“The frustration of seeing nothing that spoke to me on Top Of The Pops in the early 80’s made me realise if I wanted to hear music that had something to say about the state of the world and real life, I’d have to make it myself. 18 months later I recorded my first LP. To mark the 40th anniversary of Life’s A Riot with Spy vs Spy, I’ve compiled a number of commemorative releases that trace the arc of my career since those fateful Thursday nights.” Billy Bragg 2023

‘The music of Britain’s foremost protest singer gets an evocative overview in this nuanced compilation’

Album Of The Week

The Guardian

‘…a musically mature, international artist who is still bursting with energy.’

Rolling Stone 

‘A British institution.’

Clash

‘One of the great human beings of Planet Earth…while the world changes by the minute, Billy’s empathy remains steadfast.’

Brooklyn Vegan

Fri Mar 15th, 2024

Billy Bragg
My father was born one hundred years ago today, in the house next door to the one where he died in in 1976. My nephew lives there now, but the place still bears witness to Dad’s skill as a handyman - the fitted wardrobes in the upstairs bedrooms; the pine columns he crafted to replace the old bannisters on the stairs; the shelves and cabinet that fill the alcoves in the backroom. In the pre-Ikea days, when people made home furnishings rather than bought them, my father would regularly visit the woodyard on Ilford Lane of a Saturday morning, often with me in tow, to help him carry back whatever timber he needed for that weekend’s project.He wasn’t a woodworker by trade - he spent most of his working life as a warehouseman - but could knock you up a bookshelf in no time. When my brother came along in the early 60s, needing to upgrade the family’s transportation, he built a new sidecar for his motorbike, one capable of fitting us all in. Shaped like an egg with the sides sliced off, it sat on a trestle in the backyard for several weeks while he worked on it, allowing me to clamber into the frame and imagine that I was in the kind of space capsule that was regularly putting America’s Mercury astronauts into Earth orbit.Serving as a driver mechanic in the 43rd Royal Tank Regiment from 1942 until 1947 had also given him considerable insights into diagnosing faults in the workings of the average family car. Neighbours would often ask him to take a look under the bonnet of their vehicle to see if a problem could be easily solved or required an expensive trip to the garage. If the former, he would often do it himself. He and I once rode to the outer reaches of the London Underground system to rescue my Uncle Stan, whose car had broken down on the North Circular somewhere near Hendon.While I inherited none of his practical skills - they all went to my brother, the bricklayer - I was gifted his thirst for knowledge. An autodidact, my father was a mine of historical information, often deployed on long car journeys. Ancient ruins, Civil War battlefields, WWII aerodromes, Dad knew all their names. Never trusting any of our second-hand family cars not to break down on the M1, he preferred the lay-bys and petrol stations along the A5, which he referred to by its Roman name of Watling Street. We traversed it often, having family in Warwickshire who farmed near the Fosse Way.Dad was much on my mind last week while flying to the US to play some shows. ‘Oppenheimer’ was one of the in-flight movies and although I’d already seen it in the cinema, it offered a good way to pass three hours above the Atlantic. I found myself reflecting on the movie’s climactic scene. The detonation of the first atomic bomb at Los Alamos in July 1945 had an almost immediate effect on my father’s life. At the time, he was in India, his regiment having left England just after VE Day to prepare for the planned amphibious invasion of the Malay Peninsular planned for early 1946. While they were in Hyderabad, waiting for their tanks to arrive from the UK, news came through that Japan had surrendered. The weapons that Oppenheimer and his team had created meant that my father would never have to storm any beaches.I have often wondered how he would have felt about me campaigning against nuclear weapons in the 1980s, knowing that they had saved him from the horrors of combat. It would have been an interesting conversation to have had.A hundred years is a long time. When my father was born, there were no trans-Atlantic flights. The first such service, by zeppelin, began in 1928 and took four days. By the time Dad died aged 52, a Jumbo jet could cross the Pond in around seven hours. Given that it took me about the same time to reach America last week, I can’t help but feel that the past half-century has failed to live up the promise of my father’s lifetime. Technological progress seems to have levelled off. Other than the obvious example of the personal computer, there isn’t much of our modern world that my father would not be familiar with. He could drive our cars, navigate the channels on our tvs, use our phones, find stations on our radios and recognise the planes and helicopters that cross our skies. None of these would challenge his perception of the world as it was during his lifetime. This is not a rant about the lack of flying cars, nor a nostalgic urge for the whizz-bang years on the mid-1900s. It’s just a reflection on how the reality of the future is so much more mundane than that conjured up in movies like ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. Back then, our eyes were fixed on the stars. Now we gaze down constantly onto our screens. Happy birthday old man.Photo: Dennis Bragg 1933 ... See MoreSee Less
View on Facebook

Mon Mar 11th, 2024

Billy Bragg
Sorry to hear of the passing of Vince Power, who made the Mean Fiddler in Harlesden one of the best small venues in London during the 1980s. I played there numerous times and had two of my memorable gigs on that stage. The first was the night of the 1987 general election, when the Red Wedge crew gathered there in hope of celebrating a Labour win. It was not to be and I walked the five miles back to my flat in Acton feeling heartbroken in the bright June dawn.Ten years later, I was there on the night of the 1997 election and, with a live tv screen behind me as I played, listened to the crowd cheer as places like Basildon fell to Labour. It was an unforgettable night and it said something about Vince’s commitment to more than just music that he hosted both gigs.The Saturday bill he put on at his first Reading Festival in 1989 was made up of bands that you might see any night of the week at the Fiddler. Vince loved music and gave encouragement and spots at his venues to many of us. RIP. ... See MoreSee Less
View on Facebook

Upcoming Shows

Featured Album

Bridges Not Walls

Subscribe

Sign up for new releases to your inbox every week
Thank You For Subscribing! You have been added to our mailing list.
© Billy Bragg 2021 - 2023