. . "Billy Bragg"^^ . . . . . . . . "Billy Bragg"^^ . . . . . "Billy specialised in combining the uncombinable: punk and folk, sarcasm and warmth, politics and love. Billy's lyrics are sometimes cutting and angry, sometimes warm, but always insightful and witty. His songs paint a picture of Britain in the 1980s and capture the disillusionment that many felt at the time.
He was born in Barking, London as Stephen William Bragg and started playing guitar in his teens with his next-door neighbour Wiggy. The two of them formed a punk band called Riff Raff, but success was not forthcoming.
Surprisingly, Billy then joined the army. Unsurprisingly he hated it and bought his way out with \uFFFD175 and returned to his parents' home.
Billy devised ingenious strategies to get his demo tapes heard. He pretended to be a television repair man in order to get into the office of Peter Jenner at Charisma Records. When Billy heard our own John Peel announce he was hungry on air, he rushed to the BBC studios with a mushroom biriyani and a tape. He was rewarded with lots of airplay, which John always insisted he would have got anyway.
In 1985, the year after he released 'Brewing Up With Billy Bragg', he helped to form the left-wing youth movement Red Wedge, whose members also included Paul Weller and Jimmy Sommerville. 1984 also saw one of Billy's songs, 'New England' become a Top 10 hit, albeit sung by Kirsty MacColl. Album after album followed, but it was 1991's 'Don't Try This At Home' which featured his biggest hit, 'Sexuality'. Billy took several years off to concentrate on fatherhood and his most recent album is 2002's 'England, Half English'. Wiggy still plays in his backing band.

\"I was coming back from a gig somewhere and my girlfriend met me at the station and told me that the BBC phoned wanting me to do a Peel session. So I thought this was it - I'm a made man! I'm in! I rang my record company and said 'How am I going to get there? I don't even know where Maida Vale is. How am I going to get all my stuff on the tube?' And they said 'Bill, they pay you to do this, get a bloody taxi', which I thought was too good to be true; they PAY you to do a Peel session!\"

Billy Bragg"^^ .