Billy Bragg and the Neighborhood Bullies
Thanks to Sean Curnyn, the proprietor of the wonderful website RightWingBob.com, I have just learned that the British singer-songwriter Billy Bragg wrote one of the most vile and vicious songs honoring a terrorist dupe, the late Rachel Corrie. Bragg wrote it a few years ago, but until now (fortunately) I had not heard of it.(If you’re not familiar with the real story, please refer to the open letter I wrote a few years ago, which is available here.
Bragg, as many of you undoubtedly know, is a British leftie who considers himself someone in the tradition of both Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan. With this song, as well as some of his other rather didactic and crude lyrics, he proves himself instead to be anything but a singer who gets what Bob Dylan is all about. Dylan, as most anyone who knows something about him realizes, is a subtle artist who eschews the kind of political venom that Bragg indulges in. Indeed, it was decades ago, in fact rather early in his long career, that Dylan abandoned the Old Left milieu that others were trying to force him into. His college friends in Minnesota have written about how all their attempts to indoctrinate him came to naught, as did Dave Van Ronk in his own memoir.
Dylan absorbed what was best in the political culture that existed in New York City when he first arrived there, and soon transcended their world. He decided first to stop sending songs to Broadside, the political song magazine published in mimeographed form by the late Sis Cunningham and Gordon Friesen, and broke with Sing Out! when its then Stalinist editor, Irwin Silber, wrote an open letter condemning him for turning inwards and deserting the left-wing path they wanted him to inherit. He made this clear when he wrote “Maggie’s Farm.”
Well, I try my best To be just like I am,
But everybody wants you
To be just like them.
They sing while you slave and I just get bored.
I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more.
Later, when Dylan sang “Ihere’s something happening here and you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?” some said he was addressing it to Silber. And as for the Left and their desire to put him in their straitjacket, he sang “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.”
What Bragg has done in this song is a desecration of all that Dylan stands for. He has used his melody of a beautiful and poignant song about the death of Hattie Carrol, which lyrically is the opposite of the didactic screed meant by Bragg to honor the opening of the “play” by Alan Rickman and Katherine Viner that I wrote about in my own letter referred to earlier. If it resembles anything, Bragg’s song is more in the tradition of the worst political songs penned by the late Phil Ochs, many of which, if one hears them today, are dated and sound turgid.
Bragg’s lyrics are so vile that he dares compare Corrie to the American Freedom Riders of the 60s. He also sings, as Curnyn writes, “ ‘Is there no place for a voice in America /That doesn’t conform to the Fox News agenda?’ That’s right, Billy: It’s all Fox, all the time, here in America now, even on the stage.” The song is so silly, only the British anti-Israel press would see fit, as the British Guardian did, to print such drivel.
Now that the so-called Free Gaza Movement is once again honoring the memory of their “martyr” by naming the ship that has now reached Israel after Rachel Corrie, we can expect new articles heralding her supposed martyrdom in the various web pages of the international left-wing.
Which Phil Ochs songs sound turgid?
Rhythms of Revolution?
Even if you don’t agree with them – for instance Cops of the World – they still might be good songs.
I’m not defending Bragg but Dylan seems to have ripped off a number of tunes as well without credit. Girl from The North Country. With God on Our Side. And others I’m sure.
Dylan openly admits that he’s borrowed from other songs, in some cases citing the specific songs that influenced his work. It’s part of the folk tradition. He acknowledges his influences and he also doesn’t have a problem with others using his music. His live performance of All Along The Watchtower (whose lyrics borrow from Isaiah in the Bible) is not too far from Jimi Hendrix’ version and Bob’s said the Jimi made the song his own.
Both Dylan and Paul Simon borrowed the same tune that’s behind Girl From The North Country and Scarborough Fair.
A great musician once said that hacks copy but artists steal.
Paul Simon acknowledged it (Re Scarborough Fair). Dylan didn’t. Maybe in some interview.
Sorry to be pedantic but “With God on our Side” uses the same tune as the “Patriot Game”, a song written by Dominic Behan in the Sixties and where Dylan probably first heard it. But Behan didn’t write the tune either and I’m sure he didn’t credit it. It’s accepted as being an Irish tune, but I’ve never come across any other version in Ireland. I don’t know where Behan got the tune from from but I first came across it about 1960 in the song book by Cecil Sharp: “English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians”, published in 1916 ithe the words to the “Nightingale”, a mildly erotic song. It’s been an age old habit among songwriters (long before copyright laws were invented) to put songs to a known tune. Best practice is to credit folk song tunes as “Public Domain”, but who does that even these days? Yes Paul Simon did – all power to him.
Here’s Neighborhood Bully for anyone who wants to hear it.
http://www.trilulilu.ro/patrupedbun/664b95bf382538?video_google_com=
PS: Your buddy Eric Alterman doesn’t like this song. I remember him mentioning it on his blog in late 2001 or early 2002.
I guess even particularly bad pancakes require syrupy lyrics.
Neighborhood Bully is a personal favorite, but it’s not Bob’s best work. There are a couple of awkward lines to my ear.
Still, nothing sums up Israel’s situation better than
“He’s supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in”
Looking at the song, the following describes the Free Gaza flotillans and the Rachel Corries pretty accurately:
Well, he’s surrounded by pacifists who all want peace
They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease
Now, they wouldn’t hurt a fly. To hurt one they would weep
They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep
That’s the best verse. You’re right
The Bragg song has been around for a while. Leaving aside the politics the lyrics are pretty bad. it couldn’t have taken him more than an hour to write.
BTW Bob Dylan’s original is problematic as well. As Lawrence Auster wrote “Dylan grossly misrepresented what actually happened, and I’m amazed that Zantzinger (whose name Dylan changed to the more euphonious “Zanzinger”) never sued him for libel.”
See Art, reality, and William Zan(t)zinger
My first exposure to Billy Bragg was in 1989 when I bought a used cassette of his songs in the summer of 1989. One song Billy sang was The International. Three months later the Berlin Wall had fallen, and with it any relevance for Mr. Bragg.
I don’t find the lyrics to Dylan’s song “Socialism” to be particularly subtle.
This guy is the typical fake lefty – he lives in a massive mansion in a restricted sea view area – the millionaire life style for him – the masses have to settle for socialist hell – what a fake!!
Dylan didn’t abandon the left because of ideology; he did it out of greed and cowardice, both of which have been basic driving forces in his life. Of all the over-rated ‘artists’ of the last half-century, Dylan stands posy head and hunched shoulders above them all. He stole songs – tradition be blowed, he ripped folks off, uncredited, right and left, then sued a city council for intellectual copyright when they labelled their public transport schedule alterations ‘The Times they are a’Changing’. I go with the British commentator who remarked in the ’60′s that ‘This man is a genius. He’ll be the death of all us’. How right he was! Dylan paved the way for more crap than hits the Eastern seaboard in a year.
OK, back to Bragg. He’s a leftie, but highly educated. He’s an angry little sod, too. When he sings politics, he gets right up my nose – I hate him. But when he sings love, relationship problems, growing up, Britain/the West as she really has been this last few decades, he’s streets ahead of the millionaire, golf-playing, manipulative creep that Dylan has turned out to be. Braggs’s from the east end of London/eastern England, too, traditional home of Jewish refugees and therefore of core antisemitism, regardless of left or right. It’s chock-full of Moslems these days.
And Bragg does it all in public, takes his knocks with the folks on the street. He has courage. I respect him as an enemy but a fellow musician. Dylan hides behind his bodyguards and sucks up to authority. He’s a creep and a coward. I have nothing but contempt for him as a man, and just a little passing respect for him for the couple of lines he lucked out on as a poet (give enough monkeys enough typewriters and…).
And if you think that anyone but us Jews understood ‘Neighborhood Bully’ you’re in cloud-cuckoo land. If ever there was man utterly incapable of direct communication, it’s Dylan – half the attraction for pseudo-intellectuals.
By all means have a dig at Billy Bragg – he loves a scrap – but you’ll have to raise your intellectual sights a little higher than little Robertek Cimrman.
I love some Phil Ochs songs, but he thought the syphilitic Mao “I clean myself off in the women I’m with” Zedong was a terrific guy. That kind of removes Ochs from the deep thinker/moral clarity category for me.
Yes, Rachel Corrie (the woman, not the ship or song)–Evergreen’s finest. Someday the state of Washington will convert all it’s colleges to be as Evergreen.
Evergreen State College is and has been an unabashed indoctrination center for all of it’s 40+ years.
Neighborhood Bully is one of the greatest songs ever…and accurate through and through. Billy got very embarrassing, campy and ham-fisted in later life. I was a big fan in college. Now I just he’s squandered whatever talent he had in the name of leftism. He’s a disgrace and as for Corrie…best not mentioned.
Thanks Ron for explaining the for me long elusive lyrics of Baby Blue and Maggie’s Farm. But I do think Rachel Corrie was heroic, and am pleased that her name is honored and remembered in the vessel, MV Rachel Corrie, written about all over the world. Here are some more anglo/Irish lyrics you probably don’t like:
No tinned meat is allowed, no tomato paste,
no clothing, no shoes, no notebooks.
These will be stored in our warehouses at Kerem Shalom
until further notice.
Bananas, apples, and persimmons are allowed into Gaza,
peaches and dates, and now macaroni
(after the American Senator’s visit).
These are vital for daily sustenance.
But no apricots, no plums, no grapes, no avocados, no jam.
These are luxuries and are not allowed.
Paper for textbooks is not allowed.
The terrorists could use it to print seditious material.
And why do you need textbooks
now that your schools are rubble?
No steel is allowed, no building supplies, no plastic pipe.
These the terrorists could use to launch rockets
against us.
Pumpkins and carrots you may have,
but no delicacies,
no cherries, no pomegranates, no watermelon, no onions,
no chocolate.
We have a list of three dozen items that are allowed,
but we are not obliged to disclose its contents.
This is the decision arrived at
by Colonel Levi, Colonel Rosenzweig, and Colonel Segal.
Our motto:
‘No prosperity, no development, no humanitarian crisis.’
You may fish in the Mediterranean,
but only as far as three km from shore.
Beyond that and we open fire.
It is a great pity the waters are polluted –
twenty million gallons of raw sewage dumped into the sea every day
is the figure given.
Our rockets struck the sewage treatments plants,
and at this point spare parts to repair them are not allowed.
As long as Hamas threatens us,
no cement is allowed, no glass, no medical equipment.
We are watching you from our pilotless drones
as you cook your sparse meals over open fires
and bed down
in the ruins of houses destroyed by tank shells.
And if your children can’t sleep,
missing the ones who were killed in our incursion,
or cry out in the night, or wet their beds
in your makeshift refugee tents,
or scream, feeling pain in their amputated limbs –
that’s the price you pay for harbouring terrorists.
God gave us this land.
A land without a people for a people without a land.
Richard Tillinghast is an American poet who lives in Co Tipperary. He is the author of eight books of poetry, the latest of which is Selected Poems (Dedalus Press, 2010 ), as well as several works of non-fiction
No ear for language does the talentless hack evince,
only an intuition for what
the cool kids will or won’t approve of.
In an age that cannot tell the difference
between poetry and preachy, didactic prose printed
irregularly on a page,
his career is advanced,
his ego
Stroked.
So all the wags come out and attack … Dylan? Good grief, get a grip! The folk tradition allows for this type of usage of old tunes, by the way. Content is another matter, altogether. The contrast between, the untalented ideologue, Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan the creative genius, is a good case in point.
I had the extreme misfortune of seeing Bragg live. Imagine the insanity of a loud mouthed Brit ragging on Canadians over an American president’s actions. As badly as he sings and plays, maybe I should have been thankful that he talked so much, however.
Who are you calling a ‘wag’ and what does it mean? Folk singer are you, mate? I have been for five decades. The folk tradition allows for arrangement of tunes and contains a whole canon of ‘public domain’ type tunes – although reducing the magnificent Irish ‘Patriot Game’ to the juvenile maunder of ‘With God on our Side’ is breathtakingly naff, to say the least. With original work/research, we credit one another (with more than the slimy folksie ‘this here was writ’, which has Dylan’s vicious, envious sarcasm writ large all over it). Dylan never does. It took Paul Simon a couple of decades to allow Carthy had a heck of a lot do do with Scarborough Fair, although whether the skinflint little f…ella coughed up any money for one of the hits that made Simon, I don’t know. But he did it. Dylan played the unread hick, the naif, while ripping off lines from a monstrous library rich in dictionaries of quotes, tunes from whoever, then hiding the whole lot behind a hedge of verbiage aiming at recondite and grouping bottom right at prolix with the rest of his pull.
As the man said, cut Bragg some slack – at least he’s genuine, if deluded. Dylan’s a pseud, a poser,a lucky fake – the greatest tragedy in folk-rock-singer-songwriter history is that motorbikes killed Richard Farina and spared Dylan.
The link to your original letter just takes me to the PJM homepage. Correction, please?
Who is Billy Bragg????????????????
Let’s cut Billy Bragg (who I had never heard of) some slack. After all it took Pete Seeger, a far greater talent I’m sure, about fifty years to admit that Stalin may not have been such a nice guy after all. So give Billy boy a little time to realize that Corrie was just a useful idiot of the left who’s only claim to fame was that she sat down like a dufus in front of an earth moving machine.
I sympathize with the politics of the lyrics, but as a song, “Neighborhood Bully” is Dylan at his worst. (As for its reception by the Left, the timing of its release was post-Sabra/Shatilla.) Outside of “Jokerman,” Infidels is unlistenable. “Lonesome Death…” is a great song, but walks up to the edge of overpreachy Ochsism. “Chimes of Freedom” is an example of Dylan at his political best, IMO. In art, obscurity can be a virtue.
My son the folk rocker (going off to Evergreen State!) finds Ochs absolutely unbearable. “I Ain’t Marching Anymore,” however, is a great song, though the final verse (on the greed of United Fruit & organized labor) is a clunker.
Whatever one thinks of Bragg’s solo work–my attitude is “meh”–the Bragg/Wilco Mermaid Avenue albums are great. “Eisler on the Go” is a song of the left that neocons can appreciate.
Best you could edit the page subject title Ron Radosh » Billy Bragg and the Neighborhood Bullies to more better for your content you create. I liked the post all the same.