Speaker 1: Pushkin. Billy Bragg came up in East London, Barking, Essex
Speaker 1: to be exact, which is fitting given the characteristic howl
Speaker 1: of his vocals. Listening to him these days, it's hard
Speaker 1: not to recall the late Great Joe Drummer or the
Speaker 1: modern brilliance of Archie Marshall aka King Krule, but Bragg's
Speaker 1: musical output stands apart from an above comparison. In the
Speaker 1: mid eighties and era driven by production, he was all
Speaker 1: about songs and was one of the great standard bearers
Speaker 1: of political music, carried on from both the folk and
Speaker 1: punk traditions. In his conversation with Bruce Headlam, Bragg talks
Speaker 1: about music as a political tool and whether it can
Speaker 1: truly affect change. Reminisces about his first trip to the
Speaker 1: US and eighty four opening for Echo and the Bunnyman,
Speaker 1: and his collaboration with Willcoe to bring unpublished Woody Guthrie
Speaker 1: songs to life. This is broken record Lander notes for
Speaker 1: the digital age. I'm justin Richmond. Here's Bruce Headlerman conversation
Speaker 1: with Billy Bragg.
Speaker 2: You're touring right now.
Speaker 3: I am, yeah. I'm basically doing a week of shows
Speaker 3: before a Newport Folk Festival. That's what this trip is about.
Speaker 3: And then I'm coming back in the autumn, late September,
Speaker 3: October and starting in actually starting in Vancouver, down the
Speaker 3: West Coast, up through the Midwest, over to the East
Speaker 3: Coast and down to finishing off in Washington, DC. A
Speaker 3: four months on tour. So that's the kind of fortieth anniversary.
Speaker 3: So it's forty years ago next month that I first
Speaker 3: came to America to open Frek Underbunnyman.
Speaker 2: Amazing. Yeah, how is it this time compared to forty
Speaker 2: years ago?
Speaker 3: You got to remember, I'm someone who'd never been on
Speaker 3: a plane before I got this job. I was twenty
Speaker 3: five years old. And we come across the Atlantic and
Speaker 3: I'm on the left hand side of the plane. So
Speaker 3: it's coming to JFK. So we come down Long Island.
Speaker 3: You can't receee anything apart from ocean, and then it
Speaker 3: starts banking to you know, coming to JFK, and I
Speaker 3: start to see America and I see these rows of
Speaker 3: houses and I'm like, okay, this is amazing. So coming
Speaker 3: in yesterday, I was the same side of the plane.
Speaker 3: We come through the clouds and as the plane banked
Speaker 3: I'm not a happy flyer. So I listened to music
Speaker 3: when I'm not watching films, particularly landing and takeoff, and
Speaker 3: it's just on random. It just goes for I don't
Speaker 3: like the track, I'll just bang forward till I find
Speaker 3: something like a scarboroughfare come on by Simon and Garfank call.
Speaker 3: And as it did, the plane banked exactly the same way,
Speaker 3: and I looked down. I thought, I got it. I'm
Speaker 3: getting a thingle talking about it now, thinking back to
Speaker 3: that first time we came to the United States of
Speaker 3: America in August of nineteen eighty four. It was swotering
Speaker 3: hot and the Olympics were on the La Olympics, I think,
Speaker 3: and we stayed in the Iroquois Hotel in Midtown and
Speaker 3: I had four or five nights performing on the roof
Speaker 3: of the dance Materia, which was an amazing introduction to
Speaker 3: life in America, not least because looking uptown from the
Speaker 3: dance Materia from where I was standing on the stage,
Speaker 3: the vista was absolutely dominated by the Empire State Building,
Speaker 3: which lit up as the sun went down, the lights
Speaker 3: on it. It was like, Okay, this is it, this
Speaker 3: is America. Here we are let's do this. So yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm very happy memories of toom of our under bunnyman
Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty four because I stayed on the bus
Speaker 3: where the bunny men were on the bus the first half,
Speaker 3: and then they got bored and started flying. But I
Speaker 3: had me and my best friend from school, WIGGI came
Speaker 3: with me, and we stayed on the tour bus and
Speaker 3: as a result saw a lot more of America than
Speaker 3: if we had just seen the airports and the hotels.
Speaker 2: What stands out from that from traveling around in a bus.
Speaker 3: We did a shower in Chicago, and we went asleep
Speaker 3: on the bus, and when we woke up, I was like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I wonder where we are now. So I went up
Speaker 3: and sat next to the driver and I said where
Speaker 3: are we now? Man? He said, we're in Illinois. I said, no, no,
Speaker 3: where are we now? Said yeah, we're in Illinois. I
Speaker 3: said no, no, we started in Illinois, Chicago. Where are
Speaker 3: we at the moment? And he's like, we're still in Illinois.
Speaker 3: I'm like, how can we be in illinoy, I've been
Speaker 3: driving for twelve hours. He looked to me like, you
Speaker 3: don't know half of its son. So yeah, that the
Speaker 3: vastness of America.
Speaker 2: That was one, Well, I hope you stuck with it,
Speaker 2: because once you hit Saint Louis, there's a little bit
Speaker 2: of a hill.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's that as well. And the other
Speaker 3: one was we realized in that that drive was Chicago
Speaker 3: to New Orleans NonStop drives. We realized you would have
Speaker 3: to stop somewhere somewhere, You're gonna have to stop. I said,
Speaker 3: and where are you Where are you going to? Where
Speaker 3: are you going to stop? Said? Oh no, somewhere around Memphis.
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, interesting, any chance you could stop
Speaker 3: at Gracelands And he's like, no, I'm not going into
Speaker 3: not going into Memphis. This is a total a nightmare
Speaker 3: driving in and out of Memphis. Forget it. We'll just
Speaker 3: it will just be a truck stop somewhere. You'll be fine.
Speaker 3: You'll be able to get a meal and a coffee.
Speaker 3: And I was like, So I went back with the crew,
Speaker 3: the lighting crew and the sound crew, and I said, look,
Speaker 3: there's nine of us. If we all put ten bucks
Speaker 3: in remember this nineteen eighty four as well, we will
Speaker 3: put ten bucks in and give him ninety bucks. We
Speaker 3: might be able to bribe him to go asleep for
Speaker 3: four hours in the car park at Gracelands, and I
Speaker 3: was like, that's got to be worth ten parks. So
Speaker 3: we put it together. We made him off. He was
Speaker 3: very grumpy about it, but he did do it. I
Speaker 3: remember him saying to us, remember where we parked, and
Speaker 3: so we got that. We actually got to go around
Speaker 3: Gracelands before Priscilla tided it up. So we saw the
Speaker 3: kind of the depths, the pile of the carpet in
Speaker 3: the jungle room, the room with all the gold records
Speaker 3: down the side, and the costumes reminded me of how
Speaker 3: a Carter said when he opened two chunk Harmen's tomb.
Speaker 3: Everywhere a glint of gold. It's like we would come
Speaker 3: to see, you know, the Pharaoh Memphis as well. I
Speaker 3: mean that kind of yeah. That kind of made it
Speaker 3: even more like we were come to see the boy King.
Speaker 3: And then when we got to New Orleans, we woke
Speaker 3: up on the band decided to go to Bourbon Street.
Speaker 3: So I went with them and we saw this guy playing.
Speaker 3: I'll think of his what was his name. I'd never
Speaker 3: heard of him before or since, Mason Rufner. I think
Speaker 3: his name was slick back guy, skinny guy playing its
Speaker 3: black telecaster. Incredible thing. But he did this thing where
Speaker 3: he went down the notes in the basstring of the
Speaker 3: telecaster with his elbow while pointing at the audience like
Speaker 3: that thing like it. And you remember, this is all
Speaker 3: in one day. This is the day where we woke
Speaker 3: up still in Illinois. So that passage of time where
Speaker 3: we went from the Great Lakes to the Gulf. You know,
Speaker 3: I've never done anything like that. Again. I've traveled, you know,
Speaker 3: I've done some huge drives, I've done some great journeys.
Speaker 3: I've been in some amazing situations, But in twenty four hours,
Speaker 3: I don't think I ever did anything as mind blowing
Speaker 3: as what we did in that drive from Chicago to
Speaker 3: New Orleans.
Speaker 2: Were you an Elvis fan?
Speaker 3: I was, Yeah. I mean I think from my generation,
Speaker 3: it's hard to get to rock and roll without going
Speaker 3: through Elvis. I mean, if you think of the cover
Speaker 3: of London Calling, it's a homage to Elvis's first album graphically,
Speaker 3: you know, and I think there's so many different Elvis's.
Speaker 3: You can choose your Elvis, you know, for some people
Speaker 3: it's Sun Records Elvis. I mean, that's why I wanted
Speaker 3: a lot of echo on my first album, so it
Speaker 3: sounded like Elvis's Sun Records. But my favorite Elvis is
Speaker 3: political Elvis. You know Elvis that for his Christmas Special
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty eight has specially written for him if
Speaker 3: I Can Dream, and sings it at the end of
Speaker 3: the Christmas Special in front of the big words Elvis
Speaker 3: and looks into the camera and sings this incredible song,
Speaker 3: which in the wake of nineteen sixty eight, which is
Speaker 3: in the year where Dr King was assassinated and Bobby
Speaker 3: Kennedy was assassinated while they were making the Christmas Special
Speaker 3: while they were filming it, to say to talk about
Speaker 3: a dream, you know, having a dream in which our
Speaker 3: brothers walk hand in hand. I mean, that's that's pretty brave,
Speaker 3: that's pretty political. And then he comes out within the
Speaker 3: ghetto and goes to that run of great thing was briefly,
Speaker 3: you know, there's a there's a moment there where you
Speaker 3: might think Elvis could pick up the mantle of the
Speaker 3: the Kennedy Brothers and unify America. Because he doesn't. He
Speaker 3: goes to Gracelands and takes loads of amphetamines. But the
Speaker 3: possibility of that is interesting. It's it's a really it's
Speaker 3: a really great moment in pop history as well. And
Speaker 3: it's he does he does it because he I mean,
Speaker 3: he specifically asked to do it. Colonel Parker wants him
Speaker 3: to finish with I'll behind by Christmas, a dreadful you know,
Speaker 3: sort of modeling Christmas song, and he's like, I need
Speaker 3: something else, so he gets his musical director to come
Speaker 3: up with this if I Can Dream, and and he
Speaker 3: really goes for it. If you watch the clip it's
Speaker 3: on YouTube, it is even.
Speaker 2: When you said political Elvis, I was like, he olviously
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, A fucking dream is a in its context.
Speaker 3: In its context, it's Elvis connecting with that. I mean,
Speaker 3: I think he felt Dr King being assassinated in his
Speaker 3: town as well. I think he felt that, he really
Speaker 3: felt that. And that year was such a tumultuous year
Speaker 3: in the United States and Elvis had something to say
Speaker 3: about it.
Speaker 2: M hmm. That's interesting because even even the sixty eight
Speaker 2: Elvis from Me was almost betraying the sort of Sun
Speaker 2: Records Elvis I loved so much, you know, rushing through songs, yeah,
Speaker 2: finishing everything with a karate chop or something.
Speaker 3: The thing about Elvis is he's the first one. You know,
Speaker 3: he doesn't know how to do this. It's like Lonnie
Speaker 3: Donegan in England. You know, he was the first guy.
Speaker 3: He wasn't really prepared for what was going to happen
Speaker 3: to him. You know, He's out there on the ice,
Speaker 3: taking one step after the other, never knowing when it
Speaker 3: was going to break. Everyone who came in his wake,
Speaker 3: including the Beatles, you know, including everybody, have at least
Speaker 3: that had an idea model. You know, why didn't the
Speaker 3: beat was going to films because Elvis did. Even Lonnie
Speaker 3: Doneghan made a film, you know, that's what they did.
Speaker 3: They they followed his route, but he was just making
Speaker 3: it up as he was going along. And I think
Speaker 3: because he's shone so brightly, he was ultimately consumed by
Speaker 3: his own his own fame, his own image, his own elvisness.
Speaker 3: There's never been anyone touch what he did and who
Speaker 3: he was and what he meant to people. And I
Speaker 3: think for my generation, as I say, if you're going
Speaker 3: to take on that rock and roll mantle, you can't
Speaker 3: ignore him.
Speaker 2: You know, Paul Simon said when we were talking to him,
Speaker 2: his favorite record, and he's obsessed with the production of
Speaker 2: records is a mystery train. Yeah, And he said every
Speaker 2: song he's ever done he tries to get a little
Speaker 2: of that mystery.
Speaker 3: I totally agree with him. That's for me, that's the
Speaker 3: key moment when the synthesis of country music and blues,
Speaker 3: of African American roots music and European American roots music
Speaker 3: comes together. Is in Mystery Train. They captured lightning in
Speaker 3: a bottle there. I mean, obviously that's all right, it
Speaker 3: is incredible, But there's something about Mystery Train. It just
Speaker 3: kind of appears over the hill coming out of nowhere.
Speaker 3: It's like it doesn't it even seem to have a start,
Speaker 3: and it trails off at the end and it's gone.
Speaker 3: It's really gone, gone, gone, you know.
Speaker 2: And I have that incredible slap that's from the studio.
Speaker 2: There's no drummer, no.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's the really interesting thing about the Sun Sessions.
Speaker 3: They're so similar to Skiffle in that they have no drums,
Speaker 3: no augmentation, no pianos or brass or anything like that.
Speaker 3: You know, it's all just guitar driven slap bass and velocity.
Speaker 3: It's about speed, you know, he speeds, he speeds up
Speaker 3: those old blue songs, those old country songs like Blue
Speaker 3: moona Kentucky. He just you know, revs them up and
Speaker 3: off they go, which is exactly what Lonnie Doneghan was
Speaker 3: doing with lead Belly staff in the UK. Weirdly, almost
Speaker 3: at the same time. I mean, that's all right, mama. Obviously,
Speaker 3: his first recording came the fifth of July in nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty four. Lonnie Donegan recorded rock Online a week later
Speaker 3: on the thirteenth of July in London. I mean, how
Speaker 3: that was just out in the air somewhere something so
Speaker 3: in sinjury could happen at the same time.
Speaker 2: Here's the difference.
Speaker 3: To me.
Speaker 2: This is something I've thought a lot about, which is
Speaker 2: when you listen to Lonnie Donegan, you listen to a
Speaker 2: lot of performers, you love what they do, but then
Speaker 2: you want to go here, the original Elvis, you don't
Speaker 2: do that. I think maybe he shone so brightly that
Speaker 2: when you go you know, for example, when I went
Speaker 2: to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I don't
Speaker 2: know if you've ever been there, but he is presented
Speaker 2: as the first rock and roll star, and a lot
Speaker 2: of the people who were called rock and roll stars
Speaker 2: before him like Big Joe Turner and Ruth Brown are
Speaker 2: just considered these sort of the pioneers they like to
Speaker 2: call them. And by the way, Elvis, the Elvis Enterprises
Speaker 2: owns that part of the rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Ye,
Speaker 2: so I'm sure it's presented the way they want. Nobody,
Speaker 2: but I thought, well, and you know, you have this
Speaker 2: little thing like who do you think should be in
Speaker 2: the rock and Roll Hall of Fame? I thought, well,
Speaker 2: Arthur Croud up because he did the original version. And
Speaker 2: if you hear the original version, it's got a lot
Speaker 2: of the the elements. It's not that totally transformed. And
Speaker 2: you're like, nobody knows him. No, nobody knows Mabel. I've
Speaker 2: forgotten her name, my accent, pardon me my action. No,
Speaker 2: the did the original hound Dog.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I'll can't take one name on them.
Speaker 2: To be fair, written by two Jewish guys from Long Island.
Speaker 2: But there you great, But there's something about you know
Speaker 2: even uh and Malcolm and I did an episode about
Speaker 2: this once. You know, Little Richard actually was grateful to
Speaker 2: Pat Boone because people listened to Pat Boone and then
Speaker 2: wanted to hear Little Richard and uh, you know, Fats
Speaker 2: Domino felt the same way with Elvis, and I don't
Speaker 2: think it was deliberate on his part, no, but.
Speaker 3: Well he's a complete package. Oh anyway, it was sixty
Speaker 3: something about.
Speaker 2: It that he, uh, you know, all evolution before him
Speaker 2: kind of gets discarded somehow, and he's like.
Speaker 3: Well nothing, we know, nothing comes from nothing comes from nothing,
Speaker 3: does it? It happened these things, you know. That's one
Speaker 3: of the things that led me to write the book
Speaker 3: about Skiffle were roots, radicals and rockers. I was fed
Speaker 3: up with the idea that Lonnie Donegan recording rock on
Speaker 3: online was a singularity that just happened. It didn't just happen.
Speaker 3: It was a load of forces coming together around that
Speaker 3: time in the UK culturally among young people, and I
Speaker 3: was looking for a book that explained how happened, and
Speaker 3: no one had written it, so I ended up writing
Speaker 3: it myself, and it was that urge to find it out.
Speaker 3: I think that really really helped. I'm really proud that
Speaker 3: in the book Rock Island Line doesn't come out until
Speaker 3: chapter thirteen.
Speaker 2: But your book also, it's another chapter in this English
Speaker 2: fascination with American music.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: And you know, as many books as I read about
Speaker 2: music or you know, there's that apocryphal story that when
Speaker 2: Paul McCartney first came to the US, he asked an interviewer, well,
Speaker 2: where's Ray Charles. The guy said, I don't know where
Speaker 2: Ray Charles is because he just assumed in the United
Speaker 2: States Ray Charles was as important as they were in English.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean as straight as when I first came
Speaker 3: to New York in nineteen eighty four, friend took some
Speaker 3: I said, take me to a great record shop. It
Speaker 3: took me to a great record shop. Was full of
Speaker 3: depeche Mode impulse. I'm like, mate, this is not a
Speaker 3: great record you know. I mean, the average mom and
Speaker 3: pop store in America back then was a great record shop.
Speaker 3: We had a gospel section. We never have anything like
Speaker 3: that at a Latin section, you know, at a country section,
Speaker 3: with real proper obscure stuff that you never find a home. So, well,
Speaker 3: what is.
Speaker 2: That in the English it's and it's it's famous stuff.
Speaker 2: It's obscure stuff. You know. The Beatles did an Arthur
Speaker 2: Alexander song who you couldn't find anybody in the streets
Speaker 2: of New York who remembers Arthur Alexander. But they do
Speaker 2: a tribute album, and people in England, you know, Nick Low,
Speaker 2: Graham Parker are lining up to do Arthur Alexander. It's
Speaker 2: like a cargo cult or something like.
Speaker 3: It's well, it's really I think appreciation of the great
Speaker 3: performances oars Alexander was a great performer. You know, I'm
Speaker 3: scratching me out now for the name of the guy
Speaker 3: who originally recorded at the Dark End of the Streets
Speaker 3: something Carr. I can't but the people who around the
Speaker 3: time said he was the greatest soul singer of all
Speaker 3: time and his performances are great, but he just didn't
Speaker 3: get the get the profile.
Speaker 2: That's what fascinated me, both the skiff and they were
Speaker 2: you know, I hadn't realized, you know, in my mind
Speaker 2: skiffle was kind of like a like almost a kid's
Speaker 2: version of sort of pop songs country mainly. Instead, they're
Speaker 2: really diving into.
Speaker 3: They really are diving into African American roots music, to
Speaker 3: the extent that one old guy who was a skiffler
Speaker 3: in fifties told me that the average skiffle player felt
Speaker 3: they have more in common with an African American sharecropper
Speaker 3: that they've never met anything than they did with their
Speaker 3: own dad, you know, because their parents had lived through
Speaker 3: the war, and the Skiffle Kids were the first bunch
Speaker 3: of youngsters to define themselves. It's different. And the way
Speaker 3: they did that was by playing the guitar. Just there
Speaker 3: weren't many guitars in British popular music prior to the
Speaker 3: mid nineteen fifties, and it's Donnegan and then Elvis that
Speaker 3: kind of brings that in, you know, but it is
Speaker 3: school kids, I mean is it's like a playground craze.
Speaker 3: You know. When Lonnie Donegan plays in Liverpool in nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty six, George Harrison goes every night. I think he's thirteen.
Speaker 3: McCartney's fourteen, he goes one night, and Lennon who's sixteen,
Speaker 3: don't know if he went, but in the weeks that
Speaker 3: followed he formed the Quarrymen. So we are talking about
Speaker 3: school boys. And the reason why that's significant is because
Speaker 3: by the time they were twenty one, twenty two and
Speaker 3: twenty three, those Skiffle Kids have been playing live music,
Speaker 3: mostly chuck Berry rock and roll type music for five
Speaker 3: or six years. They were kind of road hardened. So
Speaker 3: when the Beatles break America in nineteen sixty four, there's
Speaker 3: a whole cadre of British bands ready to follow them,
Speaker 3: you know, and every single one of those British Invasion
Speaker 3: bands were all skifflers, and I think that didn't happen
Speaker 3: to white American use until the folk boom, which is
Speaker 3: later fifty nine sixty, you know, until you get to
Speaker 3: Kingston Trio and acts like that.
Speaker 2: Weavers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, no, I think the Weaver was I think
Speaker 3: the Weaver's really I think they were gone. I mean,
Speaker 3: the idea of young people playing guitars comes with the
Speaker 3: folk boom, and that doesn't really get going until the
Speaker 3: late fifties, whereas these British kids are already, you know,
Speaker 3: by the time someone like you know, Paul Simon is
Speaker 3: learning to play the guitar, the Beatles already in Amberg,
Speaker 3: so that they're although they're the same generation, our kids
Speaker 3: are that bit ahead, and that's what makes the British
Speaker 3: invasion possible. So skiff al was the nursery of the
Speaker 3: British invasion.
Speaker 2: It's interesting how again, things that we think seem spontaneous
Speaker 2: have these strange origins.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: One of the great things about Motown was that a
Speaker 2: lot of those kids went to pre integration schools where
Speaker 2: they had great music classes. Like a lot of them
Speaker 2: went to Northern in Detroit, but they had music teachers
Speaker 2: who were teaching them counterpoint and teaching them, you know, notation,
Speaker 2: and teaching them classical music. So Barrett Strong, a lot
Speaker 2: of those guys, Norman Whitfield, when they showed up, they
Speaker 2: were they knew music, very small range, and so we
Speaker 2: tend to think of, you know, music as some sort
Speaker 2: of primordial scream.
Speaker 3: It's like, no more than that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll be right back with more from Billy Bragg
Speaker 1: after the break. We're back with more from Billy Bragg.
Speaker 2: Speaking of guitars, I thought I read that you started
Speaker 2: writing songs before you played an instrument.
Speaker 3: It's true I did. Yeah, Yeah, what.
Speaker 2: Were you writing too? Were you writing to a tune
Speaker 2: in your head?
Speaker 3: In my head? Yeah? Tunes in my head. Yeah. I've
Speaker 3: got notebooks full of songs where I still could look
Speaker 3: at the lyric and remember what the tune was.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah. When I was twelve, I wrote a
Speaker 3: poem at school and the teacher wrote to my parents
Speaker 3: to ask if I copied it from a book. And
Speaker 3: when I found out, I hadn't, and they kind of
Speaker 3: got me to read it out on the radio London,
Speaker 3: the local radio station, and I took that as a
Speaker 3: kind of recognition that I could do this, I could
Speaker 3: be a songwriter. I thought, this is you know, this
Speaker 3: is really good and I don't know anyone else's ever
Speaker 3: done this. So I started, you know, just writing sort
Speaker 3: of songs that were broadly imitative of the music that
Speaker 3: I was into, which was American singer songwriters and Tamla motown.
Speaker 3: You know, they're the two things that I listened to
Speaker 3: most at that age.
Speaker 2: Do you remember what was the first song that do
Speaker 2: you remember just moved you musically?
Speaker 3: Do you remember as the Box of by Simon and Garfunkel? Really, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: I heard it on a school trip in a must
Speaker 3: have been eleven years old, so that would be sixty nine.
Speaker 3: We're on a school trip somewhere, and it was one
Speaker 3: of those moments where I was it just I don't know, somehow,
Speaker 3: it just it was on the radio on the bus
Speaker 3: on the trip and it just it was a I
Speaker 3: don't say it's slightly but it was a transcendental moment
Speaker 3: for an eleven year old. It took me out of
Speaker 3: my little world into a completely different world and something
Speaker 3: magical in it, the storytelling, the sound of it, and
Speaker 3: I kind of started, really, I must have been really
Speaker 3: into music. My parents that following Christmas brought me a
Speaker 3: real to real tape recorder so I could record songs
Speaker 3: on the radio. Have to buy me records basically, which
Speaker 3: is smart. And if I lug this around the corner
Speaker 3: to my mate's house, his sister Leslie, who was probably
Speaker 3: fifteen at the time, older than us, but she had
Speaker 3: a brilliant record collection. She had quite a few Simon
Speaker 3: and Garfuncle records and several Motown chartbuster compilations. And I'm
Speaker 3: more or less taped Leslie Charmer's record collection, and that
Speaker 3: served me my apprentices that I then started trying to
Speaker 3: write songs like Paul Simon and Smokey Robinson and still
Speaker 3: do some days.
Speaker 2: Older siblings with good taste are a crucial part of
Speaker 2: the music.
Speaker 3: Except I never had one. I never had an older
Speaker 3: sibling of good or bad taste, so I was kind
Speaker 3: of blind until my friend's older sisters because basically, when
Speaker 3: I worked my way through and I've got older Simon
Speaker 3: and Guardfunkal albums because Simon and Garfuncle were very popular
Speaker 3: among Wins young adolescent schoolgirls at the time, you know,
Speaker 3: Sound of Silence and all that kind of stuff, you know,
Speaker 3: and the chart buster albums were massive as well at
Speaker 3: the time, So that kind of brought me into the
Speaker 3: whole notion of the craft of songwriting. You know, I
Speaker 3: will take songs apart me and think about tracks of
Speaker 3: my tears as three chords. It's possibly the greatest three
Speaker 3: card trick of all time. You know.
Speaker 2: It's funny you mentioned the sound of the Boxer because
Speaker 2: when we did the project with him, you know, you wonder,
Speaker 2: what is it the words that move you? Is it
Speaker 2: the music? For him, it's all the sound and he
Speaker 2: obsesses over production. And even now if you listen, if
Speaker 2: you've listened to that poor record, it's a stunning sounding,
Speaker 2: right it is.
Speaker 3: It's an incredible album to be obsessed with, which I
Speaker 3: was for a long time. I was obsessed with that record.
Speaker 3: It kind of I mean the thing about I eventually
Speaker 3: ended up becoming obsessed with Bob Dylan subsequently, kind of
Speaker 3: Paul Simon led me into Bob Dylan and English folk
Speaker 3: music as well via a Scarborough fair in a rather
Speaker 3: ironic way because Martin Carthy, who Paul Simon was inspired
Speaker 3: by hearing Martin place garboroughfare to record his own version,
Speaker 3: was playing in a folk club not a mile from
Speaker 3: my house around that time. But it took these two
Speaker 3: guys from Brooklyn recording this old English folk song to
Speaker 3: turn me onto my own folk music, which is a
Speaker 3: weird paradoxical way. What goes around comes around with saying
Speaker 3: folk music.
Speaker 2: So your musical inspirations were Paul Simon, Paul Simon, Smokey Robinson,
Speaker 2: Smokey Robinson, Eddie Cochran and your what were your lyrical inspirations?
Speaker 3: Well, again, you know, I was trying to write knock
Speaker 3: off sing, a songwriter song, so a bit of a
Speaker 3: bit of Paul Simon to start with a bit of
Speaker 3: Bob doing, a bit of Jackson Brown. I was big
Speaker 3: on Jackson Brown. I still think it's a great songwriter.
Speaker 3: And you know, I think you when you're learning your craft,
Speaker 3: you're always writing songs that in some ways have their
Speaker 3: framework from music you like. I always say to people
Speaker 3: they want to start writing songs, take your favorite song,
Speaker 3: take the words out of it and write your own
Speaker 3: words because it's your favorite song. You'll know exactly how
Speaker 3: the words are supposed to fit. And then you that's
Speaker 3: how you know, make your own words, make you know,
Speaker 3: maybe keep the chorus and change the words to I
Speaker 3: will Always love you, to give it a happy ending
Speaker 3: or something, whatever you want to do, that's how you
Speaker 3: start to do it. That's what I did, basically. You know,
Speaker 3: you just take a Chuck Berry song apart, and that's
Speaker 3: my simplest thing, and then put your own words on it.
Speaker 3: And then eventually, when I was about twenty I suppose
Speaker 3: maybe twenty one, I wrote a Billy Bragg song. I
Speaker 3: wrote a song that didn't.
Speaker 2: Have the first Billy Bragg song, Richard.
Speaker 3: Which ended up on the first album because I was
Speaker 3: very proud of it because it didn't sound like anybody else.
Speaker 3: I thought, this is actually me in this song. And
Speaker 3: once I'd worked out how to do that. This is
Speaker 3: towards the end of the period when I was in
Speaker 3: a little band called riff Raff, which is kind of
Speaker 3: like a punky new wavy band in the seventies or
Speaker 3: late seventies, and I started writing songs that were more
Speaker 3: had more me and him. I worked out to get
Speaker 3: me into the songs. Also read somewhere that you were
Speaker 3: bullied as a kid that kind of yeah, I was
Speaker 3: sort of. You know, it got a bit towards the
Speaker 3: end of our school years. It all got a bit
Speaker 3: larry at school, so I tended to not go in
Speaker 3: so much. You know, it's too much mm hmm, too
Speaker 3: much grief. It just made me. Gave me a lot
Speaker 3: of anxiety around town. So you know, the sort of
Speaker 3: things that other people, other kids my age did not
Speaker 3: go out to the pubs and go out dancing and stuff.
Speaker 3: I just didn't, you know, I just gave me, just
Speaker 3: give me too much anxiety. So I was fortunate. I
Speaker 3: had a couple of mates who had a guitar and
Speaker 3: a drum kit, and we sat in my mum's back
Speaker 3: room and wrote songs and played music. It's saved my
Speaker 3: own life.
Speaker 2: Is that when you started guitar? Did that give you
Speaker 2: some confidence a lot?
Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot, huge amount self expression? Bruce. You know
Speaker 3: you got your writing it, putting it all out there,
Speaker 3: you know, you this is how I feel. Music is
Speaker 3: a form of therapy, whether you're listening to it or
Speaker 3: writing it or making it or playing it, a repeutic
Speaker 3: effect because you're you're putting yourself into it. And I
Speaker 3: say this not just as a musician, but that can
Speaker 3: also be as a listener, because I think the currency
Speaker 3: of music is fundamentally empathy. You're as a writer, you're
Speaker 3: asking the listener to listen to this person in this
Speaker 3: situation and feel something for them in a situation you
Speaker 3: might not have experienced as a person. But this person here,
Speaker 3: you know, listen to that. Or there's another way whereby
Speaker 3: the person who's written the song has somehow touched a
Speaker 3: nerve with you, and in that case you draw empathy
Speaker 3: from the song. You're getting some of yourself, you're feeling
Speaker 3: and you're not alone. This song, you know, is somehow
Speaker 3: articulating something you can't put into words. We all have
Speaker 3: songs like that, you know, and that, and that's really
Speaker 3: really valuable because I think, you know, the the sense
Speaker 3: of isolation that we have in society, which is always
Speaker 3: been that's not just a manifestation of the digital wage.
Speaker 3: I've always been there. And when people come together to
Speaker 3: celebrate and to sing, whether it's in church, at soccer games,
Speaker 3: it happens people sing, you know. Obviously music concerts, you
Speaker 3: get a moment where you feel you're not alone. You're
Speaker 3: not the only person who cares about this thing, whatever
Speaker 3: this thing is.
Speaker 2: Did you need the feedback of an audience to feel
Speaker 2: that way about your own songs? Or did you feel
Speaker 2: that way in the back room of the house.
Speaker 3: I felt that way in the background of the house.
Speaker 2: Really. Yeah, did you feel the anxiety about being around
Speaker 2: other people and get you could put your feelings out
Speaker 2: in a song?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I could not not. I don't think so. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know that's the trick of it, isn't it. You
Speaker 3: learn you learn to put into song the things that
Speaker 3: you find yourself struggling with, you know, the reflection of
Speaker 3: who you are, and you think the song's about somebody else,
Speaker 3: but actually it sends out to be about you actually
Speaker 3: when you admit about it and that. You know, when
Speaker 3: we started doing gigs, when when punk happened and it
Speaker 3: became possible for you just to turn up and play,
Speaker 3: it became much easier. You didn't have to justify being
Speaker 3: in the band. Everyone was in a band. Uh. Then
Speaker 3: there was a there was a confidence in that as well,
Speaker 3: because it was like our generation were coming to the fore.
Speaker 3: Now this is who we are.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: My political uh awakening was going to rock against racism.
Speaker 3: That's the first political thing I ever did, and that
Speaker 3: that was an incredible experience because it gave me the
Speaker 3: courage of my convictions.
Speaker 2: You know, that's interesting to me. I had always assumed
Speaker 2: that that your politics informed you becoming a singer and
Speaker 2: a songwriter, that you're what we would call here a
Speaker 2: red daper baby.
Speaker 3: No no, no, no, no, no no no. The town
Speaker 3: I grew up in, East London has always been labor
Speaker 3: since my father was a kid, so there was no
Speaker 3: real politics around. It was just labor. That was what
Speaker 3: it was, and everyone was labor. My parents weren't particularly political.
Speaker 3: I got my sense of of policy by osmosis from
Speaker 3: listening to predominantly American soul music from the Civil rights period.
Speaker 3: You know, if you get them Motown chartbuses albums, they're
Speaker 3: great pop albums, and they're you know, they're amazing. And
Speaker 3: then you get to volume five, I think, and all
Speaker 3: of a sudden things start. Something's changed. You get you know,
Speaker 3: Ball of Confusion by the Temptations, You've got War by
Speaker 3: Edwin Starr, you know, and there's a change of tone.
Speaker 3: Something's happened, and the clue is in the record Marvin
Speaker 3: Gaye sings Abraham Martin and John and what has happened
Speaker 3: is Dr King has been murdered and along with the
Speaker 3: rest of African American and culture motowns reflecting that. So
Speaker 3: I kind of picked up on on that politics, the
Speaker 3: politics of civil rights and as also doing a singer
Speaker 3: songwriters that I listened to as well. You know, the
Speaker 3: early Dylan records. You know, my huge record for me
Speaker 3: was The Times They Were Changing That album. I swapped
Speaker 3: it with mate of mine at school for his dad's
Speaker 3: copy of No I got it. I got his dad's
Speaker 3: copy of The Times They Were Changing in exchange from
Speaker 3: my copy of the Jackson Five's greatst Hits. It was
Speaker 3: a brilliant deal and.
Speaker 2: I think you both want on that one, but he thought.
Speaker 3: He wanted to give it to his sister as a
Speaker 3: birthday present, so anyway we did it. It was it was,
Speaker 3: It just blew my mind. It was so raw, it
Speaker 3: was so visceral, all that album, The Times They Were Changing,
Speaker 3: and that Bob Dylan, not the later Blonde on Blonde
Speaker 3: type I was sixty one, but that early you know,
Speaker 3: blowing in the Wind Bob Dylan was really inspiration to me.
Speaker 3: As while I'm talking about when I'm like fourteen fifteen now,
Speaker 3: So I got my politics from that, but you know,
Speaker 3: my politics were broadly I suppose humanitarian. But where I
Speaker 3: was you know, when I went to Rock Against Racism,
Speaker 3: I was working in an office in London and the
Speaker 3: men I worked with were you know, casually racist, casually sexist,
Speaker 3: casually homophobic, and I really you know, didn't ever say
Speaker 3: anything or raise any questions. But going to Rock against Racism,
Speaker 3: see the clash we're playing, and that's kind of what
Speaker 3: got us to go over the step. But going there
Speaker 3: and getting to the theres a park in Hackney called
Speaker 3: Victoria Park where it happened, and seeing eighty thousand kids
Speaker 3: just like me, I kind of realized that this issue
Speaker 3: is going to be what defines my generation, like Vietnam
Speaker 3: had defined the previous generation. We were going to define
Speaker 3: ourselves in opposition of an opposition to discrimination of all kinds,
Speaker 3: not just racism, but homophobia and sexism and everything else.
Speaker 3: We were going to be the generation of two Tone.
Speaker 3: We were going to be the generation of artists against
Speaker 3: aparthe That's who we were going to be. And when
Speaker 3: I went back to work on Monday. The world hadn't changed,
Speaker 3: but my perception of it had and I knew why
Speaker 3: I was different from these arshols at work, you know,
Speaker 3: And so I'd stopped laughing when they made those comments,
Speaker 3: you know, I stopped joining him with you, pastor and
Speaker 3: the secretaries and stuff like that. I like, Okay, there's
Speaker 3: something different now, you know. And that and that informs
Speaker 3: how I understand how music works when I'm doing a gig.
Speaker 2: Now that's interesting to me because you, of course, are
Speaker 2: always called the political songwriter, although the vast majority of
Speaker 2: your songs are about love and human relationships and other things.
Speaker 2: Does a song have to be explicitly political to be political?
Speaker 3: No, it really really doesn't. I have a song called
Speaker 3: I Keep Faith, and I can introduce that as a
Speaker 3: love song. Ostensibly it works as a love song, but
Speaker 3: I can also introduce it by talking about my faith
Speaker 3: in the audience's ability to change the world. And if
Speaker 3: I do that, men cry. They come up to me
Speaker 3: at the end and say, I really moved, you know,
Speaker 3: it was really moved for that, And I'm not good mate,
Speaker 3: you know, I was talking about empathy back then. That's
Speaker 3: that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for that empathy,
Speaker 3: you know, mate, Malcolm was listening to him on the
Speaker 3: radio one time and he talked about the ability to
Speaker 3: make people move people to tears without hurting them. You know,
Speaker 3: the ability to move people by emotion to tears is
Speaker 3: a very powerful thing. And then he played levs Stubs tears.
Speaker 3: That made my ears pick up, I'll tell you. And
Speaker 3: it's very insightful, Malcolm, the touch on that, because it
Speaker 3: gave me a you know, a sudden flash of how
Speaker 3: the process works.
Speaker 2: I would say a couple of things. First of all,
Speaker 2: I always felt that song was quite ironic, not that
Speaker 2: you don't like Levi Stubbs, but that the comparison of
Speaker 2: her life with with a sort of motown fantasy was
Speaker 2: quite bleak.
Speaker 3: Well. Yeah, the thing is, the song is about the
Speaker 3: redemptive power of soul music. You know that the pain
Speaker 3: that Levi Stubbs has, the pain that he expressed, is
Speaker 3: the tear in his voice, the sob in his voice.
Speaker 3: She draws from that a sense that someone understands where
Speaker 3: she's coming from. She draws some empathy from from his pain.
Speaker 3: His pain somehow is her pain. She's got to pick
Speaker 3: herself up and put herself back togethering in now and
Speaker 3: Levi's obviously felt that as well, because you can hear
Speaker 3: it in the way that he sings, you know, when
Speaker 3: he cries out for Bernadette, you know, when he talks
Speaker 3: about the seven Rooms of Gloom. You know it's there,
Speaker 3: you know, very operatic. Yeah, just incredible voice. Incredible voice.
Speaker 2: Are you the person who's jotting things down when a
Speaker 2: line occurs to you? Is it something you're very conscious
Speaker 2: of injecting into your records?
Speaker 3: I think if you're going to do politics, you have
Speaker 3: to leave it up a little with some rye Humer.
Speaker 3: You know, you can't just go storming in there, putting
Speaker 3: people in the chest all the way through a gig.
Speaker 3: And I do a little bit of that, you know
Speaker 3: sometimes talking about the election on this tour, I'll be
Speaker 3: doing a little bit of fingerpointing maybe of the British
Speaker 3: election the American election in November. Oh okay, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: the British election I will talk about. But obviously, you
Speaker 3: know what's coming in November is very contentious at the moment,
Speaker 3: so I doubt let's be talking about that.
Speaker 2: I haven't been reading about it, so I have no
Speaker 2: idea what you're talking about.
Speaker 3: But the I found that when I was you know,
Speaker 3: my political crucible was the UK minor strike in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty four and you played there, Yeah, loads of times. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I would play What was that like? I was mad?
Speaker 3: It was absolutely mad?
Speaker 2: Well did did they know you were coming? You would
Speaker 2: just show up?
Speaker 3: And well I used I used to go up to
Speaker 3: the coal fields because I was solo, so I could
Speaker 3: literally wed go around with a small amp, a little
Speaker 3: sixty what amp and a guitar.
Speaker 2: What was your guitar back then?
Speaker 3: Oh? It was a copy of a Gibson less Paul
Speaker 3: made by a company called Arbiter. It was a sort
Speaker 3: of one. It was my punk guitar.
Speaker 2: Right, you're not one of those guys with a lot
Speaker 2: of guitars.
Speaker 3: I'm not.
Speaker 2: No, I'm not really no, because Johnny Marz Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: End See I did a gig once with Steve Earl
Speaker 3: in Montreal and he was opening for me. He had
Speaker 3: twelve guitars could get on stage. I was like a
Speaker 3: guitar shop on the Wing song exactly it was. Anyway,
Speaker 3: So I'm not that guy. No, No, I do have
Speaker 3: a I carry a couple of guitars I've probably got
Speaker 3: home not more than a half a dozen knocking around
Speaker 3: and you you.
Speaker 2: Know when I when I would first see you play,
Speaker 2: he would play what are called cowboy chords. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: you'd strum the whole thing, which nobody does.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, I'm basically a rhythm guitar player in a
Speaker 3: punk band. That's why basically I'm not a lead guitar player.
Speaker 3: I never was a lead guitar player. I'm a rhythm
Speaker 3: guitar player, and I think I'm pretty good at that.
Speaker 3: But it's very percussive. You know. The guitar heroes that
Speaker 3: I have for people like Ray Koda and Ronnie Wood
Speaker 3: and there John Lee Hooker, the guitar star, is pretty percussive.
Speaker 3: It's about the rhythm, you know. So that's where I
Speaker 3: get my licks from, get my ideas from.
Speaker 2: I don't know how we got in that, but oh no.
Speaker 2: He was asking what was it like to.
Speaker 3: In the miner Strike? Yeh yeah, Well, first of all,
Speaker 3: it was it was amazing to see because the audiences
Speaker 3: would be my generation. But the people who were making
Speaker 3: the speeches at the gigs to when they put round
Speaker 3: the bucket to raise a bit more money would often
Speaker 3: be the wives of the miners. So these were women
Speaker 3: who were perhaps ten or fifteen years older, sometimes twenty
Speaker 3: years older than the audience, working class women who probably
Speaker 3: never spoke in public before. Talking to all these little
Speaker 3: punk rockers, it was an amazing thing to see because
Speaker 3: their husbands were either on the picket line or in prison. Right,
Speaker 3: that in itself was amazing to watch.
Speaker 2: This is the eighties, yeah, nine eighty four. It's almost
Speaker 2: all coal mining.
Speaker 3: It's all coal mining.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's predominant in the North of England, South Wales, some
Speaker 3: in Scotland, some in Kent, but predominantly the North of
Speaker 3: England and South Wales, heavy heavy working class areas. You know,
Speaker 3: villages where the pit is absolutely everything, you know, the
Speaker 3: whole village, and they're like under siege from the police
Speaker 3: and the state. And you would go up there and
Speaker 3: the audiences were really really up for it and it
Speaker 3: was just incredibly invigorating, and then you'd very often be
Speaker 3: keeping on their sofa or in their spare room. You know,
Speaker 3: you go back and you know, you go back to
Speaker 3: their assimate your cup of team, maybe a bacon sandwich,
Speaker 3: and then they sit down and talk politics because they
Speaker 3: wanted to know why a pop star from London was
Speaker 3: doing this. Is it just for the fame or you
Speaker 3: actually walk the walk and talk the talk. So very
Speaker 3: quickly I had to sort of because I didn't I
Speaker 3: left go when I was sixteen, so I didn't have
Speaker 3: a political education. I had to sort of learn the
Speaker 3: language of Marxism to be able to put across my
Speaker 3: ideas and define where I was coming from. That was
Speaker 3: a real sharp learning curve. But you know, it was
Speaker 3: a genuine radical situation. It was class. It was my
Speaker 3: class against the state, really, so I couldn't not take part.
Speaker 3: And also I'd listened to all these solo singer songwriters
Speaker 3: in the nineteen sixties trying to change the world through music,
Speaker 3: and now I had opportunity to see if you can
Speaker 3: actually change the world. Does it actually work this? Can
Speaker 3: you go and sing songs and bring about social change?
Speaker 3: Because that's what the clash told me you could. Music
Speaker 3: will change the world, and I kind of believed that.
Speaker 3: Now I had a chance to find out if that
Speaker 3: was true or not. It turns out it's not.
Speaker 2: Was that a whole lesson?
Speaker 3: Initially? Maybe I suppose, But thinking about it, you know,
Speaker 3: logically music has no agency, you know, it's not going
Speaker 3: to win the election. It has the ability to bring
Speaker 3: people together, and that in and of itself is a
Speaker 3: positive thing because change happens, I think in you know,
Speaker 3: is catalyzed by two events. Firstly, your realization that things
Speaker 3: and not right, and then secondly your realization that other
Speaker 3: people have already realized that things are not right. You
Speaker 3: realize you're not the only person who cares about this thing.
Speaker 3: And music can bring you together into an audience where
Speaker 3: you suddenly realize that like, ah okay, like as me rocking,
Speaker 3: it's racism. When I speak from experience here, that's what
Speaker 3: happened to me in Victoria Park in Hackney. I realized
Speaker 3: I wasn't the only person who cared about these things,
Speaker 3: you know. And you know, when I make my pitch
Speaker 3: for a solidarity with the trans community, when I sing
Speaker 3: sexuality on these shows, they will undoubtedly be people my age,
Speaker 3: because my audience predominantly my age in you know, sixties,
Speaker 3: who probably haven't given the issue much thought. It's not
Speaker 3: that they're anti or pro and even it's just something
Speaker 3: like they're like it's too much trouble, but they see
Speaker 3: themselves in an audience who are expressing solidarity with this,
Speaker 3: who are responding positively to what I'm saying, and they
Speaker 3: look around him and they think, Wow, maybe I should
Speaker 3: get off the fence on this, maybe have a think
Speaker 3: about what's going on here, because clearly this is an
Speaker 3: important issue to these people who I have so much
Speaker 3: in come with. And that's how music can affect change,
Speaker 3: not directly, not storm the barricades' way, but just by
Speaker 3: planting ideas in people's minds, introducing them to different concepts,
Speaker 3: challenging their perceptions music. That's one of the things that
Speaker 3: music can do. It doesn't have to do it all
Speaker 3: the time. It's not the defining aspect of it, but
Speaker 3: it's one of the many things it can do. And
Speaker 3: I think coming from a twentieth century music culture in
Speaker 3: which music was our social medium, which I had to
Speaker 3: articulate everything that my generation thought through music, and we had,
Speaker 3: you know, three four weekly music papers in the UK
Speaker 3: to thrash these ideas out. The idea that music should
Speaker 3: be something more than I'm great your shit, you like
Speaker 3: my socks to paraphrase Oasis is still important to me.
Speaker 3: I don't know if younger people feel that way. It's
Speaker 3: not something that I'm going to say, listen, this is
Speaker 3: the way it should be. It's not my job to
Speaker 3: do that. I hear young people write songs about the
Speaker 3: pressure that they feel under. That's enough for me that
Speaker 3: they are talking about that, they are using music to
Speaker 3: articulate their feelings about that. I'm not going to start
Speaker 3: leaning them and say, why don't you write about trade unions.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to write that because they have not
Speaker 3: been through the minor strike. They've had a different cultural perception,
Speaker 3: put culture experience to the one I've had.
Speaker 1: After this last break, we'll be back with the rest
Speaker 1: of Bruce Headlam's conversation with Billy Bragg. Here's the rest
Speaker 1: of our conversation with Billy Bragg.
Speaker 2: The album with Trust Tank Part Salute, Tank Park, Salute,
Speaker 2: Pardon Me.
Speaker 3: Don't try this own?
Speaker 2: It was was Yeah, I thought, are you saying that
Speaker 2: about me trying to say Tank Park.
Speaker 1: At home?
Speaker 2: It was much more a bigger musical.
Speaker 3: It was yeah, did you like that?
Speaker 2: Because people are like, oh, finally you know, Billy Bragg
Speaker 2: has discovered the eighties?
Speaker 3: Well that was that was about being doctrinaire as well
Speaker 3: in some ways, you know.
Speaker 2: But there. You know, when I think of the song,
Speaker 2: you know everywhere Sindy of a thousand lives very different sounds.
Speaker 3: Well, you've got to progress, haven't you one, you know,
Speaker 3: that's that's my thing. But what happened was I wrote
Speaker 3: Sexuality and it kind of sounded like Louis Louis and
Speaker 3: Johnny mar got hold of it and made that track
Speaker 3: that you now hear and it was a shining pop
Speaker 3: monstrosity and when it came back, me and my producer
Speaker 3: Grant Showbiz were like, oh damn, you know, now we're
Speaker 3: going to have to make the album a that that
Speaker 3: sits on. But it was good. It was a challenge,
Speaker 3: you know, and coming as it did, I think, I think,
Speaker 3: if you're really really lucky, you get ten good years
Speaker 3: where people are interested in what you're doing, and you can,
Speaker 3: you know, you can feel that when you do something
Speaker 3: the media will be you know, give you a front
Speaker 3: page and stuff like that. If you get ten years,
Speaker 3: you're really really lucky. And that comes at the end
Speaker 3: of kind of that period where I was, you know,
Speaker 3: I got me on top of the pops. Everybody at
Speaker 3: home thinks it was a huge hit record, which actually
Speaker 3: I only got to number twenty six in the charts.
Speaker 3: But you know the perception of it is that that's
Speaker 3: what it was.
Speaker 2: If you're going to sell out, you've got to get
Speaker 2: to the top ten.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. And consequently, after that record, I had a
Speaker 3: grumble appendix. I was off the road for a while
Speaker 3: and I got together with my partner and we you know,
Speaker 3: we became parents and everything and everything changed. So but
Speaker 3: it was also an aspect of that where I kind
Speaker 3: of painted myself into a corner because I can't really
Speaker 3: be a big production pop star. That's not really who
Speaker 3: I am. I can do it. You want me to
Speaker 3: do it? Here, here we go, I can do it.
Speaker 3: Check out this Ciddy of a thousand Lives. This is
Speaker 3: a song about an American photographer that you've never heard of,
Speaker 3: who does incredible images that are all of herself. Here
Speaker 3: it is Sherman. Yeah, Cindy Sherman, the great Cindy Sherman.
Speaker 3: And so yeah, I was. I was incredibly and still
Speaker 3: am incredibly proud of that record, but I couldn't carry
Speaker 3: on a natural dijectory. You know. It was sort of
Speaker 3: like who want me? So fortunately then I made William Blake,
Speaker 3: which was a much more personal record, much more a
Speaker 3: post parenthood record which I'm which I'm very proud of
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 2: And I do want to ask you about Tank Park.
Speaker 3: Sure, Sure, Tank Park salute was. I had a very
Speaker 3: strange genesis. Let's start by saying that when I was eighteen,
Speaker 3: my father died of lung cancer, who was fifty two
Speaker 3: years old. The hospital when he got ill told us
Speaker 3: the best way to deal with this would be not
Speaker 3: to talk about it, not to talk about it in
Speaker 3: front of him, and not to talk about it among ourselves.
Speaker 2: So I have to stop you there, because that is
Speaker 2: so English.
Speaker 3: I know, it's terrible, isn't it, But it's also it's
Speaker 3: also so my father's generation. And looking back now, I
Speaker 3: it was a mistake. My mother really regretted it. She
Speaker 3: really regretted it till the day she died. When she
Speaker 3: got cancer and I went to see her in the hospital,
Speaker 3: she said to me, we're going to talk about this,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, we are, of course, we are, we are.
Speaker 3: She hated it. My father had every opportunity to say
Speaker 3: to me, son, I think I'm dying. Look I'm coughing
Speaker 3: up blood. Look I'm dying. He never did. He never
Speaker 3: said it, so I don't know. My brother, who's five
Speaker 3: years younger than me. He was at school at the time,
Speaker 3: and I was there when my father died. My brothers
Speaker 3: never asked me about it. And I respect that. I'm
Speaker 3: not going to suddenly turn up and say to him
Speaker 3: and listen, I'm going to tell you what happened that day.
Speaker 3: If he doesn't want to know, he doesn't want to know,
Speaker 3: and I respect that. But I was in a very
Speaker 3: weird situation where I never spoke to it about anybody
Speaker 3: I ever. I spoke to it what happened to anybody.
Speaker 3: And then one day I was writing a song and
Speaker 3: a line came out. I closed my eye and when
Speaker 3: I looked, your name was in the memorial book. And
Speaker 3: now where my father's ashes are scattered, they have a
Speaker 3: book there on the anniversary of the day of his death,
Speaker 3: which opens on the page and his name's there. And
Speaker 3: I used to go to it my mum on the
Speaker 3: anniversary and look at the book and go and visit.
Speaker 3: That's what we did. And this line, I was like, oh, now,
Speaker 3: this is interesting. If I go down this path, I'm
Speaker 3: going to be in a situation where I have to
Speaker 3: talk to strangers about what happened. How do I feel
Speaker 3: about that? I wasn't really sure how I felt about that,
Speaker 3: but nonetheless I wrote that song in the next hour.
Speaker 3: It just came out. Who like a there. It was
Speaker 3: fully formed around that old who had that guitar lick.
Speaker 3: That's what I was writing the other song to that
Speaker 3: guitar lick. So the next time was rehearsing in my
Speaker 3: keyboard player car TV I taught at the piano part
Speaker 3: played the song. She said, Oh, that's about your dad,
Speaker 3: don't it. I said, yeah, it is Cary. Yeah. So
Speaker 3: I thought, well, if she didn't get it like that,
Speaker 3: obviously it you know, it's hits the mark. So I
Speaker 3: started playing it live and it had that effect. People
Speaker 3: would come and talk to me about someone that they
Speaker 3: had lost, and still do. People write to me and say,
Speaker 3: you know, your song really helped me to process things
Speaker 3: about how my father or whoever lost, and it's great
Speaker 3: to be able to write back to them and say,
Speaker 3: you know what made it. It had exactly the same
Speaker 3: effect on me. It helped me to process how I
Speaker 3: felt about the loss of my father, to the extent
Speaker 3: that I can now talk about it without being overcome
Speaker 3: with emotion, and so, you know, I'm really pleased to
Speaker 3: have a song about that. My mum, whenever I played
Speaker 3: in London or where she came to see me play,
Speaker 3: she would always say, before you're going to play that song,
Speaker 3: aren't you. I don't think she even knew what it
Speaker 3: was called, play that song. And I would play the song,
Speaker 3: of course. I would play the song nervously while she
Speaker 3: was there, you know, so self consciously. And then my
Speaker 3: nephews will say to me, why do you keep playing
Speaker 3: that song that makes Nan cry every time we come
Speaker 3: and see you, And I'll be like, boys, Asher Nan,
Speaker 3: all right, And then I tell you, yeah.
Speaker 2: I have to say and this is inappropriate. But the
Speaker 2: comic version of the we're not talking the English, we're
Speaker 2: not talking about it, yeah, is and it is my
Speaker 2: favorite line in Spinal Tap Yeah, when they're talking about
Speaker 2: one of the drummers died. Yeah, and the phrases said
Speaker 2: the police said best left unsolved, the most English line.
Speaker 2: That whole thing is that how songs come to you
Speaker 2: a phrase or two, and then that opens up the
Speaker 2: idea you mentioned you wrote a song about. I had
Speaker 2: no idea. Cindy of a Thousand Lives was about Cindy Sherman.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Cindy Sherman was a big part of my
Speaker 3: realization of America. On that first trip, I bought loads
Speaker 3: of postcards to send home. But then I just started
Speaker 3: buying postcards that just had images. You know, you can
Speaker 3: get postcard with James brown It, you get a postcard
Speaker 3: with you know, Smoky Robinson the Miracles. And I found
Speaker 3: there's a famous Cindy Sherman photograph of like a child
Speaker 3: with a pig's head eating an apple, and it was
Speaker 3: so weird. It was so weird. I saw it and
Speaker 3: I bought it, and I thought, what the heck, kiss this?
Speaker 3: What madness? What strange weirdness. I mean, America's a weird
Speaker 3: enough place if you've never been here before, but that's,
Speaker 3: to me, summed up the weirdness of America. And I
Speaker 3: subsequently found out what it was and who she was,
Speaker 3: and I bought her, you know, coming to the US
Speaker 3: back and forth in the eighties, I was able to find,
Speaker 3: you know, books about her exhibitions and stuff, and it
Speaker 3: always intrigued me what she was doing that, you know,
Speaker 3: putting herself in the in the absolutely in the art
Speaker 3: as a songwriter, that's something that you try and do.
Speaker 3: You try and put yourself in there, even subconsciously. Sometimes
Speaker 3: you don't realize you're doing it, putting yourself in there.
Speaker 3: So I was very much attracted to that, and when
Speaker 3: I got those weird chords, the song kind of sort
Speaker 3: of developed out of that. Going back to those, I
Speaker 3: think they call them a murder pictures, a kind of
Speaker 3: like weird scary periods she went through, which I think
Speaker 3: it comes after the original, sort of like cinema scenes,
Speaker 3: untitled pictures that are really really There's something about the
Speaker 3: United States America that's very strange to people coming from
Speaker 3: my country is the vastness of it and the fact
Speaker 3: most of it isn't inhabited. Well Springsteen referred to as
Speaker 3: the darkness on the edge of town. We don't have
Speaker 3: much of that in my country. You might have the
Speaker 3: darkness on the edge of town, but you can probably
Speaker 3: see another town just up the ways a bit. You
Speaker 3: don't have that bit where the town ends and there's
Speaker 3: the piney woods, and the piney woods go on for
Speaker 3: miles and miles, and you know, when you're flying in
Speaker 3: over New Jersey sometimes it's piney, piney, piney, piney woods.
Speaker 3: And then while there's New York, it's that like it's
Speaker 3: like the moors around Manchester. You know they're coming there,
Speaker 3: kind of stand around, and as a European you get
Speaker 3: that weird in the pines thing and something that those
Speaker 3: Cindy Sherman postcards from that period of her her art
Speaker 3: really spoke to me about that, that you know, what's
Speaker 3: out there in the majority of on any given night,
Speaker 3: the majority of the United States America is in complete
Speaker 3: and out of darkness. That's a weird thing to someone
Speaker 3: coming from a little island off the coast of Europe.
Speaker 2: Have you met her?
Speaker 3: No, No, I've never met her, but weirdly, she was
Speaker 3: interviewed in The Guardian last month and I was, I was,
Speaker 3: it's always great to read about what she's doing and
Speaker 3: see what she's up to. I don't know if she
Speaker 3: maybe shows an exhibition. And then the very last paragraph,
Speaker 3: the journalist asked her if she'd ever heard the song,
Speaker 3: and she said no. She was very flattered by it. Particularly,
Speaker 3: she said particularly I've never met him, as if I'd
Speaker 3: need to meet her to be able to write a
Speaker 3: song like that, because I don't really need you.
Speaker 2: You're an artist.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's there. It's about how what she did
Speaker 3: move me and I'm responding to that. So it'd be
Speaker 3: lovely to meet her. But whether that would help me
Speaker 3: understand better or anything that she's done, probably not. You know,
Speaker 3: sometimes it's it's lovely to know that she's flattered by it,
Speaker 3: because sometimes you know, people don't. You don't want the attention,
Speaker 3: but a huge respect for someone who can have a
Speaker 3: vision like that and communicate it so powerfully.
Speaker 2: I should ask you, I've never heard you talk about Springsteen.
Speaker 2: You just mentioned it. Are you a fan of a
Speaker 2: huge fan? Huge fan?
Speaker 3: He has that redemptive power as well, like soul music.
Speaker 3: You know, whatever happens for the characters in his song,
Speaker 3: there's always the possibility that they can ride to the
Speaker 3: sea and wash these sins off their hands. You know,
Speaker 3: they're doing racing in the street. I mean darkness on
Speaker 3: the edge of town. We were just talking about about that,
Speaker 3: you know. I mean, is there is there any great
Speaker 3: opening line in pop music? Then they blew up the
Speaker 3: Chicken Man in Philly last night? I mean, what a
Speaker 3: great line that is. It's such a great line. I
Speaker 3: saw him at Meadowlands on born in USA, too blew
Speaker 3: my mind. He made it feel like a club, just
Speaker 3: did my head in completely. I was like, I mean,
Speaker 3: the trouble is I think maybe it's just I don't know,
Speaker 3: it might just be me. Maybe all performances like this.
Speaker 3: But when you go and see a songwriter or you know,
Speaker 3: somebody who does a job similar to your job, you
Speaker 3: spend all your time analyzing what they're doing, how they're
Speaker 3: doing that, why are they doing that, what's going on there?
Speaker 3: You know, it gets in the way of watching Elvis Costello.
Speaker 3: It's impossible for me to enjoy Bob Dylan gig. I'm
Speaker 3: trying to all the time think you know what's going
Speaker 3: on here? But Springsteen was just like.
Speaker 2: I think he's so connected to the audience. There's no
Speaker 2: like I was used to English bands or kind of
Speaker 2: nodding at each other somebody ironically, there's none of that.
Speaker 3: No, he totally He's all there and he doesn't leave anything.
Speaker 3: He doesn't leave anything backstage. It's all there out front.
Speaker 3: You get it every time, and it just gives and
Speaker 3: gives and gives.
Speaker 2: Yeah, after you did William Blook, you did Mermaid, the
Speaker 2: first Mermaid Abby, Yeah, And I think people know the
Speaker 2: sort of genesis of the project that you got all
Speaker 2: these lyrics of Woody Guthrie's. When you saw these archives,
Speaker 2: what surprised you what jumped out.
Speaker 3: How much there was three thousand complete lyrics boxes and boxes.
Speaker 3: The start off pulling out the songs you think are good,
Speaker 3: and you realize, actually, there's amazing songs in there. And
Speaker 3: you pull out the amazing ones and you realize there
Speaker 3: are brilliant songs in there, and you have to go
Speaker 3: back put some back in the box they come out
Speaker 3: of and you realize that, and then you get on
Speaker 3: a thread, and then you realize that, yeah, you get
Speaker 3: a bit of paper and it's got written on the
Speaker 3: bit of you know, it's a song here, but the
Speaker 3: top of the bit of paper someone what he's written
Speaker 3: way over yonder in the minor key. You're like that,
Speaker 3: what does that mean? You go through morning and you
Speaker 3: see again, you know, way over yonder in the minor
Speaker 3: kin and maybe a little bit more of a scrubble lewick.
Speaker 3: And eventually you come to a song that says, let's
Speaker 3: got way over yonder in the minor key in the chorus,
Speaker 3: and you realize it, he's left your paper trail. They
Speaker 3: kind of find somebody to find and connect with his song.
Speaker 2: I think as a listener, what surprised me the most
Speaker 2: was how modern the songs sounded, because I'm not a
Speaker 2: would he got through affection auto he I think to
Speaker 2: many people just seemed like a character from the Grapes
Speaker 2: of Wrath. It's this sort of Sepia toned hobo crossing.
Speaker 3: The country, of course.
Speaker 2: And so the songs were so funny, yep, which surprised me,
Speaker 2: but not funny in the way that you know Christ
Speaker 2: for President or some of his kids songs were. And
Speaker 2: Walt Whitman's niece.
Speaker 3: That's why we opened with it, so everyone knew where
Speaker 3: we were going. Don't think you're going to get the
Speaker 3: dust bowl balladi in mate, this.
Speaker 2: Is well, that's what.
Speaker 3: There's a couple of reasons for that. There's a couple
Speaker 3: of reasons for that. Firstly, Norah Guthrie, Woody's daughter, who
Speaker 3: was running the archive at the time, who asked me
Speaker 3: to come and look at the lyrics. She was concerned
Speaker 3: that this is like the late nineties, her father was
Speaker 3: becoming a bit of a two dimensional figure who you know,
Speaker 3: was only kind of up on a pedestal. It was
Speaker 3: the dust Bowl balladeer, and she rightly pointed out that
Speaker 3: he actually lived half his life in New York City,
Speaker 3: down on Coney Island, at a time when New York
Speaker 3: City was perhaps the most exciting cultural city in the world.
Speaker 3: You know, from nineteen thirty nine until he died in
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty seven, he was here in New York. So
Speaker 3: she wanted that aspect of him to come out. You know,
Speaker 3: everyone had heard the dust Body was one song early on.
Speaker 3: Because Woody often wrote the tunes to traditional tunes, there
Speaker 3: was one song called My thirty thousand that was clearly
Speaker 3: because the lyric, the opening line was written to the
Speaker 3: tune of an old American folk song called Jesse James.
Speaker 3: Jesse James was the man that Lay's children. They were
Speaker 3: brave that tune. And I very proudly, when I'd got
Speaker 3: the first stuff, played it to her and said, yeah,
Speaker 3: look I've got the and she was like, yeah, We've
Speaker 3: got plenty of songs like that. Billy. I was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 3: you want me to, and she was frying songs at
Speaker 3: me that were, you know, totally contrary to people's perception
Speaker 3: of Woody Guffrey, and it was her generosity and encouragement.
Speaker 3: That led me to choose songs like Ingrid Bergman, where
Speaker 3: he talks about making love to the Swedish film star
Speaker 3: on the slope some Italian volcano, My Flying Saucer where
Speaker 3: he goes for a ride on a flying saucer. Not
Speaker 3: things you would think about, would he Gusriye. But to
Speaker 3: take Woody on board, I mean you mentioned the Grapes
Speaker 3: of Wroth, the movie Henry Fonder in the Grapes of Wrath.
Speaker 3: Perhaps in people's mind they associate Woody with that Sepia
Speaker 3: tone period, but yeah, he was there. He did write
Speaker 3: songs in there. But he also lived in New York
Speaker 3: in the forties, so you also have to imagine him
Speaker 3: in the movie On the Town with Frank Sinatra and
Speaker 3: Gene Kelly, the two sailors who are chasing women around
Speaker 3: New York City in nineteen forty in technicolor in full color,
Speaker 3: which incidentally ends in Coney Island. They chase the girls
Speaker 3: to the Coney Island funfair. Wood he lived in that world.
Speaker 3: He wrote many of those songs in that world. That's
Speaker 3: why Nora chose to call the album Mermad Avenue, because
Speaker 3: to focus on that world. So we were out to
Speaker 3: challenge people's perceptions too, as Norris to reboot a father's image,
Speaker 3: and that's why we kicked off with what Whitman's niece.
Speaker 3: So nobody would have any preconceptions that we were going
Speaker 3: to be reverent with the little guy. That's not what
Speaker 3: Laura asked us to do. She asked us to shake
Speaker 3: him up. And with regard to it sounding modern, one
Speaker 3: of the you know, there wasn't many templates for doing
Speaker 3: a project like that, But Jeff and I, I think
Speaker 3: at the time Grail Marcus book Invisible Republic had come
Speaker 3: out about the recording of the Basement Tapes, and I
Speaker 3: certainly read it. I know Jeff had read it as well,
Speaker 3: and I said to him, look, you know, we're this
Speaker 3: is a bit like the Basement Tapes in the sense
Speaker 3: that I don't know if your listeners are familiar with.
Speaker 3: Many of the songs in the Basement Tapes were old
Speaker 3: timey songs. They weren't all Bob Dylan songs that Bob
Speaker 3: had written. A lot of the songs they played were
Speaker 3: old folks songs they were messing around with. And I
Speaker 3: said to Jeff, this is kind of what we're doing
Speaker 3: we're kind of we're kind of messing around with these
Speaker 3: old songs. But the thing about the basement tapes, you
Speaker 3: knew that the although they were playing these old timey songs,
Speaker 3: the people that were playing them had heard Little Richard,
Speaker 3: you know, they'd heard rock and roll. They were in
Speaker 3: that vernacular. So we got to make these records and
Speaker 3: people have got to know that we have heard the clash.
Speaker 3: People have got to know that we've heard cheap trick.
Speaker 3: You know, the Wilkos were big cheap trick fans. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 3: bring it on, you know, bring it on. We've got
Speaker 3: we've got a opportunity here to take these songs and
Speaker 3: kind of like dress them up anyway. It's like going
Speaker 3: to the dressing up box every day and who we're
Speaker 3: going to be today. Let's be Tom Waits today on
Speaker 3: Meanest Man, you know, let's be Vanilla Fudge, Let's be
Speaker 3: you know, let's just be weird. Let's just take these
Speaker 3: songs apart and put them back together again in a
Speaker 3: different way. And the freedom to do that is why
Speaker 3: we ended up recording fifty three tracks rather than fifteen tracks,
Speaker 3: which we were contracted to do, not least because nort We
Speaker 3: were in Dublin, Nora. We invited Nora over for a
Speaker 3: holiday for a week. She bought another sheaf of songs
Speaker 3: and started the old bloody process. Yeah. Yeah, she suddenly
Speaker 3: turned up with you know, another Man's Done Gone. What
Speaker 3: an incredible song that is? You know so and it
Speaker 3: was a joy to do. I mean, I really enjoyed
Speaker 3: the whole process because hitherto I'd been the guy in
Speaker 3: the studio where everything had to go through me. We had,
Speaker 3: you know, every decision, what songs next, how do you
Speaker 3: want to record it? When are we having a t break?
Speaker 3: What biscuits are we having? You know everything. Whereas in
Speaker 3: that process there was it was a you know, a
Speaker 3: two andre if not a three andder with Jay Bennett
Speaker 3: as well, between me, Jeff and Jay and the band.
Speaker 3: You know, we were taking it in turns. It was
Speaker 3: what we're going to do next?
Speaker 2: Did it change your rating?
Speaker 3: After all? It did? Yeah, it did. Because one of
Speaker 3: the things I realized looking through Woody's work is that,
Speaker 3: and he said as much in his writings that you know,
Speaker 3: he never wrote a cynical song in his life. He
Speaker 3: never wrote a song that put people down. I think
Speaker 3: that's where I kind of started to understand what a
Speaker 3: corrosive thing cynicism is. If you know, you know, would
Speaker 3: famously add on his guitar, this machine kills fascists. If
Speaker 3: I had to have something written on my guitar, we'll
Speaker 3: be death to cynicism. And by cynicism, I don't mean skepticism.
Speaker 3: I think that's healthy, it's helpful. I don't mean doubt.
Speaker 3: Never trust anyone who has no doubts. I'm talking about
Speaker 3: those people who've given up and they want you to
Speaker 3: give up as well, and it makes them feel better about
Speaker 3: the decision they've made. I've no time for those people,
Speaker 3: you know. To me, you know, cynicism is what makes
Speaker 3: you think nothing will ever change. Cynicism is what makes
Speaker 3: you fear that nobody else cares about this stuff. It's
Speaker 3: what Fox News want you to believe. And I'm, you know,
Speaker 3: like Woody, I'm you know, committed to destroying that feeling
Speaker 3: in people then kicking it to the curve as often
Speaker 3: as I can not to say that I'm not prone
Speaker 3: to my own cynicism. How could you not be? The
Speaker 3: way politics have gone in the last thirty years, But
Speaker 3: you have to fight it all the time in order
Speaker 3: to recognize that the glasses half full, and that if
Speaker 3: ordinary people are given the opportunity to pull the leaves
Speaker 3: of power, we would live in a better world. You
Speaker 3: have to believe in people and what they what they do.
Speaker 2: I want to ask you about two projects you did
Speaker 2: because it was with one of our favorite people here.
Speaker 2: It was Joe Henry.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: And first of all, and this gets to the sense
Speaker 2: of place, the field recordings. You taped train songs from where.
Speaker 3: Was the Chicago to Los Angeles?
Speaker 2: Chicago to Los Angeles new tape. I don't know how
Speaker 2: many you tape. There's about ten on the record.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think it's what was he?
Speaker 2: How did that come about?
Speaker 3: Well, it's a bit convoluted, but I'll try. While I
Speaker 3: was writing the Skiffle book in Touch by Aperture Photography
Speaker 3: magazine and they wanted to send me out on the road.
Speaker 3: It was a the anniversary of The Americans, the photo
Speaker 3: book by.
Speaker 2: Robert Frank.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much for Robert Frank. I'm so bad
Speaker 3: with names. I do apologize everyone. Robert Frank's great book
Speaker 3: The Americans, which is amazing photography book. They wanted to
Speaker 3: send someone out on the road. A photographer out on
Speaker 3: the road with me, and so I had a chat
Speaker 3: with him and I said, you know, that's really boring
Speaker 3: being on the road. Really, I'm just like, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm in the van and I'm at a gig, And
Speaker 3: I said, can't we do it? You know, it would
Speaker 3: be more interested to do a road trip somewhereere I've
Speaker 3: never been in America. And they said, well, where would
Speaker 3: you like to go in America that you've never been.
Speaker 3: I said, I'd like to go to Rock Island, where
Speaker 3: the Rock Island Line comes from. And the guy said
Speaker 3: to me, where's that? I said, I don't know. It
Speaker 3: turns out it's in in the far west of Illinois
Speaker 3: on the border with Iowa. It's the mississ the Mississippi divides,
Speaker 3: and it's where they built the first bridge across the Mississippi.
Speaker 3: So we went there, and we drove down to Arkansas,
Speaker 3: where the song Rock Island line comes from. And when
Speaker 3: we went to the railway station there, we wanted to
Speaker 3: get the midnight train to come in. So we do
Speaker 3: a photo with the midnight train and it come in
Speaker 3: and it sat there for forty minutes, just sat there
Speaker 3: and what's that about and it turns out that there
Speaker 3: are so few passenger trains outside the Northeast corner that
Speaker 3: when a passenger train like one a day really on
Speaker 3: that line through Little Rock where we were, they have
Speaker 3: to stay in the railway station let the freight train through.
Speaker 3: They used the railway station almost like a side in.
Speaker 3: And it turned out I got the schedule, and it
Speaker 3: turned out it stopped in every big city forty minutes.
Speaker 3: And it occurred to me that you could use that
Speaker 3: time to record a song. You get off the train,
Speaker 3: go into the waiting room, find a suitably acoustic corner,
Speaker 3: play a train song, jump back on the train, and
Speaker 3: keep going, play some on the train maybe you know.
Speaker 3: And so you know, Joe Henry had produced my album
Speaker 3: before that, Tooth and Nail, and he's a dear friend
Speaker 3: of mine, Joe, I love him the bits, and I
Speaker 3: came up with this cockamaney idea and he said, yeah,
Speaker 3: that would be brilliant. So over the course of three
Speaker 3: or four days we were on the train, and it
Speaker 3: was it was a revelation because the train comes through
Speaker 3: the kind of what was it, iggy pop call at
Speaker 3: the ripped back sides of the city. Because you're you know,
Speaker 3: you're you're slowing down to go over the roads. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you're slowing down to go over the roads. And you're
Speaker 3: looking in someone's backyard in their parlor. You see them
Speaker 3: all sitting there having a dinner. It's in America. I
Speaker 3: certainly never seen. And my compadres who are working with me,
Speaker 3: Joe and the guy who recorded it and the guys
Speaker 3: who took some photos and did some filming, they were
Speaker 3: blown away by this. And they've never been on a
Speaker 3: training before, I don't think. Really, Yeah, it's really strange.
Speaker 3: They were like, wow, this is like a completely different
Speaker 3: you know, it kind of comes down the from Chicago,
Speaker 3: comes down to San Antonio and then it kind of
Speaker 3: follows the Rio Grande and uh and then off across
Speaker 3: Arizona into into Union Station in Los Angeles. And we
Speaker 3: had the best time in the trains had you know,
Speaker 3: they have a shower on there. We have a dining
Speaker 3: car and they always sit here on a table with
Speaker 3: people that you haven't sat with before, so that that's
Speaker 3: always someone who and who's on the trains. The people
Speaker 3: on the trains are either tourists, people who worked on
Speaker 3: the railways or their father worked on the railways, and
Speaker 3: people who don't want to show their idea an airport
Speaker 3: are on trains. So it's a really interesting trip. When
Speaker 3: you sit down and talk to people at the table,
Speaker 3: you know, it's what you're doing and we are you know,
Speaker 3: you learn, We learn a lot.
Speaker 2: Was it easy to find places in the train stations
Speaker 2: where you could get good acoustics?
Speaker 3: Yeah, generally. Yeah. We obviously we told the crew that
Speaker 3: what we were doing. Well. I had a guy I
Speaker 3: had a contact at Amtrak who was a musician, really
Speaker 3: fortunate and he set it up for me. We met
Speaker 3: him in Union Station in Chicago. So they have all aboard.
Speaker 3: They have three all the boards. The first all the boards,
Speaker 3: the general all the board, the second all the board
Speaker 3: is better, get the board, and then the last all
Speaker 3: the board is goodbye. So we just had to listen
Speaker 3: out for the second all the board and make sure
Speaker 3: we were on our way back to the train so
Speaker 3: we didn't get left behind. One of the things about
Speaker 3: Amtrak is their schedule was a bit a bit hit
Speaker 3: and miss. Yeah. One of the guys English guys said
Speaker 3: that they got in twenty four hours late to Union
Speaker 3: and it's only a forty eight hour train journey. They
Speaker 3: got in a whole day late due to problems with
Speaker 3: freight trains on the line, and we were do to
Speaker 3: get into Union Station, Los Angeles at kind of seven am.
Speaker 3: We've got it at four am, and the one time ever
Speaker 3: they were early, we got it at four am. But
Speaker 3: it was cool because we ended up finding nobody about.
Speaker 3: We found this loveliest space to record our last song,
Speaker 3: which was Early Morning Rain by Gordon Lightfoot, which compares
Speaker 3: the jetplane to the railways. A brilliant, brilliant song. And
Speaker 3: where we sang it was behind us there was a
Speaker 3: little garden square and as we sang it, the birds
Speaker 3: began to wake up. They must have heard us, and
Speaker 3: they started singing, and you can hear them just in
Speaker 3: the background starting to sing in the bushes behind us
Speaker 3: as he's starting to get light. It was a brilliant,
Speaker 3: brilliant experience, and I encourage any of you out there
Speaker 3: we want to see a different kind of America to
Speaker 3: take the trip. There's another route to Los Angeles goes
Speaker 3: through the Rockies, the California Zephyr. We went on the
Speaker 3: Texas Eagle, but it really is an amazing experience and
Speaker 3: it's and given the grief you have to go through,
Speaker 3: to go through airports to get around America. I don't
Speaker 3: know why there isn't a high speed train link, you know,
Speaker 3: San Francisco to Los Angeles, a bullet train, you know,
Speaker 3: as the atmosphere gets more turbulent, the possibility of high
Speaker 3: speed trains, I think you really should check it out,
Speaker 3: because the trains that make America. America before the trains
Speaker 3: is a completely different place to America after the training.
Speaker 3: Before the train, it was only really feasible to build
Speaker 3: settlements inland on rivers because you just couldn't get the
Speaker 3: stuff there was, you know, too many piney woods in
Speaker 3: the way, you know, so all the big towns and
Speaker 3: the big cities are all on the great rivers. Once
Speaker 3: the railway comes, then you know, it opens the whole
Speaker 3: continent up. And I don't think doing the record and
Speaker 3: doing the research that went with it, I don't think
Speaker 3: there's ever been a more transformative technology for humankind than
Speaker 3: the railroad. The change it brings for thousands of years
Speaker 3: of nothing being able to go faster than a horse
Speaker 3: could gallup or ship could sail, suddenly to have something
Speaker 3: that not could only go at a higher speed, but
Speaker 3: could connect you directly to anywhere in the continent, so
Speaker 3: that you could order something from Chicago and it would
Speaker 3: arrive two or three days later, it would physically be there.
Speaker 3: It's so much more, I think, so much more revolutionary
Speaker 3: than the Internet what we've experienced in our lifetimes, which
Speaker 3: is in itself revolutionary. But you know, Amazon is nothing
Speaker 3: to the ability of people to order something from a
Speaker 3: catalog out east and it end up in this tiny
Speaker 3: little town in wherever, you know, Nevada or whatever, something
Speaker 3: like that, and also people could get on it. I mean,
Speaker 3: so many of those those blue songs about the railroad
Speaker 3: because that was another level of emancipation for African Americans
Speaker 3: to get to the big cities up north where you
Speaker 3: weren't constantly you know, there was of course there was
Speaker 3: still racism. Of course there was still discrimination, but it
Speaker 3: wasn't the Jim Crow type up there. That emmancipatory nature
Speaker 3: of the railroads in America was That's why we wanted
Speaker 3: to take them songs back there.
Speaker 2: It was also the way people told time back then. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you knew that was the three or four.
Speaker 3: In my country. That's when they had to synchronize all
Speaker 3: the clocks in the country because before and they just
Speaker 3: did it when it was got darker, when it got light.
Speaker 3: But once the railroad come, everything had to run on
Speaker 3: a scheduled timetable. And it's like, it's interesting, you know,
Speaker 3: if you if you go back to the story that
Speaker 3: made Charles Dickens the Pickwick Papers, it's about the pre
Speaker 3: industrial age, you know. It's why we Brits are all
Speaker 3: obsessed with Jane Austin. It's all going back to that
Speaker 3: prelapse area period before the Industrial Revolution, before the railroad came,
Speaker 3: there was this kind of you know, dizzy kind of
Speaker 3: Garden of Eden vibe with the aristocracy and all that
Speaker 3: kind of stuff. It's very interesting how the railroad comes
Speaker 3: to symbolize modernity and any on dynamicism, and particularly in
Speaker 3: this continent, it changes everything.
Speaker 2: Well, you woke up the birds in Los Angeles. It's
Speaker 2: a very woody Guthrie image. I think we should end there.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for coming in well.
Speaker 3: Pleasure, thank you having I've been great chatting with email.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much to Billy Bragg for stopping off during
Speaker 1: his tour to chat with Bruce Headlam. Here a playlist
Speaker 1: of some of our favorite Billy Bragg songs. Visit the
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Speaker 3: Our theme music's back Anny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.