd love to meet you.

So I spend the entire show thinking, what the f ⁇ am I going to say to Bob Dylan?

Hi, I'm Billy Bragg.

I'm

right song.

So at the end of the gig, I was

just left like a rocket, just went out and just couldn't face it.

And the funny thing is, while we were making Mermaid Avenue,

this is the record you did in the middle of the year.

Yeah, we were at Wilco, yeah, in Chicago.

We were supposed to be routining it, but we ended up, I think we were called the California Stars that week.

But while we were there, I think it might have been the first day we were in the studio, that night, Dylan was playing at a

club.

I can't remember what I played it opposite Wrigley Field.

And Dylan was playing, and I did manage to blag tickets.

He was really good.

I thought he was really great.

He was waggling his leg like Elvis.

And the Wilcoes were saying to him, Look, he's doing it, Elvis.

And I'm like, no, no, no, he's not.

He's trying to keep his circulation going.

He's got a dead leg.

I've done that.

But he was really good.

And they were just bugging me to go backstage and ask Bob Dylan to come to the studio and play these Woody Guffery songs with us.

And I just said to them,

We're in the studio with Woody Guffery, okay?

Isn't that enough?

Isn't it enough?

What would it be like if he came down?

What would we do?

What would we do?

And they were like, oh, yeah, what would we do?

Yeah, okay.

Let's just, let's just, let's just keep focused on what we're doing.

We've got that.

We're in the studio with the little guy anyway, okay?

With Woody.

Let's just keep focused on the little guy.

That's what our work is here.

That was your nickname for him, was it?

Yeah, that's what we recorded.

We referred to him.

Yeah, the little guy.

Okay.

Yeah.

What would the little guy do?

And have you thought, though, now what you would say?

At some point, you've got to meet Bobble.

Surely.

Bob Dylan has got to come and...

Well, Adam, he mentioned mentioned me in his book.

Have a little powwow.

That's right.

You've got to mention in Chronicles.

I've got a mention in Chronicles with regard to the Woody lyrics.

So I'm satisfied with that, mate.

That's pretty cool.

You know, one of the nicest things anyone ever said to me?

What?

I know who you are, Bill.

It's okay.

You don't have to tell me.

You know who said that to me?

Who?

David fucking Bowie.

Wow.

Yeah.

I was doing a DJ thing.

And he...

I had this weird gig.

I got this weird gig being a DJ in drive time

on Radio 2 when Johnny Walker was suspended for, I think he was snorting Coke on the cover of the News of the World.

Johnny.

Yeah.

And he got suspended and I knew his producer and he said, could you come in for a week and play some records with us?

I'm going to lose my gig.

I'm like, yeah, if you like.

So I did that and eight months later, I was still there.

And they were getting in depths when I went on.

I'm like, you can't get, I am the depth.

You can't get in.

But I did all these amazing, met all these amazing people.

And among them was Bowie.

He came in and we had a chat.

And

I thought, well, I better explain to him that I'm not just a DJ.

You guys think I'm just a DJ.

I'm Billy Bragg.

I'm a singer-song.

He's like,

he sort of patted me.

I know who you are, Bill.

I was like,

oh, good.

David Bowie knows who I am.

I went home to the missus.

I was like, cool.

And did you get to ask him things that you'd always wanted to ask?

Or was it just a sort of easy-going conversation?

It was a relatively easy-going conversation for two reasons.

One, it was Radio 2.

And two, he was David Bowie.

Yeah.

And I'm Billy Bragg.

So I thought, I don't want to get all Billy Bragg on his arm.

Okay.

And what's the first thing he said to me when we finished?

I thought we were going to talk about politics, Bill.

I've got a load of political answers for you.

I'm like, you should have said, mate.

You should have said.

Because he'd had a go at Blair at the time for

supporting China against the Dalai Lama.

He'd had a bit of that.

There was that going on.

I thought,

maybe I shouldn't.

I don't want to

spoil it for everyone.

I want to fuck him off, you know.

So I kept, because it's kind of a strange job.

You know, one week I'm doing him, and the next week I'm doing the Dixie Chicks.

Sure.

You know, or some uh

the mavericks i ended up at the end of that year with more mavericks cds than you could shake a stick at you know i was i was the hero of our uh school uh christmas fate people loved them cds dance the night away oh mate can't i see it i went to interviewed him at the albut oh it was massive but in the end i was like look this really isn't my my job you know i'm not a dj I'm only doing this to help you out.

I've really missed my weekends up as well.

West on my Saturdays.

And I don't don't want to, you know, I'm a poacher.

I'm not a gamekeeper.

I'm really sorry.

Yeah.

But if it was only when we moved to, I said, look, I'm moving to Dorset next week.

That's it, all right?

And happily, they got Johnny back.

By that time, Johnny came back, picked up where he left off.

All good.

I bet you were good at it, though.

I enjoyed it.

There's always podcasting.

There is always podcasting.

Again,

I do have a line in Waiting for the Great Leap Forward.

Yeah.

At the end of that, or I mess around with the, you know, if no one out there understands, start your own bloody podcast and cut out the middleman.

So, there's always you know, the possibility of it.

But I'm writing, I like writing books, I kind of enjoy writing books.

Yeah, you know, when writing a skiffle book, I spent hours in the British Library going through old copies of Melody Maker and stuff like that, and digging around all that.

And I can't really, I kind of enjoyed all that.

The archivist in me

kind of enjoyed all that kind of stuff.

So, I don't know if I've got the stamina to

keep going on a podcast.

Oh, I don't know.

I think you'd be all right.

You think?

Yeah.

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As long as you don't make me sound like a clump, I don't mind what you do.

Wow.

Hey, welcome back, podcast.

Billy Bragg there.

And I'm very grateful that he gave up his time to talk to me and be so friendly, especially as I really screwed up that day.

You know, I say from time to time, I tell you, especially when I put episodes out years after they were recorded, how disorganized I am and maybe you think that I'm being disingenuous, but I'm not.

I am disorganized.

I'm not proud of the fact.

Seamus does what he can, but he's in New York.

So

often it's down to me to keep the show on the road.

And often I screw up.

And that was one of those days that I did.

When I was supposed to be talking to Billy, had it down in my diary as 2 2 p.m.

Got on the 11:30 train that would get me into London with just enough time to get over to King's Cross, where we were recording.

4:2 p.m.

And as I got on the train, I got a text from Ted Cummings, who was wrangling Billy that day.

And Ted said, Looking forward to seeing you at midday.

And I had a little flash of kind of indignation, like, no, what?

No, it's 2 p.m.

And then I had to go back and check my emails sure enough.

It was midday

Texted back Explained the situation and Ted was so nice about it as was Billy and I really appreciate it

Few links in today's description firstly to Billy's website where you can find his tour dates and all sorts of other info about his releases.

There is a link in the description to that interview that me and Joe did with Billy at Glastonbury in 2000.

Whoa, I mean that really was another world.

There is a link to Billy's skiffle playlist on Spotify.

There's a link to that amazing video of Jimmy Page

aged 13

with his skiffle band

playing Mama Don't Want to Skiffle Anymore as well as Cotton Fields and having a very engagingly stilted interview with Hugh Weldon.

There is a link to a live version of Billy playing Tank Park Salute, the song he wrote about his dad, or the song that he realised was about his dad after he'd started writing it.

Rosie,

shall I let you off the lead?

There's no one around.

Here, look.

Rosie, what do you think?

If I let you off, will you

promise to continue walking?

No.

Alright, well I don't know.

Do your best.

There's also a link to a short clip from that Neil Young documentary Harvest Time.

Hours of home movie footage shot

around the time that Neil Young was recording Harvest.

I haven't yet managed to figure out where you can see the whole film

but I will keep searching because it looks terrific.

If you're a Neil Young fan, I imagine

it would be sweet, sweet, music-flavored goo pudding.

How are you doing anyway, podcats?

I didn't ask you at the very beginning.

I apologize.

I hope you're doing well.

Soldiering on.

Oh, these are noisy plains.

Maybe from Lake and Heath.

God, that is a long way away in the sky.

So I'm going to head back.

Thank you very much once again to Billy Bragg and to Ted.

Thanks to Seamus Murphy Mitchell

for conversation, editing, and his always invaluable production support.

That's receding a little bit.

Thanks to Helen Green.

She does the artwork for the podcast.

Thank you, Helen.

Thanks to ACAST for all their hard work keeping the show on the road with the sponsors.

But thanks most of all to you.

You listened right to the end.

And yes, it isn't absolutely essential stuff.

But, you know, it strengthens our bond.

And that's, at the end of the day, the main thing.

And that's why I think it's time we had a hug.

May I approach?

Hey.

Good to see you.

Until next time, we share the same Aural space.

Take care.

I love you.

Bye.

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