John

Billy Bragg, thank you very much for agreeing to talk to us. The first thing we wanted to ask you about was about those songs that are on the 250. And in particular, how the two that we have in the 250, which is ‘Between the Wars’, and ‘It Says Here’, both of them were written in response to the miners’ strike, is that right?

Billy

Kinda yeah; both in that sort of period, aren’t they? They’re both on Taxman. So yeah, they, they must have been both really out from that period. Certainly ‘Between the Wars’. I don't have such clear memory of ‘It Says Here’ appearing.

Alan

Isn’t that on Brewing Up?

Billy

Yeah, yeah, you're right. Because the solo version is on the Between the Wars EP. You’re absolutely right. All these things condense, don’t they, after such a long time away? So please, feel free to correct me!

Alan

Sorry! I remember it very well.

Billy

You’re better than me!

John

When you were thinking of writing the song [‘Between the Wars’], what were the pressures on you?

Billy

Well, let's sort of backpedal to when I was a teenager, Barking library got burned down and a new library went up and opened a record library. And it didn't have much pop stuff. But a lot of folk stuff – particularly the Topic samplers that came out in the late ’60s, early ’70s. And I listened to a lot of those. And I really got into The Watersons; into Shirley and Dolly Collins; Bert Lloyd, that kind of stuff. So I kind of had a kind of understanding of English folk music, which was kind of swept away during punk and come to nothing.

Fast forward to the miners’ strike in 1984. By now I'm a sort of one-man Clash. And because of my mobility, because I was a solo performer, I was able to go into the coal fields themselves and do gigs. Early on in the strike. And one of the first ones I did, and I'm not sure where it was – definitely the northeast, it could have been Sunderland. Or could have been, you know, Workington or somewhere like that. But I went up to do this gig in a miners’ hall. And the support artist was a guy named Jock Purdon, who had been a miner, you’re probably familiar with him, he’d been a miner, he was an old guy, he's probably my age now. He sang on stage, sitting down, a capella, with his hand cupped over his ears. And damn me, his songs were more radical than mine.

And I thought to myself, I'm really in trouble here, I'm going to come out in front of this audience with my, you know, my punk Herbert songs and it's just not going to make any sense to them whatsoever, I'm really in trouble! And I kinda articulated this to Jock, in, in the dressing room. And he was so kind to me. He said, ‘Look, son, it really doesn't matter what you sing out there; the fact that you've come here to stand in solidarity with the miners, you're part of this tradition, now. You're part of it. So what you're bringing to it is, is going to fit, it's going to be part of it.’ And he kind of sort of passed it on to me like, in the dressing room. It was really, to me, it was really, he was the real first folk musician, proper folk, you know, ‘traditional folk musician’ I’d ever met. So it was really kind of him to do that.

And I think that gave me the courage to remember my own grounding in English folk music, and to reach into that tradition to try and articulate my ideas about socialism, solidarity, in ‘Between the Wars’. And it gave me this sort of, you know, realisation that I didn't have to be loud and fast, and angry, in order to be political – that I could approach it in another way.

So I was trying to touch into that: to Jock’s tradition, rather than with something like ‘It Says Here’, which I'm more aiming for the Clash tradition.

Alan

That's really interesting, because it sounds like that – it sounds like a song which you’re consciously—

Billy

On purpose.

Alan

—consciously locating yourself in a musical, and a political tradition: both thinking about it, and thinking about your place in it, and that comes across in the writing – was that very conscious when you were writing that?

Billy

Yeah, it was conscious, yeah yeah. I mean, the other thing ... I know it's not in your remit. But in 1984 was also the first time I went to America, and the one man going round singing these kinds of songs, people compared me not to the Clash, but to Woody Guthrie, and also kind of put me in touch with people like Utah Phillips, who I'd never heard of, and Joe Hill, whose songs I'd never heard, because we didn't kind of sing those songs, it seemed to me, in the UK.

So, I picked up Utah’s album, We Have Fed You For A Thousand Years, which is mostly Joe’s songs. So when I came back to the UK, and the miners’ strike, now it was in the summer of 84 I was in America, the miners’ strikes are getting harder and harder, I wrote ‘There Is Power in a Union’ as a kind of Joe Hill-referencing song rather than Jock. Because you know, I've stolen the title from Joe first and foremost; I've stolen the tune from an American song from the Civil War called ‘Rally Round the Flag’ or ‘Battle Cry of Freedom’. And I've put my own lyrics to it.

So both of those songs, I mention them because they were me connecting with a tradition I wasn't part of but was part of what I was trying to articulate. And I suppose both of them have eventually resolved themselves in me accepting that I'm one of Woody's grandchildren. And Woody’s the original political songwriter, topical songwriter, and I'm part of that tradition. And Mermaid Avenue subsequently brings me into part of the family the actual, the Guthrie family thanks to Nora so yeah, I was consciously trying to write, with ‘Between the Wars’, a contemporary folk song, like MacColl did with the Radio Ballads.

Alan

But what about a musical tradition, but also a political tradition? I mean are you also thinking about—

Billy

Well, you got to remember the miners’ strike was my political education. So I'm trying to make sense of things there. You know. I'm trying to articulate my sense of what's going on in the miners’ strike, you know, and also the CND, the anti-war movement as well. It's not just the miners’ strike. It's the belligerent nature of Thatcherism and Reaganism, as someone who's also been in the British Army, just, you know, two years before, these things are very close to home for me.

And also, you know, for me, getting involved in the miners’ strike was a no brainer, this was my class and they were under attack. I'd never really been strong on class politics, in my work, or in my politics, really. So that was a way of connecting with that aspect of it. Because if you look at the first album, um, you know, I am trying to get to grips with these things, but I'm not articulating them ideologically it's, you know, just because you're better than me, doesn't mean I'm lazy, you know, whereas by the time you get to ‘Between the Wars’, I've learned from sleeping on the sofas of miners or their supporters during the strike and having conversations which were basically predicated on the idea of them finding out what a London pop star is doing in the coalfields, do I know anything about politics at all? I'd kind of learned how to articulate what I was thinking, where I was coming from, and ‘Between the Wars’ was like the downpayment on that – there’s your two-penn’orth.

John

I mean, you’re not singing the song to the miners—

Billy

No.

John

—the song is talking to everybody else.

Billy

Yeah, exactly.

John

Who doesn't understand quite what it’s all about, is that—?

Billy

It’s the Woody Guthrie thing. You take an idea and you bring it to there, you know. And in the old days, you know, when I went to America, no one knew about the miners’ strike. You couldn't just flip it up on one of these and find out.

And literally I would also find things out in America that would then inform my raps to the English audience to make that connection. So that was very much in Woody's tradition as well. So I'm trying to think in those terms. You know, when I was in involved in Red Wedge, almost everybody else was a pop star.

But if you look at me, I'm, you know, I'm dressed like one of the fishermen's friends! Because I'm in my head, I'm thinking, Yeah, I'm a folk singer, I’m a folk singer though ...

John

But you’re not always a folk singer?

Billy

No, no, I'm trying to... the thing about the secret, John, is if you're in with a load of pop stars, don't try to look like a pop star. If you're on Question Time with a load of politicians, don't look like a politician. Alright. It's always like, try not to – you’ve gotta zig.

John

I’ll remember that!

Billy

When you’re sitting down with a load of academics, don't look like an academic, right? That’s how you stand out.

So for me in my mind, in Red Wedge, and that was ’87, it's a funny thing. When I wrote ‘Levi Stubbs’ Tears’, I was trying it out in sound checks on the first Style Council tour, and [Paul] Weller come up to me and said, ‘Is that Levi Stubbs in the Four Tops?’ I said, ‘Yeah, Paul, course it is, yeah.’ He said to me, ‘I thought you were supposed to be a folk singer?’ And I got to say to him, ‘Yeah it's kind of soul-folk, Paul. Because that's the name of a ... Soul Folk in Action is the name of a Staple Singers [album]. I knew it would [clicks fingers] bang him. So yeah, that's how I thought of myself – in that sense.

Alan

So the reason – one of the many reasons I’m on this project, the main reason, is, if I'm a specialist anything I'm a specialist in rhetoric, political rhetoric.

Billy

Oh, interesting. I thought you were going to say, ‘I’m a specialist in The Jam’ and ask me about Weller! Like everyone else does.

Alan

So I'm sort of interested in the songs ... now I'm not a literature person. I studied political speeches and think about political arguments. So I'm always stuck with this question when I look at these songs as texts – I'm like, what makes it a song; what makes it political speech? What is it and what's it doing? How's it working? And rhetorically, ‘Between the War’s is really tightly and well constructed—

Billy

Thank you.

Alan

—Because you’re a good songwriter, but I also see it as kind of as making a sort of argument. There’s a story about time and history, there’s a connection being made with the present. You've got these contrasts, which is a classic rhetorical thing. ‘Theirs is the this, mine is the this.’

Billy

Yeah.

Alan

Did that just come out? Or do you look at that and think—

Billy

It just came out. I think what ... you see there's two ways of cracking this particular nut: you can write a sloganeering song like ‘Power in a Union’, which is a punch-the-air song, a to-the-barricade song. I close with it at the moment, it's doing the job ‘A New England’ does, which sends the audience over the top – I’m not doing ‘New England’ at the moment, but ‘Power in a Union’ fires them right over the top, the way I play it, I kick their arse, they sing it at the end on their own. And it finishes the show, bang. And it's that great slogan song. It's all slogans, the whole bloody thing.

Whereas ‘Between the Wars’ is more of a trying to evoke the journey of an individual through times that they have no control over. Because that's very much how I felt back in those days – that we were in, you know, in a situation where, despite people wanting peace, we were arming ourselves to the teeth for, well, for nuclear war. So I was trying to humanise it as a better way to connect with people. And that was a conscious decision in terms of constructing it.

Alan

That's interesting. Because the ‘I’ in the song—

Billy

Is the everyman I. Because it's all those people

Alan

So it becomes ‘us’ as well...

Billy

Yeah.

Alan

And it's also making the people listening to the song become the ‘I’ and think about that.

Billy

Yeah, yeah. And it evokes the masses – ‘call up the craftsmen’.

Alan

Yes.

Billy

You know, build me a path from the cradle to the grave. And I'm using those terms from the founding of the welfare state, to make that argument for a democratic socialist settlement, which was being actively taken apart at the time. So I knew I was using that term, you know, the green fields, the factory floor, you know, green and pleasant land, all that kind of stuff.

Alan

Absolutely. All these phrases that are familiar. And the guitar is almost sort of a percussive backing for – it’s not a speech, but it's sort of like a speech, or...?

Billy

Well, when you're a solo performer, the dynamics are really important. And you get a dynamic from the guitar. I'm really a rhythm guitar player; the guitar is a percussive instrument for me. It's not a melodic instrument. And I do play it melodically sometimes, but it basically ... the voice, my melody, that's the voice. And the guitar provides the necessary punctuation if you like, almost.

And particularly in ‘Between the Wars’, it’s that clipped, you know?

Alan

Yeah, so the sort of the traditional feel of the music, and of the song, kind of comes together—

Billy

If I played it on an acoustic like ‘Streets of London’, it wouldn’t work; it would lose the dynamic urgency.

Alan

So, so maybe a simple question then about the rhetoric of it, which is looking at it just this time around and thinking about it, I found myself thinking, what are the wars? And you've just said you’re thinking about nuclear war, but it's also the class war, isn’t it?

Billy

No, not consciously. You can take it for that. You can take it for that. But no, it's not consciously class war. No, it's consciously that sense that, you know, there's an impending sense of doom around the Third World War. I was never really able to get the class analysis absolutely clear myself, although I would, you know, I'm strong enough to identify the miners’ strike as being my class and I – my role in it was absolutely clear.

But in terms of ... I never use in discussing my politics, Marxist language, it wasn't something I came from; I didn't study politics. My politics I learned first-hand when I was 16. So all my politics I learned first-hand or by reading shit. So I wasn't schooled in that way of thinking about politics. Although I'm clearly a leftist and a socialist. I don't come from that background. I come from a more humanist side. You know, if that makes sense.

Alan

Yeah. But you're writing it during the miners’ strike.

Billy

Yeah, yeah. Of course.

Alan

And so it's hard not to think of that. The class war. Part of the war is that battle that’s going on.

Billy

You have to ... the point is that as a listener, you're entitled to bring whatever you want to bring to it. It's not my job to do this, what we're doing now, with everybody, is it?

Alan

But it does feel like a bit of an elegy.

Billy

Yep.

Alan

I mean, now, when we know what’s going to happen. But even though you didn’t know what was going to happen when you wrote it—

Billy

Of course. I accept that. When I played it in East Germany, in 1986 at the sonic festival of political song, they ... when they gave me the running order in German, instead of saying zwischen dem Krieg[en] – between the wars – it said zwischen dem Mauer[n], which is between the walls. They had misheard it as between the walls.

I was like, oh, shit, I'm not gonna even get into that! I mean I know my accent is a bit odd. But you ... I was like I said to my translator, ‘What’s a Mauer?’ He said ‘It’s a wall.’ I was like, oh flip, we’re in trouble here.

Alan

I think it’s a thing we'll come to later, but I think – how the songs change and shift over time. Cecause I think it was probably when I first heard it, I would have thought ‘between the wars, meaning—

Billy

Yeah.

Alan

Now I look at it and I thought, hang on a minute, because I feel a bit between the wars now. We're waiting.

Billy

Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah.

Alan

So there's this other kind of resonance to it. You're describing one phase of a certain kind of – well, several phases of some kind of political struggle. And steeling us for...

Billy

I did get some criticism for it though.

Alan

Oh really?

Billy

Yeah, I was at a Canadian folk festival. And there were three women there. And they were heckling me, ‘Between the Wars’, asking me: are there no women in British politics? And my rather unkind response was yeah, the fucking Prime Minister's one. Which was a bit unfair! And when they came to see me afterwards, I apologised for that. I apologised for that. But this had an effect on me. Because when I come to write ‘Power in a Union’, the first line that came to me was: ‘there is power in a factory, power in the land, power in the hand of the working man’. And I'm like, that's not quite right is it? That's not right, that doesn't reflect. And those three women. They did have an effect and they are right. But I, you know, I said I was trying to write an archaic song from the early part of the century. Rather than a present song. I know, it's not an excuse. But I was not an oversight at the time, because of what I was trying to do, but I do recognise that's a valid criticism of the song.

Alan

I think you can see that in your – do I say oeuvre? Because I have been listening to a lot of it again, just in a short space of time. Yeah, I know, and I can see you’re thinking and learning all the way through.

Billy

Yeah, I am. Because that’s ... how else do you do it, you know? I mean,

you probably heard I got in a bit of trouble for updating the lyrics of ‘Sexuality’.

Alan and John

Yeah, yes.

Billy

I mean, I’ve been doing that for ages; that's what I've been doing that for over at least since 2018. Why they should suddenly jump on me for it I don't know. But I guess maybe I you know, it’s just one of those things. Anyway.

John

Okay, just to tie what we've been talking about to the other songs, it does sound to me that you have these, you have some quite distinct ideas about the particular forms your songs can take. I mean, as you say, ‘Between the Wars’ is a very distinctive kind of song, and then you talk about ‘It Says Here’ as a kind of Clash-style song, and then you're talking about ‘Power in a Union’ as a kind of slogan song.

Is that how you start – with those thoughts? This is this, this is going to be this type of song, and therefore it will have these kinds of sentiments and—

Billy

What do I need in a set? What do I need here in the set? Do I need a song that punches hard here? Or do I need a song that steps back a little bit? Because if all of them were like, I used to tour a lot with the Redskins, John, you must have seen the Redskins back in the day. Every fucking song was about politics. I used to say to them, guys, come on, you know, give it a break. Because I'm into it and it's getting on my nerves! And it was heartbreaking because they were such soulful guys. You know, they were steeped in classic Northern Soul sounds, they could have done great songs. The only love song I ever heard them play, ironically, was ‘Levi Stubbs’ Tears’, they did a cover of that one. Which was recorded for an EP for a fanzine, and it just sounded great. I just wished they’d been a bit more, but you know, Trotskyists—

John

SWP, what can we do?

Billy

No sense of humour, no sense of doubt...

Alan

Is part of what you're getting at when you're writing a song, is it a political problem that you want to work out? Or a musical problem—?

Billy

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. ‘It Says Here’ I’m angry as fuck. But ‘Between the Wars’, it’s a lament, right? ‘Never Buy the Sun’ is a lament. Right? Whereas, you know, ‘Power in a Union’ has gotta lift people up to the barricades. So it's a different way to approach it, you know, it's not always the same method with which to get the audience's attention sometimes, you know, when I sing ‘Between the Wars’, sometimes, sometimes on the last verse, If I'm aware, the audience is singing it quietly to themselves – which they often do because it’s like a hymn, just like a hymn really – if I get off mic, and they can hear themselves, and I'm singing with them at a similar, it's really a beautiful, it's a beautiful moment.

But I, I stopped playing it in probably around the end of the century, because I got a feeling from my audience that they were feeling a bit nostalgic for Margaret Thatcher. And I was like, you know, I don’t want to be that guy!

So I wrote other things to take the place, like, ‘Take Down the Union Jack’ fits in the same place, you know, does the same, makes the same dynamic point in the set. So yeah, it's one of those songs, It's like singing the ‘Internationale’. I've got a version of that, but it's all about context, you can't sing that every night, you know. ‘Between the Wars’ is a little bit like that – I do put it in if ... it's one of those treat songs, if the audience have been really good.

I know it sounds funny. But to use it like that. And then there's another place where it's absolutely the context of it, you know, like on November 11th. Although this November 11th, I opened a set with ‘Tender Comrade’, because I thought that seemed more fitting about where we are at the moment, just to – without making any point about it. But yeah, you do, you could use ‘Between the Wars’ in that context.

John

You were responding to Alan’s suggestion that you start with a political problem but, I mean, one of the thoughts we had, just thinking about your songs and what we included in our so-called list, was what songs tend to be written about. I mean that you were unusual in having at least two songs, which were about the media, and it seemed actually historically that there weren't that many songs addressing the media. And then in your new album, it struck me as kind of unusual to find a song – I've forgotten what it's called –‘Freedom Doesn't Come for Free’, which is—

Billy

About a book that I read, yeah, called A Libertarian walks into a Bear. Which is the true story of these guys...

Alan

That’s why there’s bears in the lyric?

John

Well, it’s a song about neoliberalism, right?

Billy

No no, libertarianism.

John

Yeah, there aren't many songs about libertarianism or... In other words, you don't seem as constricted in what you choose to write about as other songwriters might?

Billy

What's the the only real justification for making any art? It’s to give someone a perspective on this situation that they don't already have. So I'm looking for things that people aren't picking up on to write about, okay, which is a real problem when you happen to deal with something universal, like a pandemic, when everyone – it’s the same everywhere! That's a real problem. And I've tried to address that on the album. But, I have problems with libertarians. I think the pandemic has shown us that the underlying aspect of the politics of the last 150 years has been a struggle between individual liberty and the common good. And those people who won't wear masks because of their personal freedom, I have very little time for them. My solidarity is with the immuno-compromised who haven’t been able to leave their homes because arseholes won't wear masks in Morrisons.

So finding a way to be able to talk about that in a gig and pitch that – because basically, what a song does, it gives you a chance to talk about that. You know – England, Half-English, calling the album England, Half-English and putting that English flag, meant all the interviews were about Englishness and that's what I wanted. Last night I was I was trying to encourage my 1980s political audience to get their head around trans rights.

Alan

Okay.

Billy

I'm saying look, it'd be really easy for me to stand up here and kick the shit out of Boris Johnson. But that's too easy. We need to be challenged on these things. There's a song on the album called ‘Mid-Century Modern’ where I'm sort of touching on those kind of things.

People think that a Billy Bragg gig is preaching to the converted. If you try talking about Englishness to my audience, they’re really like, ‘what the fuck is this?’

Alan

How did they take the trans discussion yesterday?

Billy

Positively, very positively. I had, I've been doing it on the entire tour. I wasn't just since that thing kicked off. But I've mostly been doing it in terms of the treatment of Stonewall and the importance of Stonewall, and that we have to defend it. And I've been getting some lovely tweets from parents of trans kids to see the amount of solidarity in the room. And one person who explicitly said, a young person who said, I was absolutely amazed to see a 19— an audience that came of age in the 1980s responding that way.

So I tell them that: I say, that's how we look. And it may be you haven't got your head around this yet, but it's Trans Day of Remembrance on Saturday. Think of that as a day of solidarity with the victims of a patriarchal society that marginalises, abuses, ultimately murders, people who don't conform to its binary norms. Think of it in those terms, if you can't get your head around what it means to be trans, think of it like that.

So yeah, I'm hoping they're going home thinking, oh... I mean, my sound man, we were talking about this in the dressing room. And I had some friends there who have a trans kid, and he just said, ‘I just don't see how a man can become a woman’. And the next day I said to him, ‘Man, I know where you're coming from, but when you ... just saying that you're taking sides. You really have got to think about this, you know, we're old guys now, I know that. And it's not the same politics that we had. And it's not coming out as – in the way it is. But, you know, nor did our politics for our dad's generation, you know, these things change. And I'm, I'd rather be pushing that along than just talking about, you know... Whether my audience like it or not, Thatcher’s dead!

A big message from the show, the big political message from the show is about empathy. It's about fighting our own cynicism. How that cynicism is a greater enemy than capitalism, conservatism. And about accountability – about, you know, I find myself talking in these broad brush arguments now that perhaps my 1980-self wouldn't have recognised so much. But that's where the world is. It’s certainly where I am.

Alan

When you're thinking about the song in that sense, as an argument, are you thinking how do I put this in a way that's going to make sense to my audience? Should I, what's the way to put it—?

 Billy

I have a song called ‘I Keep Faith’. Right, I could sell it to you as a relationship song, easy peasy. But if I set it up about it being about my faith in your ability to change the world as an audience member, and my job is to, is to recharge your activism and send you home to make a difference, because that's how music makes a difference. If I set it up like that, grown men cry. They come to me afterwards and say, Oh, man, I keep faith just... I'm like, good, mate, because that's the empathy I'm talking about, you know, that's the liquid empathy. That's exactly what I'm getting at. So I'm happy with that. And I say shit to me, like, keep on doing what you're doing. And I'm like, mate, you just seen what I did! That's what I do. That's my bit. All right? I've done my bit.

Alan

Yeah, yes.

Billy

That’s on you now. And I'm always trying to get my audience to accept responsibility for the content of what I'm talking about and the songs that I'm singing, because I think as a songwriter that writes those kind of songs, it's so easy to give the impression that you've got all the answers. I've not got all the answers. I've got some perspectives I'm willing to offer. But ultimately, if you really want to act on what I'm talking about, it's down to you. It's not down to me, I can't, you know, music has no agency. They hate it when I say music can’t change the world. It really bugs them. And I'm like, who do you think’s got more experience on this? Who do you think’s been trying to do this for years? Don't give me that.

And yeah, we’ll go into what music can do later. But yeah, I do. I do struggle. I am aware of the danger of putting yourself forward as the person who's got the answers just because you can write a smart-arse song.

John

Because in a way, ‘Pass It On’ is about that. Is it?

Billy

Yeah. I mean, ‘Pass It On’ is really more about belonging and generational interaction. But yeah, there's an element of that in there as well. I wouldn't put ‘Pass It On’ in the topical political pile. I'll put it in the empathy/belonging pile, it’s kind of more like to do with the Englishness stuff.

John

Can we ask you about the Englishness?

Billy

Yeah, of course. Yeah.

John

I mean, do you think, because often... I mean, for example, ‘Freedom Doesn't Come For Free’ sounds like – is it bluegrass, all that kind of style?

Billy

Woody? I think like Woody. One of Woody’s songs.

John

So you toured quite extensively upon America...

Billy

Well, yeah. Officially I'm an Americana artist now. That's, that's the genre I’m in, which is kind of weird. Because obviously, I'm not, but because I made Mermaid Avenue, and because I work with Joe Henry, who’s an Americana producer, it’s cool. And Americana really is really just a place where the craft of songwriting is still appreciated. So in many ways, it is a good place for me.

But I'm Americana in a way that I don't think Eliza Carthy could ever be, you know, and I'm alright with that. I've got this thing where now some songs come out with a mid-Atlantic accent. And some don’t. On the new album. You know, and I really genuinely don't know why ‘Good Days and Bad Days’ is in my accent, and a song like ‘The Buck Doesn’t Stop Here No More’ is in an American accent. They're just how they come out.

And I'm like, I do think about it. And I went through a period of when I first... kind of what happened after Mermaid Avenue because you can't really sing the Woody songs in my accent. So when I was making Mr Love & Justice, you can hear me struggling with the accent on it, trying to move it, and I was like, I don't know what's happening here. But I'm just gonna have to go with it and see what happens. So it's kind of weird. I have no control over it.

John

You would see yourself as working within an English tradition, at least as far as the lyrics are concerned? But you wouldn't necessarily see yourself – or even that, you're not even going to be labelled English in that respect?

Billy

I'm quite happy to be labelled English. I'm very happy to be in that context. English is not a, you know, it's not a single thing. Identity is intrinsically personal. And we all of us take the things that mean something to us to create our own identity. And it's not a problem until someone tells you what you are, who you are, based on your religion, your colour, your football team. Your, you know, where you were born.

I think, ultimately, it's a personal construct. It’s whether from that you can create a sense of belonging, or whether your identity... as I've had Black friends who’ve said they're not English, they're European and Londoners. Because they felt that when they were younger, the English identity wasn't available so much as actively, you know, hostile to them. So I can't say to those friends, but you are English, you know, because they’re as English as I am. But if you don't feel it, you can't force it on people.

So I was just trying to, you know, when I was starting to use that in a political way, I was trying to counter the tendency on the left to reject any notions of patriotism or identity, because it was having the effect of leaving a vacuum, which was very easily filled by the British National Party. And we were in danger of leaving them to define what – not just what Englishness means, but also to define who does and who doesn't belong. And I'm not prepared to do that. So it was a complex thing. And it took me a while to sort of feel my way around it.

But in the end, it's something that... I mean, just today, I was just tweeting about progressive patriotism, based on something Rafael Behr wrote in the Guardian, trying to make the case for a patriotism based on values, justice and diversity. In contrast to a traditional patriot, who’s more interested in, you know, immutable things like symbols, institutions, and assimilation, and that these are two different things. You know, I got some shit off of people telling me, you know, when did you stop being a socialist? And I’m like, you know, when did socialism stop being about, you know, values, justice and diversity, mate? Come on, give me a break.

So yeah, so it's a bit of an uphill battle. But it seemed to me a thing that was holding us back. So that's why Englishness, which I guess, you know, I guess has always been there. When you look at, you know, things like ‘The Few’, you know, about the football hooligans, there’s a, you know, ‘Do they know of England, who only England know?’ I don't only steal off of Paul Simon, Bob Dylan – I steal a lot off of Rudyard Kipling. That's not the only line either; there’s a few of those around.

So that's another contradiction of the, you know, where I'm coming from: the Kipling side of things.

Alan

That’s interesting that you didn't sort of go down a route with the Englishness of kind of exploring some kind of English cultural musical tradition in a very narrow, you know, and trying to kind of re-articulate that; you stuck with the—

Billy

That’s because I'm trying to get to a sense of belonging, rather than define a thing that I can point to. I’m trying to evoke something; I'm trying to draw on the contradictions of Englishness with... I think, as far as I know, we're the only ethnic identity that has a hyphen in it: Anglo hyphen Saxon. And that says something about where we come from and who we are, you know, and I'm hoping tomorrow at the Fitzwilliam museum to see the golden hyphen of King Arthur, King Alfred rather, that was, you know, found at Sutton Hoo, that proves this point! So yes, it's still a hot potato, Englishness, and will continue to be one.

Alan

No, it is. And it's been one of the biggest problems in the project, defining an English song; there's lots of songs when we first thought of and thought, well hang on a minute. Manic Street Preachers...

Billy

Oh, you’re in trouble there!

Alan

They're Welsh, but clearly the song is... But then equally there's also a lot of Jamaican songs.

Billy

Oh cool, yeah.

Alan

And you can get ridiculous – at what point does a Jamaican writing a song in London become an English song?

Billy

Yeah, that’s hard, isn’t it? Yeah.

Alan

There really isn't a clear line.

Billy

Well, that’s partly what England, Half-English was about.

Alan

But we've also found very, very early songs... One of the earliest songs on the list is actually about a complaint about Scottish people taking over the court of James.

Billy

Oh, yeah.

Alan

So it's right there. At the start.

Billy

Plus ça change!

Alan

Yeah, exactly.

Billy

As they would say at the court of King James!

John

One of the things we were wondering about is what you think about, as it were the history of the protest song, and you know, your programme and what you've been talking about, locates it very much in the 20th century?

Billy

Yeah. I think I was, you know, talking about protest-pop there really, for the BBC purposes. Because I think, you know, once you get outside of popular culture, for most people, things become very fuzzy. And myself included, really. You know, there's a long tradition of songs trying to grapple with the way the world is, you know, they're not always as obvious as they might seem in the first place, you know, the perspective that people had back then. And the restrictions under which they wrote the songs were like, things that they were allowed to say and what they weren't allowed to say. We don't really, you know, I mean, it's not an English song, but Muddy Waters singing ‘I'm A Man’. It's not about his manhood he's talking about there; he’s talking about ‘don't call me boy’.

Trying to bring that perspective on some of the songs from the English tradition. It gives you a bit more, you know, songs like ‘The White Cockade’ and those kinds of songs, you know, what are they saying about – are they only talking about Jacobites or are they talking about something deeper than that? You know?

John

The formal definition of something called protest song is a 20th century phenomenon. But it does sound as if there is a much longer tradition, but it takes very different forms.

Billy

There is, there is. Popular culture is kind of – loves a maverick. In some ways, we still, I think we still live with the ’60s concept of protest music, you know, Dylan, everything goes back to Dylan, doesn’t it, you can't really avoid that. Whereas he did everything he could to avoid it. So it's that contradiction that has to be dealt with, you know, the spokesman of a generation, all that shit, you know. I mean I bought into that completely, I was 100% into that.

And when the miners’ strike came along, there's I – a solo performer. Up on the stage. I suddenly thought, well, here's my chance to find out if there's any truth in it, I'll push as hard as I can. And that’s how we ended up with Red Wedge: with me pushing and pushing and pushing and see how far it will go. If the context was right, I would do it again, you can't just do that being in a vacuum. But that was a really, really interesting time. And it, it left me with a determination to base my perspective on the ability of music to change the world, on my own personal experience, and not on anything anybody imagined music could do.

So when I talk to my audience about how my politics were shaped by music, I'm very specific, particularly about going to the first Rock Against Racism march in 1978. And that did a number of things. It first introduced me to out gay men, there kissing, with Tom [Robinson] singing ‘Glad To Be Gay’.

But more than that, it changed my perspective on politics to the extent that I probably wouldn't be sitting here doing this job now if it weren’t for that event. And what happened was, when I got to the park and saw 100,000 kids just like me, I realised I wasn't the only one who gave a shit about this stuff. And more than that, that my generation was going to define itself in opposition to discrimination of all kinds; this was going to be our Vietnam War. This was going to be our CND as it was for the ’50s generation.

So the world changed for me there, my perspective of it. But the absolute crucial thing you have to remember is, it wasn't the Clash that changed my perspective. They got me there. What changed my perspective and gave me the courage of my convictions was being part of that 100,000 kids from my generation, and seeing that I wasn't alone. That this was a powerful thing that we were part of. That's the – that was the real change. So it was the, again, the audience, not the artist. The artist has a role to play, bringing people together, express solidarity, offer an idea, create ally-ship.

I mean, that's another thing about the power of song, in a song like ‘Sexuality’, in its current form, and its original form, I'm trying to obviously create ally-ship for marginalised community, gays and lesbians back in the day, the trans and non-binary now, but I'm also trying to kind of... vaccinate the audience. So if they’ve had no experience whatsoever of meeting a trans or non-binary person, and they do, they've got at least one point of reference from me, from my song. They've heard me talk about it. They’ve heard an audience applaud me talking about it. This is not a completely alien experience for them. They’d have some – even though it may be a strange encounter, and they may feel awkward – they have got some way of referencing what's happening to them. Song can do that. Song can do that.

And I think that ally-ship aspect is really, really important because it does allow movements to take root and people to express their solidarity in a – it's a very intangible way. But it can be the beginning of much bigger things.

John

Well, this notion of empathy is a big thing in the way you think of it—

Billy

You know, I've come to the conclusion that empathy is the currency of music. Whatever music you listen to, whether it's Billy Bragg or Adele. If you go and see Adele, she's written about a divorce, perhaps you've been in a divorce, she somehow touches on something that you can't articulate yourself, but she manages to make you feel that that's been heard. You go and see her. She's singing it – the woman who's opened this thing, unlock this thing you've not been able to reach. You’re singing at the top of your voice. 10,000 other people are singing it. Whatever that thing was is totally accepted by everyone – you feel that; that you're not alone. You're not alone, there’s a communion. That is not available online.

There's a solidarity in song, not just political song, but any kind of song, that is absolutely crucial to our sense of how we connect with one another. And I've known this for a while. And I've often felt it. But now I'm... in my show, if you come tomorrow night, I’m more or less saying – well, I ain’t exactly saying this, you know, making it explicit, because I feel we live in a time when empathy is under attack. And I feel that rather than just singing about it, and leaving you to go home with a nice feeling, I want to slap you around the head with it like a kipper so you wake up tomorrow morning thinking about it. You know? And it’s as political as anything I've ever done.

Alan

I'm not going to give you now my theory of 400 years of protest songs, but sort of what we find is that in the early period, they're actually sort of more like songs today than it is in the middle period. My sense is there's no anxiety about writing a political song, song is just a way you talk to people about stuff that's going on, for different reasons. But politically, they're doing that.

Billy

You’re talking about broadsides and stuff?

Alan

Yeah. So they’re just... politics is just one of their topics. And they're being, as I understand it from our colleagues, kind of passed around and sung by people together. So they're very political in a straightforward sense. But they're using the songs to make political arguments.

Billy

Are they capital-P political or are they merely topical? Because this is the other question, right.

Alan

We've had lots of arguments about that—

Billy

I bet you have, yeah!

Alan

But often they very much are. Because they're engaged in Parliament; for Cromwell, against Cromwell...

Billy

What’s in people’s minds.

Alan

This is what's going to get rid of these... this house of something, ‘rooks’, is one of my favourite lines.

Billy

It’s a great line.

Alan

That sounds familiar, right?

Billy

Yeah. With a ‘c’ on the front.

Alan

And we’ll get rid of them... So, and then what happens is really in the later period, the 19th century, they become more like marching songs, rallying kind of songs. But not quite what you're describing as a crowd, they're more like songs to keep you in time; that go with your membership of this group, that group, going up to the Suffragettes.

Billy

More about bonding.

Alan

Yeah. And then in a funny way, the Dylan period is sort of an aberration. There’s a sort of reinvention of the idea of the protest song singer. As it were. And it really explodes in your time – in the ’70s and ’80s. Then there's this real shooting up of the songs. And it's a lot like the earlier period – except whereas those early songs are generally about the Parliament, the Church, they were attacking things in power, the songs become about each other. They're still about politics, of course, but there's also a lot more songs about how do we treat each other?

Billy

And lifting up the discriminated?

Alan

Exactly, exactly.

Billy

The empathy – you’re back to the empathy again.

Alan

And that's what struck me most about it is the way in which politics has become, in good ways, mostly, some are more problematically, but a kind of a different sort of discussion: how are we going to live to each other? So there's a lot of songs that aren't saying, the powers that be have got to do this. They're saying: you, we us.

Billy

Yeah, come gather around people wherever you roam and all that shit, yeah.

Alan

And you're absolutely encapsulating that. Because it's, I think you're right. It's because of that particular kind of experience. Because I'm guessing – my historical knowledge is weak – but in the 16th, the 17th century, the groups singing the songs are quickly divided. Whereas actually now that's one of those moments where you're having a communal experience, which is increasingly rare, is actually, you know, there's gonna be some variation, you know – your audience might be at one view, quite specific, but actually, it's gonna be different ages, different backgrounds, and different context will come to it. So you're providing that moment where they're thinking together, how shall we be with each other? And that’s—

Billy

Communion. A form of communion. That’s why they sing in church and at football.

Alan

Yes, exactly.

John

No, but I was just thinking in terms of... in your songs – in ‘Never Buy The Sun’ we know about the journalist hiding in the bushes. And Murdoch and so on. But you don't typically have enemy figures to any extent, or—?

Billy

No, I don’t, no. ‘It Says Here’ doesn’t have an enemy figure as such; it doesn't exist as a kind of...

John

There's another story.

Billy

Yeah, that's another story. I think—

Alan

It’s a pretty biting moral machine!

Billy

Yeah, that’s true. ‘Never Buy the Sun’ is specific in that it names the Sun. And the Scousers; it names the Scousers as well. So in that context, putting in the parents of the missing girl [Milly Dowler], those kinds, I mean, I literally, that's a weird one. I literally wrote that driving to a gig in a school playground in a suburb of Leeds – some folk festival with me and Hugh Masekela – on the weekend that the story broke, and Murdoch decided to close the News of the World.

And it was the back – it was the weekend of spring school holidays. So the traffic kept stopping. And I was listening to Radio Four, and the song started coming to me. I started writing stuff down when the traffic stopped, or singing stuff into my phone. And then I got up to Yorkshire and watched Newsnight and that gave me another load of ideas. And I woke up in the morning and it was all good. And I went to the gig and the soundcheck and the PA wouldn't work. So in the course of the soundcheck, I sang the song 12 times, which meant by the time of the gig I kind of had a handle on it, and I sang it at the gig and the audience cheered every time I sang that line, ‘Scousers never buy the Sun’, and I have never had an experience like that before.

And I think what the song had done was, it had given them the first opportunity to express publicly how they felt about what happened. The song was a conduit for them, it was a lightning rod for them. They were so angry about what was going down and they didn't have any way of coming together as a community at their school, in their suburb of Leeds, as parents, to express how outraged they were. And the song was like, bang! You know, they weren't expecting it; it wasn't something they were familiar with. But just that song. And I was like wow, and then some great big Scouser grabbed me and kissed me at the end and he hadn’t had a shave, he was like sandpaper, fucking huge – it was brilliant. And I was like, oh, okay. This one works. We’ll do this one...

We haven’t talk much about ‘It Says Here’.

Alan

Again, I was thinking about the rhetoric of it, because ‘It Says Here’ strikes me as the one that I could sort of imagine: put a few more words in there, that's a speech. Because again, it's got this brilliantly clear structure. Here’s what's going on; it’s that series of juxtapositions again. They say that but... So your heightening, you're drawing attention to the moral hypocrisy—

Billy

Exactly.

Alan

So it's a very tight structure. But again, looking at it again, it's also not that directly political in the sense that you're not talking about Labour, Tory – you’re call out the moral hypocrisy, the anti-sexism was really strong on that song as well. It's coming through. So it's creating this picture that then ends with the direct address to the audience...

Billy

Yeah, it does pull it home to the Tory, doesn't it, at the end?

Alan

Yeah. Yeah. Which is so which is kind of really interesting how that works, with a series of arguments—

Billy

Well, we’re in the same situation. Look at the Daily Telegraph headlines in the last few weeks – they haven’t mentioned the sleaze at all, nothing at all, like it never happened, like fucking Pravda. You know, it’s like unbelievable.

John

Would you call that a Clash song? Right?

Billy

I mean, you know, you know, there's kind of, I've got a number of iterations, John, you know, over the years. There’s the original bash-em-out Bragg, where I was going around playing gigs, opening for people, making you have it, whether you wanted it or not. Then there's classic Bragg, which would include ‘It Says Here’, but really is exemplified by ‘Levi Stubbs’ Tears’ and ‘Power In a Union’. And that's what we call chop and clang. And then there's a kind of more Rambling Bill Bragg, which is more a kind of talking, Woody Guthrie aspect of what I do. And now we're in some sort of weird zone, a goofy guru place, where I'm kind of offering a sort of spiritual philosophy based on intangible ideas such as belonging, empathy, accountability... it’s quite an interesting journey.

Alan

If I was advising someone to write a speech, I might say, oh, these juxtapositions work really well to show the hypocrisy. And I just want to know when you're writing, it was a long time ago, But are you thinking – just because it's poetically worked – are you thinking, how can I present the hypocrisy of the newspapers? Or does it just come out as... naturally come out as this kind of—?

Billy

No, no, you've got your points you want to make. You see this as hypocritical? How can you make it rhyme? What's the best imagery you can use, you know, to make it rhyme? ‘Bingo and tits’ and that sort, you know, that sort of stuff to get right into the tabloid language. ‘Voices on the right of the House echo down the street of shame’ and that sort of stuff, you know, you're using, you're picking up metaphors that other people use, and pulling them in to make a case that people can sing really loudly.

Alan

We haven’t talked about the latest album, have we not? My favourite on it so far, is ‘Ten Mysterious Photographs’ [sic].

Billy

Why?

Alan

Because as well as doing this, I have just finished a three-year project studying the far right and everything online. I know the ten conspiracy photos! Well, there are many different versions of it. So I had a little bit of, kind of listening to that song and I thought: I’ve taken three years to say something and he’s just summed it up in one song!

Billy

See, the thing with ‘Ten Mysterious Photos’ was, when I wrote it, it had an A and a B part, it didn't have a chorus, it kind of like, what was the chorus was the B part. So yeah, the verse was the A part and the chorus was the B part. And the lyrics didn't repeat, they just went through. And my son said, ‘I really like that one’, it was his favourite song, he thought it was really really good. But he thought ‘ten mysterious photos’ should – that should be the chorus. And that would mean negating the other two B parts. And I said to him, look, look – I've just come up with, kind of coined this term ‘cyberchondriacs’. I'm not going to throw that away, am I? So he said, ‘Well, why not just make it into the middle eight?’. I was like, oh, really? He said, ‘yeah, come on and give it to me, I'll do it.’ So he took it away. And he wrote it so it was a middle eight. So he got a co-writing credit on the album. But it was ‘cyberchondriacs’ that was like – I was so happy with that. You really want to sort of...

Alan

It conjures up this image – you know I can see you sitting on the internet looking at this stuff. And I'm like, I've done that, I've been there.

Billy

I mean, you gotta remember I'm a dreadful punk rocker. I like nothing greater than a pun. I was at an Irish festival one time and Björk was headlining, and we were – fortunately we were in a tent. So it was kind of starting to get a bit wet in the evening, and I was on stage and I could see across from our tent, there was a silent disco going on, people standing around posts all listening? And it started to rain. And I was like, I feel really sorry for them. And then I heard in the distance Björk start to play, and these people took off their headphones and, and kind of all went off to watch Björk. And I was able to say: ‘Now is the winter of our disco tent / Made glorious summer by this song of Björk.’

Oh man, I was so fucking happy that I said it about ten times, the band were like, ‘Stop it!’ and I was like, fuck, that’s a top score man, that’s a fucking 180 score. I was so pleased with that... I'm dreadful. I am terrible, terrible for a pun. I have to fish them out of songs all the time. Come on, come out of there...

The use of humour in gigs to soften people up for the political shit. That’s something I've always, always used: that bit of self-effacing humour – goofy, everyone relax, everyone’s laughing. (Smack) In it comes. It is; I mean the thing is, you got to understand that in terms of pop culture, I am somewhere in the middle between Joe Strummer and Max Miller. Right? Seriously. Last night it was like a panto last night. Because some nights the audience really go for it and I just... I said some things last night I really shouldn't have said. And I had them rocking in the aisles. I said a terrible thing last night. I said to them, you don't get these chuckles with Weller, do you? I couldn’t resist it; I couldn’t resist it! It’ll get back to him, I’ll get in terrible trouble! No no; it was good fun. I’ll probably say it tomorrow.