BILLY BRAGG – Live at the Bronson Club, Ravenna – 13th May 2011
Billy Bragg is still essentially the same rebel with a cause he was when he burst onto the music scene in 1983.
The world is a very different place now but he is still as passionate and compassionate as he was as a 22 year old (particularly comforting for me as I am practically the same age; Bragg is just 4 months older).
He does, inevitably, have a few more grey hairs but is relaxed enough to joke about his age. When he returns for an encore, someone requests that he sing ‘Help Save The Youth Of America’ , He replies – “It’s easy for you, you only have to remember the title; I’m 53 – I have to remember the words, the chords and the right stance”.
He closes the show instead with a touching tribute song to his father (Tank Park Salute) and a crowd pleasing rendition of New England which, over three decades ago, was where it all began. This rendition included the nice touch of adding lines from Kirsty MacColl’s cover version – “Last night beside the telephone, I waited for someone to pull me through/And when at last it didn’t ring I knew it wasn’t you,” Watching him perform this song brought back memories of seeing him on TV for the first time when he played it on Channel 4’s ‘The Tube’.
If he was unsure about speaking English to an Italian audience, it didn’t show. Many of his songs , particularly ones with overt political messages, were prefaced by lengthy anecdotes and explanations before winding up with “and that’s what this next song’s about”.
As a result, we get the full run down of the background to The Battle of Barking where the British National Party (BNP) briefly won seats on the council of his home town before he and other young Labour activists rallied to overturn the vote in the next local election. This shows that Bragg is still as devoted to his ‘-isms’ as ever – he denounces sexism, racism and fascism and adds the word ‘cynicism’ to this list (he was pleased to report that he had now learnt how to say this is Italian)
Cynicism, or “cinismo”, he declares, is the biggest enemy of democracy and he tells us that sees his ‘job’ as a singer songwriter as being to instil in his audiences the belief they can make a difference to the world.
This campaigning tone spills over into unashamedly didactic songs like NPWA (No Power Without Accountability), Tomorrow’s Going To Be A Better Day and There Is Power In The Union, the titles of which speak for themselves. There is nothing subtle about these pronouncements but the strength lies in the fact that he delivers them with the fervour of a true believer.
I will confess a small measure of “cinismo” when it comes to these more rabble-rousing tunes. I find it hard to entirely share his view that the world can always be changed for the better through the ballot box.
During his (and my) lifetime, seriously flawed and/or fascist leaders like Thatcher, Reagan, Bush, Blair and Berlusconi have all been elected to power. Left-leaning Italians, more than any European nation, know just how much the democratic process can be manipulated to their disadvantage.
Actually, I think Bragg knows full well how fucked up political systems are. The implicit message of his song I Keep The Faith is that nothing is to the gained from clinging blindly to tired religious dogma or failed political ideologies. Instead the ‘faith’ he sings about lies in a straightforward belief that ordinary people can be the vehicles of positive change. This philosophy lies at the heart of his ‘glass-half-full’ optimism that progress will come through solid socialist principles of unity and community.
Billy Bragg fully lives up to the role as an English equivalent of Woody Guthrie. One of his acoustic guitars has the words ‘This guitar kills time’ stencilled on it, an ironic nod to Guthrie’s provocative slogan ‘This guitar kills Fascists’.
Bragg plays his versions of two songs written, but never recorded, by Guthrie – Ingrid Bergman, and Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key. In his jokey introductions to these, Bragg emphasises how they prove Guthrie was as much a “lover man” as a political activist.
This balance between the personal and the political is a stance Bragg brings to his own song writing. And there’s no question in my mind that his finest songs err more towards the personal; those that are more autobiographical or centre on domestic issues, such as in the sublime Greetings To The New Brunette in which he confessed that “sexual politics has left me all in a muddle” .
In what is arguably his greatest song , ‘Levi Stubbs Tears’, he beautifully blends an appreciation for the Four Tops singer with a tale of a failed marriage and includes great lyrics like :
“She ran away from home In her mother’s best coat
She was married before she was even entitled to vote
And her husband was one of those blokes
The sort that only laughs at his own jokes
The sort a war takes away
And when there wasn’t a war he left anyway”
This great song also contains a line which neatly sum up where Billy Bragg stands in relation to today’s global politics: “The world falls apart – some things stay in place” .
This is a video of him performing the song at Ravenna:
