Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Billy Bragg

Transcript

Billy Bragg · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin. Billy Bragg came up in East London, Barking, Essex
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: to be exact, which is fitting given the characteristic howl
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: of his vocals. Listening to him these days, it's hard
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: not to recall the late Great Joe Drummer or the
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: modern brilliance of Archie Marshall aka King Krule, but Bragg's
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: musical output stands apart from an above comparison. In the
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: mid eighties and era driven by production, he was all
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: about songs and was one of the great standard bearers
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: of political music, carried on from both the folk and
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: punk traditions. In his conversation with Bruce Headlam, Bragg talks
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: about music as a political tool and whether it can
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: truly affect change. Reminisces about his first trip to the
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: US and eighty four opening for Echo and the Bunnyman,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: and his collaboration with Willcoe to bring unpublished Woody Guthrie
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: songs to life. This is broken record Lander notes for
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: the digital age. I'm justin Richmond. Here's Bruce Headlerman conversation
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: with Billy Bragg.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: You're touring right now.
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: I am, yeah. I'm basically doing a week of shows
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: before a Newport Folk Festival. That's what this trip is about.
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: And then I'm coming back in the autumn, late September,
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: October and starting in actually starting in Vancouver, down the
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: West Coast, up through the Midwest, over to the East
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: Coast and down to finishing off in Washington, DC. A
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: four months on tour. So that's the kind of fortieth anniversary.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: So it's forty years ago next month that I first
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: came to America to open Frek Underbunnyman.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: Amazing. Yeah, how is it this time compared to forty
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: years ago?
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: You got to remember, I'm someone who'd never been on
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: a plane before I got this job. I was twenty
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: five years old. And we come across the Atlantic and
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: I'm on the left hand side of the plane. So
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: it's coming to JFK. So we come down Long Island.
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: You can't receee anything apart from ocean, and then it
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: starts banking to you know, coming to JFK, and I
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: start to see America and I see these rows of
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: houses and I'm like, okay, this is amazing. So coming
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: in yesterday, I was the same side of the plane.
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: We come through the clouds and as the plane banked
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: I'm not a happy flyer. So I listened to music
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: when I'm not watching films, particularly landing and takeoff, and
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: it's just on random. It just goes for I don't
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: like the track, I'll just bang forward till I find
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: something like a scarboroughfare come on by Simon and Garfank call.
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: And as it did, the plane banked exactly the same way,
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: and I looked down. I thought, I got it. I'm
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: getting a thingle talking about it now, thinking back to
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: that first time we came to the United States of
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: America in August of nineteen eighty four. It was swotering
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: hot and the Olympics were on the La Olympics, I think,
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: and we stayed in the Iroquois Hotel in Midtown and
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: I had four or five nights performing on the roof
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: of the dance Materia, which was an amazing introduction to
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: life in America, not least because looking uptown from the
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: dance Materia from where I was standing on the stage,
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: the vista was absolutely dominated by the Empire State Building,
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: which lit up as the sun went down, the lights
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: on it. It was like, Okay, this is it, this
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: is America. Here we are let's do this. So yeah,
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: I'm very happy memories of toom of our under bunnyman
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty four because I stayed on the bus
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: where the bunny men were on the bus the first half,
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: and then they got bored and started flying. But I
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: had me and my best friend from school, WIGGI came
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: with me, and we stayed on the tour bus and
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: as a result saw a lot more of America than
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: if we had just seen the airports and the hotels.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: What stands out from that from traveling around in a bus.
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: We did a shower in Chicago, and we went asleep
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: on the bus, and when we woke up, I was like, Okay,
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: I wonder where we are now. So I went up
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: and sat next to the driver and I said where
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: are we now? Man? He said, we're in Illinois. I said, no, no,
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: where are we now? Said yeah, we're in Illinois. I
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: said no, no, we started in Illinois, Chicago. Where are
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: we at the moment? And he's like, we're still in Illinois.
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: I'm like, how can we be in illinoy, I've been
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: driving for twelve hours. He looked to me like, you
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: don't know half of its son. So yeah, that the
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: vastness of America.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: That was one, Well, I hope you stuck with it,
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: because once you hit Saint Louis, there's a little bit
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: of a hill.
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's that as well. And the other
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: one was we realized in that that drive was Chicago
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: to New Orleans NonStop drives. We realized you would have
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: to stop somewhere somewhere, You're gonna have to stop. I said,
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: and where are you Where are you going to? Where
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: are you going to stop? Said? Oh no, somewhere around Memphis.
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: I was like, oh, interesting, any chance you could stop
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: at Gracelands And he's like, no, I'm not going into
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: not going into Memphis. This is a total a nightmare
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: driving in and out of Memphis. Forget it. We'll just
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: it will just be a truck stop somewhere. You'll be fine.
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: You'll be able to get a meal and a coffee.
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: And I was like, So I went back with the crew,
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: the lighting crew and the sound crew, and I said, look,
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: there's nine of us. If we all put ten bucks
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: in remember this nineteen eighty four as well, we will
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: put ten bucks in and give him ninety bucks. We
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: might be able to bribe him to go asleep for
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: four hours in the car park at Gracelands, and I
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: was like, that's got to be worth ten parks. So
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: we put it together. We made him off. He was
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: very grumpy about it, but he did do it. I
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: remember him saying to us, remember where we parked, and
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: so we got that. We actually got to go around
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: Gracelands before Priscilla tided it up. So we saw the
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: kind of the depths, the pile of the carpet in
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: the jungle room, the room with all the gold records
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: down the side, and the costumes reminded me of how
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: a Carter said when he opened two chunk Harmen's tomb.
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: Everywhere a glint of gold. It's like we would come
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: to see, you know, the Pharaoh Memphis as well. I
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: mean that kind of yeah. That kind of made it
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: even more like we were come to see the boy King.
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: And then when we got to New Orleans, we woke
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: up on the band decided to go to Bourbon Street.
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: So I went with them and we saw this guy playing.
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: I'll think of his what was his name. I'd never
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: heard of him before or since, Mason Rufner. I think
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: his name was slick back guy, skinny guy playing its
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: black telecaster. Incredible thing. But he did this thing where
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: he went down the notes in the basstring of the
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: telecaster with his elbow while pointing at the audience like
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: that thing like it. And you remember, this is all
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: in one day. This is the day where we woke
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: up still in Illinois. So that passage of time where
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: we went from the Great Lakes to the Gulf. You know,
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: I've never done anything like that. Again. I've traveled, you know,
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: I've done some huge drives, I've done some great journeys.
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: I've been in some amazing situations, But in twenty four hours,
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: I don't think I ever did anything as mind blowing
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: as what we did in that drive from Chicago to
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: New Orleans.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: Were you an Elvis fan?
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: I was, Yeah. I mean I think from my generation,
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: it's hard to get to rock and roll without going
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: through Elvis. I mean, if you think of the cover
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: of London Calling, it's a homage to Elvis's first album graphically,
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: you know, and I think there's so many different Elvis's.
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: You can choose your Elvis, you know, for some people
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: it's Sun Records Elvis. I mean, that's why I wanted
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: a lot of echo on my first album, so it
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: sounded like Elvis's Sun Records. But my favorite Elvis is
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: political Elvis. You know Elvis that for his Christmas Special
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty eight has specially written for him if
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: I Can Dream, and sings it at the end of
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: the Christmas Special in front of the big words Elvis
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: and looks into the camera and sings this incredible song,
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: which in the wake of nineteen sixty eight, which is
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: in the year where Dr King was assassinated and Bobby
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: Kennedy was assassinated while they were making the Christmas Special
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: while they were filming it, to say to talk about
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: a dream, you know, having a dream in which our
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: brothers walk hand in hand. I mean, that's that's pretty brave,
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: that's pretty political. And then he comes out within the
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: ghetto and goes to that run of great thing was briefly,
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: you know, there's a there's a moment there where you
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: might think Elvis could pick up the mantle of the
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: the Kennedy Brothers and unify America. Because he doesn't. He
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: goes to Gracelands and takes loads of amphetamines. But the
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: possibility of that is interesting. It's it's a really it's
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: a really great moment in pop history as well. And
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: it's he does he does it because he I mean,
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: he specifically asked to do it. Colonel Parker wants him
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: to finish with I'll behind by Christmas, a dreadful you know,
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: sort of modeling Christmas song, and he's like, I need
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: something else, so he gets his musical director to come
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: up with this if I Can Dream, and and he
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: really goes for it. If you watch the clip it's
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: on YouTube, it is even.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: When you said political Elvis, I was like, he olviously
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: don't know.
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, A fucking dream is a in its context.
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: In its context, it's Elvis connecting with that. I mean,
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: I think he felt Dr King being assassinated in his
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: town as well. I think he felt that, he really
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: felt that. And that year was such a tumultuous year
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: in the United States and Elvis had something to say
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: about it.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: M hmm. That's interesting because even even the sixty eight
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: Elvis from Me was almost betraying the sort of Sun
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: Records Elvis I loved so much, you know, rushing through songs, yeah,
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: finishing everything with a karate chop or something.
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: The thing about Elvis is he's the first one. You know,
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: he doesn't know how to do this. It's like Lonnie
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: Donegan in England. You know, he was the first guy.
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: He wasn't really prepared for what was going to happen
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: to him. You know, He's out there on the ice,
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: taking one step after the other, never knowing when it
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: was going to break. Everyone who came in his wake,
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: including the Beatles, you know, including everybody, have at least
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: that had an idea model. You know, why didn't the
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: beat was going to films because Elvis did. Even Lonnie
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: Doneghan made a film, you know, that's what they did.
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: They they followed his route, but he was just making
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: it up as he was going along. And I think
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: because he's shone so brightly, he was ultimately consumed by
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: his own his own fame, his own image, his own elvisness.
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: There's never been anyone touch what he did and who
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: he was and what he meant to people. And I
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: think for my generation, as I say, if you're going
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: to take on that rock and roll mantle, you can't
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: ignore him.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: You know, Paul Simon said when we were talking to him,
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: his favorite record, and he's obsessed with the production of
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: records is a mystery train. Yeah, And he said every
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: song he's ever done he tries to get a little
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: of that mystery.
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: I totally agree with him. That's for me, that's the
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: key moment when the synthesis of country music and blues,
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: of African American roots music and European American roots music
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: comes together. Is in Mystery Train. They captured lightning in
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: a bottle there. I mean, obviously that's all right, it
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: is incredible, But there's something about Mystery Train. It just
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: kind of appears over the hill coming out of nowhere.
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: It's like it doesn't it even seem to have a start,
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: and it trails off at the end and it's gone.
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: It's really gone, gone, gone, you know.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: And I have that incredible slap that's from the studio.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: There's no drummer, no.
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's the really interesting thing about the Sun Sessions.
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: They're so similar to Skiffle in that they have no drums,
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: no augmentation, no pianos or brass or anything like that.
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: You know, it's all just guitar driven slap bass and velocity.
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: It's about speed, you know, he speeds, he speeds up
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: those old blue songs, those old country songs like Blue
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: moona Kentucky. He just you know, revs them up and
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: off they go, which is exactly what Lonnie Doneghan was
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: doing with lead Belly staff in the UK. Weirdly, almost
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: at the same time. I mean, that's all right, mama. Obviously,
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: his first recording came the fifth of July in nineteen
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: fifty four. Lonnie Donegan recorded rock Online a week later
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: on the thirteenth of July in London. I mean, how
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: that was just out in the air somewhere something so
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: in sinjury could happen at the same time.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: Here's the difference.
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: To me.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: This is something I've thought a lot about, which is
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: when you listen to Lonnie Donegan, you listen to a
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: lot of performers, you love what they do, but then
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: you want to go here, the original Elvis, you don't
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: do that. I think maybe he shone so brightly that
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: when you go you know, for example, when I went
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I don't
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: know if you've ever been there, but he is presented
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: as the first rock and roll star, and a lot
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: of the people who were called rock and roll stars
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: before him like Big Joe Turner and Ruth Brown are
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: just considered these sort of the pioneers they like to
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: call them. And by the way, Elvis, the Elvis Enterprises
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: owns that part of the rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Ye,
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: so I'm sure it's presented the way they want. Nobody,
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: but I thought, well, and you know, you have this
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: little thing like who do you think should be in
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: the rock and Roll Hall of Fame? I thought, well,
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: Arthur Croud up because he did the original version. And
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: if you hear the original version, it's got a lot
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: of the the elements. It's not that totally transformed. And
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: you're like, nobody knows him. No, nobody knows Mabel. I've
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: forgotten her name, my accent, pardon me my action. No,
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: the did the original hound Dog.
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I'll can't take one name on them.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: To be fair, written by two Jewish guys from Long Island.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: But there you great, But there's something about you know
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: even uh and Malcolm and I did an episode about
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: this once. You know, Little Richard actually was grateful to
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: Pat Boone because people listened to Pat Boone and then
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: wanted to hear Little Richard and uh, you know, Fats
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: Domino felt the same way with Elvis, and I don't
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: think it was deliberate on his part, no, but.
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: Well he's a complete package. Oh anyway, it was sixty
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: something about.
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: It that he, uh, you know, all evolution before him
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: kind of gets discarded somehow, and he's like.
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: Well nothing, we know, nothing comes from nothing comes from nothing,
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: does it? It happened these things, you know. That's one
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: of the things that led me to write the book
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: about Skiffle were roots, radicals and rockers. I was fed
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: up with the idea that Lonnie Donegan recording rock on
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: online was a singularity that just happened. It didn't just happen.
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: It was a load of forces coming together around that
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: time in the UK culturally among young people, and I
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: was looking for a book that explained how happened, and
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: no one had written it, so I ended up writing
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: it myself, and it was that urge to find it out.
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: I think that really really helped. I'm really proud that
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: in the book Rock Island Line doesn't come out until
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: chapter thirteen.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: But your book also, it's another chapter in this English
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: fascination with American music.
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: Yep.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: And you know, as many books as I read about
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: music or you know, there's that apocryphal story that when
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: Paul McCartney first came to the US, he asked an interviewer, well,
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: where's Ray Charles. The guy said, I don't know where
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: Ray Charles is because he just assumed in the United
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: States Ray Charles was as important as they were in English.
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean as straight as when I first came
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: to New York in nineteen eighty four, friend took some
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: I said, take me to a great record shop. It
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: took me to a great record shop. Was full of
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: depeche Mode impulse. I'm like, mate, this is not a
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: great record you know. I mean, the average mom and
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: pop store in America back then was a great record shop.
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: We had a gospel section. We never have anything like
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: that at a Latin section, you know, at a country section,
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: with real proper obscure stuff that you never find a home. So, well,
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: what is.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: That in the English it's and it's it's famous stuff.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: It's obscure stuff. You know. The Beatles did an Arthur
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: Alexander song who you couldn't find anybody in the streets
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: of New York who remembers Arthur Alexander. But they do
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: a tribute album, and people in England, you know, Nick Low,
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: Graham Parker are lining up to do Arthur Alexander. It's
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: like a cargo cult or something like.
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: It's well, it's really I think appreciation of the great
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: performances oars Alexander was a great performer. You know, I'm
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: scratching me out now for the name of the guy
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: who originally recorded at the Dark End of the Streets
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: something Carr. I can't but the people who around the
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: time said he was the greatest soul singer of all
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: time and his performances are great, but he just didn't
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: get the get the profile.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: That's what fascinated me, both the skiff and they were
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: you know, I hadn't realized, you know, in my mind
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: skiffle was kind of like a like almost a kid's
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: version of sort of pop songs country mainly. Instead, they're
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: really diving into.
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: They really are diving into African American roots music, to
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: the extent that one old guy who was a skiffler
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: in fifties told me that the average skiffle player felt
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: they have more in common with an African American sharecropper
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: that they've never met anything than they did with their
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: own dad, you know, because their parents had lived through
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: the war, and the Skiffle Kids were the first bunch
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: of youngsters to define themselves. It's different. And the way
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: they did that was by playing the guitar. Just there
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: weren't many guitars in British popular music prior to the
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: mid nineteen fifties, and it's Donnegan and then Elvis that
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: kind of brings that in, you know, but it is
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: school kids, I mean is it's like a playground craze.
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: You know. When Lonnie Donegan plays in Liverpool in nineteen
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: fifty six, George Harrison goes every night. I think he's thirteen.
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: McCartney's fourteen, he goes one night, and Lennon who's sixteen,
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: don't know if he went, but in the weeks that
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: followed he formed the Quarrymen. So we are talking about
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: school boys. And the reason why that's significant is because
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: by the time they were twenty one, twenty two and
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: twenty three, those Skiffle Kids have been playing live music,
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: mostly chuck Berry rock and roll type music for five
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: or six years. They were kind of road hardened. So
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: when the Beatles break America in nineteen sixty four, there's
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: a whole cadre of British bands ready to follow them,
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: you know, and every single one of those British Invasion
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: bands were all skifflers, and I think that didn't happen
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: to white American use until the folk boom, which is
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: later fifty nine sixty, you know, until you get to
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: Kingston Trio and acts like that.
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: Weavers.
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, no, I think the Weaver was I think
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: the Weaver's really I think they were gone. I mean,
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: the idea of young people playing guitars comes with the
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: folk boom, and that doesn't really get going until the
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: late fifties, whereas these British kids are already, you know,
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: by the time someone like you know, Paul Simon is
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: learning to play the guitar, the Beatles already in Amberg,
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: so that they're although they're the same generation, our kids
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: are that bit ahead, and that's what makes the British
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: invasion possible. So skiff al was the nursery of the
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: British invasion.
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: It's interesting how again, things that we think seem spontaneous
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: have these strange origins.
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: One of the great things about Motown was that a
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: lot of those kids went to pre integration schools where
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: they had great music classes. Like a lot of them
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: went to Northern in Detroit, but they had music teachers
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: who were teaching them counterpoint and teaching them, you know, notation,
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: and teaching them classical music. So Barrett Strong, a lot
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: of those guys, Norman Whitfield, when they showed up, they
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: were they knew music, very small range, and so we
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: tend to think of, you know, music as some sort
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: of primordial scream.
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: It's like, no more than that.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll be right back with more from Billy Bragg
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: after the break. We're back with more from Billy Bragg.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: Speaking of guitars, I thought I read that you started
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: writing songs before you played an instrument.
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: It's true I did. Yeah, Yeah, what.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: Were you writing too? Were you writing to a tune
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: in your head?
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: In my head? Yeah? Tunes in my head. Yeah. I've
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: got notebooks full of songs where I still could look
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: at the lyric and remember what the tune was.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: Really.
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah. When I was twelve, I wrote a
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: poem at school and the teacher wrote to my parents
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: to ask if I copied it from a book. And
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: when I found out, I hadn't, and they kind of
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: got me to read it out on the radio London,
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: the local radio station, and I took that as a
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: kind of recognition that I could do this, I could
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: be a songwriter. I thought, this is you know, this
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: is really good and I don't know anyone else's ever
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: done this. So I started, you know, just writing sort
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: of songs that were broadly imitative of the music that
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: I was into, which was American singer songwriters and Tamla motown.
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: You know, they're the two things that I listened to
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: most at that age.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: Do you remember what was the first song that do
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: you remember just moved you musically?
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: Do you remember as the Box of by Simon and Garfunkel? Really, yeah, yeah.
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: I heard it on a school trip in a must
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: have been eleven years old, so that would be sixty nine.
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: We're on a school trip somewhere, and it was one
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: of those moments where I was it just I don't know, somehow,
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: it just it was on the radio on the bus
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: on the trip and it just it was a I
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: don't say it's slightly but it was a transcendental moment
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: for an eleven year old. It took me out of
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: my little world into a completely different world and something
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: magical in it, the storytelling, the sound of it, and
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: I kind of started, really, I must have been really
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: into music. My parents that following Christmas brought me a
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: real to real tape recorder so I could record songs
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: on the radio. Have to buy me records basically, which
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: is smart. And if I lug this around the corner
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: to my mate's house, his sister Leslie, who was probably
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: fifteen at the time, older than us, but she had
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: a brilliant record collection. She had quite a few Simon
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: and Garfuncle records and several Motown chartbuster compilations. And I'm
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: more or less taped Leslie Charmer's record collection, and that
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: served me my apprentices that I then started trying to
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: write songs like Paul Simon and Smokey Robinson and still
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: do some days.
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: Older siblings with good taste are a crucial part of
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: the music.
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: Except I never had one. I never had an older
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: sibling of good or bad taste, so I was kind
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: of blind until my friend's older sisters because basically, when
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: I worked my way through and I've got older Simon
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: and Guardfunkal albums because Simon and Garfuncle were very popular
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: among Wins young adolescent schoolgirls at the time, you know,
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: Sound of Silence and all that kind of stuff, you know,
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: and the chart buster albums were massive as well at
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: the time, So that kind of brought me into the
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: whole notion of the craft of songwriting. You know, I
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: will take songs apart me and think about tracks of
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: my tears as three chords. It's possibly the greatest three
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: card trick of all time. You know.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: It's funny you mentioned the sound of the Boxer because
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: when we did the project with him, you know, you wonder,
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: what is it the words that move you? Is it
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: the music? For him, it's all the sound and he
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: obsesses over production. And even now if you listen, if
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: you've listened to that poor record, it's a stunning sounding,
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: right it is.
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: It's an incredible album to be obsessed with, which I
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: was for a long time. I was obsessed with that record.
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: It kind of I mean the thing about I eventually
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: ended up becoming obsessed with Bob Dylan subsequently, kind of
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: Paul Simon led me into Bob Dylan and English folk
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: music as well via a Scarborough fair in a rather
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: ironic way because Martin Carthy, who Paul Simon was inspired
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: by hearing Martin place garboroughfare to record his own version,
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: was playing in a folk club not a mile from
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: my house around that time. But it took these two
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: guys from Brooklyn recording this old English folk song to
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: turn me onto my own folk music, which is a
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: weird paradoxical way. What goes around comes around with saying
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: folk music.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: So your musical inspirations were Paul Simon, Paul Simon, Smokey Robinson,
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: Smokey Robinson, Eddie Cochran and your what were your lyrical inspirations?
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: Well, again, you know, I was trying to write knock
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: off sing, a songwriter song, so a bit of a
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: bit of Paul Simon to start with a bit of
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: Bob doing, a bit of Jackson Brown. I was big
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: on Jackson Brown. I still think it's a great songwriter.
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: And you know, I think you when you're learning your craft,
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: you're always writing songs that in some ways have their
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: framework from music you like. I always say to people
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: they want to start writing songs, take your favorite song,
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: take the words out of it and write your own
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: words because it's your favorite song. You'll know exactly how
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: the words are supposed to fit. And then you that's
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: how you know, make your own words, make you know,
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: maybe keep the chorus and change the words to I
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: will Always love you, to give it a happy ending
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: or something, whatever you want to do, that's how you
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: start to do it. That's what I did, basically. You know,
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: you just take a Chuck Berry song apart, and that's
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: my simplest thing, and then put your own words on it.
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: And then eventually, when I was about twenty I suppose
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: maybe twenty one, I wrote a Billy Bragg song. I
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: wrote a song that didn't.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: Have the first Billy Bragg song, Richard.
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: Which ended up on the first album because I was
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: very proud of it because it didn't sound like anybody else.
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: I thought, this is actually me in this song. And
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: once I'd worked out how to do that. This is
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: towards the end of the period when I was in
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: a little band called riff Raff, which is kind of
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: like a punky new wavy band in the seventies or
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: late seventies, and I started writing songs that were more
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: had more me and him. I worked out to get
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: me into the songs. Also read somewhere that you were
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: bullied as a kid that kind of yeah, I was
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: sort of. You know, it got a bit towards the
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: end of our school years. It all got a bit
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: larry at school, so I tended to not go in
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: so much. You know, it's too much mm hmm, too
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: much grief. It just made me. Gave me a lot
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: of anxiety around town. So you know, the sort of
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: things that other people, other kids my age did not
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: go out to the pubs and go out dancing and stuff.
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: I just didn't, you know, I just gave me, just
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: give me too much anxiety. So I was fortunate. I
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: had a couple of mates who had a guitar and
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: a drum kit, and we sat in my mum's back
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: room and wrote songs and played music. It's saved my
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: own life.
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: Is that when you started guitar? Did that give you
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: some confidence a lot?
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot, huge amount self expression? Bruce. You know
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: you got your writing it, putting it all out there,
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: you know, you this is how I feel. Music is
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: a form of therapy, whether you're listening to it or
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: writing it or making it or playing it, a repeutic
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: effect because you're you're putting yourself into it. And I
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: say this not just as a musician, but that can
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: also be as a listener, because I think the currency
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: of music is fundamentally empathy. You're as a writer, you're
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: asking the listener to listen to this person in this
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: situation and feel something for them in a situation you
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: might not have experienced as a person. But this person here,
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: you know, listen to that. Or there's another way whereby
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: the person who's written the song has somehow touched a
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: nerve with you, and in that case you draw empathy
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: from the song. You're getting some of yourself, you're feeling
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: and you're not alone. This song, you know, is somehow
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: articulating something you can't put into words. We all have
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: songs like that, you know, and that, and that's really
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: really valuable because I think, you know, the the sense
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: of isolation that we have in society, which is always
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: been that's not just a manifestation of the digital wage.
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: I've always been there. And when people come together to
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: celebrate and to sing, whether it's in church, at soccer games,
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: it happens people sing, you know. Obviously music concerts, you
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: get a moment where you feel you're not alone. You're
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: not the only person who cares about this thing, whatever
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: this thing is.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: Did you need the feedback of an audience to feel
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: that way about your own songs? Or did you feel
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: that way in the back room of the house.
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: I felt that way in the background of the house.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: Really. Yeah, did you feel the anxiety about being around
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: other people and get you could put your feelings out
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: in a song?
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah? I could not not. I don't think so. I mean,
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: you know that's the trick of it, isn't it. You
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: learn you learn to put into song the things that
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: you find yourself struggling with, you know, the reflection of
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: who you are, and you think the song's about somebody else,
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: but actually it sends out to be about you actually
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: when you admit about it and that. You know, when
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: we started doing gigs, when when punk happened and it
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: became possible for you just to turn up and play,
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: it became much easier. You didn't have to justify being
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: in the band. Everyone was in a band. Uh. Then
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: there was a there was a confidence in that as well,
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: because it was like our generation were coming to the fore.
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: Now this is who we are.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: My political uh awakening was going to rock against racism.
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: That's the first political thing I ever did, and that
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: that was an incredible experience because it gave me the
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: courage of my convictions.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: You know, that's interesting to me. I had always assumed
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: that that your politics informed you becoming a singer and
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: a songwriter, that you're what we would call here a
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: red daper baby.
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: No no, no, no, no, no no no. The town
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: I grew up in, East London has always been labor
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: since my father was a kid, so there was no
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: real politics around. It was just labor. That was what
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: it was, and everyone was labor. My parents weren't particularly political.
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: I got my sense of of policy by osmosis from
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: listening to predominantly American soul music from the Civil rights period.
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: You know, if you get them Motown chartbuses albums, they're
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: great pop albums, and they're you know, they're amazing. And
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: then you get to volume five, I think, and all
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: of a sudden things start. Something's changed. You get you know,
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: Ball of Confusion by the Temptations, You've got War by
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: Edwin Starr, you know, and there's a change of tone.
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: Something's happened, and the clue is in the record Marvin
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: Gaye sings Abraham Martin and John and what has happened
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: is Dr King has been murdered and along with the
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: rest of African American and culture motowns reflecting that. So
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: I kind of picked up on on that politics, the
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: politics of civil rights and as also doing a singer
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: songwriters that I listened to as well. You know, the
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: early Dylan records. You know, my huge record for me
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: was The Times They Were Changing That album. I swapped
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: it with mate of mine at school for his dad's
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: copy of No I got it. I got his dad's
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: copy of The Times They Were Changing in exchange from
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: my copy of the Jackson Five's greatst Hits. It was
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: a brilliant deal and.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: I think you both want on that one, but he thought.
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: He wanted to give it to his sister as a
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: birthday present, so anyway we did it. It was it was,
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: It just blew my mind. It was so raw, it
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: was so visceral, all that album, The Times They Were Changing,
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: and that Bob Dylan, not the later Blonde on Blonde
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: type I was sixty one, but that early you know,
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: blowing in the Wind Bob Dylan was really inspiration to me.
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: As while I'm talking about when I'm like fourteen fifteen now,
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: So I got my politics from that, but you know,
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: my politics were broadly I suppose humanitarian. But where I
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: was you know, when I went to Rock Against Racism,
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: I was working in an office in London and the
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: men I worked with were you know, casually racist, casually sexist,
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: casually homophobic, and I really you know, didn't ever say
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: anything or raise any questions. But going to Rock against Racism,
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: see the clash we're playing, and that's kind of what
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: got us to go over the step. But going there
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: and getting to the theres a park in Hackney called
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: Victoria Park where it happened, and seeing eighty thousand kids
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: just like me, I kind of realized that this issue
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: is going to be what defines my generation, like Vietnam
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: had defined the previous generation. We were going to define
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: ourselves in opposition of an opposition to discrimination of all kinds,
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: not just racism, but homophobia and sexism and everything else.
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: We were going to be the generation of two Tone.
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: We were going to be the generation of artists against
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: aparthe That's who we were going to be. And when
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: I went back to work on Monday. The world hadn't changed,
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: but my perception of it had and I knew why
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: I was different from these arshols at work, you know,
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: And so I'd stopped laughing when they made those comments,
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: you know, I stopped joining him with you, pastor and
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: the secretaries and stuff like that. I like, Okay, there's
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: something different now, you know. And that and that informs
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: how I understand how music works when I'm doing a gig.
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: Now that's interesting to me because you, of course, are
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: always called the political songwriter, although the vast majority of
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: your songs are about love and human relationships and other things.
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: Does a song have to be explicitly political to be political?
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: No, it really really doesn't. I have a song called
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: I Keep Faith, and I can introduce that as a
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: love song. Ostensibly it works as a love song, but
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: I can also introduce it by talking about my faith
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: in the audience's ability to change the world. And if
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: I do that, men cry. They come up to me
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: at the end and say, I really moved, you know,
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: it was really moved for that, And I'm not good mate,
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: you know, I was talking about empathy back then. That's
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for that empathy,
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: you know, mate, Malcolm was listening to him on the
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: radio one time and he talked about the ability to
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: make people move people to tears without hurting them. You know,
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: the ability to move people by emotion to tears is
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: a very powerful thing. And then he played levs Stubs tears.
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: That made my ears pick up, I'll tell you. And
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: it's very insightful, Malcolm, the touch on that, because it
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: gave me a you know, a sudden flash of how
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: the process works.
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: I would say a couple of things. First of all,
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: I always felt that song was quite ironic, not that
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: you don't like Levi Stubbs, but that the comparison of
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: her life with with a sort of motown fantasy was
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: quite bleak.
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: Well. Yeah, the thing is, the song is about the
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: redemptive power of soul music. You know that the pain
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: that Levi Stubbs has, the pain that he expressed, is
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: the tear in his voice, the sob in his voice.
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: She draws from that a sense that someone understands where
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: she's coming from. She draws some empathy from from his pain.
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: His pain somehow is her pain. She's got to pick
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: herself up and put herself back togethering in now and
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: Levi's obviously felt that as well, because you can hear
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: it in the way that he sings, you know, when
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: he cries out for Bernadette, you know, when he talks
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: about the seven Rooms of Gloom. You know it's there,
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: you know, very operatic. Yeah, just incredible voice. Incredible voice.
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: Are you the person who's jotting things down when a
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: line occurs to you? Is it something you're very conscious
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: of injecting into your records?
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: I think if you're going to do politics, you have
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: to leave it up a little with some rye Humer.
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: You know, you can't just go storming in there, putting
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: people in the chest all the way through a gig.
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: And I do a little bit of that, you know
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: sometimes talking about the election on this tour, I'll be
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: doing a little bit of fingerpointing maybe of the British
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: election the American election in November. Oh okay, yeah, yeah,
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: the British election I will talk about. But obviously, you
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: know what's coming in November is very contentious at the moment,
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: so I doubt let's be talking about that.
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: I haven't been reading about it, so I have no
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: idea what you're talking about.
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: But the I found that when I was you know,
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: my political crucible was the UK minor strike in nineteen
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: eighty four and you played there, Yeah, loads of times. Yeah, yeah,
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: I would play What was that like? I was mad?
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: It was absolutely mad?
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: Well did did they know you were coming? You would
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: just show up?
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: And well I used I used to go up to
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: the coal fields because I was solo, so I could
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: literally wed go around with a small amp, a little
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: sixty what amp and a guitar.
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: What was your guitar back then?
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: Oh? It was a copy of a Gibson less Paul
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: made by a company called Arbiter. It was a sort
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: of one. It was my punk guitar.
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: Right, you're not one of those guys with a lot
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: of guitars.
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: I'm not.
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: No, I'm not really no, because Johnny Marz Yeah yeah.
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: End See I did a gig once with Steve Earl
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: in Montreal and he was opening for me. He had
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: twelve guitars could get on stage. I was like a
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: guitar shop on the Wing song exactly it was. Anyway,
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: So I'm not that guy. No, No, I do have
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: a I carry a couple of guitars I've probably got
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: home not more than a half a dozen knocking around
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: and you you.
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: Know when I when I would first see you play,
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: he would play what are called cowboy chords. Yeah, but
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: you'd strum the whole thing, which nobody does.
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, I'm basically a rhythm guitar player in a
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: punk band. That's why basically I'm not a lead guitar player.
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: I never was a lead guitar player. I'm a rhythm
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: guitar player, and I think I'm pretty good at that.
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: But it's very percussive. You know. The guitar heroes that
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: I have for people like Ray Koda and Ronnie Wood
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: and there John Lee Hooker, the guitar star, is pretty percussive.
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: It's about the rhythm, you know. So that's where I
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: get my licks from, get my ideas from.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: I don't know how we got in that, but oh no.
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: He was asking what was it like to.
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: In the miner Strike? Yeh yeah, Well, first of all,
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: it was it was amazing to see because the audiences
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: would be my generation. But the people who were making
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: the speeches at the gigs to when they put round
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: the bucket to raise a bit more money would often
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: be the wives of the miners. So these were women
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: who were perhaps ten or fifteen years older, sometimes twenty
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: years older than the audience, working class women who probably
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: never spoke in public before. Talking to all these little
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: punk rockers, it was an amazing thing to see because
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: their husbands were either on the picket line or in prison. Right,
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: that in itself was amazing to watch.
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: This is the eighties, yeah, nine eighty four. It's almost
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: all coal mining.
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: It's all coal mining.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: It's predominant in the North of England, South Wales, some
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: in Scotland, some in Kent, but predominantly the North of
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: England and South Wales, heavy heavy working class areas. You know,
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: villages where the pit is absolutely everything, you know, the
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: whole village, and they're like under siege from the police
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: and the state. And you would go up there and
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: the audiences were really really up for it and it
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: was just incredibly invigorating, and then you'd very often be
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: keeping on their sofa or in their spare room. You know,
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: you go back and you know, you go back to
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: their assimate your cup of team, maybe a bacon sandwich,
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: and then they sit down and talk politics because they
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: wanted to know why a pop star from London was
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: doing this. Is it just for the fame or you
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: actually walk the walk and talk the talk. So very
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: quickly I had to sort of because I didn't I
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: left go when I was sixteen, so I didn't have
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: a political education. I had to sort of learn the
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: language of Marxism to be able to put across my
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: ideas and define where I was coming from. That was
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: a real sharp learning curve. But you know, it was
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: a genuine radical situation. It was class. It was my
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: class against the state, really, so I couldn't not take part.
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: And also I'd listened to all these solo singer songwriters
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: in the nineteen sixties trying to change the world through music,
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: and now I had opportunity to see if you can
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: actually change the world. Does it actually work this? Can
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: you go and sing songs and bring about social change?
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: Because that's what the clash told me you could. Music
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: will change the world, and I kind of believed that.
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: Now I had a chance to find out if that
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: was true or not. It turns out it's not.
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: Was that a whole lesson?
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: Initially? Maybe I suppose, But thinking about it, you know,
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: logically music has no agency, you know, it's not going
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: to win the election. It has the ability to bring
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: people together, and that in and of itself is a
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: positive thing because change happens, I think in you know,
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: is catalyzed by two events. Firstly, your realization that things
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: and not right, and then secondly your realization that other
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: people have already realized that things are not right. You
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: realize you're not the only person who cares about this thing.
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: And music can bring you together into an audience where
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: you suddenly realize that like, ah okay, like as me rocking,
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: it's racism. When I speak from experience here, that's what
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: happened to me in Victoria Park in Hackney. I realized
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: I wasn't the only person who cared about these things,
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: you know. And you know, when I make my pitch
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: for a solidarity with the trans community, when I sing
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: sexuality on these shows, they will undoubtedly be people my age,
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: because my audience predominantly my age in you know, sixties,
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: who probably haven't given the issue much thought. It's not
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: that they're anti or pro and even it's just something
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: like they're like it's too much trouble, but they see
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: themselves in an audience who are expressing solidarity with this,
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: who are responding positively to what I'm saying, and they
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: look around him and they think, Wow, maybe I should
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: get off the fence on this, maybe have a think
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: about what's going on here, because clearly this is an
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: important issue to these people who I have so much
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: in come with. And that's how music can affect change,
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: not directly, not storm the barricades' way, but just by
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: planting ideas in people's minds, introducing them to different concepts,
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: challenging their perceptions music. That's one of the things that
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: music can do. It doesn't have to do it all
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: the time. It's not the defining aspect of it, but
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: it's one of the many things it can do. And
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: I think coming from a twentieth century music culture in
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: which music was our social medium, which I had to
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: articulate everything that my generation thought through music, and we had,
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: you know, three four weekly music papers in the UK
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: to thrash these ideas out. The idea that music should
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: be something more than I'm great your shit, you like
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: my socks to paraphrase Oasis is still important to me.
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: I don't know if younger people feel that way. It's
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: not something that I'm going to say, listen, this is
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: the way it should be. It's not my job to
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: do that. I hear young people write songs about the
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: pressure that they feel under. That's enough for me that
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: they are talking about that, they are using music to
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: articulate their feelings about that. I'm not going to start
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: leaning them and say, why don't you write about trade unions.
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to write that because they have not
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: been through the minor strike. They've had a different cultural perception,
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: put culture experience to the one I've had.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: After this last break, we'll be back with the rest
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: of Bruce Headlam's conversation with Billy Bragg. Here's the rest
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: of our conversation with Billy Bragg.
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: The album with Trust Tank Part Salute, Tank Park, Salute,
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: Pardon Me.
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: Don't try this own?
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: It was was Yeah, I thought, are you saying that
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: about me trying to say Tank Park.
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: At home?
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: It was much more a bigger musical.
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: It was yeah, did you like that?
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: Because people are like, oh, finally you know, Billy Bragg
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: has discovered the eighties?
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: Well that was that was about being doctrinaire as well
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: in some ways, you know.
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: But there. You know, when I think of the song,
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: you know everywhere Sindy of a thousand lives very different sounds.
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: Well, you've got to progress, haven't you one, you know,
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: that's that's my thing. But what happened was I wrote
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: Sexuality and it kind of sounded like Louis Louis and
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: Johnny mar got hold of it and made that track
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: that you now hear and it was a shining pop
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: monstrosity and when it came back, me and my producer
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: Grant Showbiz were like, oh damn, you know, now we're
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: going to have to make the album a that that
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: sits on. But it was good. It was a challenge,
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: you know, and coming as it did, I think, I think,
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: if you're really really lucky, you get ten good years
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: where people are interested in what you're doing, and you can,
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: you know, you can feel that when you do something
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: the media will be you know, give you a front
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: page and stuff like that. If you get ten years,
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: you're really really lucky. And that comes at the end
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: of kind of that period where I was, you know,
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: I got me on top of the pops. Everybody at
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: home thinks it was a huge hit record, which actually
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: I only got to number twenty six in the charts.
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: But you know the perception of it is that that's
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: what it was.
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: If you're going to sell out, you've got to get
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: to the top ten.
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. And consequently, after that record, I had a
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: grumble appendix. I was off the road for a while
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: and I got together with my partner and we you know,
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: we became parents and everything and everything changed. So but
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: it was also an aspect of that where I kind
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: of painted myself into a corner because I can't really
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: be a big production pop star. That's not really who
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: I am. I can do it. You want me to
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: do it? Here, here we go, I can do it.
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: Check out this Ciddy of a thousand Lives. This is
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: a song about an American photographer that you've never heard of,
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: who does incredible images that are all of herself. Here
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: it is Sherman. Yeah, Cindy Sherman, the great Cindy Sherman.
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: And so yeah, I was. I was incredibly and still
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: am incredibly proud of that record, but I couldn't carry
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: on a natural dijectory. You know. It was sort of
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: like who want me? So fortunately then I made William Blake,
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: which was a much more personal record, much more a
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: post parenthood record which I'm which I'm very proud of
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: as well.
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: And I do want to ask you about Tank Park.
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: Sure, Sure, Tank Park salute was. I had a very
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: strange genesis. Let's start by saying that when I was eighteen,
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: my father died of lung cancer, who was fifty two
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: years old. The hospital when he got ill told us
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: the best way to deal with this would be not
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: to talk about it, not to talk about it in
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: front of him, and not to talk about it among ourselves.
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: So I have to stop you there, because that is
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: so English.
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: I know, it's terrible, isn't it, But it's also it's
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: also so my father's generation. And looking back now, I
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: it was a mistake. My mother really regretted it. She
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: really regretted it till the day she died. When she
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: got cancer and I went to see her in the hospital,
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: she said to me, we're going to talk about this,
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: and I'm like, we are, of course, we are, we are.
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: She hated it. My father had every opportunity to say
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: to me, son, I think I'm dying. Look I'm coughing
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: up blood. Look I'm dying. He never did. He never
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: said it, so I don't know. My brother, who's five
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: years younger than me. He was at school at the time,
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: and I was there when my father died. My brothers
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: never asked me about it. And I respect that. I'm
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: not going to suddenly turn up and say to him
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: and listen, I'm going to tell you what happened that day.
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: If he doesn't want to know, he doesn't want to know,
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: and I respect that. But I was in a very
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: weird situation where I never spoke to it about anybody
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: I ever. I spoke to it what happened to anybody.
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: And then one day I was writing a song and
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: a line came out. I closed my eye and when
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: I looked, your name was in the memorial book. And
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: now where my father's ashes are scattered, they have a
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: book there on the anniversary of the day of his death,
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: which opens on the page and his name's there. And
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: I used to go to it my mum on the
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: anniversary and look at the book and go and visit.
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: That's what we did. And this line, I was like, oh, now,
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: this is interesting. If I go down this path, I'm
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: going to be in a situation where I have to
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: talk to strangers about what happened. How do I feel
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: about that? I wasn't really sure how I felt about that,
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: but nonetheless I wrote that song in the next hour.
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: It just came out. Who like a there. It was
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: fully formed around that old who had that guitar lick.
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: That's what I was writing the other song to that
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: guitar lick. So the next time was rehearsing in my
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: keyboard player car TV I taught at the piano part
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: played the song. She said, Oh, that's about your dad,
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: don't it. I said, yeah, it is Cary. Yeah. So
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: I thought, well, if she didn't get it like that,
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: obviously it you know, it's hits the mark. So I
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: started playing it live and it had that effect. People
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: would come and talk to me about someone that they
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: had lost, and still do. People write to me and say,
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: you know, your song really helped me to process things
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: about how my father or whoever lost, and it's great
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: to be able to write back to them and say,
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: you know what made it. It had exactly the same
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: effect on me. It helped me to process how I
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: felt about the loss of my father, to the extent
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: that I can now talk about it without being overcome
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: with emotion, and so, you know, I'm really pleased to
• 49:55
  Speaker 3: have a song about that. My mum, whenever I played
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: in London or where she came to see me play,
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: she would always say, before you're going to play that song,
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: aren't you. I don't think she even knew what it
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: was called, play that song. And I would play the song,
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: of course. I would play the song nervously while she
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: was there, you know, so self consciously. And then my
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: nephews will say to me, why do you keep playing
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: that song that makes Nan cry every time we come
• 50:21
  Speaker 3: and see you, And I'll be like, boys, Asher Nan,
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: all right, And then I tell you, yeah.
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: I have to say and this is inappropriate. But the
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: comic version of the we're not talking the English, we're
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: not talking about it, yeah, is and it is my
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: favorite line in Spinal Tap Yeah, when they're talking about
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: one of the drummers died. Yeah, and the phrases said
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: the police said best left unsolved, the most English line.
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: That whole thing is that how songs come to you
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: a phrase or two, and then that opens up the
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: idea you mentioned you wrote a song about. I had
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: no idea. Cindy of a Thousand Lives was about Cindy Sherman.
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Cindy Sherman was a big part of my
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: realization of America. On that first trip, I bought loads
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: of postcards to send home. But then I just started
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: buying postcards that just had images. You know, you can
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: get postcard with James brown It, you get a postcard
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: with you know, Smoky Robinson the Miracles. And I found
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: there's a famous Cindy Sherman photograph of like a child
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: with a pig's head eating an apple, and it was
• 51:34
  Speaker 3: so weird. It was so weird. I saw it and
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: I bought it, and I thought, what the heck, kiss this?
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: What madness? What strange weirdness. I mean, America's a weird
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: enough place if you've never been here before, but that's,
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: to me, summed up the weirdness of America. And I
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: subsequently found out what it was and who she was,
• 51:55
  Speaker 3: and I bought her, you know, coming to the US
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: back and forth in the eighties, I was able to find,
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: you know, books about her exhibitions and stuff, and it
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: always intrigued me what she was doing that, you know,
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: putting herself in the in the absolutely in the art
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: as a songwriter, that's something that you try and do.
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: You try and put yourself in there, even subconsciously. Sometimes
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: you don't realize you're doing it, putting yourself in there.
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: So I was very much attracted to that, and when
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: I got those weird chords, the song kind of sort
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: of developed out of that. Going back to those, I
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: think they call them a murder pictures, a kind of
• 52:37
  Speaker 3: like weird scary periods she went through, which I think
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: it comes after the original, sort of like cinema scenes,
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: untitled pictures that are really really There's something about the
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: United States America that's very strange to people coming from
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: my country is the vastness of it and the fact
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: most of it isn't inhabited. Well Springsteen referred to as
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: the darkness on the edge of town. We don't have
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: much of that in my country. You might have the
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: darkness on the edge of town, but you can probably
• 53:11
  Speaker 3: see another town just up the ways a bit. You
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: don't have that bit where the town ends and there's
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: the piney woods, and the piney woods go on for
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: miles and miles, and you know, when you're flying in
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: over New Jersey sometimes it's piney, piney, piney, piney woods.
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: And then while there's New York, it's that like it's
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: like the moors around Manchester. You know they're coming there,
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: kind of stand around, and as a European you get
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: that weird in the pines thing and something that those
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: Cindy Sherman postcards from that period of her her art
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: really spoke to me about that, that you know, what's
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: out there in the majority of on any given night,
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: the majority of the United States America is in complete
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: and out of darkness. That's a weird thing to someone
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: coming from a little island off the coast of Europe.
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: Have you met her?
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: No, No, I've never met her, but weirdly, she was
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: interviewed in The Guardian last month and I was, I was,
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: it's always great to read about what she's doing and
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: see what she's up to. I don't know if she
• 54:15
  Speaker 3: maybe shows an exhibition. And then the very last paragraph,
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: the journalist asked her if she'd ever heard the song,
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: and she said no. She was very flattered by it. Particularly,
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: she said particularly I've never met him, as if I'd
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: need to meet her to be able to write a
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: song like that, because I don't really need you.
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: You're an artist.
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's there. It's about how what she did
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: move me and I'm responding to that. So it'd be
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: lovely to meet her. But whether that would help me
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: understand better or anything that she's done, probably not. You know,
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: sometimes it's it's lovely to know that she's flattered by it,
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: because sometimes you know, people don't. You don't want the attention,
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: but a huge respect for someone who can have a
• 55:01
  Speaker 3: vision like that and communicate it so powerfully.
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: I should ask you, I've never heard you talk about Springsteen.
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: You just mentioned it. Are you a fan of a
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: huge fan? Huge fan?
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: He has that redemptive power as well, like soul music.
• 55:17
  Speaker 3: You know, whatever happens for the characters in his song,
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: there's always the possibility that they can ride to the
• 55:24
  Speaker 3: sea and wash these sins off their hands. You know,
• 55:26
  Speaker 3: they're doing racing in the street. I mean darkness on
• 55:29
  Speaker 3: the edge of town. We were just talking about about that,
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: you know. I mean, is there is there any great
• 55:37
  Speaker 3: opening line in pop music? Then they blew up the
• 55:40
  Speaker 3: Chicken Man in Philly last night? I mean, what a
• 55:42
  Speaker 3: great line that is. It's such a great line. I
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: saw him at Meadowlands on born in USA, too blew
• 55:50
  Speaker 3: my mind. He made it feel like a club, just
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: did my head in completely. I was like, I mean,
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: the trouble is I think maybe it's just I don't know,
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: it might just be me. Maybe all performances like this.
• 55:59
  Speaker 3: But when you go and see a songwriter or you know,
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: somebody who does a job similar to your job, you
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: spend all your time analyzing what they're doing, how they're
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: doing that, why are they doing that, what's going on there?
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: You know, it gets in the way of watching Elvis Costello.
• 56:11
  Speaker 3: It's impossible for me to enjoy Bob Dylan gig. I'm
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: trying to all the time think you know what's going
• 56:15
  Speaker 3: on here? But Springsteen was just like.
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: I think he's so connected to the audience. There's no
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: like I was used to English bands or kind of
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: nodding at each other somebody ironically, there's none of that.
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: No, he totally He's all there and he doesn't leave anything.
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: He doesn't leave anything backstage. It's all there out front.
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: You get it every time, and it just gives and
• 56:37
  Speaker 3: gives and gives.
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, after you did William Blook, you did Mermaid, the
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: first Mermaid Abby, Yeah, And I think people know the
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: sort of genesis of the project that you got all
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: these lyrics of Woody Guthrie's. When you saw these archives,
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: what surprised you what jumped out.
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: How much there was three thousand complete lyrics boxes and boxes.
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: The start off pulling out the songs you think are good,
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: and you realize, actually, there's amazing songs in there. And
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: you pull out the amazing ones and you realize there
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: are brilliant songs in there, and you have to go
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: back put some back in the box they come out
• 57:18
  Speaker 3: of and you realize that, and then you get on
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: a thread, and then you realize that, yeah, you get
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: a bit of paper and it's got written on the
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: bit of you know, it's a song here, but the
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: top of the bit of paper someone what he's written
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: way over yonder in the minor key. You're like that,
• 57:32
  Speaker 3: what does that mean? You go through morning and you
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: see again, you know, way over yonder in the minor
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: kin and maybe a little bit more of a scrubble lewick.
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: And eventually you come to a song that says, let's
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: got way over yonder in the minor key in the chorus,
• 57:43
  Speaker 3: and you realize it, he's left your paper trail. They
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: kind of find somebody to find and connect with his song.
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: I think as a listener, what surprised me the most
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: was how modern the songs sounded, because I'm not a
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: would he got through affection auto he I think to
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: many people just seemed like a character from the Grapes
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: of Wrath. It's this sort of Sepia toned hobo crossing.
• 58:11
  Speaker 3: The country, of course.
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: And so the songs were so funny, yep, which surprised me,
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: but not funny in the way that you know Christ
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: for President or some of his kids songs were. And
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: Walt Whitman's niece.
• 58:24
  Speaker 3: That's why we opened with it, so everyone knew where
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: we were going. Don't think you're going to get the
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: dust bowl balladi in mate, this.
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: Is well, that's what.
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: There's a couple of reasons for that. There's a couple
• 58:33
  Speaker 3: of reasons for that. Firstly, Norah Guthrie, Woody's daughter, who
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: was running the archive at the time, who asked me
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: to come and look at the lyrics. She was concerned
• 58:43
  Speaker 3: that this is like the late nineties, her father was
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: becoming a bit of a two dimensional figure who you know,
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: was only kind of up on a pedestal. It was
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: the dust Bowl balladeer, and she rightly pointed out that
• 58:57
  Speaker 3: he actually lived half his life in New York City,
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: down on Coney Island, at a time when New York
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: City was perhaps the most exciting cultural city in the world.
• 59:07
  Speaker 3: You know, from nineteen thirty nine until he died in
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: nineteen sixty seven, he was here in New York. So
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: she wanted that aspect of him to come out. You know,
• 59:17
  Speaker 3: everyone had heard the dust Body was one song early on.
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: Because Woody often wrote the tunes to traditional tunes, there
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: was one song called My thirty thousand that was clearly
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: because the lyric, the opening line was written to the
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: tune of an old American folk song called Jesse James.
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: Jesse James was the man that Lay's children. They were
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: brave that tune. And I very proudly, when I'd got
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: the first stuff, played it to her and said, yeah,
• 59:45
  Speaker 3: look I've got the and she was like, yeah, We've
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: got plenty of songs like that. Billy. I was like, oh, okay,
• 59:52
  Speaker 3: you want me to, and she was frying songs at
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: me that were, you know, totally contrary to people's perception
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: of Woody Guffrey, and it was her generosity and encouragement.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: That led me to choose songs like Ingrid Bergman, where
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 3: he talks about making love to the Swedish film star
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: on the slope some Italian volcano, My Flying Saucer where
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: he goes for a ride on a flying saucer. Not
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: things you would think about, would he Gusriye. But to
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: take Woody on board, I mean you mentioned the Grapes
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: of Wroth, the movie Henry Fonder in the Grapes of Wrath.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: Perhaps in people's mind they associate Woody with that Sepia
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: tone period, but yeah, he was there. He did write
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: songs in there. But he also lived in New York
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 3: in the forties, so you also have to imagine him
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 3: in the movie On the Town with Frank Sinatra and
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 3: Gene Kelly, the two sailors who are chasing women around
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: New York City in nineteen forty in technicolor in full color,
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: which incidentally ends in Coney Island. They chase the girls
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: to the Coney Island funfair. Wood he lived in that world.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: He wrote many of those songs in that world. That's
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: why Nora chose to call the album Mermad Avenue, because
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: to focus on that world. So we were out to
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 3: challenge people's perceptions too, as Norris to reboot a father's image,
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 3: and that's why we kicked off with what Whitman's niece.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 3: So nobody would have any preconceptions that we were going
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 3: to be reverent with the little guy. That's not what
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: Laura asked us to do. She asked us to shake
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 3: him up. And with regard to it sounding modern, one
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: of the you know, there wasn't many templates for doing
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: a project like that, But Jeff and I, I think
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: at the time Grail Marcus book Invisible Republic had come
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 3: out about the recording of the Basement Tapes, and I
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 3: certainly read it. I know Jeff had read it as well,
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 3: and I said to him, look, you know, we're this
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: is a bit like the Basement Tapes in the sense
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 3: that I don't know if your listeners are familiar with.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: Many of the songs in the Basement Tapes were old
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: timey songs. They weren't all Bob Dylan songs that Bob
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: had written. A lot of the songs they played were
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 3: old folks songs they were messing around with. And I
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 3: said to Jeff, this is kind of what we're doing
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: we're kind of we're kind of messing around with these
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: old songs. But the thing about the basement tapes, you
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 3: knew that the although they were playing these old timey songs,
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: the people that were playing them had heard Little Richard,
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 3: you know, they'd heard rock and roll. They were in
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: that vernacular. So we got to make these records and
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 3: people have got to know that we have heard the clash.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 3: People have got to know that we've heard cheap trick.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 3: You know, the Wilkos were big cheap trick fans. I'm like, yeah,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: bring it on, you know, bring it on. We've got
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: we've got a opportunity here to take these songs and
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: kind of like dress them up anyway. It's like going
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: to the dressing up box every day and who we're
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 3: going to be today. Let's be Tom Waits today on
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 3: Meanest Man, you know, let's be Vanilla Fudge, Let's be
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 3: you know, let's just be weird. Let's just take these
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 3: songs apart and put them back together again in a
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: different way. And the freedom to do that is why
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 3: we ended up recording fifty three tracks rather than fifteen tracks,
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: which we were contracted to do, not least because nort We
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: were in Dublin, Nora. We invited Nora over for a
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 3: holiday for a week. She bought another sheaf of songs
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 3: and started the old bloody process. Yeah. Yeah, she suddenly
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 3: turned up with you know, another Man's Done Gone. What
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: an incredible song that is? You know so and it
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 3: was a joy to do. I mean, I really enjoyed
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 3: the whole process because hitherto I'd been the guy in
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 3: the studio where everything had to go through me. We had,
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 3: you know, every decision, what songs next, how do you
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: want to record it? When are we having a t break?
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: What biscuits are we having? You know everything. Whereas in
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 3: that process there was it was a you know, a
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 3: two andre if not a three andder with Jay Bennett
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: as well, between me, Jeff and Jay and the band.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: You know, we were taking it in turns. It was
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 3: what we're going to do next?
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: Did it change your rating?
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 3: After all? It did? Yeah, it did. Because one of
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: the things I realized looking through Woody's work is that,
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 3: and he said as much in his writings that you know,
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 3: he never wrote a cynical song in his life. He
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 3: never wrote a song that put people down. I think
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 3: that's where I kind of started to understand what a
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 3: corrosive thing cynicism is. If you know, you know, would
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 3: famously add on his guitar, this machine kills fascists. If
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: I had to have something written on my guitar, we'll
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 3: be death to cynicism. And by cynicism, I don't mean skepticism.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 3: I think that's healthy, it's helpful. I don't mean doubt.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: Never trust anyone who has no doubts. I'm talking about
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 3: those people who've given up and they want you to
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: give up as well, and it makes them feel better about
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 3: the decision they've made. I've no time for those people,
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: you know. To me, you know, cynicism is what makes
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 3: you think nothing will ever change. Cynicism is what makes
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 3: you fear that nobody else cares about this stuff. It's
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 3: what Fox News want you to believe. And I'm, you know,
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 3: like Woody, I'm you know, committed to destroying that feeling
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 3: in people then kicking it to the curve as often
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 3: as I can not to say that I'm not prone
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 3: to my own cynicism. How could you not be? The
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 3: way politics have gone in the last thirty years, But
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: you have to fight it all the time in order
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 3: to recognize that the glasses half full, and that if
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: ordinary people are given the opportunity to pull the leaves
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 3: of power, we would live in a better world. You
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: have to believe in people and what they what they do.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: I want to ask you about two projects you did
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: because it was with one of our favorite people here.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: It was Joe Henry.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: And first of all, and this gets to the sense
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: of place, the field recordings. You taped train songs from where.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 3: Was the Chicago to Los Angeles?
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: Chicago to Los Angeles new tape. I don't know how
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: many you tape. There's about ten on the record.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think it's what was he?
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: How did that come about?
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 3: Well, it's a bit convoluted, but I'll try. While I
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: was writing the Skiffle book in Touch by Aperture Photography
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 3: magazine and they wanted to send me out on the road.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 3: It was a the anniversary of The Americans, the photo
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: book by.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: Robert Frank.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 3: Thank you very much for Robert Frank. I'm so bad
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: with names. I do apologize everyone. Robert Frank's great book
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: The Americans, which is amazing photography book. They wanted to
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: send someone out on the road. A photographer out on
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 3: the road with me, and so I had a chat
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: with him and I said, you know, that's really boring
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 3: being on the road. Really, I'm just like, you know,
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 3: I'm in the van and I'm at a gig, And
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 3: I said, can't we do it? You know, it would
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: be more interested to do a road trip somewhereere I've
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 3: never been in America. And they said, well, where would
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 3: you like to go in America that you've never been.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 3: I said, I'd like to go to Rock Island, where
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 3: the Rock Island Line comes from. And the guy said
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 3: to me, where's that? I said, I don't know. It
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 3: turns out it's in in the far west of Illinois
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 3: on the border with Iowa. It's the mississ the Mississippi divides,
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 3: and it's where they built the first bridge across the Mississippi.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: So we went there, and we drove down to Arkansas,
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 3: where the song Rock Island line comes from. And when
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 3: we went to the railway station there, we wanted to
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 3: get the midnight train to come in. So we do
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 3: a photo with the midnight train and it come in
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 3: and it sat there for forty minutes, just sat there
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 3: and what's that about and it turns out that there
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 3: are so few passenger trains outside the Northeast corner that
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 3: when a passenger train like one a day really on
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 3: that line through Little Rock where we were, they have
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 3: to stay in the railway station let the freight train through.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: They used the railway station almost like a side in.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 3: And it turned out I got the schedule, and it
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 3: turned out it stopped in every big city forty minutes.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 3: And it occurred to me that you could use that
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 3: time to record a song. You get off the train,
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 3: go into the waiting room, find a suitably acoustic corner,
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 3: play a train song, jump back on the train, and
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 3: keep going, play some on the train maybe you know.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 3: And so you know, Joe Henry had produced my album
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 3: before that, Tooth and Nail, and he's a dear friend
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 3: of mine, Joe, I love him the bits, and I
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 3: came up with this cockamaney idea and he said, yeah,
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 3: that would be brilliant. So over the course of three
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 3: or four days we were on the train, and it
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 3: was it was a revelation because the train comes through
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 3: the kind of what was it, iggy pop call at
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 3: the ripped back sides of the city. Because you're you know,
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 3: you're you're slowing down to go over the roads. Yeah,
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 3: you're slowing down to go over the roads. And you're
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 3: looking in someone's backyard in their parlor. You see them
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 3: all sitting there having a dinner. It's in America. I
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 3: certainly never seen. And my compadres who are working with me,
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 3: Joe and the guy who recorded it and the guys
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 3: who took some photos and did some filming, they were
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 3: blown away by this. And they've never been on a
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 3: training before, I don't think. Really, Yeah, it's really strange.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 3: They were like, wow, this is like a completely different
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 3: you know, it kind of comes down the from Chicago,
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 3: comes down to San Antonio and then it kind of
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 3: follows the Rio Grande and uh and then off across
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 3: Arizona into into Union Station in Los Angeles. And we
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 3: had the best time in the trains had you know,
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 3: they have a shower on there. We have a dining
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 3: car and they always sit here on a table with
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 3: people that you haven't sat with before, so that that's
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 3: always someone who and who's on the trains. The people
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 3: on the trains are either tourists, people who worked on
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 3: the railways or their father worked on the railways, and
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 3: people who don't want to show their idea an airport
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 3: are on trains. So it's a really interesting trip. When
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 3: you sit down and talk to people at the table,
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 3: you know, it's what you're doing and we are you know,
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 3: you learn, We learn a lot.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: Was it easy to find places in the train stations
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 2: where you could get good acoustics?
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, generally. Yeah. We obviously we told the crew that
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 3: what we were doing. Well. I had a guy I
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 3: had a contact at Amtrak who was a musician, really
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 3: fortunate and he set it up for me. We met
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 3: him in Union Station in Chicago. So they have all aboard.
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 3: They have three all the boards. The first all the boards,
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 3: the general all the board, the second all the board
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 3: is better, get the board, and then the last all
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 3: the board is goodbye. So we just had to listen
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 3: out for the second all the board and make sure
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 3: we were on our way back to the train so
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 3: we didn't get left behind. One of the things about
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 3: Amtrak is their schedule was a bit a bit hit
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 3: and miss. Yeah. One of the guys English guys said
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 3: that they got in twenty four hours late to Union
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 3: and it's only a forty eight hour train journey. They
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 3: got in a whole day late due to problems with
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 3: freight trains on the line, and we were do to
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 3: get into Union Station, Los Angeles at kind of seven am.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 3: We've got it at four am, and the one time ever
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 3: they were early, we got it at four am. But
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 3: it was cool because we ended up finding nobody about.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 3: We found this loveliest space to record our last song,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 3: which was Early Morning Rain by Gordon Lightfoot, which compares
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 3: the jetplane to the railways. A brilliant, brilliant song. And
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 3: where we sang it was behind us there was a
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 3: little garden square and as we sang it, the birds
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 3: began to wake up. They must have heard us, and
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 3: they started singing, and you can hear them just in
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 3: the background starting to sing in the bushes behind us
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 3: as he's starting to get light. It was a brilliant,
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 3: brilliant experience, and I encourage any of you out there
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 3: we want to see a different kind of America to
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 3: take the trip. There's another route to Los Angeles goes
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 3: through the Rockies, the California Zephyr. We went on the
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 3: Texas Eagle, but it really is an amazing experience and
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 3: it's and given the grief you have to go through,
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 3: to go through airports to get around America. I don't
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 3: know why there isn't a high speed train link, you know,
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 3: San Francisco to Los Angeles, a bullet train, you know,
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 3: as the atmosphere gets more turbulent, the possibility of high
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 3: speed trains, I think you really should check it out,
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 3: because the trains that make America. America before the trains
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 3: is a completely different place to America after the training.
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 3: Before the train, it was only really feasible to build
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 3: settlements inland on rivers because you just couldn't get the
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 3: stuff there was, you know, too many piney woods in
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 3: the way, you know, so all the big towns and
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 3: the big cities are all on the great rivers. Once
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 3: the railway comes, then you know, it opens the whole
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 3: continent up. And I don't think doing the record and
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 3: doing the research that went with it, I don't think
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 3: there's ever been a more transformative technology for humankind than
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 3: the railroad. The change it brings for thousands of years
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 3: of nothing being able to go faster than a horse
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 3: could gallup or ship could sail, suddenly to have something
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 3: that not could only go at a higher speed, but
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 3: could connect you directly to anywhere in the continent, so
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 3: that you could order something from Chicago and it would
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 3: arrive two or three days later, it would physically be there.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 3: It's so much more, I think, so much more revolutionary
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 3: than the Internet what we've experienced in our lifetimes, which
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 3: is in itself revolutionary. But you know, Amazon is nothing
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 3: to the ability of people to order something from a
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 3: catalog out east and it end up in this tiny
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 3: little town in wherever, you know, Nevada or whatever, something
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 3: like that, and also people could get on it. I mean,
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 3: so many of those those blue songs about the railroad
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 3: because that was another level of emancipation for African Americans
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 3: to get to the big cities up north where you
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 3: weren't constantly you know, there was of course there was
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 3: still racism. Of course there was still discrimination, but it
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 3: wasn't the Jim Crow type up there. That emmancipatory nature
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 3: of the railroads in America was That's why we wanted
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 3: to take them songs back there.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: It was also the way people told time back then. Yeah,
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 2: you knew that was the three or four.
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 3: In my country. That's when they had to synchronize all
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 3: the clocks in the country because before and they just
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 3: did it when it was got darker, when it got light.
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 3: But once the railroad come, everything had to run on
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 3: a scheduled timetable. And it's like, it's interesting, you know,
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 3: if you if you go back to the story that
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 3: made Charles Dickens the Pickwick Papers, it's about the pre
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 3: industrial age, you know. It's why we Brits are all
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 3: obsessed with Jane Austin. It's all going back to that
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 3: prelapse area period before the Industrial Revolution, before the railroad came,
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 3: there was this kind of you know, dizzy kind of
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 3: Garden of Eden vibe with the aristocracy and all that
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 3: kind of stuff. It's very interesting how the railroad comes
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 3: to symbolize modernity and any on dynamicism, and particularly in
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 3: this continent, it changes everything.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 2: Well, you woke up the birds in Los Angeles. It's
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: a very woody Guthrie image. I think we should end there.
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for coming in well.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 3: Pleasure, thank you having I've been great chatting with email.
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much to Billy Bragg for stopping off during
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: his tour to chat with Bruce Headlam. Here a playlist
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: of some of our favorite Billy Bragg songs. Visit the
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: link in our show notes or at broken Record podcast
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: dot com, and be sure to follow us on Instagram
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: at the broken Record PI. You can follow us on
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced by Leah
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: Rose with marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan.
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: Our engineer is Ben Tollivian. Broken Record is a production
• 1:15:55
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• 1:16:13
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• 1:16:16
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• 1:16:17
  Speaker 3: Our theme music's back Anny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.