Interview: Billy Bragg - Changing the World and Getting a Life as Nineties Stars Finally Embrace Politics (See Left), a Mellow, 40-Year-Old Billy Bragg Is Happy to Let a New Generation Do the Tub- Thumping, Writes Karen O'Brien

Karen O'Brien, The Independent (London, England)

Politics, we are told by the spin-meisters is the new rock and roll. But those of us who feel that it's only a matter of time before Cool Britannia thaws and melts away, remember when rock'n'roll was the new politics. Billy Bragg was there at the barricades singing about a new England long before the re-branding of Blair's Britain.

Over the past 15 years, Bragg has done more than any other to shape a British political consciousness through music - he formed Red Wedge in the Eighties, the glorious but doomed attempt to back the Labour Party.

Bragg was near tears at an election-night gig when Old Labour suffered its last defeat, and must have been tempted to weep …

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Publication information: Article title: Interview: Billy Bragg - Changing the World and Getting a Life as Nineties Stars Finally Embrace Politics (See Left), a Mellow, 40-Year-Old Billy Bragg Is Happy to Let a New Generation Do the Tub- Thumping, Writes Karen O'Brien. Contributors: Karen O'Brien - Author. Newspaper title: The Independent (London, England). Publication date: October 4, 1998. Page number: 3. © 2009 The Independent - London. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All Rights Reserved.

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