This is the latest installment of the Billy Bragg podcasts from the official Billy Bragg website.Episode 10: Victim of Geography
In 1989 a crafty comment during a political song festival about rabbits running free gets Billy chucked out of East Berlin and a warning he would never play East Germany again. He didn’t - because within a year the Berlin Wall had come down.
In this episode, Billy, with some more nudge-nudge-wink-wink from Wiggy, recalls a year in which he never seemed to stop touring, winding up in Bolivia with Andy Kershaw making a programme for the BBC.
Episode 9: Where's My Playtex?
It’s 1988. Billy, Wiggy, and the Red Stars tour extensively, and work with Natalie Merchant in the States. Billy and Cara Tivey record She’s Leaving Home for charity, but after the record goes to number one in the UK (with the help of a double A-side from pop act Wet Wet Wet), a hastily-arranged Top of the Pops television performance goes awry thanks to a ladder and special BBC ‘heavy’ dry ice.
Episode 8: Waiting For The Great Leap Forwards
Billy and Wiggy recall the making of Workers Playtime in 1988, and how producer Joe Boyd, some veteran Sixties session musicians, and the wonderful Cara Tivey helped them create a classic album.
Episode 7: The Internationale
The Berlin Wall comes down as Billy tours the States with Wiggy and the rest of the Red Stars. Relieved at the bloodless overthrow of a repressive police state, but dismayed by the West’s crowing, Billy decides he should examine more closely some of the Communist and socialist ideals that had been expressed in song. And so The Internationale mini-album came into being - which included The Red Flag and Blake’s Jerusalem among other uplifting songs.
He also describes the background to the DVD ‘Here and There’ that accompanies the re-issued Internationale and Billy Bragg Volume 1 boxed set.
Johnny Marr and John Porter help Billy find a slicker style of production in the studio as he writes and records the material for Talking With The Taxman About Poetry. The peerless Kirsty MacColl, who had already scored a hit with a pop version of A New England, contributes backing vocals. And a song called Levi Stubbs’ Tears establishes Billy’s versatility as a songwriter.
Episode 5: Brewing Up with Political Pop
Billy and Wiggy return from America to discover not glamour, but the grim battle of the Miners’ Strike, and Billy is forced to think about his political ideals and articulate them in his writing and performing.
Episode 4: Brewing Up With the Burns
It is 1984 and something approaching Bragg Mania exists in the UK as Billy tops the indie charts. He’s rubbing shoulders with his heroes The Smiths as well as The Redskins, and he’s had his face on the front of the NME newspaper - so where does he go from here? Tours America with Wiggy, and acquires a certain guitar named Burns, that’s what he does…
Episode 3: PJ to the top of the indie charts
In which Billy describes how he came to record his first (mini) album of songs he had honed in live performances, and how he found out about a certain music manager by the name of Pete Jenner - formerly svengali of Pink Floyd, T-Rex, Ian Dury and the Blockheads, and the Clash.
Marvel as Billy describes his ingenious means of getting his demo in front of PJ - by pretending to be a TV engineer - and the famous curry incident that got his first record played by legendary Radio 1 DJ John Peel.
Wiggy tops and tails this episode, and prods Billy from time to time as the tale unfolds…Episode 2: Oliver's Army to the Tunnel
Riff Raff is dead. So what do you do when your punk dream dies with it? Join the Army, of course, if you’re Billy Bragg. And then leave it sharpish.
Billy continues his series of podcasts on his career with a description of how he tried to develop his song-writing skills and forge a distinctive solo style, and plays a few of those early songs. Aided and abetted, as usual, by Wiggy.Episode 1: Pre-history to the end of Riff Raff
The first episode of Billy Bragg’s new series of podcasts in which he discusses his career with Wiggy - childhood friend, guitar teacher, and musical collaborator in Riff Raff and the Red Stars.
Billy Bragg Volume 1, a boxed set of Billy’s first four studio albums plus bonus material - 7 CDs and two DVDs in all - was released in March 2006 by Yep Roc Records in the USA and Cooking Vinyl in the UK. It is available in the Billy Bragg Shop here
Riff Raff - The Singles 1977-1980, a 13-track CD compilation of Billy and Wiggy’s first band, including the songs played in this podcast, is available exclusively from the Billy Bragg Shop here
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