British singer, songwriter and musician (born 1957)
Stephen William Bragg (born 20 December 1957) is an English singer, songwriter, musician, author and political activist. His music blends elements of folk music, punk rock and protest songs, with lyrics that mostly span political or romantic themes. His activism is centred on social change and left-wing political causes.
Early life.
Bragg was born in 1957 in Barking, Essex (later part of Greater London) to Dennis Frederick Austin Bragg, an assistant sales manager to a Barking cap maker and milliner, and his wife Marie Victoria D'Urso, who was of Italian descent through her father. Bragg's father died of lung cancer in 1976, and his mother died in 2011.
Bragg was educated at Northbury Junior School and Park Modern Secondary School (now part of Barking Abbey Secondary School) in Barking. He failed his eleven-plus exam. He developed an interest in poetry at age twelve, when his English teacher chose him to read a poem he had written for a homework assignment on a local radio station. He focused on learning and practising the guitar with his next-door neighbour, Philip Wigg (Wiggy). Some of their influences were the Faces, Small Faces and the Rolling Stones. He was also exposed to folk and folk-rock music during his teenage years, citing Simon &amp; Garfunkel and Bob Dylan as early influences on his songwriting.
During the rise of punk rock and new wave in the late 1970s, Elvis Costello also served as an inspiration for Bragg. He was particularly influenced by the Jam, as well as the Clash, whom he had seen play live in London in May 1977 on their White Riot Tour, and again at a Rock Against Racism carnival in April 1978, which he admits was the first time he really stepped into the world of music as it is used for political activism. The experience of the gig and preceding march helped shape Bragg's left-wing politics, a change from his having previously "turned a blind eye" to casual racism.
Career.
Early career.
In 1977, Bragg formed the punk rock/pub rock band Riff Raff with Wiggy. The band decamped to rural Oundle in Northamptonshire in 1978 to record a series of singles (the first on independent Chiswick Records), which did not receive wide exposure. After a period of gigging in Northamptonshire and London, they returned to Barking and split in 1980. Taking a series of odd jobs including working at Guy Norris' record shop in Barking high street, Bragg became disillusioned with his stalled music career and in May 1981 joined the British Army as a recruit destined for the Queen's Royal Irish Hussars of the Royal Armoured Corps. After completing three months' basic training, he bought himself out for £175 and returned home.
Bragg peroxided his hair to mark a new phase in his life and began performing frequent concerts and busking around London, playing solo with an electric guitar under the name "Spy vs Spy" (after the strip in "Mad" magazine).
His demo tape initially got no response from the record industry, but by pretending to be a television repair man, he got into the office of Charisma Records' A&amp;R man Peter Jenner. Jenner liked the tape, but the company was near bankruptcy and had no budget to sign new artists. Bragg got an offer to record more demos for music publisher Chappell &amp; Co., so Jenner agreed to release them as a record. "Life's a Riot with Spy vs Spy" (credited to Billy Bragg) was released in July 1983 by Charisma's new imprint, Utility. Hearing DJ John Peel mention on-air that he was hungry, Bragg rushed to the BBC with a mushroom biryani, so Peel played "The Milkman of Human Kindness" from "Life's a Riot with Spy vs Spy" albeit at the wrong speed (since the 12" LP was, unconventionally, cut to play at 45rpm). Peel insisted he would have played the song even without the biryani and later played it at the correct speed.
Within months Charisma had been taken over by Virgin Records and Jenner, who had been made redundant, became Bragg's manager. Stiff Records' press officer Andy Macdonald – who was setting up his own record label, Go! Discs – received a copy of "Life's a Riot with Spy vs Spy". He made Virgin an offer and the album was re-released on Go! Discs in November 1983, at the fixed low price of £2.99. Around this time, Andy Kershaw, an early supporter at Radio Aire in Leeds, was employed by Jenner as Bragg's tour manager. (He later became a BBC DJ and TV presenter, and he and Bragg appeared in an episode of the BBC TV programme "Great Journeys" in 1989, in which they travelled the Silver Road from Potosí, Bolivia, to the Pacific coast at Arica, Chile.)
Though never released as a Bragg single, album track and live favourite "A New England", with an additional verse, became a Top 10 hit in the UK for Kirsty MacColl in January 1985. Since MacColl's early death, Bragg always sings the extra verse live in her honour.
In 1984, Bragg toured the UK supporting the Style Council. Later the same year he released "Brewing Up with Billy Bragg", a mixture of political songs (e.g. "It Says Here") and songs of unrequited love (e.g. "The Saturday Boy"). This was followed in 1985 by "Between the Wars", an EP of political songs that included a cover version of Leon Rosselson's "The World Turned Upside Down". The EP made the Top 20 of the UK Singles Chart and earned Bragg an appearance on "Top of the Pops", singing the title track. Bragg later collaborated with Rosselson on the song "Ballad of a Spycatcher".
In the same year, he embarked on his first tour of North America, with Wiggy as tour manager, supporting Echo &amp; the Bunnymen. The tour began in Washington, D.C., and ended in Los Angeles. On the same trip, in New York, Bragg unveiled his "Portastack", a self-contained, mobile PA system weighing 35 lbs (designed for £500 by engineer Kenny Jones), the wearing of which became an archetypal image of the singer at that time. With it, he was able to busk outside the New Music Seminar, a record industry conference.
Late 1980s and early 1990s.
In 1986 Bragg released "Talking with the Taxman About Poetry", which became his first Top 10 album. Its title is taken from a poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky and a translated version of the poem was printed on the record's inner sleeve. "Back to Basics" is a 1987 collection of his first three releases: "Life's a Riot with Spy vs Spy", "Brewing Up with Billy Bragg", and "Between the Wars". He enjoyed his only Number 1 hit single in May 1988, a cover of the Beatles' "She's Leaving Home", a shared A-side with Wet Wet Wet's "With a Little Help from My Friends". Both were taken from a multi-artist re-recording of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" titled "Sgt. Pepper Knew My Father" coordinated by the "NME" in aid of the charity Childline. Wet Wet Wet's cover dominated radio airplay and its video was shown over four consecutive weeks on "Top of the Pops"; on the single's first week at number one, Bragg also went on the programme to play his cover, with regular accompanist Cara Tivey on piano.
Bragg released his fourth album, "Workers Playtime", in September 1988. With this album, Bragg added a full backing band and accompaniment, including Tivey on piano, Danny Thompson on double bass and veteran Micky Waller on drums. Wiggy earned a co-production credit with Joe Boyd.
In August 1989 Bragg took lead vocal on Norman Cook's UK top 40 hit "Won't Talk About It", which sampled Bragg's song "Levi Stubbs' Tears" and was a double-A-side with "Blame It On the Bassline". The track was a bigger hit a year later with Lindy Layton replacing Bragg as lead vocal.
In May 1990 Bragg released the political mini-LP "The Internationale" on his and Jenner's own short-lived label Utility, which operated independently of Go! Discs, to which Bragg was still contracted. The songs were, in part, a return to his solo guitar style, but some featured more complicated arrangements and included a brass band. The album paid tribute to one of Bragg's influences with the song, "I Dreamed I Saw Phil Ochs Last Night", which is an adapted version of Earl Robinson's song, "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night", itself an adaptation of a poem by Alfred Hayes. Though the album only reached Number 34 in the UK Albums Chart, Bragg described it as "a reassertion of my rights as an individual... and a childish two fingers [to Go! Discs boss Andy Macdonald, who'd recently signed a distribution deal with entertainment industry giant PolyGram]".
His sixth studio album "Don't Try This at Home" was recorded in the shadow of the build-up to the Gulf War and subsequent ground war, inspiring the track "Rumours of War". Although there is social comment ("The Few", "North Sea Bubble"), it was intended as a more commercial pop album, released in September 1991. (Bragg called it "a very long-range attempt to convert the ball between the posts".). The first single was the upbeat "Sexuality", which, despite an accessible video and a dance remix on the B-side, only reached Number 27 on the UK Singles Chart. Following overtures by rival label Chrysalis, Bragg and Jenner had been persuaded by Go! Discs' Andy and Juliet Macdonald to sign a four-album deal for a million pound advance; in return he would promote the album with singles and videos. A more commercial sound and aggressive marketing had no appreciable effect on album sales, and after a grueling, 13-month world tour with a full band (the Red Stars, led by Wiggy), and a period of forced convalescence after appendicitis, Bragg left Go! Discs in summer 1992, paying back the remainder of his advance in return for all rights to his back catalogue.
Late 1990s and 2000s.
Bragg released the album "William Bloke" in 1996 after taking time off to help new partner Juliet Wills raise their son Jack. (There is a reference to him in the track "Brickbat": "Now you'll find me with the baby, in the bathroom".) After the ambitious instrumentation of "Don't Try This at Home", it was a simpler record, musically, more personal and even spiritual, lyrically (its title a pun on the name of 18th-century English poet William Blake, who is referenced in the song "Upfield").
Around that time, Nora Guthrie (daughter of American folk artist Woody Guthrie) asked Bragg to set some of her father's unrecorded lyrics to music. The result was a collaboration with the band Wilco and Natalie Merchant (with whom Bragg had worked previously). They released the album "Mermaid Avenue" in 1998, and "Mermaid Avenue Vol. II" in 2000. The first album was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Contemporary Folk Album category. A third batch, "Mermaid Avenue Vol III", and "The Complete Sessions" followed in 2012 to mark Woody Guthrie's centennial. A rift with Wilco over mixing and sequencing the first album led to Bragg recruiting his own band, The Blokes, to promote the album live. The Blokes included keyboardist Ian McLagan, who had been a member of Bragg's boyhood heroes the Faces. The documentary film "Man in the Sand" depicted the roles of Nora Guthrie, Bragg, and Wilco in the creation of the "Mermaid Avenue" albums.
A developing interest in English national identity, driven by the rise of the BNP and his own move from London to rural Dorset in 1999, informed his 2002 album "England, Half-English" (whose single, "Take Down The Union Jack" put him back on "Top of the Pops" in the Queen's Golden Jubilee year) and his 2006 book "The Progressive Patriot". The book expressed his view that English socialists can reclaim patriotism from the right wing. He draws on Victorian poet Rudyard Kipling for an inclusive sense of Englishness. In 2007 Bragg moved closer to his English folk music roots by joining the WOMAD-inspired collective The Imagined Village, who recorded an album of updated versions of traditional English songs and dances and toured through that autumn.
In December, Bragg previewed tracks from his forthcoming album "Mr. Love &amp; Justice" at a one-off evening of music and conversation to mark his 50th birthday at London's South Bank. The album was released in March 2008, the second Bragg album to be