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THIS TIME IT ’S PERSONAL

Billy Bragg is known for his hard-edge lefty politics, but the punk-folk singer-songwriter tells Karl Puschmann it’s raw emotions he’s aiming for these days.

‘Music,” Billy Bragg says, “can’t change the world.” It’s a startling admission. Aside from saints Bono, Geldof and [Chuck] D, no other musician has done more to fight for change through the weaponry of song than Bragg. A regular fixture at UK strikes, rallies and political talk shows for decades, Bragg has spent his career walking the talk of his righteously political songs.

And it is his politics and activism that he’s known for. So much so that it can overshadow the exposed vulnerability of his quite brilliant and incredibly moving songs that deal with affairs of the heart as opposed to the state.

As he declared on the very first song on his essential 1983 debut album Life’s a Riot with Spy Vs Spy, he is the milkman of human kindness after all.

Bragg’s in good spirits when he Zooms in for our interview. He looks sharp and, befitting a life lived on the road, is an engaging and entertaining storyteller. He celebrated his 65th birthday a week before Christmas. He smiles and calls it, “a shock to the system because I don’t feel 65”.

“I’m trying to look out for myself and get my arse in gear for New Zealand,” he says. “That’s the first big challenge for the year.”

He flies in next month and is essentially playing two tours. Auckland and Christchurch get his new show, which covers his entire career from Life’s a Riot through to his most recent album, 2021’s

The Million Things That Never Happened. In Wellington, however, he’s making good on the Covid-postponement of his acclaimed One Step Forward, Two Steps Back Tour.

This sees him taking up residency at The Hunter Lounge for three nights to play three different sets, each focusing on a different period of his career. Opening night is the new set. The second goes back to his days as a punk-folk poet playing songs from his first three albums Life’s a Riot, Brewing Up with Billy Bragg and Talking with the Taxman About Poetry. The final night he refers to as his “reflective” set, where he plays songs from his second three records, the break-up album Workers Playtime, his pop record Don’t Try This at Home and William Bloke, his album about parenthood.

“The shows in Wellington will be the first time I’ve done this in a long time,” he says, before admitting with a grin, “I’ve got to get my head back around it.”

Bragg has an enviable songbook, and Wellingtonians are in for a treat to see him digging into those early albums. Looking back he says it was the 50/50 split in his songs between hard-edge politics and heartfelt love songs that attracted him an audience.

“That mixture hadn’t been explored for a while. It had been done before, but what was different about me – and I know it sounds daft now – but at the time nobody had done the solo singer/songwriter thing with an electric guitar,” he says. “No-one had been able to deliver that punch without a band whilst at the same time being vulnerable alone on stage.”

Rather than feeling exposed, Bragg says he found a power in the solitude. It made for a compelling image. Just him, his convictions and what he amusingly calls the “chop and clang” of his guitar.

“If I’d come on with a band it wouldn’t have come over in the same way,” he says. “It wouldn’t have had the same emotional heft as seeing me up there on my own saying, ‘here’s my personal feelings’. I’ve felt for a long time that the currency of music is empathy. It’s about trying to make a connection with people on an emotional level. Trying to offer them a means of understanding the world as they find it.”

As an example, he cites the song

“I’ve felt for a long time that the currency of music is empathy. It’s about trying to make a connection with people on an emotional level. Trying to offer them a means of understanding the world as they find it.”

Te Uiui / The Interview

en-nz

2023-01-28T08:00:00.0000000Z

2023-01-28T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/282673281457556

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