33 f “Folk music to me is a working class
thing, it’s a working class memory. If they’re singing about riding out one mid- summer’s morning, that’s what they fuck- ing did. Just as much as Muddy Waters sings about Chicago or the south, they would sing about whatever it was that was winding them up a long time ago. I’m not a great fan of all that maidenhead stuff, all that ‘thank you kindly sir’ and all that crap… but the more developed stuff. “
“The thing is, I’m a punk rocker and I remain a punk rocker. But talking to Southern Rag is admitting that I have been influenced and listen to folk music. I mean, you can play reggae without sink- ing to the excesses of Yelloman, and you can play soul music without wearing the silly flares and the shiny jackets, so I don’t have to disappear and do the whole fin- ger-in-the-ear business. As soon as you play a slow song, everybody immediately thinks ‘ah, folk music’, and as soon as you do a fast one, they go ‘punk rock’. It ‘s a real pisser. There was a review in Melody Maker which said this is what Willie Nel- son would sound like if he’d heard The Clash. Phil Ochs, possibly. Maybe if Phil Ochs had heard The Clash a few times, he’d have ended up sounding like me. I can possibly live up to being Phil Ochs, I can’t live up to being Bob Dylan or Willie Nelson or Paul Weller.”
“See, the great folk singers of the last 25 years are Chuck Berry, Springsteen and Costello, who are writing about what’s happening now.”
So you think the structure of folk clubs and the people who frequent them are…
“They live in a fucking time-warp. They either want it to be 1960 again or – even worse – 1860. They’re retreating instead of facing up to how powerful it could be and what it could do. It’s not so obvious, but they’ve the same sort of vibe as the spikey-tops who walk around in leather jackets with Sex Pistols on the back. Folk music could be a much more powerful genre if it could break away from thinking it’s all acoustic guitars and olde Englishe.”
“I like it with a bit of fire in it… the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. I really like them early albums, and the Dubliners. I liked the Corries, too – there’s an album called The Corries Live In Scot- land which I got in Woolworths ages ago, there’s some really great Scottish songs on there. Great voices too. They bridge the gap between the Spinners, who always were thoroughly over-polite, far too tooralooraladdyo. That’s another thing about the folk circuit, all that terri- ble tooralooraloo stuff, it’s laughable. But then you hear something like Abyssinians by June Tabor… what a great album. I’ve almost been moved to tears by some of the songs on there, Smiling Shore particularly. Did you see Elvis Costello do that song?”
There is, of course, the matter of a band called The Pogues. The Pogues, bless ’em, have still to crack it on a major scale and they urgently need to break out of their relatively confined field of vision in order to become durable. But they’ve sure- ly had more effect in changing attitudes both in and out of folk clubs than any of us can honestly have thought possible when they first emerged. Bragg, pre- dictably, is a big fan. While his musical con- nection with them is more by default than common ground, there’s little doubt that
the pair of them represent a two-pronged spearhead aimed at the throat of the pop pap industry.
“I think there’s a great lead being given by the Pogues. There’s loads of other things they could be doing, union songs and stuff, if they’re going to be more than a fad. And all I’ve heard by The Men They Couldn’t Hang is The Green Fields Of France, which I really like. But l was very pleased to see Southern Rag embrace all that. It would have been very easy for you to say ‘this is our folk music, and we’re keeping it this way’. The real reason why I think Southern Rag is important is that folk music needs to re-appraise itself and look stronger at itself. I’m sure if you threw the beer-swilling Pogues in amongst a few folk clubs, it would really put the cat amongst the pigeons. Punk folk – let’s have some! I really do admire the Pogues and the Boothill Foot Tappers and all that lot. The Boothills have a lot to offer too, because they genuinely do love hillbilly music, and folk music to some extent.”
“See, there’s nothing glamorous in it,
is there? That’s the problem. It’s like the blues. In America there’s no young blues players, they all want to play jazz-funk,
because that’s where all the money and glamour is. They all want to be Prince, they don’t wanna be Elmore James.”
S
As far as his own career is concerned, Bragg has never been on such a high. More importantly, there hasn’t been the slightest suggestion of a compromise in the way he’s achieved it. His second album, Brewing Up With Billy Bragg, suffered all manner of marketing problems purely as a result of Billy’s insistence that it carried a (non-detachable) tag saying “Pay no more than £3.99”. The material on it is typically strident, including a wonderfully savage indictment of the tabloid press (It Says Here) which appears in revised format on the new Between The Wars EP. There’s also a haunting, compassionate song about the Falklands conflict, Island Of No Return.
o far, he’s steadfastly refused to put out a single on the basis that singles are rip-offs (the EP is des- tined to sell at only £1.25), but he’s nevertheless enjoying his first vicarious hit courtesy of Kirsty MacColl’s treatment of one of his songs from Life’s A Riot. And, unless you’re in Thailand, Vanu- atu or possibly Saffron Walden, there’s a very good chance that as you read this, Bragg will be on a British tour backed by the Labour Party and ratified by Neil Kin- nock himself in a joint press conference.
And he’ll be playing Cambridge this
year. “Not because I’m a folk artist, more because I’m not. I don’t want ’em to be afraid of me either, y’know… I haven’t come to destroy or anything. I think I might have quite a bit in common with Loudon Wainwright – not in my song - writing, but in my attitude.”
Don’t fret yourself now about the
man’s right to be at Cambridge or even in these pages (if you’re worried about that, then you’ve got big problems). If the prospect of going to hear him at a Labour Party-sponsored concert or a benefit for miners’ families or a double-header bill with some punk band is just too much to stomach, then still lock up your precon- ceptions and buy yourself a copy of Between The Wars or Brewing Up With Billy Bragg. Whatever else, you won’t be left unmoved.
F
Photo: Ian Anderson
Photo: Pennie Smith
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