The Christmas holidays are just around the corner and are you looking for gift ideas? Find her Libé’s recommendations here.
“The Clash taught me that words are nothing without commitment and action. When Phil Collins writes a song about the homeless, it’s just exploitation if it’s not accompanied by concrete actions. I try to stay true to this principle.” This excerpt from an interview given to the American weekly newspaper in 2014 Weekly entertainment Almost sums up Billy Bragg alone. A Ken Loach who would have preferred the guitar to the camera, an electric bard paired with a passionate English Labor Party activist, Dylan from Essex, who couldn’t decide between Woody Guthrie and the Sex Pistols and clung tightly to the family tree Protest songs.
Caught up in the punk tumult of 1977, Billy Bragg played through groups as they should have been back then – spontaneous and ephemeral – before finding himself alone with a guitar whose strings were still full of energy. He tinkered with an astonishing mix of punk and skiffle (rudimentary folk-blues based on makeshift instruments), begged in London and eventually recorded a first album for a label that was on the verge of bankruptcy. One evening, when radio presenter John Peel announces on the BBC that he is starving, Billy Bragg brings him vegetarian biryani rice – as a thank you, Peel plays an excerpt from his record at the wrong tempo. A mistake he corrected later in the evening and marked the beginning of unwavering support.
And an exponential success for Billy Bragg, who in 1985 saw one of his most important tracks reach the English Top 10, covered by singer Kirsty MacColl – A New Englandtwo minutes of absolute perfection, a sophisticated and tart cousin of Teenage Kicks Undertones with a clear, universal and timeless message (“I don’t want to change the world, I just want to fuck.” en substance).
Half mud, half velvet
Around ten albums followed, on which the always violently political songs were sometimes hidden behind ruthless melodies. After years of minimalist and brutal asceticism, he turned to more orchestrated music in the late ’80s, adding a touch of Elvis Costello to his Joe Strummer / Bob Dylan / Ken Loach cocktail. However, his most acclaimed album was released in 1998: Mermaid Avenue, recorded with the American group Wilco. Perfect marriage of fluidity between his socialist folk-punk full of closing factories and exhausted unemployed and his half-muddy, half-velvet country rock, all in athletic harmonies and crazy violins – the success will be such that the project will have two more phases, in 2000 and 2012.
Always active, both on the record and within the English Labor Party, today he sees the publication of this elephantine anthology: The Roaring FortyAll his studio recordings are distributed over 14 CDs, accompanied by a large format book containing the annotated photos of 40 objects that have marked this 40-year journey, from the flyer of his first concert to the handwritten texts of A New England. Unfortunately, no sign of his recipe for vegetarian biryani.
