For too many years, the role of Skiffle in The Beatles’ development as artists has been glossed over or diminished. Not anymore: in his new book, Roots, Radicals and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World, singer/songwriter/activist Billy Bragg presents an examination of the musical and sociological history of skiffle – where it came from; what it meant to a generation in post-war Britain, and how it paved the way for the British Invasion – while also restoring Lonnie Donegan to his rightful place as a true cultural revolutionary.
In this episode, Robert and Richard host this special guest, discussing his book as well as his recent release, Shine A Light – a collection of railroad songs recorded on the road across the US.
The Shine A Light project: http://shinealight-joehenry.billybragg.co.uk/
For more on Billy: http://www.billybragg.co.uk/
Find Richard’s books here.
Find Robert’s books here.
I can’t wait to read Billy’s book. He was a great guest!
What a brilliant show! Thanks for getting Billy on and just letting him talk – which he certainly did…I learnt a lot from that history lesson but it never once felt like being back at school. Cheers
The book is nothing short of fascinating. Very scholarly but well written and very entertaining at the same time. I’m halfway through the book. Wishing for volume 2.
Billy Bragg mentions the books by Chas McDevitt and Mike Dewe but not Pete Frame’s 2007 The Restless Generation, which is surely a must in this context, detailing skiffle’s emergence from trad jazz and its being subsumed by rock’n’roll. I haven’t read Bragg’s book so can’t speak for its content or quality but Frame’s book is comprehensive and highly entertaining, with a great deal about Lonnie Donegan, not always complimentary.
Best guest you guys have ever had. Great, informative show.
Superb show. I had the good fortune of seeing Lonnie Donegan opening for Van Morrison in the late 90s. He was great.
Such a wonderful podcast. This period of time is so interesting and important and giving Billy Bragg the time and freedom to share his stories was true magic. Thank you so much for your hard work in putting your podcasts together. Long may it continue!!!
Thank you, James!
Good show.The best skiffle, Donegan when he was showing his love for the music – Lost John, New Burying Ground and the like, Dickie Bishop – Jesse James (his No Other Baby covered by McCartney), Nancy Whiskey and The Vipers – is great music and is roots music before it was labelled as such. The impact it had on kids starting to play their own music is well communicated by Billy. My Dad’s first single was Be Bop A Lula but he had stacks of Donegan’s 78s and eps and of course Johnny Duncan’s Last Train to San Fernando
Wonderful as ever!
Thank you Robert and Richard and thank you Billy.
I do recommend any listeners who haven’t heard much Billy check out his own stuff – my own personal favourite album is Don’t Try This at Home, for what it’s worth.
She’s Leaving Home’s not a half bad version either!
Cheers. . .
Really interesting show, but aren’t songs like She Loves You and I Want to Hold Your Hand imbued with the guitar rhythms of skiffle? Although he acknowledges this influence in Please Please Me, Bragg seems more to emphasize the indirect influence of skiffle in terms of the blues, rather than its direct insertion into their early songs.
This episode was amazing, I learned so much.
I have a bit of a unique perspective on the Al Capp moment. I’m a graduate of the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon & Graphic Art, class of ’89, At that time, the Kubert School was (and may still be) the only school in the country where the curriculum was focused entirely on teaching cartooning as a professional, marketable skill, and every teacher at the school was a freelance cartoonist or graphic artist working or retired (one of my teachers was Irwin Hasen, the guy who created the old comic strip Dondi, for instance).
Among those teachers was a guy named Tex Blaisdell, who had been an inker for comic strips and books through the 40’s to the ‘80s, and one of the many jobs in his resume had been as an inker on the backgrounds of Li’l Abner. Tex taught three days a week at the school and crashed in the basement of the student housing house were I was resident assistant, and we would often chat in the evenings about his past — anecdotes and so forth. It was through Tex that I learned that reknowned fantasy cover painter Frank Frazetta was the guy Capp hired to draw all the attractive women in Li’l Abner, for example, or that Capp made sure that all the trees had knotholes that were actually vaginas.
I asked Tex once about the Capp confrontation with John and Yoko, because Tex had been working with him at the time, and the Imagine movie had just come out so that sequence was at the forefront of my mind.
Tex laughed and said, “Yeah, that was Al. I can tell you right now — he just went there to stir shit up because winding people up was just one of his favorite things to do. He was actually in complete agreement with them, but he just liked pissing people off and being an asshole. He deliberately went in there to get them worked up and he came back laughing about it, and then said he hoped that what John and Yoko were trying to do actually worked. That’s the kind of guy Al was.”
So whenever I listen to that audio, or watch that clip, that’s what I think of — Capp going in there in complete agreement with them and fucking with them anyway just because he enjoyed being the asshole.
Thank you for clearing this up for all the Beatlemania fans around the world.
I remember seeing the “Imagine: John Lennon” film when it came out in ’88: Al Capp’s belligerent and provocative performance was a highlight. It was interesting to see John bite back and show the not-so-peaceful side of his character…which was probably why Andrew Solt (and Yoko) included it, I’d think. (That, as well as the footage of “How Do You Sleep?” with John referring to Paul as a cnut (sic)).
I wonder if Al Capp knew that John Lennon had spent a lot of time making fun of cripples? Capp had lost much of one leg and used a prosthetic limb, so he was well-armed (or well-legged!!) with a chip on his shoulder to go into battle with Lennon.
Capp was accused, several times, of making unwanted advances (Goldie Hawn was a recipient of one of these), so he was a sleaze, it seems.