The location :
Billy Bragg’s dressing room (yes, a real one with lights around the mirror) at
Llewellyn Hall, the concert hall of the School Of Music in Canberra, Australia.
Billy is into the second half of his 2001 Australian Tour. BB=Billy Bragg ;
MW=Mark Warner and GW=Geoff Wilson. It’s 8.25pm :
MW : “Billy,
you’re on stage in 35 minutes”
BB : “Fuck, am I,
I haven’t written the running order yet”
GW : “I’ll write
it for you”
BB: “Alright,
there’s a pen and a piece of paper there”
MW : “You’ve been
telling us on this tour that there’s a new album coming out early next year”
BB : “That’s
true”
MW :
“Provisionally titled ‘Having A Shag With Billy Bragg’ ? “
BB : “No,
‘Shagged Out With Billy Bragg’ …I don’t know what it’s going to be called. I
think it says on the listening copy I’ve got it’s called ‘England, Half
English’ so it might end up being called that. But the trouble is they get the
tapes and have to make up names to the songs. So half the time I don’t know
what song they’re talking about ‘cos they
listen to it and think ‘I wonder what that’s called’"
MW : “Have we
heard on this tour, and the last couple of tours you’ve done around Europe and
the US, just about all of the songs or are there a lot more ?”
BB : “No…you’ve
got a list there haven’t you ?. How many have you heard ?”
GW : “Well, from
that list we’ve heard 12 out of the 15”
BB : “Carpet Out
you haven’t heard…He’ll Go down you haven’t heard the way it is, Farouk,
Mystery Shoes, NPWA you haven’t heard, Judy doesn’t sound like it did any
more…but no one else has heard Yarra Song, no one else has heard Distant
Shore….It’s partly because it’s taken a long time because I had to learn how to
write songs with The Blokes”
MW : “A different
process ?”
BB : “ No, just
sort of like trying to work out what the possibilities were. That took a while
to get that together, plus me moving house twice – that didn’t help. So the
next album we’re gonna have to go out and do it in about six weeks, I think.
Bang. Straight. Write the songs. Record it. Put it out. You can’t spend all
this time making a record. It just keeps going on forever”
MW : "Some of the
songs have been knocking around for a while now, like Millennium Song.
Has that gone through a lot of changes since you first wrote it ?”
BB : “No. There’s
some debate as to whether the band version should be on the record or the solo
version, and everybody says it should be the solo version except me and I think
it should be the band version"
MW : “I saw the
solo version on a TV programme you made about Englishness”
BB : “That’s
right. I played it on that”
MW : “It was
interesting that the bit that was missing when you did it on that show was the
verse about Gilbert and George. Is that still a bit of an iffy lyric ?”
BB : “No, no. I
might play it tonight. It’s all there as I play it”
MW : “There was a
lot of debate about it being a song that might not travel”
BB : “That’s
true. Not without the record being out. Once the record’s out I think it might
travel then. Without the record being out it’ll take me a while to
contextualise it. I might try tonight just to talk a little bit about it”
MW : “Have you
had any contact from Gilbert and George ?”
BB : “No, not
from Gilbert and George. I’ve had a few people ask me that they know who St.
George is but who’s Gilbert. Perhaps my audience aren’t as au fait with modern
art as I thought !”
MW “ “Referencing
another one of the new ones – Dreadbelly. Now, Sir Thomas
Stamford Raffles – I managed to work out who he is, founder of Singapore
amongst other things”
BB : “That’s
right”
MW : “Sir Richard
Van Dyke – is that Dick Van Dyke ?”
BB : “Exactly !”
MW : “I thought
it was. It was actually my wife who tipped me off. I said ‘I can’t find this Sir
Richard Van Dyke, he’s not on the internet’ and she said ‘Is it Dick Van Dyke
?’ “
GW “Has he been
knighted ?”
BB : “No we
knighted him. That song was…Ben had the riff and we were in the Bridport Arts
Centre rehearsing near where I live, and they’d been in the bookshops buying
all these books…and I was just taking lines out of all these books and sticking
them on this song and seeing what stuck. Just for something to sing. And a lot
of the lines in the song…'Clear piss and hard shit' was from one of the books,
and…what is it about being a fishmonger…'You’re never gonna be a clog dancer',
that was a reference to Little Titch about being a great comedian when he was
the champion clog dancer of all England”
MW : “That’s not
a reference to Ian McLagan’s dad then ?”
BB : “No. Ian
McLagan’s dad was a roller skater”
MW : “That’s it.
He was the British Champion roller skater”.
BB : “He was,
yea. I don’t think there’s anything in Dreadbelly that’s in any way real, it’s
all fucked around and quotes from these books. I’d open a page of a book and
take the lyrics – the lyrics kinda just fell into place. That’s another one
where I was working out how to write songs. And once I’d worked out how to do
it that’s when we wrote England, Half English”
MW : “So on the
new album no room for a cover ?”
BB : “Well, no.
We’ve got a few knocking about. We’ve got the infamous Mansion On The Hill that
didn’t get used but we might deploy that in some context"
GW : “Is that a
potential for a B side ?”
BB : “Yea, if
there are such things. And Another Kind Of Judy has gone through 3 or 4
different versions to get to where it is. He’ll Go Down don’t sound anything
like it used to. So there’s the original versions of those we’ll potentially
use”
MW : “Are you
doing anything falsetto or a capella ?”
BB : “No nothing
a capella. There might be a bit of falsetto, I can’t remember”
MW : “You did
Ontario, Quebec and Me the other night. Do you feel more comfortable singing it
in your regular voice ?”
BB : “Yea, I’m
not totally…I was fucking around with Wish You Were Her the other night in one
of the soundchecks and it just wasn’t coming together in a convincing way”
MW :”Do you find
that harder to do with an audience”
BB : “Sometimes,
sometimes. It’s not that hard actually”
MW : “Just think
of The Stylistics”
BB : “I do. I
think more of The Delfonics actually, and Smokey…but yea, it never quite
comes. I need a really long run up to do that sort of thing”
MW : “Apart from
the new album, which I guess after this tour that’s what you’re going to be
concentrating on...”
BB : “Yea, when I
get back. It’s almost done. I’ve got about another week in the studio just for
me to finish that off”
MW : “Have you
got any other side projects coming along ? We were talking the other day
possibly about doing something with all the old Riff Raff
material”
BB : “Yea, well I
could do that, yea. I spoke to Wiggy about it and he thought it was a good idea
and Chiswick Records have said we can have the four tracks to put out as long
as we don’t press more than 5000. That’ll be cool. Maybe we’ll do it around the
re-release of the book, so it’ll tie in with that”
MW : “Does that
mean maybe that if you’re doing any gigs around that time you might be bunging
out a few Riff Raff songs in the set ?
“
BB : “No…the
other thing we might be doing – the next bootleg might be a solo one if we can
get some good tracks off this tour. Grant’s recording all this tour. If we get
a dozen decent tracks then we might put out a solo bootleg next”
MW : “The
Y-Fronts Tour”
BB : “Possibly,
yea. The Qantas Y-Fronts Tour !”
MW : “Just out in
the U.S. is a Guthrie CD, or it’s actually various artists covering Guthrie
childrens’ songs ("Daddy-o Daddy").You’ve got a couple of songs on there”
BB: “Both on
there are they ?”
MW : “Dry Bed”…
and another one “12345678”,
isn’t that Hoodoo Voodoo
?”
BB : “It is, yea.
That’s the interesting thing, ‘cos after we recorded some of the Mermaid Avenue
songs versions did turn up. There’s a version of All You Fascists Bound To Lose
someone played me. And also one or two of the Mermaid Avenue songs turned out
not to be Woody songs, turned out to be Carter Family. One of the ones, you
know in the film Tweedy sings…”
MW : “When The
Roses Bloom Again”
BB : “Yea, we
couldn’t put that on the album ‘cos it wasn’t a Woody song”
MW : “So
basically it’s pretty much the same song ?”
BB : “No, it’s
not quite, no. Has Hoodoo Voodoo got 1-2-3-4 in it…I don’t think so. But, it’s
definitely a kids’ song…there’s another compilation coming out as well which is
a re-recording of the Lowell Waterson album, what’s it called…we did a track
for that as well, me and the Blokes. Bollocks, I can’t remember what it’s
called now…”.
MW : “And then
there’s volume 2 of the Pete Seeger tribute…”
BB : “Now there’s
some other tracks from that session by me and Eliza which didn’t get released”
MW : “So you did
more than two ?”
BB : “We didn’t
do any more Seeger ones but we did do a version of All Fall Down by Lindisfarne
which at the time there was some talk of an Alan Hull tribute record and I said
to the people who are organising it ‘Look, if you’re going to do it I’ve done
this. Me and Eliza had a go at this’. That’s knocking around, I heard that the
other day. What context we’ll use that in I don’t know but at the moment I am
beholden to them to get it together to put their record out. I can’t really use
it until it’s clear they’re not going to do it. And then there’s Mansion On The
Hill…”
MW : “ One of my
spies told me a production company in the UK is making a documentary all about
The Faces”
BB : “I’m not
sure that’s going to happen. There’s already been one about Rod Stewart”
MW : “Yea, but
this was specifically about The Small Faces and The Faces and what I’d been
told was that you’d been asked to narrate it”
BB : “No, that’s
not happening. I’m not narrating that. There already was one that ended up
being about Rod Stewart and McLagan was very pissed off with it. There’s people
doing stuff around McLagan all the time and he's always getting great bits of
film that he very kindly gives me a copy of...The Faces and Ronnie Lane.
Someone’s doing a doco about Ronnie Lane…I think that’s what the latest one is.
There was a BBC programme called something like The Forgotten Heroes that was
about The Small Faces and I was the main non-Small Faces person talking in
that"
MW : “That was my
listening driving to Sydney and driving back – 'Ooh La La'”
BB : “Oh, fucking
great album ! I was playing Richmond in the soundcheck from Long Player.
Grant’s just got Long Player and Nod’s As Good, but I defy you to go into a
petrol station anywhere in the world and not find a Small Faces album. There
was one when we stopped on the motorway today 'Best Of Small Faces'. Whenever
we stop in the middle of the night we can always find a track in a petrol
station. We won’t leave a petrol station unless we can find a track from McLagan.
Yes “Come on Mac you must be in here…”…”Are you getting paid for it ?”…”No, the
fuckers…”.
MW : “How is Sir
Ian ?”
BB : “ He’s well.
He’s out on the road with Taj. We exchanged emails after September 11th.
That’s the last time I had some contact with him. He’s out on the road with Taj
Mahal”.
MW : “When you’ve
got a band who have got their own business, their own bands as well, does that
make it a lot harder ?”
BB : “No, it
makes it easier ‘cos they’re not all waiting around to have to do stuff. That
was partly the problem for Wiggs when I went into my paternity leave…”
MW : "He’d got
nothing to do”
BB : “ Yea. And
it was really tough on him. Sort of leaving him a bit in the lurch like that.
You know life intervenes. But now he’s in a good place…he’s got the studio”
MW : “You were
telling us Andrew Collins has caught up with you to do an update of Still
Suitable For Miners”.
BB : “Yea,
another chapter”
MW : “What’s that
going to cover…The Blokes ?”
BB : “The
Blokes…what did we talk about ? I actually said to him 'Look Andrew, I don’t
think I’ve done anything', then he reeled off a load of stuff like Bragg Close,
you know all that stuff, getting The Blokes together – that was a bit of a
story, what happened with Wilco…and moving house, moving out of London.”
MW : “Did you
want him to go back and change anything that was in the existing story ? You’d
remembered something differently ?”
BB : “No. All the
things he got wrong I thought was better that way, probably…”
MW : “Protect the
guilty”
BB : “Exactly !”
MW : “ Talking of
protecting the guilty….Wobblesox ?”
BB : “Wobblesox.
Yea, what can I tell you about that ?”
MW : “I got somebody
send me an email saying “Do you want this Billy Bragg single I’ve got ?”
BB : “ It can
only be about one of four people and if it’s not me and it’s not Wiggy it can
only be one of the O’Lochlainns, or Jackie MacKay ?”
MW : “Well, I’ll
tell you, it was Fionn (O’Lochlainn)”
BB : “Fionn, one
of the boys…that’s great !…..Yea, Wiggy
had an audio-visual company called AV Movies under whose auspices we more or
less got the (Riff Raff) singles together and the video of the singles. The
film of the singles…oh God !"
GW : “The long
lost video”
BB : “Yea,
happily !…and those two women were some friends of Jackie O’Lochlainn, Fionn’s
Mum, who used to be married to Ruan and then they split up and she lived with
Wiggy, and when I came out of the army I worked for them and they very kindly
helped me out and employed me…and those women wanted to make a record. And we
could do that, that weren’t too hard, so we went in the studio. We played on
it, I don’t think we wrote it. They wrote it”
MW : "On the single
it gives the record company address as Acton Lane”
BB : “Yea, that
was AV Movies…downstairs was a shop but we didn’t occupy it as a shop. We just
had it as office space. I was there, I was asleep there…we’re talking about
1980-81. John Lennon was killed when I was there – my main memory of being
there….So yea, we made it (the record) with them two women and gave them a box
of singles and they went away happy"
GW : “Any more
like that ?”
BB : “ I can’t
remember – ask Wiggy. I don’t think we did any”
MW : “And what
made you dress up as Santa ?”
BB : “Why was I dressed up as Santa…I don’t fuckin’ know ! I’ve know idea, I
really can’t remember, Mark. Ask Wiggy, he might know”
MW : “And why
were the two girls dressed up as schoolgirls”
BB :”Don’t let’s
not even go there !…Oh my God !”
Grant Showbiz :
“You’ve got to stop now and start working !”
At which point
Billy had to write his set list and go on stage….thanks Billy !