As the hot summer sun beat down on Skeppsholmen, the flame of Billy Bragg’s burning belief in social justice managed to raise the temperature an extra few notches as he played at the Stockholm Music and Arts Festival.
Thirty years on, bearded and slightly heavier, the songs that launched Bragg’s career still maintain their simple, direct power. And even if his writing has become more refined over time, it is the gritty guitar and the kitchen-sink storytelling of his early work that eventually kick the sun-drenched audience out of their slumber.
Appearing in the middle of one of the hottest afternoons of the year – and a couple of hours before Prince – Bragg’s rambling monologues are as entertaining as ever, and they need to be. Some members of his audience haven’t aged as well as his songs, and with many opting to sit on picnic blankets and take it easy, the pace is sedate, even as he barks the lyrics of Woodie Guthrie’s All You Fascists Bound To Lose.
“Normally, controlling an audience is like feeding a tiger. Not today – today it’s more like feeding a St. Bernard,” Bragg notes wryly as the crowd take their time getting into it. But it is when the band departs for a brief break at the shade that Bragg comes into his own.
Bob Marley’s One Love is reworked into a plea to drop Africa’s debt, and the crowd play along with the Barking boy’s mildly ridiculous dance moves. With the crowd on his side and on their feet, he turns the screw. The Milkman of Human Kindness, Levi Stubb’s Tears and To Have And To Have Not punch through the warm air and all of a sudden the spark of socialist rhetoric long since extinguished in this part of town once again springs to life.
On a roll, Bragg goes for the jugular, challenging his audience to exchange their cynicism for activism, and this sun-drenched Skeppsholmen quay could be easily one of the beer-sodden British university halls where Bragg made his name. Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards bounces off the museum walls, and there is a brief respite with Handyman Blues before Bragg and the band rip their way through A New England before departing.
Behind them they leave an ageing audience remembering what it was that made them love him in the first place, and no doubt many will download his new album Tooth and Nail before Prince takes the stage. But for all the country stylings of recent years, Billy Bragg remains the foremost European protest singer of his (and arguably any other) generation.
