Tender Comrade - Billy Bragg

 A warning – I’m about to reference changing musical formats.  Classic middle-aged bloke chat.  The warmth of vinyl, making mix tapes etc etc.  But trust me, this is not a nostalgic piece about tapes and CD’s and midi disks being more fun than mp3’s.  This is nostalgic, but for nothing as banal as changing music tech.

Like vinyl, a cassette tape forces you to listen to the whole of an album, in the order that the makers intended.  In the early 90’s CD’s arrived, along with the tantalising prospect of shuffling tracks about.  Maybe the classic album started to die here.  I wonder if this shuffling prompted bands to wonder why they should spend days and days agonising over the sequencing or bothering to write rock operas. 

Three contenders for favourite Billy Bragg album (in no particular order):

·         * Talking to the Taxman About Poetry

·         * Back to Basics

·         * Workers Playtime

I owned all of these on cassette.  When I listen to these on Spotify I turn off that shuffle function.  There is a right way and a wrong way to listen to these albums. 

In 1992 it was Workers Playtime.  It deceives you.  The cover is bright yellow and depicts a bunch of idealistically happy Maoists, gathered about to learn wisdom from Mao’s Red Book.  Yet, to me, this is one of Billy’s least overtly political albums.  It's full of songs about lost romance, unconsummated love, confusing women and hapless narrators.  Rotting on Remand and Great Leap Forward are there, of course, to remind us that Billy has things to say, but I remember reflecting on how Billy’s concerns must have changed from the Red Wedge days, how he must have been trying to navigate relationships.  Weren’t we all?

The one song I couldn’t bear was Tender Comrade.  Acapella Billy.  Please. It seemed to drone. It lurked between the vain declaration of ‘Must I Paint You a Picture' and the abandoned lover of ‘The Price I Pay'.  I loved those two songs and Tender Comrade seemed to break in on the mood.  Maybe that was the point.  I’m not here to give Billy Bragg advice on how to make albums. 

I became adept at fast-forwarding Tender Comrade.  I could press fast forward on the tape deck for just long enough to roll through the song and stop before cutting off the start of the next song.  An analogue human skip button if you like.  The song jarred.  It didn’t belong on the album. 

A cool night and I’m at a 21^st on a farm out at Beaudesert.   On the long drive out Mikey and I sat in the old white Mazda and listened to The Johnnys, Highlights of a Dangerous Life, as the sun set in our faces and empties rolled about the footwells. 

A bunch of us stood out behind the house, around a roaring fire in a 44-gallon drum.  We clutched cold cans of beer, but they didn’t go down so well in the cool evening.  Shirley (that's not her name) stood in the group, intelligent, vibrant without pretension, and full of life.  I talked to her about music. She talked to me about music.  Indigo Girls, Pogues, Billy Bragg.  Someone came to the fire and said that they had lost a bracelet out in the long grass behind the house. 

We all filed out away from the fire, and broke into small groups to find the bracelet.  I don’t know if anyone ever found that bracelet, but I found myself in the middle of this field, alone with Shirley.  We fell to talking about Billy again and Workers Playtime and Tender Comrade.  She said there was one song on that album she couldn’t stand.

Without that song, that misplaced piece of sequencing, would there have ever been something between us?  Probably. She said, yeah, I always fast forward that track. That was enough for us.  It created a lost moment in a field and I’ve never felt quite the same way about Beaudesert or Tender Comrade since.

In the morning, back in the Mazda, I was content to listen to Hidden Things and think about how fate brings you the things you've always wanted when you were least looking for them.  Mikey let me think.  He knew when things were up.

There was a follow-up.  Trips to the movies, drinks with people.  But then there was a misunderstanding and the loves of other people intruded on our bond and the moment in a field became just that.

Years later, in a very different time and headspace, I found myself resisting the urge to skip Tender Comrade.  I came to appreciate the emotion in that song.  What will you say of the bond we had? asks Billy.  I ask the same question.