2023-12-09 08:10:00
A fervent English activist, the bard punk musician is the subject of a substantial anthology bringing together all of his studio recordings spread over 14 discs.
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“The Clash taught me that words were nothing without commitment and actions. When Phil Collins writes a song about the homeless, if it’s not accompanied by concrete actions, it’s just exploitation. I try to stay true to this principle.” This extract from an interview given in 2014 to the American weekly Entertainment Weekly almost sums up Billy Bragg alone. A Ken Loach who would have preferred the guitar to the camera, an electric bard coupled with an ardent activist of the English Labor Party, Dylan from Essex unable to choose between Woody Guthrie and the Sex Pistols, remaining firmly clinging to the tree of protest songs .
Caught in the punk turmoil of 1977, Billy Bragg played through groups as they should have been at the time – spontaneous and ephemeral – before finding himself alone with a guitar with strings still saturated with energy. Tinkering with an astonishing mixture of punk and skiffle (rudimentary folk-blues, based on makeshift instruments), he begged in London and ended up recording a first album for a label 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 extract from his record at the wrong speed . An error that he corrected later in the evening, marking the beginning of unwavering support.
And exponential success for Billy Bragg, who in 1985 saw one of his most emblematic titles enter the English top 10, covered by singer Kirsty MacColl – A New England, two minutes of absolute perfection, a refined and acidic cousin from the Undertones’ Teenage Kicks with a clear, universal and timeless message (“I don’t want to change the world, I just want to fuck”, in essence).
Half mud, half velvet
Around ten albums followed, where the songs, always fiercely political, sometimes hide behind relentless melodies. After years of minimalist and rabid asceticism, at the end of the 80s he made a turn towards more orchestrated music, adding a finger of Elvis Costello to his Joe Strummer / Bob Dylan / Ken Loach cocktail. However, it was in 1998 that his most widely acclaimed album, Mermaid Avenue, was released, recorded with the American group Wilco. Perfect marriage of fluidity between its socialist folk-punk full of closing factories and exhausted unemployed people and their half-mud, half-velvet country rock, all in athletic harmonies and crazy violins – the success will be such as the project will have two additional phases, in 2000 and 2012.
Always active, on record as well as within the English Labor Party, he today sees the release of this elephantine anthology, The Roaring Forty, all of his studio recordings spread over 14 discs, accompanied by a large format book bringing together the commented photos of 40 objects that have marked this 40-year journey, from the flyer of his first concert to the handwritten lyrics of A New England. No trace, alas, of his recipe for vegetarian biryani.
The Roaring Forty de Billy Bragg (Cooking Vinyl).
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