Billy Bragg

We’ve got ourselves in a prime spot to watch Billy and watch the slow and careful set up of his equipment by his roadie and note the tea bags, towels, mugs and kettle which I convince my daughter are necessary in case someone has a baby.

Unfortunately minutes before the nearly fifty year old political poet walks out onto the stage thesecurity shepherd us to a position infront of the speaker stack and we can see nothing! We manage to wriggle into a position where we can see Billy’s top half as he dons a green guitar and bursts into ‘The World Turned Upside Down’ after which Billy explains this tour is ‘The Hope Not Hate Tour’ and it’s about stamping out racism and standing up for what you believe in. Standing up now!



Anyone not expecting Billy to be politically charged surely left as they were given Union cards and stickers at the door. Strange as Exeter University, the venue for tonight, have rejected the Student Union having instead a Guild for their members.

‘Levi Stubbs’ Tears’ is one of my favourite records and judging by the cheer the first three chords get, also many others’ and Billy has a sore throat but it merely makes the song sound more acute and richer. ‘Julie’ also gets a great reception. The lights change to orange and Billy swaps guitar, and explains his sore throat and jokes this is also like support act Seth Lakeman a ‘home gig’ for him, from Essex Man to Wessex Man, the usual hecklers point out he’s in Devon.

Billy points out he’s in an intellectual university, has a quick monologue about the graffiti in the toilets being better, name drops Glastonbury Festival and Morrissey and says his voice is suffering and throws in a few jokes. My daughter is at pains to point out one of the security is playing a PSP so clearly they aren’t expecting trouble. Even though some folks from Tiverton are in the crowd.

Billy talks more about ‘Hope Not Hate’ about St George’s Day when his tour started, about St George, about the flag, about the football, England had played the night before – about Peter Crouch and his ickle son Theo Walcott and recreated Crouch’s robot dancing. He has us in stitches as he explains a convoluted theory where instead of lions the England team wear 3 carrots on their shirts. It’s political and funny and his stand up is as good as his tunes.

Talking of which Billy gets around to playing another tune a re-worked version of the old folk song John Barleycorn and being half English. Before more banter about SXSW festival in Texas about hoping our American cousins can pull through and correct their political mistakes removing Bush in the process and somehow ends up discussing the PIE stall at Glastonbury struggling against a tide of Coldplay fans and ending up two days later in the kids’ field. Personally I love the fact he talks about the festival so intimately.

Billy introduces his guest for keyboard duties the Faces star ‘Sir’ Ian McLagan and they both launch into ‘A Lover Sings’ and boy can they both play their respective instruments. Billy starts to talk again using ‘Mac’ as a foil and I take the opportunity to go to the bar and see Mark Chadwick and some of the organisers of Beautiful Days are there celebrating the festival selling all its tickets!

When I return to the room Billy is playing the instrumental ‘Green Onions’ and Mac is sparkling on the keyboards playing it with real skill. They launch almost immediately into ‘The Price I Pay’ with no more than a minute’s conversation. Billy introduces ‘Debris’ and explains it was written by Faces bass player Ronnie Lane, it’s a great song made all the more poignant by the fact Ronnie died royalty free of pneumonia. What a waste!

I’m still feeling moved by the last number when Billy plays ‘From a Son to a Father’ and having lost my own father recently I’m moved to tears by the words. Fortunately once he’s done Billy picks my emotions up from the plastic glass strewn floor with tales of his new alter ego ‘Johnny Clash’ – The man in Black... and Red! Reeling off a load of possible single releases including ‘Rock the JazzBar’ before talking again about festivals in particular Tolpuddle Festival – not before he’s exhausted every Piddle joke he can fire off.


‘St. Monday’ follows managing to meander into The Faces’ ‘It’s All Too Beautiful’ with Mac playing jaw droppingly good piano now. Billy then talks to us again this time starting with David Cameron and the fact on ‘Desert Island Discs’ he’d chosen early on ‘This Charming Man’ by The Smiths and Billy had knelt through the rest praying he wouldn’t choose a Bragg number (he didn’t) before talking again about the BNP, immigration and a multi-cultural Britain and playing for us a new song ‘I Keep Faith’ before launching into a scathing attack on Nick Griffin and how Woody Guthrie was still telling Billy an important message in ‘All You Fascists (Are Bound To Lose)’ which Billy doesn’t do as well as Wilco but it is the end of his set.

Cheers call Billy back for his encore which is slow burning with a return of Johnny Clash before finally playing ‘Great Leap Forward’ but only after he’s had us in stitches by proving Peter Crouch is a giraffe. Then we are treated to another classic ‘Saturday Girl’ before he leaves again.

The second encore starts rapidly with ‘It Says Here’ before he twiddles with the words to ‘New England’ which gets the loudest response of the night. And that’s that. Billy’s made us laugh, made me cry, voiced his politics and his jokes, entertained us with top tunes and made us think. What a performer! Singing and political comedy – genius and value for money. He really is a real gem in this country’s musical heritage.

But he sparks a debate with me and the Mrs about his love of changing the words. Me, I don’t like it, I know it’s to keep them relevant but I do like my songs in the words of Led Zep to remain the same. What about you?

FUTURE GIGS