Billy Bragg
STILL LOOKING FOR A NEW ENGLAND Billy Bragg Returns from Mermaid Avenue to His Home Soil with England, Half English
For two decades, Billy Bragg has followed in the tradition of his heroes Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, marrying politics and poetry in song. In fact, his two albums of songs written around Guthrie lyrics, the Mermaid Avenue, projects -- earned Grammy nominations for him and collaborators Wilco. After three years of immersion in Woody's world, Bragg finally found time to record England, Half English, his first album of all-original songs in more than five years. Fittingly enough, it was on the same day that the World Economic Forum brought together all the most powerful industrialists and government figures that Bragg, a labor advocate and avowed socialist, stopped by the offices of Barnes & Noble.com to present his alternative gospel. During an intimate performance and chat, Pop Music Editor Lydia Vanderloo took notes.
Barnes & Noble.com: With some of the songs on the new album -- and obviously in the title -- you're thinking about what it means to be English at this point in history. What made you latch on to that topic?
Billy Bragg: Yes, it is a very zeitgeist-y topic at home. Since the Labour government got in they have had referendums in Scotland and Wales about having national parliaments& and they both voted in favor, although they're still part of Britain. We English weren't given that choice -- partly because we're the big body. We're the big brother of everything, so you could argue that it's not necessary. But the Scots and the Welsh now have a forum. If they decide to become independent, well, we'll be independent too, in England, and I don't think anyone's really thought about that.
That last general election in 2001, the Conservative party fought on only one issue, and that was "SAVE THE POUND!" Which is ridiculous, because we're going to have a referendum about whether we want to keep the pound, so it's not an election issue at all. But they fought a very nationalistic campaign. The leader of the Conservative Party said he didn't think he could win the election, but he wanted to win the majority of seats in England so he could say that the Conservative Party spoke for the English. I find that a little troubling, because in order to do that, you would have to define who the English are, and I fear that would be a very narrow definition.
We live in the most multicultural society in Europe -- the captain of our cricket team is a man who was born in India, Nassar Hussein. The reality is, if you look out the window anywhere in England, you're going to see what Englishness is. We have multiculturalism as our present, but also we have it in our past. Remember, we are Anglo-hyphen-Saxons. The Anglos came from what we call now Denmark. And the Saxons came from North Germany. So the only bit that actually comes from England in Anglo-hyphen-Saxon is the hyphen. [laughs]You know, that's the English thing. And that's our great strength: our diversity and our ability to take other people's ideas and be inspired by them and make new things with them and send them back to the Americans.
B&N.com: That's what America does, too, right?
BB: Well, actually, you'd be surprised how often we do it to you. I mean, what were the Beatles except a bunch of guys playing Chuck Berry songs.
B&N.com: And the Rolling Stones with the blues...
BB: Exactly, and this cross-pollination thing is something really worth celebrating. I see the idea of only having English music and English food and English clothes as a dreadful thought.
B&N.com: Like in the album's title song, where you talk about your breakfast being half English?
BB: Yeah, there's a certain thing called an "English breakfast," which is basically a lot of fried food, loads of grease. But for my breakfast, I have a cappuccino, and I have something called Marmite, which is like a savory spread. It's very English. No Americans could ever eat it -- it's like root beer is to us.
And I think a lot of us are like that -- we get our culture from wherever we damn well choose. And because of that we are not the same people as our parents, and they are not the same people as their parents, and so it goes: Each generation becomes more integrated in the world, and those things that define you are personal, they are not national. So those two issues coupled together -- the rise of nationalism and the idea of having to re-create a new English identity -- is what inspired me to write this song.
B&N.com: Many of the songs have lyrics that talk about multiculturalism, and then you have some songs that musically incorporate other sounds, like "Baby Faroukh," which has African rhythms and African singers.
BB: That's right. They're from Senegal.
B&N.com: How did that collaboration come about?
BB: We'd already written "Baby Faroukh," actually, and we met them at a big labor union thing, and I said to Grant [Showbiz], my producer, I wonder if they could come along and do a bit of singing on the end of "Baby Faroukh." And they did, which was brilliant. And you know, the idea of parenthood -- the joy of it -- is universal. I think if we could concentrate on those universals rather than the things that separate us, then we have a better chance of creating a better tomorrow.
B&N.com: And you became a parent when?
BB: I became a parent in 1993, and Woody wrote loads of kids' songs, so I was trying to get into that ballpark myself. And that seemed to be a song that offered up the chance to do that.
B&N.com: I noticed a juxtaposition on the album. There's the politically charged "NPWA" ("No Power Without Authority") -- which you explained earlier was about questioning who's running our governments and big companies -- and then the song right after it, "Some Days I See the Point," which is a more meditative and personal song. It's like, here's the breadth of what he's trying to cover.
BB: It is. I think that everybody's always trying to find some space in their life with so much going on. It's not a song about finding personal inner peace, it's just a song about finding the space to have a break and just recharge your batteries.
B&N.com: And then you also have songs that are about affairs of the heart, like "Another Kind of Judy."
BB: Yeah, of course.
B&N.com: That's something you've always written about.
BB: Yeah, I think so. It's classic singer-songwriter fare, I think, writing about relationships. I wouldn't be comfortable making albums that were wholly political. Woody Guthrie didn't just write about politics. He wrote about how much he wanted to make love to Ingrid Bergman. He wrote about hitching a ride in a flying saucer. Life isn't just about politics. All of us, particularly on the left, believe in humanity, so let's express that. I mean, imagine if we were only making earnest, singer-songwriter records&
B&N.com: Well, it would just get tiring, wouldn't it.
BB: It would. If all the music on the charts was political it would be awfully, awfully boring. But there has to be room for it. I think after September 11th, apart from the obvious moment of what happened and the all the loss of people, is the sense of everyone thinking, How could this have ever happened? And perhaps if we had had our radar tuned a little bit more to the world around us, although we might not have the answer, we might not feel so caught by surprise&. And although you can't change anything by making songs, what you can do is ask a question or put a thought in somebody's mind so they go away and that thought grows. It's the job of the audience to try and bring about change, if that's what they want to do.
B&N.com: During the performance, you mentioned going back to music that's inspired you, like Smokey Robinson, and obviously you've talked plenty about Woody Guthrie in the past. Who are some of your other musical heroes?
BB: Bob Dylan was very big. That's how I got into Woody, really, by listening to Bob Dylan.
B&N.com: Do you have a favorite period or album?
BB: Well, no. Well, I suppose I do, actually. The Times They Are A-Changin' is my favorite album. When I was 14 years old, I swapped my copy of the Jackson 5's greatest hits for it. And I think that was a fair deal.
B&N.com: So the seeds of your life were sown&
BB: I'm afraid so, and it all went badly from there. [laughs] So I was really into that whole singer-songwriter thing, up until punk happened. People like the Clash, Elvis Costello, and Ian Dury took the best things about singer-songwriters and did something with it. And it goes on. I mean, I'm still listening to Elliott Smith and people like that. You know, some people say about the singer-songwriter thing, "Well, don't you think it's over?" And I'm like, no. Badly Drawn Boy, David Gray -- these people are selling a lot of records, and they're just singing songs about the world. They've not got any dancers, they're not making fabulous sexy videos. They're just singing songs, and that carries on.
B&N.com: Did you want to comment a little bit on doing a promotional performance at a New York City-based corporation like Barnes & Noble.com on the same day that those who pull the strings on the world's finances are meeting across town?
BB: Of course, there's a real paradox there, in writing a song like "NPWA" and it being on the label owned by AOL Time Warner; coming down to B&N.com and the whole corporate aspect of that. But the bottom line is I want to communicate with people, which is why I'm talking to you for the web site now; which is why I want people who are living in towns out there where the shops don't necessarily stock my records, to be able to find my records and hear them. So how do I do that? If I'm on a tiny little indie label in England, the chances of me doing that are rather slim. So I have to deal with this paradox between wanting to communicate with people, but also wanting to communicate with them on my terms.
B&N.com: You also find, I think, that the people who run these companies with shareholders are actually just people, too. So you come into our conference room and the employees are making requests from your old albums.
BB: Exactly, exactly. It's not a black-and-white world, as I said. But if you take it so seriously&. You know, Phil Ochs was a singer-songwriter I admire, and he lived at a time in the '60s when you could argue that they didn't know that you can't change the world by singing songs. I mean, Elvis changed the world socially for them, and it brought black and white young people together. So they thought, perhaps we will do this with politics, so they tried to do it. They failed, and the result with Phil is he committed suicide because he failed. Now, if I could ever talk to Phil, I would say, Phil you can't do that, you can't change the world, don't take it so personally. There are contradictions, but you've got to deal with them. Just because you can't do everything politically correctly doesn't mean you shouldn't use the channels that are open to you to communicate with people. I think you have to deal with those contradictions if you're going to do political music. You're going to face them as soon as you sign with any record label, but I'm not a Puritan. I'm a communicator, that's what I want to do. As Malcolm X said, "By any means necessary," and that includes B&N.com.
March 5, 2002
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