Billy Bragg

day you fly and play. That's hard than it used to be. I mean partly because I'm over sixty now, so it's harder than me. Let's just be clear, how old are you? Sixty one? But also the airlines don't operate the way they used to it. I think it's a mixture of um, the corporate attitude, but also the weather is much more inclement than it used to be, and it only takes a storm in the Midwest to knock their schedules out a little bit and you're in

danger of losing a gig. I know agents who won't book bands who've played in Nashville a gig the very next day in New York, because the possibility of them missing the gig because the flights are canceled is too high. So when you take all that into account, UM you need to try and think about new way of touring. And for me UM, I got invited to play at the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto a couple of years ago three nights stand there for their seventy five I think

seventy fifth anniversary. I used to play there a lot in the eighties, and I came up with this idea that the first night I would play my current touring set, which is a you know songs right across my career, the tour, the show I did last night I was in town, the show I would do if I was just doing one night in a city. But on the second night, I would only play songs from my first three albums. Just for those who were uninitiated, how many

albums do you have? Double twelve? So just from the first three years US three, yes, So that would take me up to about night and eight six. And then on the third night, the final night, I would only play songs from my second three albums, so that would take me up to so classic early brag and then the sort of poppy middle period, and it's it's kind of interesting for me because, um, I think for a lot of younger audiences, it was Murmaid Avenue project with

Wilco that put me onto their radar. When you did Mermaid Avenue that was around the turn of the century. But those earlier records play into the crowd that kind of got into me through college radio and near the people who are coming along. And I can tell it then because the middle night the first three albums always sells out first, that was my question exactly, and the other two eventually sell out. But which do you which do you enjoy playing the most? It depends what kind

of mood I'm in. I think the first three album stuff Is is exciting. You gotta remember, Bob, my first album was only seventy minutes long. I can and have played it as an uncle the whole album. I don't need to, um, you know, rent the Royal album Hole and get an orchestra. Can just bash it out if I feel like it. But having said that, um, in the context that we're currently in the political context, a

lot of those songs still resonate. But then the second three records, when I was trying to be laughingly trying to be a pop star. They're interesting to kind of reconnect with as well. And then the last of those three albums, William Bloke, is my kind of parenthood record, and it's always nice to go back to that. That's sort of rebirth. Now even you you're you're a third generation or depending on how we want to kind of

You're not the Beatles, You're not a seventies act. But in today's scattered landscape where it's hard for anybody to get traction, there's that affect your motivation to rate songs and record song It does. It's not so much the traction, it's the cost as an independent artist behind making a full blown album that can actually engage in the mainstream on Spotify. The last album made, which was recorded here

in Los Angeles at Joe Henry's place. Um, you know, I I recorded the album in a week, and then I had to spend a year earning a war chest to take it on the road with the band, because it felt to me that if I wanted to step up a level, it would need a band. But yeah, I spent a year to wait with the album and spend a year getting together because I have no record

company behind me. I do have a record company, um Cooking Vinyl, but I have a kind of licensing deal with him, so I pay for the records, I pay for the promotion, and as a result, I owned my back cattle. So yeah, it's it's a point out. A full service album is a big, a big task in terms of blood and treasure. Okay, can't you can't do it every every couple of years. Now, if you did it with Joe Henry, how much did it cost it

cost like a proper album. I shouldn't really say that much it costs, but it did cost, you know, full blown six figures. Um yeah, not quite no, no, okay, so we get we get the ball, not quite, but a lot of money for me, I have to say for someone. Of course, of course you have to make the money, but you also but you should know that I've always made a living doing gigs. I've seldom made a huge living Sullen records. I had some gold records in the UK in the eighties, which is a hundred

thousand copies. But really, I'm a I'm a My bread and butter is doing gigs. Okay, but what about the concept of recording with the band and economically going out solo, or do you felt that the only way to do justice to this material to have before being the only the only reason to make a full service album is to try and push what you're doing up or notch, to get too slightly larger theaters, to get too slightly

broader audience, to try and reach out. There's no point in just going in and just doing whatever you want to do. You gotta think what do I want to achieve with this record? So getting the band together was part of that. You know. I did a third in week North American Bus too, which I've never done before, and it's I think I needed to show willing. I was still willing to two at least I have a

have a crack making. Now that that was said and done, do you believe you achieved your goal of widening your audience. I think I achieved my goal of broadening people's perception of who I am and what I do. Working with Joe was was really howd you hook up with Joe? I'm known for years, known for years. I've always been a big fan of his and whatever I bumped into him, he's always said, you know, you could come and make

an album in my basement for a week. And towards the um end of eleven, my mom had passed away in the March of eleven and I really needed to not not for any other reason than just I needed to do something else, and you know, I sort of cleared her house out, I'd sort it out the world and everything in the state, and I needed to do have a project to do. My partners suggested, he said, why don't you go and see Joe make a record with Joe, and that that seemed like a great, great

idea to do so. So, but working with Joe kind of brought me a lot closer to the nascent Americana scene because he's got good connections in that department. So, you know, I was the Americana Music Association invite me to Nashville to give an award. Obviously I had some connection there with the Wild Coo Woody Gutic thing, but they invited me to come along and and I'm you know, I'm happy to be part of that. Obviously. It's like

my relationship with folk music in England. I'm not of the folks scene, I'm not of Americana, but I am in some ways part of it. Well today anyway, with every with the evolution of these scenes. Yeah, I think American is a good place for singer songwriters. Now I know a lot of British maybe the only place it possibly Yeah, a lot of British singer songwriters. They're looking to shift to Nashville, go to Nashville to look for work.

So that's a positive thing I think. Okay, Now, when you came in, you just said you got off the Cyomo cruise talking of Americana. Okay, so tell us a little bit about what that experience was like. Oh, I've never been on a cruise ship before, so the idea of going out on one sounds a bit strange. But when okay, just so I know, I have been on a few cruise ships. Did you have did Kayamo have the entire ship? The entire ship? And do you remember what the name of the brand was, you know, Holland

America Princes the Norwegian Pearl. We're in the Norwegian Okay, I have actually been on a Norwegian ship and it was gigantic, like yeah, like a city block sailing around the Caribbean. And um, my partner Juliet was actually born in the Caribbean. She was born in Trinidad and she never have been back there, so she wanted to come. And she's also my manager, so that made a lot

of sense. And for some reason which I can't understand, my son suddenly decided he wanted a roady for me, so he came as well, and we had the best time. We had a really great time. There's like there must have been about I would say maybe thirty to forty artists, most of them solo artists. UM. The headline acts for

Jason Isbell and he's a four hundred unit. His banned Emmy Lou Harris was keb mo Uh Indigo girls UM and a lot of other great North American and some European singer songwriters and about I think there was probably about twelve hundred hunters on the boat with it. Okay, so how many days was the cruise and how many times did you perform? Performed three times solo. I organized a Woody Guthrie event. I saw who else was on the buildry go to the Cashy Chambers UM justin towns oh.

I kind of knew these guys will be into doing something around Woody UM and also being a little bit political. I wanted to kind of make a point of doing something of that. Ilk Um and our guy would talk about skiffle because I thought that audience who are into their roots music would be interested too. Here I did, you wrote a book about skiffle. Now I understand this was really a big thing in the UK and it inspired a lot of rock artists. But Americans are clueless.

Not that this not that I haven't heard from English listeners, but relatively briefly, explain what skiffle is. Skiffle is English schoolboys in the nineteen fifties picking up acoustic guitars to play lead Belli's repertoire. Okay, I don't know this is too deep because we always hear about Liverpool being a seaport city and a lot of the acts from they're getting American records from the seamen. How did these, if

you know, these skiffle players find out about belly? Well, in the years after the Second World War, the American government had a department called the US Information Service, and if you went to the US Embassy in Crown Square, there was a department there where you could go and

borrow books. American books are promoting American culture. In the basement, there was a record library which contained the whole of the Library Congress recording so everything from you know American classical music, you know Copeland and stuff like that, all the way to um the Parchment Farm recordings that John Alan Lomax did with Muddy Waters, and so people like Londie Donegan, who had a hit with Rock, Ironline Librities Rock Online, could access those records and that is how

they found them. That is how they found them. So Lonnie Darnigan actually went to the record collection. Londie Donigan didn't only go to the record collection. He regularly stole the records because people would go there to borrow the records and they would say, I'm afraid this record has been taken out by someone called Tony Donegan. Donegan realized that if he um, if he stole the record, the

Americans could just get another copy. You couldn't buy a lead Belly record in England, so so he often stole the records. And when I went to the Library Congress in to talk about Skiffle, they looked in their records and found a memo which discussed the fact that books and records were being stolen, and the attitude in Washington, d C. Was well, we're trying to promote American culture. I guess this is part of the process. Let's not worry about it. I guess it's working. There are more

latent exactly. So here's the here's the thing. Donegan has a hit with Rock hard Line fifty six. He goes on the road in late fifty six playing vaudeville circuit. So he's doing two shows a night, six nights a week in major cities. When he plays in Liverpool, George Harrison goes every night of the week. Paul McCartney goes. John Lennon. We don't think he does go Here's the really significant thing about this. Harrison is thirteen, McCartney's fourteen,

and Lennon is sixteen. These are the people that Donnegan has the effect on, not people who are buying African American roots music from sailors in the ports. We're talking about kids. In some ways. Skiffle was like the fidget spinner craze that has been in playgrounds over here and in my country in the last five years. It was a school school boy phenomenon. What they did those kids was they picked up the acoustic guitar as a symbol

of their difference from their parents generation. Because these kids, John Ian was born in nine and forty, he's in the first tranch there there there there are first teenagers. And until when Leonard's fourteen, there was food rationing in my country, including sweets. So John Lennon couldn't go in a sweet shop till he was fourteen and buy what you wanted. And a year later he left school and you know, I was going to college, so it was quite almost an adult before he could buy what he wanted.

And it's these kids, and they're uh young, their lives being deprived of those things that blong onto African American culture so strongly as something that's there's it hasn't been handed down to them by the state or rational to them by the government and the BBC. So they learned to play guitars. And so by the time American kids are white American kids anywhere learning to play acoustic guitar during the Folk Revival, which starts in fifty nine, our kids,

their contemporaries, they were the same age as them. They're already in Hamburg. And the result of this is that when the Beatles break the American charts in janu there's a huge number of already road hard in British groups ready to come in behind them. Skiffle is the nursery for the British invasion of America. It's not what they did in in the fifties. These kids, what they do in the sixties that counts. So you were born in fifties seven, I was born at peak skiffle. Were you

aware of any of this? You're too young. When I was a kid, I was aware of Donegan, but only in terms of his um novelty records like myle Man's a Dustman and your Chewing Gun. So when did you get turned onto? Amount of time of punk? Because what happened with punk was all the old guitars that had been there during skiffle, which were most the old arch tops were back in the junk shops and the old really early a hollow body electric guitars in the U

coach are made by the Hofner company. They were they were all buying for ten quid and they became kind of part of punk. They were so fabulously retro and punk had a lot of similarities with UM. Skiffle in that it was a do it yourself uh genre. You know, you made your own music. You in many ways you were self empowering. Because that's the thing that was most

revolutionary about Donegan. The message that he took around the country when he when he went out in fifty six was firstly, you don't have to be a trained musician to make music, and secondly, you don't have to be an old African American guy at seeing the blues. And this is probably the two most revolutionary ideas ever imparted to British youth. It was just, you know, because Van Morrison, when our interviewed him for the book, told me the problem with Elvis was you couldn't be Elvis if you

were British. It's just impossible. You could be Learning Donegan. So Donegan kind of was the catalyst for for for these kids too to learn the three chords necessary to play all of Lead Bellies repertoire, which also, by concidence, happened to be the three chords necessary to play all the Chuck Berry's repertoire. Okay, and the punk scene, you know, it starts in America with the Ramans and seventy five they don't get any traction. When do you become aware of the pug scene? And I go and see the

jam They were kind of retro band. Where were you? Okay, so where were you living at the East London a place called Barking in Northeast London industrial borough. I was educated left school at sixteen, and I was educated to work in the car factory which has dominated our town. Okay, a little bit once again. If you leave at sixteen, what do your parents say about that? Are they're cool? My parents have both left school. I have a working class upbringing my parents. And so do you go to work?

What is your gig? You go to work in the car country. I'm determined not to work in the car factory because we get from school. We go to the car factory every year for careers advice. And when I tell the the careers officer that I don't want to work for Fords, he says, your free options son in the Army to Navy of the Air Force. That's it. So I manage what happens. It is just as I leave school, the Port of London is being containerized, and so I get a job with one of the new

container companies. As a kind of office boy, which is kind of well, that's what I wanted, you know, um, because in many ways I kind of picked up the guitar to avoid working in the car factory. But they were the main ways to escape. Be good at football, good at boxing, or play music, and I wasn't good at the first two. Okay, let's go back a little bit. So if you're turned out of the punk scene and you've got to see the with the GM in seventy seven,

are you someone who's addicted to the radio before that? Yeah, from the age of about twelve, I had had a real to real tape machine usually, yeah, sort of a domestic one. Domestic, real to real. My parents. I think my parents realized if they brought me a real to real machine, this is before the days of cassettes, I'll be able to tape stuff from the radio and they wouldn't have to keep spending money buy me records. It's quite clever, really, and did is that what happened? It

was better than that. My friends down our street all had elder sisters and their record collections, which is brilliant. So very soon I had the entire Simon and Garth Uncle catalog, and Motown Chartbusters Volumes three, four, five, six, and seven on tape. And that provided me with the basis of my knowledge of music and my skill as a songwriter. And when do you start to play. I start writing songs on about twelve. I can't play until I leave school. Okay. But if you're writing songs, you're

writing them on what paper? Really? You're just making the melodies up in your in my head? Yeah? And are those moon June songs or well? I wrote a poem um at school the when I was twelve that the English teacher was very impressed with and he wrote to my parents and asked if I copied it from a book and I hadn't, so that that impressed him. And then I got to read it out on a kid's radio program, a local radio program. So I kind of okay, let's go a little bit slower. Here was this for

an assign? Yeah? Okay, do you remember what the assignment was? A poem? Okay? And was this relatively brief or you know, three or four verses here? Three or four verses? You remember any of them today? Not? Really? It was it was it was kind of apocalyptic in its nature. I think that you know there's no hope for mankind or something like that. Okay, And was it something you dashed off or something you took seriously, this is my chance.

It's something I did for homework book and just worked out really well and that kind and then I got the I failed all my exams except English. You get to read on the radio. That must be big, you know. It was a big inspiration. It inspired me. Inspired me because I always liked to sing a songwriter, you know. I started with Paul Simon and graduated very quickly on

the Bob Dylan. I had a job in a hardware store on Saturdays, and the hardware store had a record shop in the basement, so I spent all my money on discounting vinyl and earlier and I got Bob Dylan's Greatest It's the original version, which has all the early stuff on it. And that really that really inspired me. Okay, So you're writing songs. Are you gathering together with friends to play these songs? Well, this is the thing. The

kid next door. When I turned sixteen, I can hear the kid next door playing his electric guitar through the war. He's fourteen and he's working his way through the watch Shoot Songbook. So I get my dad to buy me a Nylon strong Spanish guitar, and I get the kidnext or to teach me how I played. I remember that's how I started the nightline. They're not easy to play, No, they're not. And it's you know, it's the just thing of get one end to do this and the other

rand to do something completely different. It's not easy. But as I say, I was learning songs I really loved at the watch Shot song But because he covered they learn and he covered a lot of great songwriters, so I was quite into these songs. And let's stop here for a second. A lot of punks had a negative attitude towards what came before, and were you part of that? I was when it got to ninety seventy seven, year I was. I was a year zero kid, although it

wasn't everything. I remember I gave all my Eagles albums to the woman in the post office who I liked. She was a good friend. She was into the Eagles and I used to see her and I was like, I've got to get rid of these. I cut my hair, I got some narrow legged trousers. It's got within my flares um. But by this time I was in a band. I was playing you hear the Electric Guitar, through the Door, through the Wall, You buy the Nyeline guitar. Then what well?

Me and the kid next door, Wiggy, were playing the back room with friends around the corner, and we went to school. It was a year older than me, plays drums. We start, you know, hanging out, and we've become a little gang in my back room. We're predominantly playing the Faces the Stones, a lot of old rock and roll songs, and writing our own songs as well. That's yeah, this

is like an apprenticeship, you know. I worked out out how some of the Faces songs were basically guitar riffs that they just attached words to rather than verse chorus things, and explain this to Wiggy and he came up with riffs and I just attached words to him. So that sounded like where is Where is Wiggy today? He's living

still where we grew up, not very far away. His dad still lives in the house next door to the house I grew up in, although my since my mom passed away, my nephew loose there now, so I see him quite regularly. Okay, so you're playing Are you playing out or you just no, no, no, no, nothing like that. We're waiting to be discovered, but we're trying. But the dream is intact. Yeah, okay, you think, Yeah, the dream

is forming. The dream is forming, and it's punk. I saw you move your hands, and that's something to do with the money that the dreamer is that money, it's that, it's attraction. It's some kind of traction for a dream. Dreams need traction. Um. It's punk that makes us realize that the way to be in a band is to be in a band, not to wait for someone to come and tell you of being a Bandnestly, the clash

more than so than the jam. I don't know what I think the clash think about the clash was they did all the things we like to the rolling stones, but about the ronges size. But they were our age, so we kind of some of us more than others. I think I was more into it than the other. Well, that's my question. You're forming this band, and did you quickly realized wait a second, I have more desire than the other. Oh no, we were at the same desire. We just didn't want have the same aircrat and I

think that's always a problem in the band. But what happened was in the summer of seventy seven we decided we were all wanted to go on holiday together somewhere where we could stay up and make music all night, because we couldn't do that our parents. So we found this um rehearsal studio demo studio in the country and we went there for a week out of the country with We're in Northamptonshire, which is how far from East London. Oh,

I would say it's two hours. Were okay, you know, but we were all completely We're all, you know, not nothing for miles around it but fields and forests and what is paying for this our work? We're all worked Pard I'm nineteen and seventy seven, WIGGI will be seventeen twenties, so we're all at work. Um And we kind of went to the studio and never really came home after after going back and forth there a few times. The people who ran it were really great for us because

they they gave us a confidence. You know, that week, I must have written a dozen songs while we were there. We did stay up all night. We did well why why did the people give you confidence? Well, because our parents were like, you know, we might as well be uh collecting stamps. As far as my parents concerned, it was a hobby and I should get a proper job, you know. Okay, So at this point, yeah, the office job, office boy down at the ducks. The office. It was

in the central London, in the City of London. It was cut down the docks. It was that. It was the I think I maybe by then I was even a bank messenger. I think I've moved up. It was a bank messenger and you're still living at home? Yeah, what the cusure thing that has happened? Since getting the first guitar and going to the studios and my father's passed away in Nix when I was eighteen years That must have really fun Well, it kind of did, Bob. It was a long time coming. He had lung cancer.

But as he died and I had to sort of get to grips with not being a kid anymore, punk happened, and punk became the sort of life raft that I sailed away from my childhood and that terrible period where where my dad was getting worse and worse and worse and worse. It was almost like everything stopped in my life, just stopped while that was going on. And then it ended and there was punk was there, and I was able to step onto that and and sort of right away to the next part of my life. So I

was very fortunate in that. Okay, so you're working as a as a bank messenger and you're making music, and what's the next step. Next step is that we move. All the guys in the band we decided to move to the farm, to the to the studio, except the guy who has an apprenticeship at Fords. He decided to

stay at Forwards, which is understandable. And we live up in easternalth, Camptainshire for eighteen months and you do what for a living, nothing, So you're living off what of the government's unemployment benefit, which in those days was not not not a bad thing. A lot of people are on the dolls. So the taxpayers kind of pay for my apprenticeship. That's why I don't mind paying my taxes. I think it's only fair to pay some back. Um.

And yeah, we had a great time up there. We were legendary in that town when you obviously played live there all the time. Yeah, We had a residency at a pub Sunday afternoon residency where local punk bands would come and play. And in that town, in that community, we were the punks, but we meant absolutely nothing outside that community. But there were great people and we really had it. It's very formative. My mole manager Peter Jenner, used to say that I didn't go to university. I

went to riff Raft. That was the name of the band, and that isn't deed true. Okay, a couple of things. Didn't you go on the military at one? That's why happens next? The band breaks up? Why does the BM break up? Well, we had to move back to London and the drummer winner to stay there and me and we wanted to go back, and so we got a couple of other guys in. But it weren't the same.

This wasn't the same, and the venues we played in were disappearing, and a new breed of pop stars was coming along who put style over content, and we've always been content of his style for punk rock. And in order to get gigs, you have to have a sympathizer and a funny haircut, and I've never had either. Our time had come and gone, and did you literally literally give up the dream? Say, you know, time passed me by. I didn't make it, kind of joined the army to

press the eject button on my previous existence. That was the aim of it. Now, if you join the army, theoretically you get your ass shut off. Well, yes and no, it depends what you do. I mean, basically, at the time, the only place you get yours shot off was in Northern Ireland. But I told him I didn't want to go there, so they put me in an Irish regiment.

Because the Irish regiments didn't go there. Because you don't want to take some guy off the streets of Dairy and teach them how to shoot and then send him back to harass his neighbors. It's not a good idea, so I kind of mitigated against that. But a terrible thing is bob. But once you've driven one tank, you've driven them all, to be honest with you, So well, let's start for the beginning. Did you drive a tank

here for a while? Really, And you're saying, I just want to understand, because you know, I grew up in the air of the sixties when we were all anti military it's hard to see it flip in front of my eyes now. But are you saying there was no room for growth personal growth or you're saying what what in the army? No, there was. There was a realization quite early on that this wasn't going to cure me if wanted to be a singer songwriter. In fact, it maybe wanted to write more songs. So because we have

a volunteer army, you can buy yourself out at any time. Well, it gets harder and more trained you are. But I brought myself out more or less at the end of basic training, so I'd barely driven a tank. And how long was basic training? All? It was about four months? Okay, I gotta ask, though you're in the army, can you relate to any of these people? What a lot of working class lads like me it were nowhere to go.

You know in those days if if you you couldn't read and couldn't write, but we're physically fit, there was a job there for you. Now you can't do that anymore, okay, So you buy yourself out of the army. The dream is rekindled and you do what. I spend a year working out out how to start doing gigs again, solo with an electric guitar, start writing songs and that in that style, and playing anywhere anyone would have me for nothing, just carrying a little a little practice amp. And then

did you have a da job? At that time? I was very fortunate and I bumped into an old mate of mine from the basement record store in the Harbord shop. He was running a record shop, and he gave me some work, okay, and he got to listen to the music. Did yeah, okay? It was interest you because it was

an entire chain of records record stores that sold only cutouts. Really, yeah, there was a guy had a big church and these most people who don't know back in the days of physical when something was deleted from the catalog, when they weren't going to manufacture it anymore or they had overstocked, they literally put a cut in the cover and they would sell it at a discount and there were no

royalties to the acts to boots, that's right. And so he had and he hired me the boss because I was the only one who knew anything about punk, and he would take me to bankrupt record stores and asked me to value of the punk stuff. Look at the punk stuff, so you knew the other stuff you didn't know show about punk. I would have to go in and one day I found one of our records of raft records. Made me laugh. But I get a lot of a lot of stuff you have was white labels,

get boxes of white labels. And I would spend a lot of time during the day in the shop while there were customers in the shop, planning the white labels, trying to work out what they are and writing on them what they aren't, setting them for a quid or something. So it was it was good. The dangerous thing was going to the warehouse. You know, if you went to the warehouse where the records were kept. Another thing from the days of physical your listeners might not know how

heavy records were. There was always a danger that there could be an avalanche of copies of all this and World War two the soundtrack you could get buried under them. There were a lot of those in the warehouse. Do you remember that record, yes, exactly, so, yeah, those are the days. Those are my days in the bowels of the record industry and all this entire chain run on. You know, what was the name Low Price Records run on nothing more than the detritus. You run a whole.

I think had six shops run just on the detritus of the record industry. I gotta ask, because that's the second word you used, which if you're an American, that would be evidence of higher education. You said, as you pronounced an inclement, we might say inclement here, and you said the traders. Would these be words come up casually in the UK? Or are you separate from the average working Oh no, almost. I'm a wordsmith. I do have a you know, previous collection of archaic words because I

need him to rhyme with things. But I was trying to I was trying to um by saying to try this. I was trying to suggest that these songs, these records one rubbish. I've got some I've got some great white libelar. No, no, no, I know exactly what you're talking about. You know, you said, just not the issue. It's just you don't get the average musician using those particular terms. Anyway, you're playing and

you're slinging the cutouts, and what happens after that. I start too, of the guy I work with who's also musician. He's a bass play of jazz funk band Steve Goldstein. He buys a Reporter studio, which is like a little recording deck that you can Most people don't know there are four tracks on a cassette, usually two in each direction, and I don't know if Tiak was the first one that was you know, yeah, and they used all four

tracks in one direction. So it's kind of like recording the garage ban today but on a primitive, very primitive. But he bought this. He was so excited about it and he wanted to test it out. So he invited me to come and make some demos his mum's flat where he lived. And I totally up for this because I was writing the loads of his solo songs. So I went along and demo my songs and I sent them to The Melody Maker, which was a weekly newspaper, one of four we had music papers in the UK.

It was Melody Maker, Enemy, Sounds in Mirror, and the They had a page called Playback where they reviewed demo tapes and a guy named Adam Sweeting gave mine a fabulous review. Absolutely, did you think it was as good as his review? I had no idea, mate, but I can tell you that when my then girlfriend who worked in the in the West Ends, so I've got the newspapers a day early and we got him in the suburb the music papers read it to me over the phone.

Almost wept. I'll tell you why, because it was the US intimation I got that I might actually be able to do this job and it might work. It really was like a validation the like of which no reviewers ever had. The same fact just I'm cheering up a little bit now just thinking about it. That moment it was I just closed the shops. That must have been around six some was setting so the shop was full of beautiful light. It was almost like, you know what,

this might actually happen. It might actually happen. So it was. It had my phone number on the bottom of the review, and I was phoned by a guy who worked for Chapel Music Publishers named Jeff Chegman. He invited me to come and make some demos. Nobody else there was particularly interested, but he gave me a day in their demo studio with their engineer. We record a dozen songs and um.

Around the same time, I had a residency and a rather sort of rough spit and sawed US joint called The Tunnel in Southeast London, a pub, and I was I was doing pretty well there, but I started sending this the original demo type that I had made on the Port studio. I sent out to record companies but not got any anywhere. And I started going to record companies and going in reception, and I'd get a few names and try and ask her see someone. I didn't know anybody, and I went on. One day, I went

to Charisma Records. I was looking for a guy named Peter Jenna. Okay, I mean I know Peter Jenna, original manager of Pig Floyd. Certainly you're a manager. Did you know who he was? At that point I met I got his name from a guy who painted backdrops from the clash who I know. And when I said I was looking for a manager was political and like a father figure, he said, I know blow like that Jenna, That's who he is. Yeah, exactly, And it was in my career um, but at the time he was a

and R and for Charisma. So I went there with my demo and I asked for him a reception. I was it in there and I was not really getting any looked like I wasn't going to get in same as everywhere else. When someone put their head around the corner and said to me, are you the guy who's come to tune in the video? Now? At the time, I was working with Wiggy sort of part time. Wiggy was doing audio visual presentations for companies, and not many

coupanies was two. Not many companies had video machines, so we would take a video recorder with us, and while Wiggy was doing the warm up, I'd crawl under the telly and tune in their TV to this video machine. So although I wasn't the person who had come to tune in the video, I was capable of tuning in the video. So without a moment's thought, I said, yeah, I am so. She said great, come this way, took me into the recording to a record company, crawled under

their telly, tuned in their video. I think they were watching Peter Gabriel, who was on the first edition. So you actually did do the show for sure. It wasn't a complete blag. I've done it, so I don't feel I don't feel guilty about lying because I did do it, all right, let's get that straight, um. And then I said I said to um, we're all standing around watching. I said to this woman, he's Peter Jenner about there. So I went over and laid my tape on him

and bless him. He came to see me at the tunnel. Okay, did he play it while you were there? But he came to see me at the tunnel and he he later said that when he came to the town there was an electric atmosphere in the room. While I was on stage, he spoke to a woman at the bar and she said, I was. I was brilliant. And when I finished, because he was late, he'd gone there's two tunnels under the river gone he'd gone through the wrong one, So he was typical Pete Starle. He was late, so

he didn't see the gig. He just saw the end of it. But he's he He said to me, we must do something, however trivial. That was his line to me as he left, because he left straight away. What he didn't know was just before he'd arrived there'd been a and the reasons for the electric app here was I was trying to hold the room, if you know what I mean, stop it breaking out again. The woman he spoke to the bars and my then girlfriend so and amongst all this, we kind of we kind of

and only got sacked. He got sacked by Charisma after we put the record out. Uh, he put the record out and he just gave me twenty five and says, if youn't get any radio plays on that, I'm not. I thought that you were supposed to do this. He said, get out, go to the BBC. So I went to the BBC and I left some copies. I left a copy for John Peele, famous most famous DJ and the nighttime g J who had the ability to break bands

and give your sessions. I left it there and that night I was in Hyde Park, which is the other end of oxfor Street from Broadcasting US, playing football with some mates and afterwards we were having a few beers and we were listening to the BBC the program before Peel, which is Kit Jensen, and Peel came in to talk about what's on his show, and he's it Ki Jensen. I would do anything for a mushroom bery. Ay, it is the form of a curry So a light went

on in my head, so I went down. I walked down the back of Ox Street, bought the curry berry. Only went to broadcastings and said to the concierge curry for Mr Peel. They rang him. He come down. He physically come down to take the curry off me. So I was able to say to my man's Billy Bragg, I left a record for you today life The Right spy Us is by great if you could ever listen to it, it's like fine took the bury ony I

tuned in that night. Not only did he play the record, he said thanks very much for the buryany Billy I would have played it anyway. And it was the beginning of I'd like to think of a real friendship between myself and and the great Man. Okay, so now you have your start. Is it a relatively you know, it's hard to do on the radio talk about graphs and engles. Is it steady going up or is it ups and downs?

That's about ups and downs to start with, because particularly because Charisma the record label, so it's taken over just after my record comes out on on the Utility label. The record labels taken over by Virgin, So everything goes sideways, including my record. But a guy named Andy McDonald um ran a label Leslie Simmons and together they rescued my record and rereleased it later that year, and by the time we get to the new year, it's number one in the independent charts, which was a big deal in

those days. How do you think it got there? Well, partly because of I was really really working hard doing gigs. Peel was playing it put he put New England in his Festive fifty in the top five. I think it's Festive fifty, um Andy and um go this we're doing a good job with it. Was he was a good promotion man him unless he did a really great job on it. And Pete Janna, you know, was old hand.

So it's like a collaboration. Everybody put their reference. Yeah, my willingness to do as many because they threw at me and to go and literally, I mean it literally was um out on the road with a amping one hand guitar, only having a pack on my back on trains so I didn't drive in and my agent would just put set me up with um support acts for bigger bands, and I was just try and steal the audience. So by the time we got to Christmas, I was

doing my own headliners. Okay, that record is successful, what's the next step? America, America. I get a shout in this in this August night, four do I want to come to the unit sets of America and open for that kind of moneyment on their first American tour? So I do so I get I'll call Wiggy say, Wiggy, this is it, mate, I'm going to tour America for a month. I may never do this again. You've got to come with me. You've got to come with me. This is what we dreamed about doing. Come on, let's

do this. I'll pay for it. I'll pay for that, you know, I'll pay you to do it. Come and roady for me. Play a couple of songs, get on the back of the bus with Bunnyment, and that's what we did. We went coast to coast, north to south. It was just amazing, and to do it with Wiggy really was for me. It was the the sort of combination of ever we went. We got to. We got to Los Angeles at the end of the tour the Bunnyment and we were there for a couple of days.

We went to the car, drove to the end of Sunset Boulevard, end of Root and walked down to Paddle in the Pacific ocean and had a moment like our sort of sixteen year old selves kind of saw us there or we saw them, and we we came off the We've all got very emotional in weeks. Someone's going down. We saw as we came off the beach an English pub, which is too good. So we went to go and have a point to celebrate. And it wouldn't let us think because we didn't have I d totally killed it.

We're like, you don't have to have idea in English pub? No idea? No, Okay. At what point do you make a deal with the Electra? Oh? That comes shortly there after Pete, because I go back to America about three times in the following year, and Pete gets me to deal with Electra on tax mouth. I think it's a taxi. Okay, So in this period we will call your heyday. Do you achieve your goals? Yeah? I do. I mean lots of very interesting women, have very interesting conversations with them

with no clothes on. That was one of my goals I'm not ashamed of. So wait, wait, wait, wait, so you're not a closer. You said no, no, no, without any clothes on, Bob, I'm trying to put it in a nice way, One of the reasons why I wanted to be in a band was was to impress girls. So you know that kind of well that worked once you're on stage. We know that's an established formula, but one has to ask. I mean, you're a very verbal guy. Was your act working before you had some level of

fame on the stage? Yeah, it was, it was, it was working, but the the guitar and the English accent really kind of helped. Okay, any of these women you have contact with today, Yeah, I do quite a few of them. Actually, I'd like to think I've remained friends with with with quite a few of them. You know, it's what you do when you're in your twenties. You know. That was my my kind of period of heightened sexual activity.

What happened to be on the road, So it had a had a double edge sort because I was learning a lot as I was traveling as well. You know, it wasn't just me in one particular area. It was it was a great time to be out in the road. And at this point, are you're touring solo mostly? Yeah? Completely, yeah, okay, and then you ultimately have a backpack and amplifier. No, no, no, I don't ultimately have that pe Jena dream set up

as a way of getting people's attention. It's a complete pain in the ass because it weighs a ton, it feeds back, and it's the most of the weights across your diaphragm. It's like a backpack, so you can't really get along full of I complained about it mercilessly. It got me a bad back. But Jenna damn him said at the time that but people will remember this bill, and you're comment there that annoyingly proves him right. Okay, so the down term in term, you know, everyone's got

a relatively brief window where they are the center of attention. Now, would you say the moment passes or you would say the internet comes and decimates. No, no, the moment the moment passes. Basically my my, my, heighter that would be working with in the UK with a Labor Party around

red Wedge and the minor strike. That that very particularly that very political um opposition to Margaret Thatcher and policies and in the in the US to Ronald Reagan um, and that was kind of that's that's what defines me for a lot of people still, and I'm cool with that. I don't mind being called a political songwriter. I write more love songs than I write political songs. My problem is being dismissed as a political songwriter, people thinking they

did you weak? Did you grow up in a political house? No? I don't really know. So how did you become, you know, inspired to speak out on your political It's all down to the inspiration of one person I knever forget her name. It was Margaret Thatcher of my time. If you look, if you look at my first couple of albums, the politics is personal. Just because you're better than me doesn't mean I'm lazy. Tax Man, I'm writing songs that's a message we need more today than ever. Yeah, exactly. But

by tax man, I'm writing there is parent union. I'm writing songs called ideology. What's happened is the minor strikers happened. And for my generation, the minor strike, what do you experienced upon that? For those in the Conservative government provoked the National Union mine workers into a year long strike that ultimately uh led to the not just a defeat of miners, but the defeat of organized labor in my country.

And it was a destructive uh um, destructive of unions, but also destructive of communities and spirit broke the working class spirit in my country. And so uh you know, having grown up listening to all those political singer songwriters in the nine in sixties, when the strike happened, I thought, okay, well this is where I get to find out if music and change the world. So I did everything I could two use the tarant that I had the platform.

Not I had to make the case for not just an organized labor, but for a compassionate society, which is what you run up against internal pressure not to do that. Yeah, of course the um. One of Thatcher's ministers used to complain to the BBC if they put me on air. You know, he's a guy named Norman Tebbitt. Was complained and how much Once again, you're in a different market place than America and we're a very ethnocentric and self obsessed. How much exposure do you get in that era of

the minor strike? Quite a bit? Quite a bit really, because um we got remember we've got four weekly music papers. Um, and during the strike everybody was talking about it. It was not something you could avoid. So um, young people were galvanized by opposition to Thatcher in the way they've been galvanized by a position to Trump and opposition to Brexit. So to be a young person and to be making culture for young people, you know, I wasn't alone in

the way arms. Were you political before this or just this issue struck you in such a way? I was. I was personally political, Bob. You know, my my politics were broadly you know, anti racist. Um, I'll be honest. Before the minor strike, I didn't have much grasp of sexism. It was that experience to introduced me to to those issues. But I've been politicized by Rock against racism, so that's where my politics kind of came from. Um. But the

ideological politics so I started. The minor strike caused me to defined myself as a socialist rather than just someone who was in favor of good things. I started trying to, you know, bring that in. For a lot of us, it was it was definitive. Okay, We're in a you know, very tumultuous globe at this point in time. There's been a lot of rightward movement, although recently a little bit of a pushback to left. Do you have hope for

society at large. Yeah, of course, as I say, I describe myself as a socialist, And unless you can see that the glass is half full, you can't really be a socialist because you have to believe that if the majority of people have to say that the things will work for the better, you've gotta be able to wake up in the morning and think that broadly speaking, humanity

leans towards a much more compassionate society. Um. And I think we live in time with even a time when there's like a war on empathy coming down from on high. You know, anyone who expresses any sort of you know, respect for people outside their own racial or cultural or ethnic group is sort of dismissed as virtue signaling or political correctness. These people who use those terms of trying to police the the limits of social change by their dismissive language, and we have to, you know, we have

to take them on as best we can. Well, war on empathy, that's a good, uh way to put it. So, what is really going on with Brexits prior to this being published? I am sure there'll be other movement, but give us the insight into how this happened. Braxit is a manifestation of the inability of the neoliberal economic model

to deal with change. And it's not isolated. I think the election here in the United States America in UH was also the election of Donald Trump was also a result of the other candidate, Hillary Clinton, being unable to offer any real change, economic change that will help ordinary working people. She couldn't do that. She was just offering

more the same people. If you've um not benefit from the economic model, then then the the impulse to protect that econonomic model by voting to remain in the European Union, forget it. You know, you've made my life a chaos. I'm gonna make your life chaos now. And I think that's the lesson from Trump and Brexit is that unless ordinary people are offered meaningful change, they are willing to vote for the kind of you know, damn the lot

of u chaos that we see with Brexit and with Trump. Okay, so a noo that the election of the Brexit electors essentially three years old. Um, there's been a lot of talk about people who just in a lot of working class people who literally voted against their interests because there were plants in their societies that were funded by European Union. Um, they talk about a nationalism. The people missed a national

identity leading in the UK. So what degree is that a well, nationally you know, I'm a socialist and as a result that, Bob, I know, there are many different types of socialism. It's not just one type. You know, you have democratic socialisty in the United States of America, the social democracy. It's the same with nationalism. You know, in my country we have the British National Party you are led by a man who denies the veracity of the Holocaust, and the Scottish National Party, who are more

left wing than the Democrats and the Labor Party. So you know, nationalism is not always a negative form civic nationalism, loving your country and wanting it to be better. It's not always negative. But what's going on I think, both with Trump and with Brexit is an attempt to return to the way things were before women, people of color and the lgbt q I community made it in road. How much of it is that and how much of it is what you steated earlier, the lack of economic opportunity.

Well that the one is a reaction to the other. You know, the two big slogans from Trump and Brexit were make America great again and take back control. It's not like a moving forward idea where we're all going to move together. We're going to go back to our things were before all these upty people got their their place in society. It's a it's a you know, almost a nostalgia trip. And in my country it's underscored with imperial nostalgia, and I fear in your country it's it's um,

it's run through with the nostalgia for Jim Crow. I'm sorry to say. Um. Now you can you can put that down to nationalism if you like. There's a nationalist element in there. But nationalism isn't always negative. But what is clearly is negative is people who don't feel that they have a place in society anymore. You know, some of the Brexit people say that they don't feel that Britain is their country anymore. Now I have some empathy for that because I felt that way during Attache years.

So I'm not willing to dismiss them all as being racists. You know, not not everyone who voted for Breakfast is a racist, but every race is definitely voted Breakfast. But the point being. You know, these are people who are don't feel their voices heard anymore, and Brexit was their opportunity to be heard. And I think there's an element of that within the within the Trump vote as well. And the question then becomes, how do we accommodate those people? Okay,

so how do we? Well? I think we have to give them the thing that seems to be lacking to me in their lives and listen to what they say is a sense of some agency over their their environment. And one of the reasons for that, I think if the prime reason for that, I think is that the lack of accountability in a voting system in your country and my country that doesn't um make everyone's vote count.

If we lived in countries that add proportional voting systems where every vote results and representation, we might be able to get to grips with some of these issues. I mean, what's been happening just recently in my country with members of parliament splitting from the two main parties is the stress being put on a system that is unable to accommodate meaningful change. Let's go back just for a second.

You go a little deeper. Proportional voting meaning proportional voting, meaning that that the members of Congress will proportionally reflect the number of votes counted there in their election or in their viewpoints expressed in their in their election, in the number of votes Canada. In my country, we have a system called first pass the post. So if there's there's three of us, Let's say there's three of us in the election, and I get the most votes, I win,

even if I don't get the majority. You know, if I get um Let's say I get and the two other candidates get each I win, and what apps to the six of the votes that are against me? They go in the trash. That's you know, you keep doing that for twenty thirty years. Those people who going in the trash of your time, they're going to get angry. Where I live in a rural constituency, we call them

out parliamentary constituencies. I live in a rural community where the Conservative Party have been the MP since six and where I live in East London, where I grew up. Rather, Labor has been the member of Parliament there since the borough was created when my father was a child in nine. So I mean I'm a Labor supporter but I reckon just talking about the constituency you live in now. Is there any opportunity for labor or a third party that

that second party? Even previous elections, I've had to campaign for the only party that the party that comes second, even though I don't support them, I've had to encourage people to vote for them in order to defeat the Tories and to stop the Tories winning at westminth said didn't work. UM, But in a fair voting is a system system. Our votes will be reflected. You know, there will be a threshold. Parties that got more than five percent would get some kind of representation. They do have it.

I mean most European societies have it. It's not a UM solve all your problems, but it does ensure that everyone's votes get Okay, that's that's talking about government. What about economics in the fact with you know a lot of the economy, certainly in america's driven by technology, and there aren't enough jobs, never mind well paying jobs for people. How do we address that? Really easy but great new deal?

You know, the New Deal that Frank Loos got used in the nineties thirties to re re engage American workers greening the American economy would have the same job because although yes, technology will be important, you will physically have to change the way that you know, every house is insulated. You will physically have to change the way that that automobiles work. You will physically have to change the way

power is generated. These are all labor intensies, right, But those would cause employment for a period of time, just like the Alaskan oil rush of the seventies. But it does not speak to the billionaires who ultimately control these large corporations and wield their power to the detriment of the working class. In middle class. Well, we're back to the A word again, but accountability. And I think this actually, I've just been proof reading a polemical pamphlet. I've written

fifteen word pamphlet about accountability. Because I believe very very strongly that it's going to be published later this year. I'll be leave very very strongly that um our obsession with free speech as the definition of freedom is to the detriment of other dimensions of freedom that are equally important. And they are equality the right of everybody to express

their opinion. More importantly, though, accountability, because it's accountability that gives the individual agency over those corporations that you're talking about. So I'm in my in my book, I'm arguing that equality and accountability to give given equal prominence and equal respect that we give to First, let's say, you know, there are there are certainly bad actors in corporate world,

but there is a spectrum. So for those people who are paying those corporations that are paying their taxes but still eliminating jobs, what's the accountability there. Well, the accountability there is that the corporations have to be responsible so that the profits, some of the profits that they have have to go into the communities where they work to create space and create a um a sustainable model of

growth that helps those communities in some way. If everyone, you know, maybe we go into a four day working

week or something like that. Because the real big problem is that the globalization of the economy has made it possible for for um an extractive model of capitalism that allows a corporation to make its money in one country and then pay taxes somewhere else that if they pay them, if they pay them at all, And unfortunately, the only way to deal with that is to have some kind of global deal and again, Unfortunately, voters tend to be

shying away from that kind of international collective action that the you know, globalization is here to stay. It's just like an America. No one wants to be four thousand dollars for a flat screen if it was manufacturing America. But there hasn't been a good trickled down or understanding for those people left behind. The trickle down don't really matter, don't really work. But the economy works not by entrepreneurs

making loads of money and trickling it down. The economy works by you and I am every other average Joe and you will going out every day and buying stuff. That's how the of course, that's what the New Deal was about. The New Deal was about putting money into the pockets of ordinary American workers that they could buy automobiles in America, so they could buy fridges, so they could buy houses. As you don't if you don't have these people at the bottom spending their money, that's when

the economy. That's one of the things that bothers me. You have all these corporate titans, it's all based on consumer spending that they don't make the money in the vat you know, so The question is, then, how do you get that model to be sustainable? How do you get it to be more accountable? And I believe you do that by giving the consumer, the individual, greater agency over the process. So that involves a form of regulatory democracy, more regulations, not less regular in America, and I agree

with you wholly. Uh. The right wing has done a excellent job of demonizing the word regulation. Well, of course, no one wants to live in a building the collapse is, it's setera. But you know, maybe there's a change now, just like when the anti Pelosi they demonized her and they you know, turned one e. Brexit, the hard Brexit is what march. I mean, that's driven by the regulations.

We'll just add driven by the people behind that were pushing hardest for exactly those kind of people, extractive capitalists who are trying to get out the European UNI. Because the European Union is now starting to pass laws which you'll know about copyright and such issues that have international implications for corporations, not just manufacturing corporations, but people on Facebook and Google. Okay, so how do you predict this

will play out? Well, Brexit, Bob, mate, it's like trying to say who's going to win the World Series in ten years time. It's everything you say you think we'll happen, doesn't happen, or something weirder happens. It's really what Brexit has done is totally fractured the idea of left right politics completely, so you can't predict anymore the way people are going to respond to two issues in the way

that you could before. Brexit is like a faultline that runs through our politics, and it's in some ways it's a bit it's a it's a bit like Trumpism in that way. You know, it's split families and it's split I mean, I know people who don't talk to their parents anymore because their parents voted Brexit. As it's impossible to protect likely what is likely to happen. I think it's likely that we the British government, will have to ask the European Union to postpone kick the bottle down

the the field. Yeah, there's a there's a I think called Article fifty, which is the process that we're in at the moment that could be extended. What I would like to see is um an independent review of it. A lot of people at home want there to be a referendum, another referendum. The referendum was the most divisive day in British post war history, the most divisive day. And you want to do it again, come on, you know it would just be it makes winners and losers.

What we need is a consensus. So um, the Irish recently convened a a people's Forum to decide the issue of abortion. They put people, um, ordinary citizens elected like a jury. I think there was a hundred of them, and they took evidence from experts. No politicians were allowed talked and I took evidence from experts and submissions from the general public. They deliberated for months in a hotel

every weekend. It was all broadcasts online so people could see the deliberations and they came up with recommendations which the Irish government then ratified and put to a vote. And the vote of the Irish people was the same as the vote of the public form, which is more or less sixty five in favor of abortion and against. Now what that did was it involved everybody in the country in a debate. It went on for a period of time and the conclusion was consensual. Everybody could say

that everybody's voice had been heard. Whereas the referendum on one day, on on one vote and one outcome has not resolved an issue that has divided British politics, the issue of all the misinformation, the original Brexit vote. How do we would this process eliminate that? Yes, because because we would then have to put those questions to the test. Before Brexit was an abstract. Now this close we can

starting to see the lie of the land. So yeah, I mean, the fake news thing is also part of the accountability agenda, you know, the loss of accountability anymore. I mean, um, And it's not just the that the neoliberals don't want to accept facts. They don't want to accept being challenged. One of my real problems with the so called intellectual dark Web, these freedom of speech warriors, is that they simply will not countenance a challenge. It's

not free speech they want, it's free reign. They want to be able to say whatever they want and have no comeback. And that's the difference, and this is the key difference between liberty and freedom. Liberty the idea that you can say whatever you want to whoever you want, whenever you want, and and you know, not be held accountable for it. If that was the definition of freedom alone, then your president will be the paragon of freedom because that's exactly what he does. But it's not that they're

finition of freedom. It's actually what he's doing is an abuse of his freedom. He's he's um, you know, using his privilege in order to make those points. And you need equality, everybody's right to express their point of view. And then on top of that, you need accountability, the ability you know that your ability as an individual to hold people to account, but also your willingness to be accountable yourself. It's reciprocal as well as empowering, and these

things are lacking. This is the case I'm trying to make in this uh this pamphlet, the Three Dimensions of Freedom. Just to be clear. So you're against this political correctness, I don't think. I don't believe political quickness exists, Bob. It doesn't exist. You know, it's it's a projection of the powerless or powerlessness of people. You know, if you look at the people who are are most angry about

political correctness, they tend to be academics. And what they're pushing back against is people bringing in different metrics with which to deal with subjects. I think what's the academics are afraid of is that the um the standards that they were raised with that have allowed them access to uh places of privilege. If the metrics are changed, they will no longer be able to just walk through those doors that the rest of us are kept out of.

They are defending their own privilege. You know, there is no such thing as political correctness, and yet your president was elected after saying that he thought political correctness was the thing that was the biggest thing that threatened America today. Okay, let's switch in gears a little bit. Where does this leave you, Billy Bragg? At least me with on a with a platform. That's what this job has always given me, a platform in a bottom line. But I think I'm

a communicator. So you're sixty one in a change universe, and when you started primarily because technology means of communication, what are you envision going forward the twenty or thirty years? Hopefully you're left owner's playing it. Let's hope. UM, Well, I'm I'm hoping that. Um. This is personally for your career, personally for my career. If I carried on doing what I'm doing now, which is more or less what I was doing in the twentieth century, I'll be happy. I mean,

I'm feel immensely privileged, Bob. I've been coming to America for thirty five years, and people are still interested in what I'm doing to the extent I've sold free units out at the Troubador, and I've got other shows like this lined up, you know. And that's down to a number of things. You know. My management gave me good

advice and I took it. My agent, Steve Martin has been with me all the time, and you know, he's been He has a great vision for what I try and do, and and my sort of urge to try and communicate, try and make sense of the way the world is um as still motivates me. You know. It's it's just I think, what what what's different now is

that there are other ways, that are other platforms. So to sit down and write a book, it kind of gets you know, sort of after thirty five years, you need a break from to and around in a van. That's why I went on the Kayama Cruise. As much as anything, you know, if five years driving around America and a people carry on, I'm ready for okay, but also getting your message out in a tower of babel society where it's harder for any voice to be heard. Does that uh? Is that a weed on your shoulders?

Not mine? No, because unfortunately I got an audience together in the in the days of college radio, when the music industry was stratified, there were people at the top who were making huge amounts of money playing stadiums. There are people at the bottom who were going to open mics. A lot of us were kind of in the middle, you know, making a living, never gonna trouble the top of the child and never going to play the stadiums, but could go out there and play the circuit and follow.

You know, it's a very twentieth century thing. I have a son who's in a band now it's twenty five years old. There is no middle ground anymore. You're either busted through and gone gangbusters, or you're playing for a pittance somewhere. That sustainable middle middle of the road where record label lets you make free albums of seatley work out. That model is absolutely shot. And I'm sorry about that because although I don't necessary want there to be another

clash or another punk rock. I just wish every night in your could feel like I felt when I saw the Clash and then go out and be able to make a living on their own creativity. That's what's missing. You know. All of the new pop stars that are coming through in the UK tend to have been privately educated, which means in my country, means they're not working class kids like me and almost everybody else in British rock was in the in the twentieth century. And that's my

real concern. If, um, you know, the ability to have a career in music or any creative industry just becomes the preserve of the the upper middle class, then you will really lose lose something important in the in the experience of life for for our young people. You've been listening to Billy Bragg on the Bob Left Sets podcast. We could literally go on for hours, both through his catalog and through politics, but we don't want to wear

either the audience or Billy himself out. Billy's been wonderful to have you here. Thank you very much for having me. But I've been very very interesting. Okay, A lot of stuff that we touched, a lot of stuff that we have in touch. But you've certainly been very stimulating question. I'm a big believer that one person can impact society.

You know, we're seeing that with AOC in America changing the debate, and musicians used to be the people who impacted society most not right now that we can hope it happens again, Well, the thing is happening, just finish off. Is the fan about IOC is she is organized. The key is if you want to change the world, you

can't just sing about it. You gotta get organized. That's the key thing about IOC And for all the work I do in the end, in my experience, only the audience, only the audience really can change the world by going out there collectively and working together. And AOC is a really good example of someone who's an expression of the collective will of her people and hopefully of the American people.

Let's just go back the book that you're writing. What are your plans for that that will be coming out in May maybe I think in August and the United States America. It's only it's like a pamphlet, it's fifteen th words, it's an essay. Really, that's just making the point that accountability ultimately is what's missing in this will be sold. It's by Favor and Favor. I'm British publishers. They published my skiffle book. They're doing a series of them.

It's their nine Anniverse when they're doing a series of them, and they've asked me to write the first one. Do you remember who the other people are? The mostly musicians, mostly people working in the grave and will you be promoting it? Would indeed? Okay, till next time And listening a Billy Brow Go Bob Left Sets podcast m HM