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Billy Bragg
 "I'm in a hotel room in London with a dozen guitars," says Billy Bragg. "I'm taking them to a prison tomorrow along with Mick Jones from the Clash. I started this thing called 'Jail Guitar Doors' which is a fund for supplying musical instruments to people who are doing rehabilitation work inside British prisons. Jail Guitar Doors was an old Clash song written by Mick Jones and he was the first person to give me some money. He's come to a couple of prisons with me now."
If the kids know anything about Billy Bragg, it's most likely via his association with Wilco on old Woody Guthrie tunes. Older music aficionados, though, will recall Bragg's heyday in the 'eighties as a social (and socialist) activist. It's heartening to know that, while on record his politics have more recently tended towards the personal, he remains firmly committed to his broader beliefs. Bragg is touring Australia with the Big Day Out next year, and I wonder how a new generation will perceive him.
"One-man Clash," he says, after a pause. "Rage Against The Machine are on the bill too and they are mates of mine, they're ploughing a similar vein. If people like Rage, I'm a good chance of coming in on their coat tails onto people's Ipods."
The timing of our chat is serendipitous; the federal election was run only a few days earlier and any interview with Billy Bragg inevitably turns to politics. Not surprisingly, he's extremely happy to
"For those of us who thought of Australia as a progressive place, he was a heartbreaker. He was the Australian Margaret Thatcher in that sense, taking on the unions and making a society based essentially on materialism and no regulations in the market place. These kinds of ideas are going to destroy the individuals' sense of control over their own life cause they can be easily hired and fired. That's one of the hallmarks of globalisation, the lack of job security; we're suffering from that in Britain."
"It's a very simple principle," Bragg continues, warming to his theme. "It's been shown to be true time and time again in the past 50 years. The individual can only truly achieve their potential if they are supported by the collective provision of healthcare, education, and decent affordable housing. If society has the will to provide all those things, then all of us have the opportunity to achieve our ambitions rather than just a few being able to do that."
I ask him what he thinks of the entry of a fellow angry young man, Peter Garrett, into politics - and in particular the requirement that Garrett follow the party line, no matter how contrary it might be to his own personal views.
"I have great respect for Peter Garrett," Bragg says, "because he more than any of us, Bono included, has gone the extra mile to see if he can change the world through politics. Instead of paddling in the shallow end like the rest of us, he's gone in the deep end. So don't be surprised if occasionally he looks like he's drowning rather than waving. That's why his role and what he has achieved by involving himself in politics is to be applauded."
"It's the great conundrum isn't it, about becoming a politician," Braggs notes. "Unfortunately, politics really is the art of compromise. The world ain't black and white in that sense and politicians are aware of that more than anybody else. We all make compromises. If you don't make compromises you won't get very far. For instance, tomorrow, the minister for prisons will be there and he will have his photograph taken with me and he'll use that, it'll be in their literature. We'll be there together. And I'm cool with that. Because he is giving me access to those prisoners and he's letting me bring those instruments - with steel strings, mind you, think about how problematic they could be in prisons - and he's letting me film it, he's letting me do what I do. So, you just have to make sure you make compromises on your terms and that the other party is meeting you half way."
Peter strelan
Billy Bragg will appear at the Big Day Out on Fri 1 Feb. New album 'Mr. Love & Justice' is out early next year on Shock Records
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