Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to The Bob Left Set's podcast. My
Speaker 1: guest today is singer political rock auteur Troubadoor Billy Brag
Speaker 1: Billy Glad to have you here. Okay, now, you're in
Speaker 1: here for a three nights stand at the Troubadoor, and
Speaker 1: each night is different material. Can you explain that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really something that I developed over the last eighteen months.
Speaker 1: Last time I came through town through Los Angeles, I
Speaker 1: was on a fly plate too, which is basically every
Speaker 1: day you fly and play. That's hard than it used
Speaker 1: to be. I mean partly because I'm over sixty now,
Speaker 1: so it's harder than me. Let's just be clear, how
Speaker 1: old are you? Sixty one? But also the airlines don't
Speaker 1: operate the way they used to it. I think it's
Speaker 1: a mixture of um, the corporate attitude, but also the
Speaker 1: weather is much more inclement than it used to be,
Speaker 1: and it only takes a storm in the Midwest to
Speaker 1: knock their schedules out a little bit and you're in
Speaker 1: danger of losing a gig. I know agents who won't
Speaker 1: book bands who've played in Nashville a gig the very
Speaker 1: next day in New York, because the possibility of them
Speaker 1: missing the gig because the flights are canceled is too high.
Speaker 1: So when you take all that into account, UM you
Speaker 1: need to try and think about new way of touring.
Speaker 1: And for me UM, I got invited to play at
Speaker 1: the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto a couple of years ago
Speaker 1: three nights stand there for their seventy five I think
Speaker 1: seventy fifth anniversary. I used to play there a lot
Speaker 1: in the eighties, and I came up with this idea
Speaker 1: that the first night I would play my current touring set,
Speaker 1: which is a you know songs right across my career,
Speaker 1: the tour, the show I did last night I was
Speaker 1: in town, the show I would do if I was
Speaker 1: just doing one night in a city. But on the
Speaker 1: second night, I would only play songs from my first
Speaker 1: three albums. Just for those who were uninitiated, how many
Speaker 1: albums do you have? Double twelve? So just from the
Speaker 1: first three years US three, yes, So that would take
Speaker 1: me up to about night and eight six. And then
Speaker 1: on the third night, the final night, I would only
Speaker 1: play songs from my second three albums, so that would
Speaker 1: take me up to so classic early brag and then
Speaker 1: the sort of poppy middle period, and it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of interesting for me because, um, I think for a
Speaker 1: lot of younger audiences, it was Murmaid Avenue project with
Speaker 1: Wilco that put me onto their radar. When you did
Speaker 1: Mermaid Avenue that was around the turn of the century.
Speaker 1: But those earlier records play into the crowd that kind
Speaker 1: of got into me through college radio and near the
Speaker 1: people who are coming along. And I can tell it
Speaker 1: then because the middle night the first three albums always
Speaker 1: sells out first, that was my question exactly, and the
Speaker 1: other two eventually sell out. But which do you which
Speaker 1: do you enjoy playing the most? It depends what kind
Speaker 1: of mood I'm in. I think the first three album
Speaker 1: stuff Is is exciting. You gotta remember, Bob, my first
Speaker 1: album was only seventy minutes long. I can and have
Speaker 1: played it as an uncle the whole album. I don't
Speaker 1: need to, um, you know, rent the Royal album Hole
Speaker 1: and get an orchestra. Can just bash it out if
Speaker 1: I feel like it. But having said that, um, in
Speaker 1: the context that we're currently in the political context, a
Speaker 1: lot of those songs still resonate. But then the second
Speaker 1: three records, when I was trying to be laughingly trying
Speaker 1: to be a pop star. They're interesting to kind of
Speaker 1: reconnect with as well. And then the last of those
Speaker 1: three albums, William Bloke, is my kind of parenthood record,
Speaker 1: and it's always nice to go back to that. That's
Speaker 1: sort of rebirth. Now even you you're you're a third
Speaker 1: generation or depending on how we want to kind of
Speaker 1: You're not the Beatles, You're not a seventies act. But
Speaker 1: in today's scattered landscape where it's hard for anybody to
Speaker 1: get traction, there's that affect your motivation to rate songs
Speaker 1: and record song It does. It's not so much the traction,
Speaker 1: it's the cost as an independent artist behind making a
Speaker 1: full blown album that can actually engage in the mainstream
Speaker 1: on Spotify. The last album made, which was recorded here
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles at Joe Henry's place. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: I I recorded the album in a week, and then
Speaker 1: I had to spend a year earning a war chest
Speaker 1: to take it on the road with the band, because
Speaker 1: it felt to me that if I wanted to step
Speaker 1: up a level, it would need a band. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I spent a year to wait with the album and
Speaker 1: spend a year getting together because I have no record
Speaker 1: company behind me. I do have a record company, um
Speaker 1: Cooking Vinyl, but I have a kind of licensing deal
Speaker 1: with him, so I pay for the records, I pay
Speaker 1: for the promotion, and as a result, I owned my
Speaker 1: back cattle. So yeah, it's it's a point out. A
Speaker 1: full service album is a big, a big task in
Speaker 1: terms of blood and treasure. Okay, can't you can't do
Speaker 1: it every every couple of years. Now, if you did
Speaker 1: it with Joe Henry, how much did it cost it
Speaker 1: cost like a proper album. I shouldn't really say that
Speaker 1: much it costs, but it did cost, you know, full
Speaker 1: blown six figures. Um yeah, not quite no, no, okay,
Speaker 1: so we get we get the ball, not quite, but
Speaker 1: a lot of money for me, I have to say
Speaker 1: for someone. Of course, of course you have to make
Speaker 1: the money, but you also but you should know that
Speaker 1: I've always made a living doing gigs. I've seldom made
Speaker 1: a huge living Sullen records. I had some gold records
Speaker 1: in the UK in the eighties, which is a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand copies. But really, I'm a I'm a My bread
Speaker 1: and butter is doing gigs. Okay, but what about the
Speaker 1: concept of recording with the band and economically going out solo,
Speaker 1: or do you felt that the only way to do
Speaker 1: justice to this material to have before being the only
Speaker 1: the only reason to make a full service album is
Speaker 1: to try and push what you're doing up or notch,
Speaker 1: to get too slightly larger theaters, to get too slightly
Speaker 1: broader audience, to try and reach out. There's no point
Speaker 1: in just going in and just doing whatever you want
Speaker 1: to do. You gotta think what do I want to
Speaker 1: achieve with this record? So getting the band together was
Speaker 1: part of that. You know. I did a third in
Speaker 1: week North American Bus too, which I've never done before,
Speaker 1: and it's I think I needed to show willing. I
Speaker 1: was still willing to two at least I have a
Speaker 1: have a crack making. Now that that was said and done,
Speaker 1: do you believe you achieved your goal of widening your audience.
Speaker 1: I think I achieved my goal of broadening people's perception
Speaker 1: of who I am and what I do. Working with
Speaker 1: Joe was was really howd you hook up with Joe?
Speaker 1: I'm known for years, known for years. I've always been
Speaker 1: a big fan of his and whatever I bumped into him,
Speaker 1: he's always said, you know, you could come and make
Speaker 1: an album in my basement for a week. And towards
Speaker 1: the um end of eleven, my mom had passed away
Speaker 1: in the March of eleven and I really needed to
Speaker 1: not not for any other reason than just I needed
Speaker 1: to do something else, and you know, I sort of
Speaker 1: cleared her house out, I'd sort it out the world
Speaker 1: and everything in the state, and I needed to do
Speaker 1: have a project to do. My partners suggested, he said,
Speaker 1: why don't you go and see Joe make a record
Speaker 1: with Joe, and that that seemed like a great, great
Speaker 1: idea to do so. So, but working with Joe kind
Speaker 1: of brought me a lot closer to the nascent Americana
Speaker 1: scene because he's got good connections in that department. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I was the Americana Music Association invite me
Speaker 1: to Nashville to give an award. Obviously I had some
Speaker 1: connection there with the Wild Coo Woody Gutic thing, but
Speaker 1: they invited me to come along and and I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I'm happy to be part of that. Obviously. It's like
Speaker 1: my relationship with folk music in England. I'm not of
Speaker 1: the folks scene, I'm not of Americana, but I am
Speaker 1: in some ways part of it. Well today anyway, with
Speaker 1: every with the evolution of these scenes. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: American is a good place for singer songwriters. Now I
Speaker 1: know a lot of British maybe the only place it
Speaker 1: possibly Yeah, a lot of British singer songwriters. They're looking
Speaker 1: to shift to Nashville, go to Nashville to look for work.
Speaker 1: So that's a positive thing I think. Okay, Now, when
Speaker 1: you came in, you just said you got off the
Speaker 1: Cyomo cruise talking of Americana. Okay, so tell us a
Speaker 1: little bit about what that experience was like. Oh, I've
Speaker 1: never been on a cruise ship before, so the idea
Speaker 1: of going out on one sounds a bit strange. But
Speaker 1: when okay, just so I know, I have been on
Speaker 1: a few cruise ships. Did you have did Kayamo have
Speaker 1: the entire ship? The entire ship? And do you remember
Speaker 1: what the name of the brand was, you know, Holland
Speaker 1: America Princes the Norwegian Pearl. We're in the Norwegian Okay,
Speaker 1: I have actually been on a Norwegian ship and it
Speaker 1: was gigantic, like yeah, like a city block sailing around
Speaker 1: the Caribbean. And um, my partner Juliet was actually born
Speaker 1: in the Caribbean. She was born in Trinidad and she
Speaker 1: never have been back there, so she wanted to come.
Speaker 1: And she's also my manager, so that made a lot
Speaker 1: of sense. And for some reason which I can't understand,
Speaker 1: my son suddenly decided he wanted a roady for me,
Speaker 1: so he came as well, and we had the best time.
Speaker 1: We had a really great time. There's like there must
Speaker 1: have been about I would say maybe thirty to forty artists,
Speaker 1: most of them solo artists. UM. The headline acts for
Speaker 1: Jason Isbell and he's a four hundred unit. His banned
Speaker 1: Emmy Lou Harris was keb mo Uh Indigo girls UM
Speaker 1: and a lot of other great North American and some
Speaker 1: European singer songwriters and about I think there was probably
Speaker 1: about twelve hundred hunters on the boat with it. Okay,
Speaker 1: so how many days was the cruise and how many
Speaker 1: times did you perform? Performed three times solo. I organized
Speaker 1: a Woody Guthrie event. I saw who else was on
Speaker 1: the buildry go to the Cashy Chambers UM justin towns oh.
Speaker 1: I kind of knew these guys will be into doing
Speaker 1: something around Woody UM and also being a little bit political.
Speaker 1: I wanted to kind of make a point of doing
Speaker 1: something of that. Ilk Um and our guy would talk
Speaker 1: about skiffle because I thought that audience who are into
Speaker 1: their roots music would be interested too. Here I did,
Speaker 1: you wrote a book about skiffle. Now I understand this
Speaker 1: was really a big thing in the UK and it
Speaker 1: inspired a lot of rock artists. But Americans are clueless.
Speaker 1: Not that this not that I haven't heard from English listeners,
Speaker 1: but relatively briefly, explain what skiffle is. Skiffle is English
Speaker 1: schoolboys in the nineteen fifties picking up acoustic guitars to
Speaker 1: play lead Belli's repertoire. Okay, I don't know this is
Speaker 1: too deep because we always hear about Liverpool being a
Speaker 1: seaport city and a lot of the acts from they're
Speaker 1: getting American records from the seamen. How did these, if
Speaker 1: you know, these skiffle players find out about belly? Well,
Speaker 1: in the years after the Second World War, the American
Speaker 1: government had a department called the US Information Service, and
Speaker 1: if you went to the US Embassy in Crown Square,
Speaker 1: there was a department there where you could go and
Speaker 1: borrow books. American books are promoting American culture. In the basement,
Speaker 1: there was a record library which contained the whole of
Speaker 1: the Library Congress recording so everything from you know American
Speaker 1: classical music, you know Copeland and stuff like that, all
Speaker 1: the way to um the Parchment Farm recordings that John
Speaker 1: Alan Lomax did with Muddy Waters, and so people like
Speaker 1: Londie Donegan, who had a hit with Rock, Ironline Librities
Speaker 1: Rock Online, could access those records and that is how
Speaker 1: they found them. That is how they found them. So
Speaker 1: Lonnie Darnigan actually went to the record collection. Londie Donigan
Speaker 1: didn't only go to the record collection. He regularly stole
Speaker 1: the records because people would go there to borrow the
Speaker 1: records and they would say, I'm afraid this record has
Speaker 1: been taken out by someone called Tony Donegan. Donegan realized
Speaker 1: that if he um, if he stole the record, the
Speaker 1: Americans could just get another copy. You couldn't buy a
Speaker 1: lead Belly record in England, so so he often stole
Speaker 1: the records. And when I went to the Library Congress
Speaker 1: in to talk about Skiffle, they looked in their records
Speaker 1: and found a memo which discussed the fact that books
Speaker 1: and records were being stolen, and the attitude in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. Was well, we're trying to promote American culture.
Speaker 1: I guess this is part of the process. Let's not
Speaker 1: worry about it. I guess it's working. There are more
Speaker 1: latent exactly. So here's the here's the thing. Donegan has
Speaker 1: a hit with Rock hard Line fifty six. He goes
Speaker 1: on the road in late fifty six playing vaudeville circuit.
Speaker 1: So he's doing two shows a night, six nights a
Speaker 1: week in major cities. When he plays in Liverpool, George
Speaker 1: Harrison goes every night of the week. Paul McCartney goes.
Speaker 1: John Lennon. We don't think he does go Here's the
Speaker 1: really significant thing about this. Harrison is thirteen, McCartney's fourteen,
Speaker 1: and Lennon is sixteen. These are the people that Donnegan
Speaker 1: has the effect on, not people who are buying African
Speaker 1: American roots music from sailors in the ports. We're talking
Speaker 1: about kids. In some ways. Skiffle was like the fidget
Speaker 1: spinner craze that has been in playgrounds over here and
Speaker 1: in my country in the last five years. It was
Speaker 1: a school school boy phenomenon. What they did those kids
Speaker 1: was they picked up the acoustic guitar as a symbol
Speaker 1: of their difference from their parents generation. Because these kids,
Speaker 1: John Ian was born in nine and forty, he's in
Speaker 1: the first tranch there there there there are first teenagers.
Speaker 1: And until when Leonard's fourteen, there was food rationing in
Speaker 1: my country, including sweets. So John Lennon couldn't go in
Speaker 1: a sweet shop till he was fourteen and buy what
Speaker 1: you wanted. And a year later he left school and
Speaker 1: you know, I was going to college, so it was
Speaker 1: quite almost an adult before he could buy what he wanted.
Speaker 1: And it's these kids, and they're uh young, their lives
Speaker 1: being deprived of those things that blong onto African American
Speaker 1: culture so strongly as something that's there's it hasn't been
Speaker 1: handed down to them by the state or rational to
Speaker 1: them by the government and the BBC. So they learned
Speaker 1: to play guitars. And so by the time American kids
Speaker 1: are white American kids anywhere learning to play acoustic guitar
Speaker 1: during the Folk Revival, which starts in fifty nine, our kids,
Speaker 1: their contemporaries, they were the same age as them. They're
Speaker 1: already in Hamburg. And the result of this is that
Speaker 1: when the Beatles break the American charts in janu there's
Speaker 1: a huge number of already road hard in British groups
Speaker 1: ready to come in behind them. Skiffle is the nursery
Speaker 1: for the British invasion of America. It's not what they
Speaker 1: did in in the fifties. These kids, what they do
Speaker 1: in the sixties that counts. So you were born in
Speaker 1: fifties seven, I was born at peak skiffle. Were you
Speaker 1: aware of any of this? You're too young. When I
Speaker 1: was a kid, I was aware of Donegan, but only
Speaker 1: in terms of his um novelty records like myle Man's
Speaker 1: a Dustman and your Chewing Gun. So when did you
Speaker 1: get turned onto? Amount of time of punk? Because what
Speaker 1: happened with punk was all the old guitars that had
Speaker 1: been there during skiffle, which were most the old arch
Speaker 1: tops were back in the junk shops and the old
Speaker 1: really early a hollow body electric guitars in the U
Speaker 1: coach are made by the Hofner company. They were they
Speaker 1: were all buying for ten quid and they became kind
Speaker 1: of part of punk. They were so fabulously retro and
Speaker 1: punk had a lot of similarities with UM. Skiffle in
Speaker 1: that it was a do it yourself uh genre. You know,
Speaker 1: you made your own music. You in many ways you
Speaker 1: were self empowering. Because that's the thing that was most
Speaker 1: revolutionary about Donegan. The message that he took around the
Speaker 1: country when he when he went out in fifty six
Speaker 1: was firstly, you don't have to be a trained musician
Speaker 1: to make music, and secondly, you don't have to be
Speaker 1: an old African American guy at seeing the blues. And
Speaker 1: this is probably the two most revolutionary ideas ever imparted
Speaker 1: to British youth. It was just, you know, because Van Morrison,
Speaker 1: when our interviewed him for the book, told me the
Speaker 1: problem with Elvis was you couldn't be Elvis if you
Speaker 1: were British. It's just impossible. You could be Learning Donegan.
Speaker 1: So Donegan kind of was the catalyst for for for
Speaker 1: these kids too to learn the three chords necessary to
Speaker 1: play all of Lead Bellies repertoire, which also, by concidence,
Speaker 1: happened to be the three chords necessary to play all
Speaker 1: the Chuck Berry's repertoire. Okay, and the punk scene, you know,
Speaker 1: it starts in America with the Ramans and seventy five
Speaker 1: they don't get any traction. When do you become aware
Speaker 1: of the pug scene? And I go and see the
Speaker 1: jam They were kind of retro band. Where were you? Okay,
Speaker 1: so where were you living at the East London a
Speaker 1: place called Barking in Northeast London industrial borough. I was
Speaker 1: educated left school at sixteen, and I was educated to
Speaker 1: work in the car factory which has dominated our town. Okay,
Speaker 1: a little bit once again. If you leave at sixteen,
Speaker 1: what do your parents say about that? Are they're cool?
Speaker 1: My parents have both left school. I have a working
Speaker 1: class upbringing my parents. And so do you go to work?
Speaker 1: What is your gig? You go to work in the
Speaker 1: car country. I'm determined not to work in the car
Speaker 1: factory because we get from school. We go to the
Speaker 1: car factory every year for careers advice. And when I
Speaker 1: tell the the careers officer that I don't want to
Speaker 1: work for Fords, he says, your free options son in
Speaker 1: the Army to Navy of the Air Force. That's it.
Speaker 1: So I manage what happens. It is just as I
Speaker 1: leave school, the Port of London is being containerized, and
Speaker 1: so I get a job with one of the new
Speaker 1: container companies. As a kind of office boy, which is
Speaker 1: kind of well, that's what I wanted, you know, um,
Speaker 1: because in many ways I kind of picked up the
Speaker 1: guitar to avoid working in the car factory. But they
Speaker 1: were the main ways to escape. Be good at football,
Speaker 1: good at boxing, or play music, and I wasn't good
Speaker 1: at the first two. Okay, let's go back a little bit.
Speaker 1: So if you're turned out of the punk scene and
Speaker 1: you've got to see the with the GM in seventy seven,
Speaker 1: are you someone who's addicted to the radio before that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: from the age of about twelve, I had had a
Speaker 1: real to real tape machine usually, yeah, sort of a
Speaker 1: domestic one. Domestic, real to real. My parents. I think
Speaker 1: my parents realized if they brought me a real to
Speaker 1: real machine, this is before the days of cassettes, I'll
Speaker 1: be able to tape stuff from the radio and they
Speaker 1: wouldn't have to keep spending money buy me records. It's
Speaker 1: quite clever, really, and did is that what happened? It
Speaker 1: was better than that. My friends down our street all
Speaker 1: had elder sisters and their record collections, which is brilliant.
Speaker 1: So very soon I had the entire Simon and Garth
Speaker 1: Uncle catalog, and Motown Chartbusters Volumes three, four, five, six,
Speaker 1: and seven on tape. And that provided me with the
Speaker 1: basis of my knowledge of music and my skill as
Speaker 1: a songwriter. And when do you start to play. I
Speaker 1: start writing songs on about twelve. I can't play until
Speaker 1: I leave school. Okay. But if you're writing songs, you're
Speaker 1: writing them on what paper? Really? You're just making the
Speaker 1: melodies up in your in my head? Yeah? And are
Speaker 1: those moon June songs or well? I wrote a poem
Speaker 1: um at school the when I was twelve that the
Speaker 1: English teacher was very impressed with and he wrote to
Speaker 1: my parents and asked if I copied it from a
Speaker 1: book and I hadn't, so that that impressed him. And
Speaker 1: then I got to read it out on a kid's
Speaker 1: radio program, a local radio program. So I kind of okay,
Speaker 1: let's go a little bit slower. Here was this for
Speaker 1: an assign? Yeah? Okay, do you remember what the assignment was?
Speaker 1: A poem? Okay? And was this relatively brief or you know,
Speaker 1: three or four verses here? Three or four verses? You
Speaker 1: remember any of them today? Not? Really? It was it
Speaker 1: was it was kind of apocalyptic in its nature. I
Speaker 1: think that you know there's no hope for mankind or
Speaker 1: something like that. Okay, And was it something you dashed
Speaker 1: off or something you took seriously, this is my chance.
Speaker 1: It's something I did for homework book and just worked
Speaker 1: out really well and that kind and then I got
Speaker 1: the I failed all my exams except English. You get
Speaker 1: to read on the radio. That must be big, you know.
Speaker 1: It was a big inspiration. It inspired me. Inspired me
Speaker 1: because I always liked to sing a songwriter, you know.
Speaker 1: I started with Paul Simon and graduated very quickly on
Speaker 1: the Bob Dylan. I had a job in a hardware
Speaker 1: store on Saturdays, and the hardware store had a record
Speaker 1: shop in the basement, so I spent all my money
Speaker 1: on discounting vinyl and earlier and I got Bob Dylan's
Speaker 1: Greatest It's the original version, which has all the early
Speaker 1: stuff on it. And that really that really inspired me. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you're writing songs. Are you gathering together with friends
Speaker 1: to play these songs? Well, this is the thing. The
Speaker 1: kid next door. When I turned sixteen, I can hear
Speaker 1: the kid next door playing his electric guitar through the war.
Speaker 1: He's fourteen and he's working his way through the watch
Speaker 1: Shoot Songbook. So I get my dad to buy me
Speaker 1: a Nylon strong Spanish guitar, and I get the kidnext
Speaker 1: or to teach me how I played. I remember that's
Speaker 1: how I started the nightline. They're not easy to play, No,
Speaker 1: they're not. And it's you know, it's the just thing
Speaker 1: of get one end to do this and the other
Speaker 1: rand to do something completely different. It's not easy. But
Speaker 1: as I say, I was learning songs I really loved
Speaker 1: at the watch Shot song But because he covered they
Speaker 1: learn and he covered a lot of great songwriters, so
Speaker 1: I was quite into these songs. And let's stop here
Speaker 1: for a second. A lot of punks had a negative
Speaker 1: attitude towards what came before, and were you part of that?
Speaker 1: I was when it got to ninety seventy seven, year
Speaker 1: I was. I was a year zero kid, although it
Speaker 1: wasn't everything. I remember I gave all my Eagles albums
Speaker 1: to the woman in the post office who I liked.
Speaker 1: She was a good friend. She was into the Eagles
Speaker 1: and I used to see her and I was like,
Speaker 1: I've got to get rid of these. I cut my hair,
Speaker 1: I got some narrow legged trousers. It's got within my
Speaker 1: flares um. But by this time I was in a band.
Speaker 1: I was playing you hear the Electric Guitar, through the Door,
Speaker 1: through the Wall, You buy the Nyeline guitar. Then what well?
Speaker 1: Me and the kid next door, Wiggy, were playing the
Speaker 1: back room with friends around the corner, and we went
Speaker 1: to school. It was a year older than me, plays drums.
Speaker 1: We start, you know, hanging out, and we've become a
Speaker 1: little gang in my back room. We're predominantly playing the
Speaker 1: Faces the Stones, a lot of old rock and roll songs,
Speaker 1: and writing our own songs as well. That's yeah, this
Speaker 1: is like an apprenticeship, you know. I worked out out
Speaker 1: how some of the Faces songs were basically guitar riffs
Speaker 1: that they just attached words to rather than verse chorus things,
Speaker 1: and explain this to Wiggy and he came up with
Speaker 1: riffs and I just attached words to him. So that
Speaker 1: sounded like where is Where is Wiggy today? He's living
Speaker 1: still where we grew up, not very far away. His
Speaker 1: dad still lives in the house next door to the
Speaker 1: house I grew up in, although my since my mom
Speaker 1: passed away, my nephew loose there now, so I see
Speaker 1: him quite regularly. Okay, so you're playing Are you playing
Speaker 1: out or you just no, no, no, no, nothing like that.
Speaker 1: We're waiting to be discovered, but we're trying. But the
Speaker 1: dream is intact. Yeah, okay, you think, Yeah, the dream
Speaker 1: is forming. The dream is forming, and it's punk. I
Speaker 1: saw you move your hands, and that's something to do
Speaker 1: with the money that the dreamer is that money, it's that,
Speaker 1: it's attraction. It's some kind of traction for a dream.
Speaker 1: Dreams need traction. Um. It's punk that makes us realize
Speaker 1: that the way to be in a band is to
Speaker 1: be in a band, not to wait for someone to
Speaker 1: come and tell you of being a Bandnestly, the clash
Speaker 1: more than so than the jam. I don't know what
Speaker 1: I think the clash think about the clash was they
Speaker 1: did all the things we like to the rolling stones,
Speaker 1: but about the ronges size. But they were our age,
Speaker 1: so we kind of some of us more than others.
Speaker 1: I think I was more into it than the other. Well,
Speaker 1: that's my question. You're forming this band, and did you
Speaker 1: quickly realized wait a second, I have more desire than
Speaker 1: the other. Oh no, we were at the same desire.
Speaker 1: We just didn't want have the same aircrat and I
Speaker 1: think that's always a problem in the band. But what
Speaker 1: happened was in the summer of seventy seven we decided
Speaker 1: we were all wanted to go on holiday together somewhere
Speaker 1: where we could stay up and make music all night,
Speaker 1: because we couldn't do that our parents. So we found
Speaker 1: this um rehearsal studio demo studio in the country and
Speaker 1: we went there for a week out of the country
Speaker 1: with We're in Northamptonshire, which is how far from East London. Oh,
Speaker 1: I would say it's two hours. Were okay, you know,
Speaker 1: but we were all completely We're all, you know, not
Speaker 1: nothing for miles around it but fields and forests and
Speaker 1: what is paying for this our work? We're all worked
Speaker 1: Pard I'm nineteen and seventy seven, WIGGI will be seventeen twenties,
Speaker 1: so we're all at work. Um And we kind of
Speaker 1: went to the studio and never really came home after
Speaker 1: after going back and forth there a few times. The
Speaker 1: people who ran it were really great for us because
Speaker 1: they they gave us a confidence. You know, that week,
Speaker 1: I must have written a dozen songs while we were there.
Speaker 1: We did stay up all night. We did well why
Speaker 1: why did the people give you confidence? Well, because our
Speaker 1: parents were like, you know, we might as well be
Speaker 1: uh collecting stamps. As far as my parents concerned, it
Speaker 1: was a hobby and I should get a proper job,
Speaker 1: you know. Okay, So at this point, yeah, the office job,
Speaker 1: office boy down at the ducks. The office. It was
Speaker 1: in the central London, in the City of London. It
Speaker 1: was cut down the docks. It was that. It was
Speaker 1: the I think I maybe by then I was even
Speaker 1: a bank messenger. I think I've moved up. It was
Speaker 1: a bank messenger and you're still living at home? Yeah,
Speaker 1: what the cusure thing that has happened? Since getting the
Speaker 1: first guitar and going to the studios and my father's
Speaker 1: passed away in Nix when I was eighteen years That
Speaker 1: must have really fun Well, it kind of did, Bob.
Speaker 1: It was a long time coming. He had lung cancer.
Speaker 1: But as he died and I had to sort of
Speaker 1: get to grips with not being a kid anymore, punk happened,
Speaker 1: and punk became the sort of life raft that I
Speaker 1: sailed away from my childhood and that terrible period where
Speaker 1: where my dad was getting worse and worse and worse
Speaker 1: and worse. It was almost like everything stopped in my life,
Speaker 1: just stopped while that was going on. And then it
Speaker 1: ended and there was punk was there, and I was
Speaker 1: able to step onto that and and sort of right
Speaker 1: away to the next part of my life. So I
Speaker 1: was very fortunate in that. Okay, so you're working as
Speaker 1: a as a bank messenger and you're making music, and
Speaker 1: what's the next step. Next step is that we move.
Speaker 1: All the guys in the band we decided to move
Speaker 1: to the farm, to the to the studio, except the
Speaker 1: guy who has an apprenticeship at Fords. He decided to
Speaker 1: stay at Forwards, which is understandable. And we live up
Speaker 1: in easternalth, Camptainshire for eighteen months and you do what
Speaker 1: for a living, nothing, So you're living off what of
Speaker 1: the government's unemployment benefit, which in those days was not
Speaker 1: not not a bad thing. A lot of people are
Speaker 1: on the dolls. So the taxpayers kind of pay for
Speaker 1: my apprenticeship. That's why I don't mind paying my taxes.
Speaker 1: I think it's only fair to pay some back. Um.
Speaker 1: And yeah, we had a great time up there. We
Speaker 1: were legendary in that town when you obviously played live
Speaker 1: there all the time. Yeah, We had a residency at
Speaker 1: a pub Sunday afternoon residency where local punk bands would
Speaker 1: come and play. And in that town, in that community,
Speaker 1: we were the punks, but we meant absolutely nothing outside
Speaker 1: that community. But there were great people and we really
Speaker 1: had it. It's very formative. My mole manager Peter Jenner,
Speaker 1: used to say that I didn't go to university. I
Speaker 1: went to riff Raft. That was the name of the band,
Speaker 1: and that isn't deed true. Okay, a couple of things.
Speaker 1: Didn't you go on the military at one? That's why
Speaker 1: happens next? The band breaks up? Why does the BM
Speaker 1: break up? Well, we had to move back to London
Speaker 1: and the drummer winner to stay there and me and
Speaker 1: we wanted to go back, and so we got a
Speaker 1: couple of other guys in. But it weren't the same.
Speaker 1: This wasn't the same, and the venues we played in
Speaker 1: were disappearing, and a new breed of pop stars was
Speaker 1: coming along who put style over content, and we've always
Speaker 1: been content of his style for punk rock. And in
Speaker 1: order to get gigs, you have to have a sympathizer
Speaker 1: and a funny haircut, and I've never had either. Our
Speaker 1: time had come and gone, and did you literally literally
Speaker 1: give up the dream? Say, you know, time passed me by.
Speaker 1: I didn't make it, kind of joined the army to
Speaker 1: press the eject button on my previous existence. That was
Speaker 1: the aim of it. Now, if you join the army,
Speaker 1: theoretically you get your ass shut off. Well, yes and no,
Speaker 1: it depends what you do. I mean, basically, at the time,
Speaker 1: the only place you get yours shot off was in
Speaker 1: Northern Ireland. But I told him I didn't want to
Speaker 1: go there, so they put me in an Irish regiment.
Speaker 1: Because the Irish regiments didn't go there. Because you don't
Speaker 1: want to take some guy off the streets of Dairy
Speaker 1: and teach them how to shoot and then send him
Speaker 1: back to harass his neighbors. It's not a good idea,
Speaker 1: so I kind of mitigated against that. But a terrible
Speaker 1: thing is bob. But once you've driven one tank, you've
Speaker 1: driven them all, to be honest with you, So well,
Speaker 1: let's start for the beginning. Did you drive a tank
Speaker 1: here for a while? Really, And you're saying, I just
Speaker 1: want to understand, because you know, I grew up in
Speaker 1: the air of the sixties when we were all anti
Speaker 1: military it's hard to see it flip in front of
Speaker 1: my eyes now. But are you saying there was no
Speaker 1: room for growth personal growth or you're saying what what
Speaker 1: in the army? No, there was. There was a realization
Speaker 1: quite early on that this wasn't going to cure me
Speaker 1: if wanted to be a singer songwriter. In fact, it
Speaker 1: maybe wanted to write more songs. So because we have
Speaker 1: a volunteer army, you can buy yourself out at any time. Well,
Speaker 1: it gets harder and more trained you are. But I
Speaker 1: brought myself out more or less at the end of
Speaker 1: basic training, so I'd barely driven a tank. And how
Speaker 1: long was basic training? All? It was about four months? Okay,
Speaker 1: I gotta ask, though you're in the army, can you
Speaker 1: relate to any of these people? What a lot of
Speaker 1: working class lads like me it were nowhere to go.
Speaker 1: You know in those days if if you you couldn't
Speaker 1: read and couldn't write, but we're physically fit, there was
Speaker 1: a job there for you. Now you can't do that anymore, okay,
Speaker 1: So you buy yourself out of the army. The dream
Speaker 1: is rekindled and you do what. I spend a year
Speaker 1: working out out how to start doing gigs again, solo
Speaker 1: with an electric guitar, start writing songs and that in
Speaker 1: that style, and playing anywhere anyone would have me for nothing,
Speaker 1: just carrying a little a little practice amp. And then
Speaker 1: did you have a da job? At that time? I
Speaker 1: was very fortunate and I bumped into an old mate
Speaker 1: of mine from the basement record store in the Harbord shop.
Speaker 1: He was running a record shop, and he gave me
Speaker 1: some work, okay, and he got to listen to the music.
Speaker 1: Did yeah, okay? It was interest you because it was
Speaker 1: an entire chain of records record stores that sold only cutouts. Really, yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a guy had a big church and these
Speaker 1: most people who don't know back in the days of
Speaker 1: physical when something was deleted from the catalog, when they
Speaker 1: weren't going to manufacture it anymore or they had overstocked,
Speaker 1: they literally put a cut in the cover and they
Speaker 1: would sell it at a discount and there were no
Speaker 1: royalties to the acts to boots, that's right. And so
Speaker 1: he had and he hired me the boss because I
Speaker 1: was the only one who knew anything about punk, and
Speaker 1: he would take me to bankrupt record stores and asked
Speaker 1: me to value of the punk stuff. Look at the
Speaker 1: punk stuff, so you knew the other stuff you didn't
Speaker 1: know show about punk. I would have to go in
Speaker 1: and one day I found one of our records of
Speaker 1: raft records. Made me laugh. But I get a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of stuff you have was white labels,
Speaker 1: get boxes of white labels. And I would spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time during the day in the shop while
Speaker 1: there were customers in the shop, planning the white labels,
Speaker 1: trying to work out what they are and writing on
Speaker 1: them what they aren't, setting them for a quid or something.
Speaker 1: So it was it was good. The dangerous thing was
Speaker 1: going to the warehouse. You know, if you went to
Speaker 1: the warehouse where the records were kept. Another thing from
Speaker 1: the days of physical your listeners might not know how
Speaker 1: heavy records were. There was always a danger that there
Speaker 1: could be an avalanche of copies of all this and
Speaker 1: World War two the soundtrack you could get buried under them.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of those in the warehouse. Do
Speaker 1: you remember that record, yes, exactly, so, yeah, those are
Speaker 1: the days. Those are my days in the bowels of
Speaker 1: the record industry and all this entire chain run on.
Speaker 1: You know, what was the name Low Price Records run
Speaker 1: on nothing more than the detritus. You run a whole.
Speaker 1: I think had six shops run just on the detritus
Speaker 1: of the record industry. I gotta ask, because that's the
Speaker 1: second word you used, which if you're an American, that
Speaker 1: would be evidence of higher education. You said, as you
Speaker 1: pronounced an inclement, we might say inclement here, and you
Speaker 1: said the traders. Would these be words come up casually
Speaker 1: in the UK? Or are you separate from the average
Speaker 1: working Oh no, almost. I'm a wordsmith. I do have
Speaker 1: a you know, previous collection of archaic words because I
Speaker 1: need him to rhyme with things. But I was trying
Speaker 1: to I was trying to um by saying to try this.
Speaker 1: I was trying to suggest that these songs, these records
Speaker 1: one rubbish. I've got some I've got some great white libelar. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I know exactly what you're talking about. You know, you said,
Speaker 1: just not the issue. It's just you don't get the
Speaker 1: average musician using those particular terms. Anyway, you're playing and
Speaker 1: you're slinging the cutouts, and what happens after that. I
Speaker 1: start too, of the guy I work with who's also musician.
Speaker 1: He's a bass play of jazz funk band Steve Goldstein.
Speaker 1: He buys a Reporter studio, which is like a little
Speaker 1: recording deck that you can Most people don't know there
Speaker 1: are four tracks on a cassette, usually two in each direction,
Speaker 1: and I don't know if Tiak was the first one
Speaker 1: that was you know, yeah, and they used all four
Speaker 1: tracks in one direction. So it's kind of like recording
Speaker 1: the garage ban today but on a primitive, very primitive.
Speaker 1: But he bought this. He was so excited about it
Speaker 1: and he wanted to test it out. So he invited
Speaker 1: me to come and make some demos his mum's flat
Speaker 1: where he lived. And I totally up for this because
Speaker 1: I was writing the loads of his solo songs. So
Speaker 1: I went along and demo my songs and I sent
Speaker 1: them to The Melody Maker, which was a weekly newspaper,
Speaker 1: one of four we had music papers in the UK.
Speaker 1: It was Melody Maker, Enemy, Sounds in Mirror, and the
Speaker 1: They had a page called Playback where they reviewed demo
Speaker 1: tapes and a guy named Adam Sweeting gave mine a
Speaker 1: fabulous review. Absolutely, did you think it was as good
Speaker 1: as his review? I had no idea, mate, but I
Speaker 1: can tell you that when my then girlfriend who worked
Speaker 1: in the in the West Ends, so I've got the
Speaker 1: newspapers a day early and we got him in the
Speaker 1: suburb the music papers read it to me over the phone.
Speaker 1: Almost wept. I'll tell you why, because it was the
Speaker 1: US intimation I got that I might actually be able
Speaker 1: to do this job and it might work. It really
Speaker 1: was like a validation the like of which no reviewers
Speaker 1: ever had. The same fact just I'm cheering up a
Speaker 1: little bit now just thinking about it. That moment it
Speaker 1: was I just closed the shops. That must have been
Speaker 1: around six some was setting so the shop was full
Speaker 1: of beautiful light. It was almost like, you know what,
Speaker 1: this might actually happen. It might actually happen. So it was.
Speaker 1: It had my phone number on the bottom of the review,
Speaker 1: and I was phoned by a guy who worked for
Speaker 1: Chapel Music Publishers named Jeff Chegman. He invited me to
Speaker 1: come and make some demos. Nobody else there was particularly interested,
Speaker 1: but he gave me a day in their demo studio
Speaker 1: with their engineer. We record a dozen songs and um.
Speaker 1: Around the same time, I had a residency and a
Speaker 1: rather sort of rough spit and sawed US joint called
Speaker 1: The Tunnel in Southeast London, a pub, and I was
Speaker 1: I was doing pretty well there, but I started sending
Speaker 1: this the original demo type that I had made on
Speaker 1: the Port studio. I sent out to record companies but
Speaker 1: not got any anywhere. And I started going to record
Speaker 1: companies and going in reception, and I'd get a few
Speaker 1: names and try and ask her see someone. I didn't
Speaker 1: know anybody, and I went on. One day, I went
Speaker 1: to Charisma Records. I was looking for a guy named
Speaker 1: Peter Jenna. Okay, I mean I know Peter Jenna, original
Speaker 1: manager of Pig Floyd. Certainly you're a manager. Did you
Speaker 1: know who he was? At that point I met I
Speaker 1: got his name from a guy who painted backdrops from
Speaker 1: the clash who I know. And when I said I
Speaker 1: was looking for a manager was political and like a
Speaker 1: father figure, he said, I know blow like that Jenna,
Speaker 1: That's who he is. Yeah, exactly, And it was in
Speaker 1: my career um, but at the time he was a
Speaker 1: and R and for Charisma. So I went there with
Speaker 1: my demo and I asked for him a reception. I
Speaker 1: was it in there and I was not really getting
Speaker 1: any looked like I wasn't going to get in same
Speaker 1: as everywhere else. When someone put their head around the
Speaker 1: corner and said to me, are you the guy who's
Speaker 1: come to tune in the video? Now? At the time,
Speaker 1: I was working with Wiggy sort of part time. Wiggy
Speaker 1: was doing audio visual presentations for companies, and not many
Speaker 1: coupanies was two. Not many companies had video machines, so
Speaker 1: we would take a video recorder with us, and while
Speaker 1: Wiggy was doing the warm up, I'd crawl under the
Speaker 1: telly and tune in their TV to this video machine.
Speaker 1: So although I wasn't the person who had come to
Speaker 1: tune in the video, I was capable of tuning in
Speaker 1: the video. So without a moment's thought, I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I am so. She said great, come this way, took
Speaker 1: me into the recording to a record company, crawled under
Speaker 1: their telly, tuned in their video. I think they were
Speaker 1: watching Peter Gabriel, who was on the first edition. So
Speaker 1: you actually did do the show for sure. It wasn't
Speaker 1: a complete blag. I've done it, so I don't feel
Speaker 1: I don't feel guilty about lying because I did do it,
Speaker 1: all right, let's get that straight, um. And then I
Speaker 1: said I said to um, we're all standing around watching.
Speaker 1: I said to this woman, he's Peter Jenner about there.
Speaker 1: So I went over and laid my tape on him
Speaker 1: and bless him. He came to see me at the tunnel. Okay,
Speaker 1: did he play it while you were there? But he
Speaker 1: came to see me at the tunnel and he he
Speaker 1: later said that when he came to the town there
Speaker 1: was an electric atmosphere in the room. While I was
Speaker 1: on stage, he spoke to a woman at the bar
Speaker 1: and she said, I was. I was brilliant. And when
Speaker 1: I finished, because he was late, he'd gone there's two
Speaker 1: tunnels under the river gone he'd gone through the wrong one,
Speaker 1: So he was typical Pete Starle. He was late, so
Speaker 1: he didn't see the gig. He just saw the end
Speaker 1: of it. But he's he He said to me, we
Speaker 1: must do something, however trivial. That was his line to
Speaker 1: me as he left, because he left straight away. What
Speaker 1: he didn't know was just before he'd arrived there'd been
Speaker 1: a and the reasons for the electric app here was
Speaker 1: I was trying to hold the room, if you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, stop it breaking out again. The woman
Speaker 1: he spoke to the bars and my then girlfriend so
Speaker 1: and amongst all this, we kind of we kind of
Speaker 1: and only got sacked. He got sacked by Charisma after
Speaker 1: we put the record out. Uh, he put the record
Speaker 1: out and he just gave me twenty five and says,
Speaker 1: if youn't get any radio plays on that, I'm not.
Speaker 1: I thought that you were supposed to do this. He said,
Speaker 1: get out, go to the BBC. So I went to
Speaker 1: the BBC and I left some copies. I left a
Speaker 1: copy for John Peele, famous most famous DJ and the
Speaker 1: nighttime g J who had the ability to break bands
Speaker 1: and give your sessions. I left it there and that
Speaker 1: night I was in Hyde Park, which is the other
Speaker 1: end of oxfor Street from Broadcasting US, playing football with
Speaker 1: some mates and afterwards we were having a few beers
Speaker 1: and we were listening to the BBC the program before Peel,
Speaker 1: which is Kit Jensen, and Peel came in to talk
Speaker 1: about what's on his show, and he's it Ki Jensen.
Speaker 1: I would do anything for a mushroom bery. Ay, it
Speaker 1: is the form of a curry So a light went
Speaker 1: on in my head, so I went down. I walked
Speaker 1: down the back of Ox Street, bought the curry berry.
Speaker 1: Only went to broadcastings and said to the concierge curry
Speaker 1: for Mr Peel. They rang him. He come down. He
Speaker 1: physically come down to take the curry off me. So
Speaker 1: I was able to say to my man's Billy Bragg,
Speaker 1: I left a record for you today life The Right
Speaker 1: spy Us is by great if you could ever listen
Speaker 1: to it, it's like fine took the bury ony I
Speaker 1: tuned in that night. Not only did he play the record,
Speaker 1: he said thanks very much for the buryany Billy I
Speaker 1: would have played it anyway. And it was the beginning
Speaker 1: of I'd like to think of a real friendship between
Speaker 1: myself and and the great Man. Okay, so now you
Speaker 1: have your start. Is it a relatively you know, it's
Speaker 1: hard to do on the radio talk about graphs and engles.
Speaker 1: Is it steady going up or is it ups and downs?
Speaker 1: That's about ups and downs to start with, because particularly
Speaker 1: because Charisma the record label, so it's taken over just
Speaker 1: after my record comes out on on the Utility label.
Speaker 1: The record labels taken over by Virgin, So everything goes sideways,
Speaker 1: including my record. But a guy named Andy McDonald um
Speaker 1: ran a label Leslie Simmons and together they rescued my
Speaker 1: record and rereleased it later that year, and by the
Speaker 1: time we get to the new year, it's number one
Speaker 1: in the independent charts, which was a big deal in
Speaker 1: those days. How do you think it got there? Well,
Speaker 1: partly because of I was really really working hard doing gigs.
Speaker 1: Peel was playing it put he put New England in
Speaker 1: his Festive fifty in the top five. I think it's
Speaker 1: Festive fifty, um Andy and um go this we're doing
Speaker 1: a good job with it. Was he was a good
Speaker 1: promotion man him unless he did a really great job
Speaker 1: on it. And Pete Janna, you know, was old hand.
Speaker 1: So it's like a collaboration. Everybody put their reference. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my willingness to do as many because they threw at
Speaker 1: me and to go and literally, I mean it literally
Speaker 1: was um out on the road with a amping one
Speaker 1: hand guitar, only having a pack on my back on
Speaker 1: trains so I didn't drive in and my agent would
Speaker 1: just put set me up with um support acts for
Speaker 1: bigger bands, and I was just try and steal the audience.
Speaker 1: So by the time we got to Christmas, I was
Speaker 1: doing my own headliners. Okay, that record is successful, what's
Speaker 1: the next step? America, America. I get a shout in
Speaker 1: this in this August night, four do I want to
Speaker 1: come to the unit sets of America and open for
Speaker 1: that kind of moneyment on their first American tour? So
Speaker 1: I do so I get I'll call Wiggy say, Wiggy,
Speaker 1: this is it, mate, I'm going to tour America for
Speaker 1: a month. I may never do this again. You've got
Speaker 1: to come with me. You've got to come with me.
Speaker 1: This is what we dreamed about doing. Come on, let's
Speaker 1: do this. I'll pay for it. I'll pay for that,
Speaker 1: you know, I'll pay you to do it. Come and
Speaker 1: roady for me. Play a couple of songs, get on
Speaker 1: the back of the bus with Bunnyment, and that's what
Speaker 1: we did. We went coast to coast, north to south.
Speaker 1: It was just amazing, and to do it with Wiggy
Speaker 1: really was for me. It was the the sort of
Speaker 1: combination of ever we went. We got to. We got
Speaker 1: to Los Angeles at the end of the tour the
Speaker 1: Bunnyment and we were there for a couple of days.
Speaker 1: We went to the car, drove to the end of
Speaker 1: Sunset Boulevard, end of Root and walked down to Paddle
Speaker 1: in the Pacific ocean and had a moment like our
Speaker 1: sort of sixteen year old selves kind of saw us
Speaker 1: there or we saw them, and we we came off
Speaker 1: the We've all got very emotional in weeks. Someone's going down.
Speaker 1: We saw as we came off the beach an English pub,
Speaker 1: which is too good. So we went to go and
Speaker 1: have a point to celebrate. And it wouldn't let us
Speaker 1: think because we didn't have I d totally killed it.
Speaker 1: We're like, you don't have to have idea in English pub?
Speaker 1: No idea? No, Okay. At what point do you make
Speaker 1: a deal with the Electra? Oh? That comes shortly there
Speaker 1: after Pete, because I go back to America about three
Speaker 1: times in the following year, and Pete gets me to
Speaker 1: deal with Electra on tax mouth. I think it's a taxi. Okay,
Speaker 1: So in this period we will call your heyday. Do
Speaker 1: you achieve your goals? Yeah? I do. I mean lots
Speaker 1: of very interesting women, have very interesting conversations with them
Speaker 1: with no clothes on. That was one of my goals
Speaker 1: I'm not ashamed of. So wait, wait, wait, wait, so
Speaker 1: you're not a closer. You said no, no, no, without
Speaker 1: any clothes on, Bob, I'm trying to put it in
Speaker 1: a nice way, One of the reasons why I wanted
Speaker 1: to be in a band was was to impress girls.
Speaker 1: So you know that kind of well that worked once
Speaker 1: you're on stage. We know that's an established formula, but
Speaker 1: one has to ask. I mean, you're a very verbal guy.
Speaker 1: Was your act working before you had some level of
Speaker 1: fame on the stage? Yeah, it was, it was, it
Speaker 1: was working, but the the guitar and the English accent
Speaker 1: really kind of helped. Okay, any of these women you
Speaker 1: have contact with today, Yeah, I do quite a few
Speaker 1: of them. Actually, I'd like to think I've remained friends
Speaker 1: with with with quite a few of them. You know,
Speaker 1: it's what you do when you're in your twenties. You know.
Speaker 1: That was my my kind of period of heightened sexual activity.
Speaker 1: What happened to be on the road, So it had
Speaker 1: a had a double edge sort because I was learning
Speaker 1: a lot as I was traveling as well. You know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't just me in one particular area. It was
Speaker 1: it was a great time to be out in the road.
Speaker 1: And at this point, are you're touring solo mostly? Yeah? Completely, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: and then you ultimately have a backpack and amplifier. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I don't ultimately have that pe Jena dream set up
Speaker 1: as a way of getting people's attention. It's a complete
Speaker 1: pain in the ass because it weighs a ton, it
Speaker 1: feeds back, and it's the most of the weights across
Speaker 1: your diaphragm. It's like a backpack, so you can't really
Speaker 1: get along full of I complained about it mercilessly. It
Speaker 1: got me a bad back. But Jenna damn him said
Speaker 1: at the time that but people will remember this bill,
Speaker 1: and you're comment there that annoyingly proves him right. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the down term in term, you know, everyone's got
Speaker 1: a relatively brief window where they are the center of attention. Now,
Speaker 1: would you say the moment passes or you would say
Speaker 1: the internet comes and decimates. No, no, the moment the
Speaker 1: moment passes. Basically my my, my, heighter that would be
Speaker 1: working with in the UK with a Labor Party around
Speaker 1: red Wedge and the minor strike. That that very particularly
Speaker 1: that very political um opposition to Margaret Thatcher and policies
Speaker 1: and in the in the US to Ronald Reagan um,
Speaker 1: and that was kind of that's that's what defines me
Speaker 1: for a lot of people still, and I'm cool with that.
Speaker 1: I don't mind being called a political songwriter. I write
Speaker 1: more love songs than I write political songs. My problem
Speaker 1: is being dismissed as a political songwriter, people thinking they
Speaker 1: did you weak? Did you grow up in a political house? No?
Speaker 1: I don't really know. So how did you become, you know,
Speaker 1: inspired to speak out on your political It's all down
Speaker 1: to the inspiration of one person I knever forget her name.
Speaker 1: It was Margaret Thatcher of my time. If you look,
Speaker 1: if you look at my first couple of albums, the
Speaker 1: politics is personal. Just because you're better than me doesn't
Speaker 1: mean I'm lazy. Tax Man, I'm writing songs that's a
Speaker 1: message we need more today than ever. Yeah, exactly. But
Speaker 1: by tax man, I'm writing there is parent union. I'm
Speaker 1: writing songs called ideology. What's happened is the minor strikers happened.
Speaker 1: And for my generation, the minor strike, what do you
Speaker 1: experienced upon that? For those in the Conservative government provoked
Speaker 1: the National Union mine workers into a year long strike
Speaker 1: that ultimately uh led to the not just a defeat
Speaker 1: of miners, but the defeat of organized labor in my country.
Speaker 1: And it was a destructive uh um, destructive of unions,
Speaker 1: but also destructive of communities and spirit broke the working
Speaker 1: class spirit in my country. And so uh you know,
Speaker 1: having grown up listening to all those political singer songwriters
Speaker 1: in the nine in sixties, when the strike happened, I thought, okay,
Speaker 1: well this is where I get to find out if
Speaker 1: music and change the world. So I did everything I
Speaker 1: could two use the tarant that I had the platform.
Speaker 1: Not I had to make the case for not just
Speaker 1: an organized labor, but for a compassionate society, which is
Speaker 1: what you run up against internal pressure not to do that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course the um. One of Thatcher's ministers used to
Speaker 1: complain to the BBC if they put me on air.
Speaker 1: You know, he's a guy named Norman Tebbitt. Was complained
Speaker 1: and how much Once again, you're in a different market
Speaker 1: place than America and we're a very ethnocentric and self obsessed.
Speaker 1: How much exposure do you get in that era of
Speaker 1: the minor strike? Quite a bit? Quite a bit really,
Speaker 1: because um we got remember we've got four weekly music papers. Um,
Speaker 1: and during the strike everybody was talking about it. It
Speaker 1: was not something you could avoid. So um, young people
Speaker 1: were galvanized by opposition to Thatcher in the way they've
Speaker 1: been galvanized by a position to Trump and opposition to Brexit.
Speaker 1: So to be a young person and to be making
Speaker 1: culture for young people, you know, I wasn't alone in
Speaker 1: the way arms. Were you political before this or just
Speaker 1: this issue struck you in such a way? I was.
Speaker 1: I was personally political, Bob. You know, my my politics
Speaker 1: were broadly you know, anti racist. Um, I'll be honest.
Speaker 1: Before the minor strike, I didn't have much grasp of sexism.
Speaker 1: It was that experience to introduced me to to those issues.
Speaker 1: But I've been politicized by Rock against racism, so that's
Speaker 1: where my politics kind of came from. Um. But the
Speaker 1: ideological politics so I started. The minor strike caused me
Speaker 1: to defined myself as a socialist rather than just someone
Speaker 1: who was in favor of good things. I started trying to,
Speaker 1: you know, bring that in. For a lot of us,
Speaker 1: it was it was definitive. Okay, We're in a you know,
Speaker 1: very tumultuous globe at this point in time. There's been
Speaker 1: a lot of rightward movement, although recently a little bit
Speaker 1: of a pushback to left. Do you have hope for
Speaker 1: society at large. Yeah, of course, as I say, I
Speaker 1: describe myself as a socialist, And unless you can see
Speaker 1: that the glass is half full, you can't really be
Speaker 1: a socialist because you have to believe that if the
Speaker 1: majority of people have to say that the things will
Speaker 1: work for the better, you've gotta be able to wake
Speaker 1: up in the morning and think that broadly speaking, humanity
Speaker 1: leans towards a much more compassionate society. Um. And I
Speaker 1: think we live in time with even a time when
Speaker 1: there's like a war on empathy coming down from on high.
Speaker 1: You know, anyone who expresses any sort of you know,
Speaker 1: respect for people outside their own racial or cultural or
Speaker 1: ethnic group is sort of dismissed as virtue signaling or
Speaker 1: political correctness. These people who use those terms of trying
Speaker 1: to police the the limits of social change by their
Speaker 1: dismissive language, and we have to, you know, we have
Speaker 1: to take them on as best we can. Well, war
Speaker 1: on empathy, that's a good, uh way to put it. So,
Speaker 1: what is really going on with Brexits prior to this
Speaker 1: being published? I am sure there'll be other movement, but
Speaker 1: give us the insight into how this happened. Braxit is
Speaker 1: a manifestation of the inability of the neoliberal economic model
Speaker 1: to deal with change. And it's not isolated. I think
Speaker 1: the election here in the United States America in UH
Speaker 1: was also the election of Donald Trump was also a
Speaker 1: result of the other candidate, Hillary Clinton, being unable to
Speaker 1: offer any real change, economic change that will help ordinary
Speaker 1: working people. She couldn't do that. She was just offering
Speaker 1: more the same people. If you've um not benefit from
Speaker 1: the economic model, then then the the impulse to protect
Speaker 1: that econonomic model by voting to remain in the European Union,
Speaker 1: forget it. You know, you've made my life a chaos.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make your life chaos now. And I think
Speaker 1: that's the lesson from Trump and Brexit is that unless
Speaker 1: ordinary people are offered meaningful change, they are willing to
Speaker 1: vote for the kind of you know, damn the lot
Speaker 1: of u chaos that we see with Brexit and with Trump. Okay,
Speaker 1: so a noo that the election of the Brexit electors
Speaker 1: essentially three years old. Um, there's been a lot of
Speaker 1: talk about people who just in a lot of working
Speaker 1: class people who literally voted against their interests because there
Speaker 1: were plants in their societies that were funded by European Union. Um,
Speaker 1: they talk about a nationalism. The people missed a national
Speaker 1: identity leading in the UK. So what degree is that
Speaker 1: a well, nationally you know, I'm a socialist and as
Speaker 1: a result that, Bob, I know, there are many different
Speaker 1: types of socialism. It's not just one type. You know,
Speaker 1: you have democratic socialisty in the United States of America,
Speaker 1: the social democracy. It's the same with nationalism. You know,
Speaker 1: in my country we have the British National Party you
Speaker 1: are led by a man who denies the veracity of
Speaker 1: the Holocaust, and the Scottish National Party, who are more
Speaker 1: left wing than the Democrats and the Labor Party. So
Speaker 1: you know, nationalism is not always a negative form civic nationalism,
Speaker 1: loving your country and wanting it to be better. It's
Speaker 1: not always negative. But what's going on I think, both
Speaker 1: with Trump and with Brexit is an attempt to return
Speaker 1: to the way things were before women, people of color
Speaker 1: and the lgbt q I community made it in road.
Speaker 1: How much of it is that and how much of
Speaker 1: it is what you steated earlier, the lack of economic opportunity.
Speaker 1: Well that the one is a reaction to the other.
Speaker 1: You know, the two big slogans from Trump and Brexit
Speaker 1: were make America great again and take back control. It's
Speaker 1: not like a moving forward idea where we're all going
Speaker 1: to move together. We're going to go back to our
Speaker 1: things were before all these upty people got their their
Speaker 1: place in society. It's a it's a you know, almost
Speaker 1: a nostalgia trip. And in my country it's underscored with
Speaker 1: imperial nostalgia, and I fear in your country it's it's um,
Speaker 1: it's run through with the nostalgia for Jim Crow. I'm
Speaker 1: sorry to say. Um. Now you can you can put
Speaker 1: that down to nationalism if you like. There's a nationalist
Speaker 1: element in there. But nationalism isn't always negative. But what
Speaker 1: is clearly is negative is people who don't feel that
Speaker 1: they have a place in society anymore. You know, some
Speaker 1: of the Brexit people say that they don't feel that
Speaker 1: Britain is their country anymore. Now I have some empathy
Speaker 1: for that because I felt that way during Attache years.
Speaker 1: So I'm not willing to dismiss them all as being racists.
Speaker 1: You know, not not everyone who voted for Breakfast is
Speaker 1: a racist, but every race is definitely voted Breakfast. But
Speaker 1: the point being. You know, these are people who are
Speaker 1: don't feel their voices heard anymore, and Brexit was their
Speaker 1: opportunity to be heard. And I think there's an element
Speaker 1: of that within the within the Trump vote as well.
Speaker 1: And the question then becomes, how do we accommodate those people? Okay,
Speaker 1: so how do we? Well? I think we have to
Speaker 1: give them the thing that seems to be lacking to
Speaker 1: me in their lives and listen to what they say
Speaker 1: is a sense of some agency over their their environment.
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons for that, I think if
Speaker 1: the prime reason for that, I think is that the
Speaker 1: lack of accountability in a voting system in your country
Speaker 1: and my country that doesn't um make everyone's vote count.
Speaker 1: If we lived in countries that add proportional voting systems
Speaker 1: where every vote results and representation, we might be able
Speaker 1: to get to grips with some of these issues. I mean,
Speaker 1: what's been happening just recently in my country with members
Speaker 1: of parliament splitting from the two main parties is the
Speaker 1: stress being put on a system that is unable to
Speaker 1: accommodate meaningful change. Let's go back just for a second.
Speaker 1: You go a little deeper. Proportional voting meaning proportional voting,
Speaker 1: meaning that that the members of Congress will proportionally reflect
Speaker 1: the number of votes counted there in their election or
Speaker 1: in their viewpoints expressed in their in their election, in
Speaker 1: the number of votes Canada. In my country, we have
Speaker 1: a system called first pass the post. So if there's
Speaker 1: there's three of us, Let's say there's three of us
Speaker 1: in the election, and I get the most votes, I win,
Speaker 1: even if I don't get the majority. You know, if
Speaker 1: I get um Let's say I get and the two
Speaker 1: other candidates get each I win, and what apps to
Speaker 1: the six of the votes that are against me? They
Speaker 1: go in the trash. That's you know, you keep doing
Speaker 1: that for twenty thirty years. Those people who going in
Speaker 1: the trash of your time, they're going to get angry.
Speaker 1: Where I live in a rural constituency, we call them
Speaker 1: out parliamentary constituencies. I live in a rural community where
Speaker 1: the Conservative Party have been the MP since six and
Speaker 1: where I live in East London, where I grew up. Rather,
Speaker 1: Labor has been the member of Parliament there since the
Speaker 1: borough was created when my father was a child in nine.
Speaker 1: So I mean I'm a Labor supporter but I reckon
Speaker 1: just talking about the constituency you live in now. Is
Speaker 1: there any opportunity for labor or a third party that
Speaker 1: that second party? Even previous elections, I've had to campaign
Speaker 1: for the only party that the party that comes second,
Speaker 1: even though I don't support them, I've had to encourage
Speaker 1: people to vote for them in order to defeat the
Speaker 1: Tories and to stop the Tories winning at westminth said
Speaker 1: didn't work. UM, But in a fair voting is a
Speaker 1: system system. Our votes will be reflected. You know, there
Speaker 1: will be a threshold. Parties that got more than five
Speaker 1: percent would get some kind of representation. They do have it.
Speaker 1: I mean most European societies have it. It's not a
Speaker 1: UM solve all your problems, but it does ensure that
Speaker 1: everyone's votes get Okay, that's that's talking about government. What
Speaker 1: about economics in the fact with you know a lot
Speaker 1: of the economy, certainly in america's driven by technology, and
Speaker 1: there aren't enough jobs, never mind well paying jobs for people.
Speaker 1: How do we address that? Really easy but great new deal?
Speaker 1: You know, the New Deal that Frank Loos got used
Speaker 1: in the nineties thirties to re re engage American workers
Speaker 1: greening the American economy would have the same job because
Speaker 1: although yes, technology will be important, you will physically have
Speaker 1: to change the way that you know, every house is insulated.
Speaker 1: You will physically have to change the way that that
Speaker 1: automobiles work. You will physically have to change the way
Speaker 1: power is generated. These are all labor intensies, right, But
Speaker 1: those would cause employment for a period of time, just
Speaker 1: like the Alaskan oil rush of the seventies. But it
Speaker 1: does not speak to the billionaires who ultimately control these
Speaker 1: large corporations and wield their power to the detriment of
Speaker 1: the working class. In middle class. Well, we're back to
Speaker 1: the A word again, but accountability. And I think this actually,
Speaker 1: I've just been proof reading a polemical pamphlet. I've written
Speaker 1: fifteen word pamphlet about accountability. Because I believe very very
Speaker 1: strongly that it's going to be published later this year.
Speaker 1: I'll be leave very very strongly that um our obsession
Speaker 1: with free speech as the definition of freedom is to
Speaker 1: the detriment of other dimensions of freedom that are equally important.
Speaker 1: And they are equality the right of everybody to express
Speaker 1: their opinion. More importantly, though, accountability, because it's accountability that
Speaker 1: gives the individual agency over those corporations that you're talking about.
Speaker 1: So I'm in my in my book, I'm arguing that
Speaker 1: equality and accountability to give given equal prominence and equal
Speaker 1: respect that we give to First, let's say, you know,
Speaker 1: there are there are certainly bad actors in corporate world,
Speaker 1: but there is a spectrum. So for those people who
Speaker 1: are paying those corporations that are paying their taxes but
Speaker 1: still eliminating jobs, what's the accountability there. Well, the accountability
Speaker 1: there is that the corporations have to be responsible so
Speaker 1: that the profits, some of the profits that they have
Speaker 1: have to go into the communities where they work to
Speaker 1: create space and create a um a sustainable model of
Speaker 1: growth that helps those communities in some way. If everyone,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe we go into a four day working
Speaker 1: week or something like that. Because the real big problem
Speaker 1: is that the globalization of the economy has made it
Speaker 1: possible for for um an extractive model of capitalism that
Speaker 1: allows a corporation to make its money in one country
Speaker 1: and then pay taxes somewhere else that if they pay them,
Speaker 1: if they pay them at all, And unfortunately, the only
Speaker 1: way to deal with that is to have some kind
Speaker 1: of global deal and again, Unfortunately, voters tend to be
Speaker 1: shying away from that kind of international collective action that
Speaker 1: the you know, globalization is here to stay. It's just
Speaker 1: like an America. No one wants to be four thousand
Speaker 1: dollars for a flat screen if it was manufacturing America.
Speaker 1: But there hasn't been a good trickled down or understanding
Speaker 1: for those people left behind. The trickle down don't really matter,
Speaker 1: don't really work. But the economy works not by entrepreneurs
Speaker 1: making loads of money and trickling it down. The economy
Speaker 1: works by you and I am every other average Joe
Speaker 1: and you will going out every day and buying stuff.
Speaker 1: That's how the of course, that's what the New Deal
Speaker 1: was about. The New Deal was about putting money into
Speaker 1: the pockets of ordinary American workers that they could buy
Speaker 1: automobiles in America, so they could buy fridges, so they
Speaker 1: could buy houses. As you don't if you don't have
Speaker 1: these people at the bottom spending their money, that's when
Speaker 1: the economy. That's one of the things that bothers me.
Speaker 1: You have all these corporate titans, it's all based on
Speaker 1: consumer spending that they don't make the money in the
Speaker 1: vat you know, so The question is, then, how do
Speaker 1: you get that model to be sustainable? How do you
Speaker 1: get it to be more accountable? And I believe you
Speaker 1: do that by giving the consumer, the individual, greater agency
Speaker 1: over the process. So that involves a form of regulatory democracy,
Speaker 1: more regulations, not less regular in America, and I agree
Speaker 1: with you wholly. Uh. The right wing has done a
Speaker 1: excellent job of demonizing the word regulation. Well, of course,
Speaker 1: no one wants to live in a building the collapse is,
Speaker 1: it's setera. But you know, maybe there's a change now,
Speaker 1: just like when the anti Pelosi they demonized her and
Speaker 1: they you know, turned one e. Brexit, the hard Brexit
Speaker 1: is what march. I mean, that's driven by the regulations.
Speaker 1: We'll just add driven by the people behind that were
Speaker 1: pushing hardest for exactly those kind of people, extractive capitalists
Speaker 1: who are trying to get out the European UNI. Because
Speaker 1: the European Union is now starting to pass laws which
Speaker 1: you'll know about copyright and such issues that have international
Speaker 1: implications for corporations, not just manufacturing corporations, but people on
Speaker 1: Facebook and Google. Okay, so how do you predict this
Speaker 1: will play out? Well, Brexit, Bob, mate, it's like trying
Speaker 1: to say who's going to win the World Series in
Speaker 1: ten years time. It's everything you say you think we'll happen,
Speaker 1: doesn't happen, or something weirder happens. It's really what Brexit
Speaker 1: has done is totally fractured the idea of left right
Speaker 1: politics completely, so you can't predict anymore the way people
Speaker 1: are going to respond to two issues in the way
Speaker 1: that you could before. Brexit is like a faultline that
Speaker 1: runs through our politics, and it's in some ways it's
Speaker 1: a bit it's a it's a bit like Trumpism in
Speaker 1: that way. You know, it's split families and it's split
Speaker 1: I mean, I know people who don't talk to their
Speaker 1: parents anymore because their parents voted Brexit. As it's impossible
Speaker 1: to protect likely what is likely to happen. I think
Speaker 1: it's likely that we the British government, will have to
Speaker 1: ask the European Union to postpone kick the bottle down
Speaker 1: the the field. Yeah, there's a there's a I think
Speaker 1: called Article fifty, which is the process that we're in
Speaker 1: at the moment that could be extended. What I would
Speaker 1: like to see is um an independent review of it.
Speaker 1: A lot of people at home want there to be
Speaker 1: a referendum, another referendum. The referendum was the most divisive
Speaker 1: day in British post war history, the most divisive day.
Speaker 1: And you want to do it again, come on, you
Speaker 1: know it would just be it makes winners and losers.
Speaker 1: What we need is a consensus. So um, the Irish
Speaker 1: recently convened a a people's Forum to decide the issue
Speaker 1: of abortion. They put people, um, ordinary citizens elected like
Speaker 1: a jury. I think there was a hundred of them,
Speaker 1: and they took evidence from experts. No politicians were allowed
Speaker 1: talked and I took evidence from experts and submissions from
Speaker 1: the general public. They deliberated for months in a hotel
Speaker 1: every weekend. It was all broadcasts online so people could
Speaker 1: see the deliberations and they came up with recommendations which
Speaker 1: the Irish government then ratified and put to a vote.
Speaker 1: And the vote of the Irish people was the same
Speaker 1: as the vote of the public form, which is more
Speaker 1: or less sixty five in favor of abortion and against.
Speaker 1: Now what that did was it involved everybody in the
Speaker 1: country in a debate. It went on for a period
Speaker 1: of time and the conclusion was consensual. Everybody could say
Speaker 1: that everybody's voice had been heard. Whereas the referendum on
Speaker 1: one day, on on one vote and one outcome has
Speaker 1: not resolved an issue that has divided British politics, the
Speaker 1: issue of all the misinformation, the original Brexit vote. How
Speaker 1: do we would this process eliminate that? Yes, because because
Speaker 1: we would then have to put those questions to the test.
Speaker 1: Before Brexit was an abstract. Now this close we can
Speaker 1: starting to see the lie of the land. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, the fake news thing is also part of
Speaker 1: the accountability agenda, you know, the loss of accountability anymore.
Speaker 1: I mean, um, And it's not just the that the
Speaker 1: neoliberals don't want to accept facts. They don't want to
Speaker 1: accept being challenged. One of my real problems with the
Speaker 1: so called intellectual dark Web, these freedom of speech warriors,
Speaker 1: is that they simply will not countenance a challenge. It's
Speaker 1: not free speech they want, it's free reign. They want
Speaker 1: to be able to say whatever they want and have
Speaker 1: no comeback. And that's the difference, and this is the
Speaker 1: key difference between liberty and freedom. Liberty the idea that
Speaker 1: you can say whatever you want to whoever you want,
Speaker 1: whenever you want, and and you know, not be held
Speaker 1: accountable for it. If that was the definition of freedom alone,
Speaker 1: then your president will be the paragon of freedom because
Speaker 1: that's exactly what he does. But it's not that they're
Speaker 1: finition of freedom. It's actually what he's doing is an
Speaker 1: abuse of his freedom. He's he's um, you know, using
Speaker 1: his privilege in order to make those points. And you
Speaker 1: need equality, everybody's right to express their point of view.
Speaker 1: And then on top of that, you need accountability, the
Speaker 1: ability you know that your ability as an individual to
Speaker 1: hold people to account, but also your willingness to be
Speaker 1: accountable yourself. It's reciprocal as well as empowering, and these
Speaker 1: things are lacking. This is the case I'm trying to
Speaker 1: make in this uh this pamphlet, the Three Dimensions of Freedom.
Speaker 1: Just to be clear. So you're against this political correctness,
Speaker 1: I don't think. I don't believe political quickness exists, Bob.
Speaker 1: It doesn't exist. You know, it's it's a projection of
Speaker 1: the powerless or powerlessness of people. You know, if you
Speaker 1: look at the people who are are most angry about
Speaker 1: political correctness, they tend to be academics. And what they're
Speaker 1: pushing back against is people bringing in different metrics with
Speaker 1: which to deal with subjects. I think what's the academics
Speaker 1: are afraid of is that the um the standards that
Speaker 1: they were raised with that have allowed them access to
Speaker 1: uh places of privilege. If the metrics are changed, they
Speaker 1: will no longer be able to just walk through those
Speaker 1: doors that the rest of us are kept out of.
Speaker 1: They are defending their own privilege. You know, there is
Speaker 1: no such thing as political correctness, and yet your president
Speaker 1: was elected after saying that he thought political correctness was
Speaker 1: the thing that was the biggest thing that threatened America today. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's switch in gears a little bit. Where does this
Speaker 1: leave you, Billy Bragg? At least me with on a
Speaker 1: with a platform. That's what this job has always given me,
Speaker 1: a platform in a bottom line. But I think I'm
Speaker 1: a communicator. So you're sixty one in a change universe,
Speaker 1: and when you started primarily because technology means of communication,
Speaker 1: what are you envision going forward the twenty or thirty years?
Speaker 1: Hopefully you're left owner's playing it. Let's hope. UM, Well,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm hoping that. Um. This is personally for your career,
Speaker 1: personally for my career. If I carried on doing what
Speaker 1: I'm doing now, which is more or less what I
Speaker 1: was doing in the twentieth century, I'll be happy. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm feel immensely privileged, Bob. I've been coming to America
Speaker 1: for thirty five years, and people are still interested in
Speaker 1: what I'm doing to the extent I've sold free units
Speaker 1: out at the Troubador, and I've got other shows like
Speaker 1: this lined up, you know. And that's down to a
Speaker 1: number of things. You know. My management gave me good
Speaker 1: advice and I took it. My agent, Steve Martin has
Speaker 1: been with me all the time, and you know, he's
Speaker 1: been He has a great vision for what I try
Speaker 1: and do, and and my sort of urge to try
Speaker 1: and communicate, try and make sense of the way the
Speaker 1: world is um as still motivates me. You know. It's
Speaker 1: it's just I think, what what what's different now is
Speaker 1: that there are other ways, that are other platforms. So
Speaker 1: to sit down and write a book, it kind of
Speaker 1: gets you know, sort of after thirty five years, you
Speaker 1: need a break from to and around in a van.
Speaker 1: That's why I went on the Kayama Cruise. As much
Speaker 1: as anything, you know, if five years driving around America
Speaker 1: and a people carry on, I'm ready for okay, but
Speaker 1: also getting your message out in a tower of babel
Speaker 1: society where it's harder for any voice to be heard.
Speaker 1: Does that uh? Is that a weed on your shoulders?
Speaker 1: Not mine? No, because unfortunately I got an audience together
Speaker 1: in the in the days of college radio, when the
Speaker 1: music industry was stratified, there were people at the top
Speaker 1: who were making huge amounts of money playing stadiums. There
Speaker 1: are people at the bottom who were going to open mics.
Speaker 1: A lot of us were kind of in the middle,
Speaker 1: you know, making a living, never gonna trouble the top
Speaker 1: of the child and never going to play the stadiums,
Speaker 1: but could go out there and play the circuit and follow.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a very twentieth century thing. I have
Speaker 1: a son who's in a band now it's twenty five
Speaker 1: years old. There is no middle ground anymore. You're either
Speaker 1: busted through and gone gangbusters, or you're playing for a
Speaker 1: pittance somewhere. That sustainable middle middle of the road where
Speaker 1: record label lets you make free albums of seatley work out.
Speaker 1: That model is absolutely shot. And I'm sorry about that
Speaker 1: because although I don't necessary want there to be another
Speaker 1: clash or another punk rock. I just wish every night
Speaker 1: in your could feel like I felt when I saw
Speaker 1: the Clash and then go out and be able to
Speaker 1: make a living on their own creativity. That's what's missing.
Speaker 1: You know. All of the new pop stars that are
Speaker 1: coming through in the UK tend to have been privately educated,
Speaker 1: which means in my country, means they're not working class
Speaker 1: kids like me and almost everybody else in British rock
Speaker 1: was in the in the twentieth century. And that's my
Speaker 1: real concern. If, um, you know, the ability to have
Speaker 1: a career in music or any creative industry just becomes
Speaker 1: the preserve of the the upper middle class, then you
Speaker 1: will really lose lose something important in the in the
Speaker 1: experience of life for for our young people. You've been
Speaker 1: listening to Billy Bragg on the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: We could literally go on for hours, both through his
Speaker 1: catalog and through politics, but we don't want to wear
Speaker 1: either the audience or Billy himself out. Billy's been wonderful
Speaker 1: to have you here. Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 1: But I've been very very interesting. Okay, A lot of
Speaker 1: stuff that we touched, a lot of stuff that we
Speaker 1: have in touch. But you've certainly been very stimulating question.
Speaker 1: I'm a big believer that one person can impact society.
Speaker 1: You know, we're seeing that with AOC in America changing
Speaker 1: the debate, and musicians used to be the people who
Speaker 1: impacted society most not right now that we can hope
Speaker 1: it happens again, Well, the thing is happening, just finish off.
Speaker 1: Is the fan about IOC is she is organized. The
Speaker 1: key is if you want to change the world, you
Speaker 1: can't just sing about it. You gotta get organized. That's
Speaker 1: the key thing about IOC And for all the work
Speaker 1: I do in the end, in my experience, only the audience,
Speaker 1: only the audience really can change the world by going
Speaker 1: out there collectively and working together. And AOC is a
Speaker 1: really good example of someone who's an expression of the
Speaker 1: collective will of her people and hopefully of the American people.
Speaker 1: Let's just go back the book that you're writing. What
Speaker 1: are your plans for that that will be coming out
Speaker 1: in May maybe I think in August and the United
Speaker 1: States America. It's only it's like a pamphlet, it's fifteen
Speaker 1: th words, it's an essay. Really, that's just making the
Speaker 1: point that accountability ultimately is what's missing in this will
Speaker 1: be sold. It's by Favor and Favor. I'm British publishers.
Speaker 1: They published my skiffle book. They're doing a series of them.
Speaker 1: It's their nine Anniverse when they're doing a series of them,
Speaker 1: and they've asked me to write the first one. Do
Speaker 1: you remember who the other people are? The mostly musicians,
Speaker 1: mostly people working in the grave and will you be
Speaker 1: promoting it? Would indeed? Okay, till next time And listening
Speaker 1: a Billy Brow Go Bob Left Sets podcast m HM