Briton Billy Bragg Brings His Provocative Songs to Belly Up

At one point in the late Abbie Hoffman’s May, 1988, performance at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach, the radical-politico-turned-stand-up-comic was issuing a blanket indictment of today’s rock scene, with which, he confessed, he had long ago lost touch. Suddenly, a woman in the audience asked if there was anyone on the current musical landscape he liked.

“Yeah, Billy Bragg,” Hoffman responded without hesitation, but to little response.

At the time, Bragg, a British socialist, guitarist-singer-songwriter, had made most of his waves on the other side of the Atlantic. Now, 2 1/2 years later, he enjoys a bit more recognition here, thanks to two great, politically charged albums: 1990’s “The Internationale” and the recent “Don’t Try This at Home.”

Bragg and his four-piece band, the Redstars, are touring the States. They will headline a bill Monday night at the Belly Up that includes the American Music Club, the Last Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprosy and political satirist Barry Cremins.

One night earlier this week, Bragg, 33, was apprised of Hoffman’s imprimatur while speaking by phone on an airliner carrying him from Chicago to Vancouver, B.C. The normally loquacious native of Barking, an area in London’s notorious East End, was momentarily speechless.

“Wow,” he said quietly before resuming speed in his thick-as-bread-pudding Cockney accent. “That means a lot. I was privileged to work with Abbie in the mid-’80s, organizing youth movements in New York and groups like ACT UP--people who are into activity rather than waiting around for the democratic process to change the world. Abbie was a real linchpin; his experience in organizing in the ‘60s and ‘70s was invaluable in creating an historical context for those of us who were only politicized by the challenges posed by Ronald Reagan in this country and Margaret Thatcher in mine.”

Bragg excused himself to politely request some orange juice from a passing flight attendant, but the interruption was brief. He was on a roll now, talking rapidly and forcefully, energized by one of the few topics that could prove an antidote to travel fatigue. His conversation was much like the lyrics to his songs; he wasted little time getting to the point, while taking care to couch his declarations in colorful imagery.

“The single event that was a catalyst for my politicization was the miners’ strike in Britain in 1984,” he said. “I was moving in that direction anyway, thanks to Thatcher, but the strike brought it all together for me.”

Indeed, before 1984, Bragg was noteworthy mostly for a brusque, post-new-wave approach to pop that earned him a respectable following in his homeland. The material on 1983’s “Life’s a Riot With Spy vs. Spy” and the follow-up, “Brewing Up With Billy Bragg,” careened wildly from tender love songs to pungent social satire, and showed Bragg to be a keen pop essayist and wordsmith.

But with 1984’s “Between the Wars,” he came out swinging from the left, and an eventual distribution deal with Elektra Records brought his songwriting craft and his politics to the Colonies. Bragg acknowledged that the term socialist carries a much more inflammatory connotation in America than it does in Europe, but he allowed that, ironically, his views caused him the most trouble in a socialist country.

“Sure, socialism is a fightin’ word in America, but, then, this is such a non-ideological political culture,” he said. “Is there really an ideological difference between the Republicans and the Democrats? I don’t think so. They offer two, stylistically different versions of the same American dream.

“In England, there are specific ideological differences between the Conservative Party and the Labour Party. When you come out of that tradition, you tend to have a more philosophically focused view of the world, and you don’t get caught up in the sort of broad-based nonsense of American politics,” he said.

“But I’ve had no problems here,” Bragg added. “I was, on the other hand, thrown out of East Germany in February of 1989. I was saying in public that they didn’t have real socialism there, and that perestroika was a wonderful thing, but that it would never work until the Berlin Wall came down. For that, I was told I’d never play again in East Germany and was hustled out on a plane the next day. But I was very happy when the wall did come down, I’ll tell ya.”

After a period in the late ‘80s during which Bragg claims to have reached a creative plateau, he took a sharper polemical turn with “The Internationale.” The title track, which was composed in the late 1800s and later adopted by the French Workers Party, was sung by Chinese students demonstrating at Tian An Men Square in 1989. Other musical bromides--including a paean to the late American protest singer Phil Ochs and an interpretation of the William Blake hymn “Jerusalem,” which Bragg believes is an early left-wing anthem--give the album an unmistakable tint.

“I see ‘The Internationale’ and ‘Don’t Try This at Home’ as the first and second steps in a personally important progression of well-thought-out albums,” Bragg said. “ ‘Internationale’ was me holding up my flag and saying, ‘This is where I’m starting from--now follow me as I move in a certain direction.’ ”

“Don’t Try This at Home” is a radical departure from its predecessor, however, in its musical and topical comprehensiveness. Bragg’s folk-rock inclinations are fleshed out with the aid of a backup band and richer production values. Mixed in with diatribes against war, neo-Nazism and bigotry (“Accident Waiting to Happen,” whose line “You’re a dedicated swallower of fascism” is a wonderful play on a well-known Kinks song of the ‘60s), are poignant love laments and evocative song-poems that show a gift for lovely melodies and chord progressions. The jarring juxtapositions are not accidental.

“I was musical before I was political,” Bragg said in explaining the latest album’s diversity. “When the politics gets a bit disenchantin’ I go back to what originally inspired me to write songs, which was, basically, girls. And that’s not such a bad place to find inspiration. You know, life isn’t all politics. There is a much broader human experience to write about, and you shouldn’t have to put all your thoughts through a political filter.

“Frankly,” he said, “there are times when politics can take a flying leap, for all I care. And there are other times when my political feelings affect my everyday life. But I feel a bit uncomfortable with people who eat, drink and sleep politics 24 hours a day. They’re missing so much. Irony, for one thing.

“To be a socialist working in a capitalist industry like the music business, you’d better be able to smirk at the occasional irony. I mean, using my American Express card to telephone you from an airplane to talk about socialism! If you can’t see the humor in that, you’ll snap from the contradiction.”

Bragg allowed that another reason he is paying as much attention to the delivery as to the message these days is to make his opinions accessible to a wide generational, racial and political spectrum, and not just to the true believers.

“As much as I love the people who are kind enough to come along to our gigs, if we’re serious about confronting the world and changing the attitudes of people who don’t agree with us, then we’ve got to move outside of the communal meetings and try to challenge stereotypes and preconceptions,” he said. “What politicized me years ago was not reading Marx, not beating people up in the streets, but simply seeing Thatcher threatening those things that we in England had taken for granted--like free education and free health care.

“It was me realizing that the good things we have must be defended so that they can be passed from one generation to another,” he said. “In America, both blue-collar and white-collar people are finally realizing they’ve gotten the shaft end of Reaganomics. And it’s up to blokes like me to help them reach those conclusions.”

Billy Bragg and the Redstars will be joined by the American Music Club, the Last Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprosy and political satirist Barry Cremins for an 8 p.m. concert Monday at the Belly Up Tavern, 143 S. Cedros Ave., Solana Beach. For more information, call 481-9022.