Steve Albini Engineered the Indie Rock Revolution / by Christopher J. Lee

_{^{Steve Albini (1962–2024) in London on November 30, 2004. (Marc Broussely / Redferns)}}

Indie rock legend Steve Albini, who died on Tuesday, knew his industry as a musician, critic, and recording engineer. His rebellion against corporate labels was rooted in a deeply held philosophy: that every musician is a worker

_{Reposted from Jacobin}

Steve Albini kept things honest. “Whenever I talk to a band who are about to sign with a major label, I always end up thinking of them in a particular context,” begins his seminal 1993 essay, “The Problem with Music.” “I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying shit.” Albini went on to describe how this trench is the gauntlet that new bands must endure, in competition with one another, to gain a recording contract that is held by a music industry exec at the other end. Providing a litany of insider detail, including a sample budget and balance sheet that underscore the corporate exploitation involved, Albini concludes, “Some of your friends are probably already this fucked.”

Albini, who died last week from a heart attack at age sixty-one, knew the music business from all sides — as a musician, as a sometime music critic, briefly as a label manager, and, above all, as a highly regarded recording engineer. He worked on numerous canonical albums that defined an entire era of music, including releases by the Pixies, Slint, PJ Harvey, the Jesus Lizard, the Breeders, and, most famously, Nirvana. Equally important, he led several influential bands, namely Big Black and Shellac. In short, Albini experienced firsthand the recording industry’s opportunities and its systemic inequalities. He engaged its entire edifice, from playing music to recording music to writing and pontificating about music. Few can claim the same credentials. They fundamentally informed his artist-centered approach.

A Certain Kind of Labor

The man never seemed to lack ambition. Inspired by the Ramones, Albini started out as a musician during high school in the unlikely surroundings of Missoula, Montana, which, as a college town, nonetheless provided an important crucible of record stores. He first learned the bass because it had fewer strings, and he thought it would be easier. When college beckoned, Albini headed to Chicago and Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, where he founded Big Black at the age of nineteen. Their first EP, Lungs (1992), had Albini playing all the instruments apart from a drum machine, sardonically listed as “Roland” (after its corporate manufacturer) in the credits.

Listening to it today, Lungs is a characteristically prickly and uncompromising affair, establishing an enduring ethos that Albini would abide by for the rest of his life. Big Black would go on to release two LPs, Atomizer (1986) and the less delicately titled Songs About Fucking (1987). As if that wasn’t offensive enough, Albini went on to front the short-lived project Rapeman, reportedly named after a Japanese manga superhero who committed said act. Albini’s youthful abrasiveness could cross the line into graceless belligerence. In early publicity photos for Big Black, the skinny, bespectacled Albini looks both awkward and unamused, even scary, like he might rip your head off if you approached him the wrong way.

Working behind the boards provided a pathway to maturity without sacrificing his principles in the process. Albini notoriously hated the term “producer,” preferring the term “audio engineer.” His own father was, in fact, an aerospace engineer who studied at Caltech. Yet, as explained in “The Problem with Music,” Albini found many self-declared producers to know next to nothing about the actual techniques and equipment involved in recording music. (Though unnamed, someone like Rick Rubin comes to mind.) In Albini’s view, being an engineer meant knowing the capabilities of different microphones, how to operate a mastering deck, how to tune instruments, managing gain and distortion, and dealing with other technical matters. A particular expertise was needed. A certain kind of labor was demanded.

That said, the recording process Albini advocated was fast — typically less than a week — and minimalist. He had little patience for studio tricks and exhaustive multiple takes, which informed his open hatred of bands like Steely Dan. Albini was the precise opposite of producer auteurs like Brian Eno or Nigel Godrich, whose production and remixing on albums by U2 and Radiohead deeply shaped their sound. In contrast, Albini favored a less intrusive approach. Band members would perform in the same room with careful mic placements proximate to the instruments and amplifiers determining the sound. Excellent musicianship was required under these unadorned conditions. On occasion, he would even leave his name off an LP’s credits or provide a pseudonym.

What exactly was so special about this method? An authenticity and truth emerged in the music. Small human mistakes could be evident. Furthermore, there is frequently a spatial quality to the albums he worked on: the room the band is playing in could be audible. A good example is the intro to “Bone Machine,” the first track on the Pixies’ Surfer Rosa (1988), in which David Lovering’s drum kit is foregrounded, clearing space for the instruments that follow. When Black Francis, the lead vocalist, eventually enters, it sounds like he is shouting from the back of the room. This informal reorganization of how instruments and vocals are typically placed imparted an effect of tangible realism, as if you were in the same room listening to the band live.

In this way, Albini’s technique shared a stronger affinity with the field recordings of Alan Lomax than with, say, Phil Spector’s calculated wall-of-sound approach. It worked extremely well with musicians who wanted a stripped-down, unvarnished sound. PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me (1993) and Will Oldham’s Viva Last Blues (1995, recorded under his early moniker Palace Music) exemplify the possibilities of this aesthetic, being bracingly harsh, spooky, and vulnerable all at once. Albini managed to transfigure the rawness of punk into a recording style and listening experience. His unembellished method dissolved the boundaries between artists and audience, allowing for a surreptitious element of shared humanism to enter.

A Different Philosophy

This approach also brought numerous bands to Albini’s studio door, seeking his imprimatur. His letter to Nirvana has circulated widely the past several days. It reads like a pithy ransom note infused with the rancor of a manifesto. What is important to remember is that, given their precipitous fame, Nirvana approached him to record their successor to Nevermind (1991). Furthermore, he provided them with his terms, not the opposite. Immediately recognizing the tacit hierarchy involved, Albini quickly turned the tables from the start, not out of antipathy toward the band — he has since fondly recalled his time working with Kurt Cobain, Dave Grohl, and Krist Novoselic — but out of his principled stance against corporate music labels and their extractivist schemes. As regularly noted, he took no percentage of the royalties from In Utero (1993). Albini referred to himself as simply a “plumber” who had a job to perform. (The man, bless him, never abandoned his scatological worldview.)

However, beneath this self-characterization resided a deeper philosophy about how the world worked and how it should work. Albini never spelled out his attitudes and views in any systematic fashion, but there are countless instances when he expressed his anti-corporatism, citing the brutality that capitalism could mete out to the individual artist. Taken further, he saw himself as a worker — the first song on Lungs, unsurprisingly in retrospect, is titled “Steelworker” — and he saw musicians as fellow workers. As such, they should not be alienated from the fruits of their labor. His rejection of percentages was integral to his aggressively ethical stance against this kind of corporate theft that happened day in and day out in the music industry, destroying artistic careers before they even started, in addition to bankrolling passé musicians and antiquated bands who had long outlasted any sort of vitality that could make meaningful artistic contributions.

Steve Albini held people, including himself, to a high standard. He placed a premium on vocational excellence, whether that vocation be performing music or operating a mixing console. The hundreds of albums he worked on amount to an intergenerational archive that will remain a lasting source of artistic and intellectual inspiration. His generosity of spirit crossed over into other areas as well, including working for anti-poverty initiatives in the Chicago area, which he wrote movingly and seriously about.

It’s easy to be overblown in a moment like this, but it feels like the end of an era. Steve Albini was an irreplaceable part of the very firmament of punk rock, indie rock, alternative music, whatever you might want to call it. As a staunch arbiter of taste and an opinionated voice for musicians, it seemed like he would be around forever, ready to lay into an elitist platform or lend a hand to an up-and-coming band. And now, forever, he is gone.

_{Christopher J. Lee currently teaches in the Bard Prison Initiative. He is lead editor of the journal Safundi.}

Rehearsals for Maine Resistance Revival Chorus begin May 7 / by RJ

_{^{Photo credit: RJ}}

_{Reposted from the Republican Journal}

BELFAST — The Maine Resistance Revival Chorus will begin meeting weekly at 37 Miller St. Tuesdays at 6 p.m. starting May 7. This is a new singing group with the idea of supporting progressive causes in times of information overload.

“Music is a form of activism that has a long tradition in American life,” said Joe Niemczura, leader of the group. “Singing together creates a feeling of togetherness and hopefulness, which we all need these days. If you are listening to the constant stream of bad news, you need to re-center your life and realize that singing is a way to maintain balance during this upcoming election season.”

Niemczura said, “Particularly with the Dobbs decision, many women feel under threat as to their bodily autonomy. The US of A has never previously taken away civil rights from such a large group of citizens. We need to stand with those who are being marginalized. Women’s rights are human rights.”

Participants do not need prior singing experience to join, and the lyrics and music will be available at the rehearsals. The songs have been chosen on the basis of catchy lyrics and melodies. Most of these are gospel-inspired tunes from the civil rights era of the 1950s and 1960s, or the union movement.

Call (808) 352-1714 for more information, find the group on Facebook or email joeniemczura@gmail.com

_{Republican Journal}

An American Communist classical playlist: The Composers’ Collective on Spotify / by Taylor Dorrell

_{^{C.J. Atkins / People’s World}}

_{Reposted from the People’s World}

When reading through Aaron J. Leonard’s book, The Folk Singers and the Bureau, I was delighted to discover the single mention of a curious 1930s musical outfit: the Composers’ Collective of New York.

The collective consisted of a group of left-wing composers in the U.S. who, to varying degrees, wished to use their music to help the working class. “Members” of the collective, a term used loosely here, seeing as membership was not necessarily official, included famous and less-famous composers like Aaron Copland, Hans Eisler (who co-wrote Composing for the Films with Theodor Adorno), Earl Robinson, Elie Siegmeister, and Marc Blitzstein.

Grappling with what it meant to create “proletarian music” in the age of conflicting modernist and popular trends, they also debated how directly composers should be involved with politics.

Members of the collective produced a wide range of works, some reflecting the experimental modernist trends of the time, others blending jazz and folk, and a portion scoring popular plays and films.

**_{^{Marc Blitzstein in 1938. | Public Domain}}**

Their politics spanned from a more liberal-minded Aaron Copland, who, according to his HUAC testimony, didn’t consider himself to be a “political thinker,” to Earl Robinson and Marc Blitzstein, who were both card-carrying members of the Communist Party and referenced Communist classics in their works.

(Blitzstein translated the music for Brecht’s plays and contributed songs to the Lillian Hellman play Toys in the Attic while Robinson co-wrote “The House I Live in,” made famous by the Albert Maltz short film starring Frank Sinatra, and wrote “Ballad for Americans,” first performed by Paul Robeson.)

The collective itself was latter denounced as a “Communist Party front,” a label that is equally true and false—true in the sense that Communist Party members were spearheading it to a certain degree and untrue in the sense that a “front” implies a shallow opportunistic origin as opposed to a real desire for individuals to get together collectively and hash out issues they face (which those involved undoubtedly possessed).

I’ve compiled here a small Spotify playlist of some of my favorite songs from “members” of the curious Composers’ Collective—it’s telling that only a small collection even exists from each composer on Spotify. I hope artists will find some inspiration in their diverse attempts at taking on the political issues of their time.

COMPOSERS’ COLLECTIVE SPOTIFY PLAYLIST

_{We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!}

_{Taylor Dorrell is a freelance writer and photographer, contributing writer at the Cleveland Review of Books, reporter at the Columbus Free Press, columnist at Matter News, and organizer in the Freelance Solidarity Project union. Dorrell is based in Columbus, Ohio.}

Billy Bragg: “On the Class War, I Knew Where I Stood” / An Interview With Billy Bragg

_{^{Billy Bragg performs during the All Together Now Festival 2023 in Waterford, Ireland. (Debbie Hickey / Getty Images)}}

_{For four decades, Billy Bragg’s music has been a soundtrack to the British workers’ movement, enriching its long tradition of political songwriting. In an interview with Jacobin, he explains why his songs about socialism are also love songs.}

_{Reposted from Jacobin}

Billy Bragg needs little introduction. Active since the late 1970s, his profile as a singer-songwriter and committed activist came into view the following decade, particularly during the miners’ strike of 1984–85, when his songs and performances directly attacked Thatcherism and its policies toward Britain’s working class. In 1985, Bragg was among the founders of Red Wedge, a musicians’ collective that supported the Labour Party. Called a “one-man Clash,” he has built a repertoire including originals like “A New England” (1983) and “There Is Power in a Union” (1986) as well as updated versions of the labor song “Which Side Are You On?” (1931) and the communist anthem “The Internationale” (1887), with Bragg writing new lyrics for each.

Late last year, Bragg released The Roaring Forty: 1983–2023, a comprehensive career retrospective consisting of fourteen CDs and over three hundred songs, including live material, B-sides, and other archival material. In this interview with Christopher J. Lee, he discusses the background to this release, his career as an activist since the 1980s, and the role of the singer-songwriter as a witness. Their far-ranging conversation touches on the war in Palestine, the connections between love songs and political songs, and why his own love for socialism remains unrequited.

CHRISTOPHER J. LEE

This box set revisits your catalog, an enormous body of work. My immediate question is, what prompted you to put this all together and release it now?

BILLY BRAGG

Well, I wasn’t sure we’d all be around for the fiftieth [laughs]. So the fortieth seemed a good time to do it. The last time I did something like this was the twenty-fifth anniversary. A lot of stuff’s gone down since then: Mermaid Avenue, four or five additional albums, loads of between album projects. So it was about time I did another gather-together. Who knows what formats will be around in ten years’ time? Maybe we’ll all have it plugged into our ears with some kind of chip or something. So I thought I might as well do something “old school,” I suppose. That’d be a good word, wouldn’t it? A box set, a fourteen-CD box set, our “old school.”

CHRISTOPHER J. LEE

I’ve been listening to it and, to be quite honest, I haven’t finished. There are just hours of material. Yet several qualities have struck me. One is the consistency. You really nailed a certain style at the start: this tight connection between your guitar playing, your voice, and your lyrics. As your career progressed, other elements were added, but listening to these albums and songs chronologically, I find that fundamental essence is persistent throughout. There’s a purity, even a stoicism. Is there a certain paradigm of the singer-songwriter that you’ve aspired to?

BILLY BRAGG

I get where you’re coming from. I wouldn’t say it’s a paradigm, but it is an attempt to make sense of the world with what I’ve got. There were times when I did that in a more ideological way, especially during the 1980s. But underlying it, there’s a commitment to empathy. I’ll link that to a song from my last album, The Million Things That Never Happened (2021). There’s a track on there, which I think is the key track on the album, “I Will Be Your Shield.” And it’s just me and a piano, just singing. It’s exactly the same as the very first track on side one of my first album [Life’s a Riot with Spy vs Spy (1983)], “The Milkman of Human Kindness.” You know I’ll be there. I’m the milkman of human kindness. I will be your shield.

So that’s kind of me. Trying to find different ways to articulate that sensibility. I’ve long believed that as musicians, the currency of what we do is empathy. We’re trying to get people to feel something. Whether it’s a love song or a political song, giving them the opportunity to draw some empathy from the song by chiming in with their experience so that they can feel they’re not alone.

_{Whether you’re writing a love song or a political song, they’re still about compassion.}

You can get that same feeling from dance music. Go to a club, and there’s a song that makes you just freak out. And they put it on, and everybody freaks out, and you think, “Wow, yeah, I’m not alone!” You know? You can’t get that feeling online.

That experience has always been key to what I do. If you’re looking for a thread, that’s it. Whether you’re writing a love song or a political song, they’re still about compassion. They’re still about my politics. They’re about empathy. It’s the same sensibility that’s just brought to bear on different subjects. It comes out in different ways.

CHRISTOPHER J. LEE

You’ve long been active in working-class politics in Britain, particularly during the 1980s, as a vocal critic of Thatcherism. Your body of work offers a political education and falls into a very strong tradition of political songwriting.

BILLY BRAGG

Even more so during the 1980s, because in the pre-internet age, I was literally bringing information from one place to another. When I came to the United States in 1984, I was singing “Which Side Are You On?” But why am I singing this American labor song? Because we were having this situation in the UK [the miners’ strike of 1984–85].

After shows, people would talk to me about stuff that was happening with labor politics in their town or their city or their industry. I would then take that information back to the UK. It’s what Woody Guthrie did, really. It’s absolutely a key part of that role.

Obviously, that’s been superseded now by the internet, where you can find out anything going on anywhere. But you still have an opportunity to draw people’s attention to things that aren’t on their event horizon. And I think that’s an important part of the role we have as communicators and as songwriters.

CHRISTOPHER J. LEE

I’ve read that you were initially inspired by the Clash. You came of age as a musician during the 1980s during the post-punk period. Yet you also reference earlier traditions like Guthrie’s, as just mentioned.

BILLY BRAGG

In 1984, the most common analogy that journalists in the UK used to define me was a “one-man Clash.” When I came to America, they started making references to Woody. They saw a different tradition in what I was doing. Not just a singer-songwriter, not James Taylor, not Bob Dylan, but Woody.

I knew Woody. I didn’t know a huge amount about him, but I knew who he was. I knew his songs because I listened to a lot of American singer-songwriters from the 1960s and 1970s. And if you listen to those albums, you learn these songs through osmosis. They all did different versions, Ry Cooder and Arlo Guthrie and those guys. But I hadn’t made the Woody connection. That was something that people wrote about and caused me to double back and check out and also discover new songwriters.

For instance, I’d never heard of Joe Hill before I came to the US, and because I was singing union songs, talking about the coal miners’ strike, people started talking to me, “You know, have you heard of Joe Hill?” And through artists like Utah Phillips and others, I was able to discover a tradition that had influenced the UK. Florence Reece’s song “Which Side Are You On?” had crossed the Atlantic, but it wasn’t my own tradition.

So that was very interesting. But, you know, you’re right. I was also referencing punk because music had moved into a post-punk thing, had gone the opposite way, where style had returned to dominate content, and I was content over style. But that ability to zig while everybody else was zagging gave me some space to make a name for myself.

It was the same in the US. A guy standing there with an electric guitar, singing in his own accent about unions. What? Nobody was doing that. When I came out and played with Echo and the Bunnymen, people were either utterly appalled or totally blown away. There was no kind of, “Oh, it’s just a guy with a guitar.” It was like, “What the fucking hell is that?”

I wasn’t even billed. But those crazy American kids who were at college radio stations and who read the English music papers — they knew, and they took me to heart. They were the people who really made my career in the US.

CHRISTOPHER J. LEE

Were there other bands of the time that you identified with?

BILLY BRAGG

I think the key for me was lyrics. There were bands that were writing lyrics that you wanted to know. R.E.M, the Smiths, and the Pogues. I was part of that. I wrote words and my words said something. I think the path, for someone like me writing lyrics and talking about the world, was a path cut by the Smiths, by R.E.M, by the bands that were trying to make sense of the world and not escape from it. The Pogues and R.E.M. were trying to engage with the world, and that’s what I was doing too. So I was very fortunate to be around at that time when the focus came back to lyrics and activism.

CHRISTOPHER J. LEE

Were particular authors or political thinkers also sources for you?

BILLY BRAGG

Of all the political writers, George Orwell is probably most influential. I never was one for the theory of politics. I was much more for the doing and the observing of politics, trying to make sense of it without the dialectic, without all the abstract language of Marxism. I was more influenced by those people who were trying to make sense of the world for themselves by writing, like Howard Zinn. I read a lot of Zinn, learned a lot about the United States from reading his books — A People’s History of the United States, stuff like that.

CHRISTOPHER J. LEE

Returning to the 1980s and the “doing” of politics, Thatcherism was awful, but it also galvanized an amazing range of intellectuals who responded to it. I am thinking of figures like Stuart Hall and Tariq Ali. Terrible political moments can also be very generative, culturally and intellectually. Is that something you think about in relation to your own work?

_{When the miners’ strike happened, it was my class that Margaret Thatcher was attacking. This was going to be a year of class war, and I knew where I stood on that.}

BILLY BRAGG

I try not to think it’s tied to that. You don’t have to have your heart broken to write good love songs. If you have some imagination, you should be able to come up with those things. But certainly, in terms of making people aware of a situation, when someone provocative like Trump or Thatcher comes along, that can make a difference.

That’s how I was politicized. Thatcher picking on the working class and people like myself. Things that she said affected my life — so when the miners’ strike happened, it was my class that she was attacking. This was going to be a year of class war, and I knew where I stood on that. So it was a no-brainer for me to support them. It does focus people’s solidarity and activism.

But I do worry that we sometimes get nostalgic for Thatcher and the miners’ strike. I’m not really interested in that. I had to stop playing “Between the Wars” for a while because I worried people were getting a bit nostalgic with it. I’d much rather present a new song that’s looking at where we are now rather than looking back.

Paradoxically, a song which I wrote back then, “There is Power in a Union,” is now a key one in my set because there are people in my audience who weren’t born when I wrote it, who in the last eighteen months have been on a picket line. They are teachers, nurses, college lecturers; they’re working on the railways. When I come to America, they’re in the UAW. They’ve been working at Starbucks. At Amazon, they’ve been fighting for a union.

So they may have sung that song on a picket line — I don’t know. But they come to the show because they realize that sensibility is going to be expressed, and they use it to recharge their activism.

That’s what I’m all about. I certainly recharge my bloody activism every night when I go out there and sing those songs, and everyone cheers. You know, it fires me up. I think my job is to fire them up as well and send them away with their activism recharged.

CHRISTOPHER J. LEE

Building on that, I am curious if you could speak about the songwriter as witness. We often talk about the poet as witness or the journalist as witness, the idea that there are certain occupational roles that are essentially about witnessing history, being the person who witnesses something vital in order to communicate that to the rest of the world. It seems like you’re also very much in that role. I don’t think many songwriters frame themselves that way, but I feel like you do. Not to impose that on you.

BILLY BRAGG

You’re not imposing anything. You’re absolutely right. But what you need to do in that role is to ensure that you’re talking about things that aren’t being covered in the mainstream. So you write about an issue that’s in the mainstream but from a perspective that’s not reflected to try and send people away thinking about the issue rather than just having their opinions justified. That’s what I try to do.

In some moments in the set, in a song like “There Is Power in a Union,” I am singing to people who broadly agree with me. I wouldn’t say I’m singing to the choir. What I’m trying to do is fire people up, to recharge their activism and kick their cynicism to the curb. But I also have to talk about some issues that are going to challenge them. I try to make sure I have some things in there that send them away questioning the box they think I fit into.

Around 2000, I started writing about identity, about Englishness and the need to generate a progressive sense of belonging. Now the issue that I talk about that creates the most sparks is the rights of the trans community. But I need to do that because I think you’ve got to make sure that you’re not just providing a nostalgia show. You want your audience to maintain their relevance, and you need to maintain your own relevance too. You have to up your game.

In that sense, I am witnessing things, but I’m trying to bear witness to things that they don’t necessarily want to witness, if you see what I mean. You know, we all see the same stars in the sky, but it’s how you join those dots together in an interesting way that gives people a different perspective. And that’s your job, that’s the justification for creating any art, isn’t it?

CHRISTOPHER J. LEE

Right now the world is gripped by what’s going on with Gaza. Rather than just telling me your take, I’m interested in how you as a songwriter approach pressing situations like this, as somebody who’s trying to articulate complexity and bring out elements that are overlooked by the mainstream.

BILLY BRAGG

What I’m looking for is truth. It’s absolutely true that what Hamas did on October 7 is unacceptable, unspeakable. To kill innocent people, to take people hostage is an unspeakable atrocity. It’s also true that what Israel is doing by bombarding one of the most densely populated areas on earth and killing innocent civilians, many of them children, is equally unacceptable. We all know that. Most sensible people accept that.

So what have I got to offer? That’s a different perspective. I would say this: I think there’s a fundamental truth that the situation in the Middle East cannot be resolved without involving the Palestinians in the process of creating peace. Unfortunately, Israel and the other Arab nations that signed the Abraham Accords were seeking to resolve the issue without taking the Palestinians into account. What seemed to be the imminent addition of Saudi Arabia to the Abraham Accords, further normalizing relationships with Israel, suggested even more that the Arab nations were going to accept this without dealing with the Palestinian issue.

In no way am I condoning this, but Hamas have now made that impossible. They have said, “No, you cannot do this without resolving the Palestinian issue.” Even if Israel flattens Gaza, they will still have to deal with the Palestinian issue, the Palestinian people. To imagine that it could be done without the Palestinians has brought about a terrible, terrible calamity on Israel.

The two main truths I’ve got, which everyone’s got, are the terribleness of October 7 and the awfulness of the bombardment of Gaza.

CHRISTOPHER J. LEE

As a singer-songwriter, you aren’t necessarily obligated to speak about everything in the world. But are there situations that you as an artist wanted to engage with but perhaps found difficult to address?

BILLY BRAGG

During the 1980s, I tried very hard to write a song about the Troubles in Northern Ireland. And I just couldn’t do it. I tried a number of different perspectives. I played the songs to people, and they were like, “Oh, Bill, that’s a bit, you know, it’s just a bit off.” It was only after peace was declared, after the Good Friday Agreement, that I was able to write a song about how normal Belfast looked without soldiers.

So there are issues like that, maybe because I was too close to it, because I was aware of too many dimensions that I was unable to get to grips with. So it’s not just, “I’ll write something about this today.” It’s really about, “Do I have something to say here?”

CHRISTOPHER J. LEE

It seems this is perhaps where indirection is useful — that is, going to somebody like Woody Guthrie who is dealing with a separate time and place but nonetheless promoting an ethics of solidarity and an ethics of speaking.

BILLY BRAGG

Not just solidarity. Woody made a point of saying he would never write a song that put people down. I learned a lot from working with the Mermaid Avenue archive about not allowing my cynicism to overcome me, to keep it at arm’s length, to do everything I can to kick its ass. You know, you never escape it. It’s always there. You don’t have to switch the TV on, read the newspaper, but you have to keep it under control.

If you’re going to write songs that have compassion and empathy, you have to keep control, you know? I even wrote a song about someone who voted for Brexit called “Full English Brexit.” The first three verses are literally things I heard Brexit voters say on the telly. I tried to put them in context because the argument of the song was that, for all these things that Brexiteers had said about foreigners, the vote was actually about us, about who we are. It’s not about who they are.

My audience wasn’t too pleased with me articulating those sentiments, but, again, if you have a reputation for writing topical songs, you can’t just pander to people’s expectations. You’ve got to be challenging them as well.

CHRISTOPHER J. LEE

Before we finish, across your work, you go back and forth between political songs and also songs about human relationships and love, about mutual care. Could you discuss this connection?

BILLY BRAGG

I’ve already partly answered that question by talking about empathy, but when you write political songs, they’re often quite strident. You need something to balance that out. I toured with bands during the miners’ strike that only played political songs that were just bang-bang, bang-bang, and it bored the shit out of me. And I liked politics. I used to say to them, “Lighten up, you love soul music, play a song, play a Smokey Robinson song for fuck’s sake.”

The attractive thing about Billy Bragg, I think for some people, was both my politics as well as my love songs and a willingness to show that vulnerability, a willingness to show that I had doubts about both. I wasn’t trying to put myself up there as someone who had all the answers and who was going to come and sweep you off your feet and everything.

I am actually more like the person in “A New England”: “I don’t want to change the world / I’m just looking for another girl.” I’ve been involved in the ideological battle. But, you know, now I just need a cuddle. I just need someone to hug. Never trust anyone who doesn’t have any doubts.

You know, I have an unrequited love for socialism. That’s one concluding way of answering your question. It fits right in with who I am, right?

_{Billy Bragg is a singer-songwriter and political activist.}

_{Christopher J. Lee currently teaches in the Bard Prison Initiative. He is lead editor of the journal Safundi.}

The Story Behind “Solidarity Forever” / by Taylor C. Noakes

_{^{Joseph J. Ettor, who had been arrested in 1912, giving a speech to barbers on strike. Wikimedia Commons}}

_{The iconic labor song “Solidarity Forever” turns 109 years old today. Written in defiance of early 20th-century oppression, it railed against the forces that “would lash us into serfdom” with the abiding counsel that the “union makes us strong.”}

_{Reposted from Jacobin}

In an era where actual labor songs — of the sort popularized by Pete Seeger in the 1940s — are in short supply, Rage Against the Machine has become the quintessential representative of “protest music.” This is despite the fact that “Sleep Now in the Fire” is now over twenty years old. One could make the case that we are long overdue for more overtly pro-union, pro-worker anthems.

In a tragic instance of “the more things change, the more they stay the same,” we likely couldn’t find a more serviceable tune than one of the mainstays of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) trade union songbook. “Solidarity Forever” still resonates, even at 109 years old.

The song’s lyrics, referencing the “untold millions” who “stand outcast and starving,” might lead one to assume that the song was composed at the height of the Great Depression. But the fact that it was composed about fifteen years before the stock market crash of 1929 highlights that the oppression and hardship experienced by the American worker transcended the confines of the worst general economic crisis the nation faced in the twentieth century.

The song’s enduring relevance, mirroring the hardships and oppression experienced by millions of Americans today, underscores both its timelessness and universal message. Unfortunately, it also reminds us that many of the battles fought over a century ago have yet to be won.

Ralph Chaplin crafted the lyrics over the course of several years in the mid-1910s, finalizing them on January 15, 1915. Chaplin set the lyrics to the melody of “John Brown’s Body,” a popular Union marching song from the Civil War. Notably, Chaplin completed the song just six months before the execution of fellow IWW songwriter Joe Hill, credited with coining the term “pie in the sky” in his song “The Preacher and the Slave.”

Chaplin began writing the song three years earlier, while working as a journalist covering the Paint Creek–Cabin Creek Strike of 1912. The strike marked one of several bloody confrontations between striking workers and hired thugs over a roughly decade-long period known as the Mine Wars. The Mine Wars, in turn, were part of the broader Coal Wars, a series of labor conflicts in coal mining dating back to the 1870s.

In a tragically familiar tale, the strike, lasting from April 18, 1912, through July 1913, ended in considerable violence and suffering. While historical records note around fifty casualties on both sides, many more among the striking miners and their families are believed to have succumbed to malnutrition and starvation. The strike ranks as one of the most violent labor conflicts in American history, though it is somewhat overshadowed by later conflicts like the Battle of Blair Mountain and the Battle of Matewan (also known as the Matewan Massacre).

‘Solidarity Forever’ serves as a stark reminder that the fight is still far from over, and too much ground has been lost over the last forty years.

At the heart of the conflict was a difference of just two-and-a-half cents. The miners of the forty-one unionized Paint Creek mines received two-and-a-half cents less per ton of coal mined compared to their counterparts in Kanawha County, West Virginia. If the mine operators agreed to the terms, it would have cost about fifteen cents per miner per day (equivalent to just over $30 in current dollars).

The miners’ other demands were all quite reasonable as well: recognition of their union, respect of workers’ rights to free speech and freedom of assembly, fair payment for the coal they mined (with the right to independently verify weights measured and scales used), and the elimination of rules forcing miners to spend their pay at company stores.

Rather than agree to these reasonable terms, the mine operators chose violence, hiring the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency to provide three hundred armed guards who quickly set up fortifications with machine gun posts. In response, Socialist Party activists sent the miners one thousand rifles and fifty thousand rounds of ammunition. Reciprocal acts of violence and sabotage became the norm. When state troops were called in to restore order and impose martial law, they disarmed the striking miners and carried out mass arrests.

“Solidarity Forever” was born of in this violent chapter of American labor history. Its subsequent popularity left Chaplin with serious misgivings, particularly due to what he perceived as the co-optation of the American labor movement. He was particularly leery about the song’s adoption by the AFL-CIO, which many Wobblies considered too conservative. Chaplin spelled out his misgivings about both the song and the movement it was born out of in a 1968 article for American West.

Despite these reservations, Chaplin’s lyrics remain impactful today because the fight for working people isn’t over. The United States is still controlled by the “greedy parasite who would lash us into serfdom and would crush us with his might.” Child labor, once believed to have been eradicated through the militant labor struggles of a century ago, has reared its ugly head once more. Government remains passive and unconcerned about the plight of the working class, and issues like prison labor, flagrant workers’ rights violations, and abusive union-busting policies persist. Homeless encampments of working poor further highlight that, from the vantage point of an early twentieth-century militant labor activist, the America of 2024 wouldn’t seem all that unfamiliar.

Recent successes in labor organizing are undeniably inspiring, especially considering the opposition such efforts have faced. But the crisis of labor so aptly described in “Solidarity Forever” serves as a stark reminder that the fight is still far from over, and too much ground has been lost over the last forty years.

The key to understanding the potency highlighted in “Solidarity Forever” — and the reason it still serves as a beacon of hope for the future — lies in the song’s final verse:

_{In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold
Greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousand-fold
We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old
For the union makes us strong}

For Chaplin, the point wasn’t simply a New Deal or a Great Society, but a workers’ utopia. Lofty though it may sound now, such a goal is still worth fighting for.

_{Taylor C. Noakes is an independent journalist and public historian.}