Patriot games

As BILLY BRAGG blows out 50 candles on his latest birthday cake, TERRY STAUNTON gets out his books and sharpens his pencil for a musical history lesson

Billy Bragg is talking about the future of the music industry, and can’t conceal a wry smile about his own beginnings as a troubadour. Tucking into a fresh crabmeat sandwich in a beachfront cafe, just a few yards from his rural Dorset home, the subject of Radiohead’s pay-what-you-want internet launch of their new album days earlier triggers thoughts of how he once made the retail supremos jittery with his own attempts to subvert the norm.

“Pay No More Than £2.99” declared the cover of his 1983 debut mini-album Life’s A Riot With Spy Vs Spy, a bold instruction repeated on the first full longplayer Brewing Up With Billy Bragg (£3.99), and the self-proclaimed “difficult” third album Talking With The Taxman About Poetry (£4.49). It may not seem like a full-out assault on the barricades of big business, but the suits were outraged. Just who the hell did this shouty little upstart think he was?

“The retailers hated it, but I was just trying to give people value for money,” he says. “This has been reflected again with the whole Radiohead situation. I believe if people get access to something good that’s cheaper, they’ll buy more of it. That was what was at work with the Arctic Monkeys album, giving away the tracks beforehand on the …

by Terry Staunton
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