Billy Bragg: Talking With The Taxman About Poetry
Lucy O'Brien, New Musical Express, 27 September 1986
SUBTITLED 'THE difficult third album', this is Billy growing into a Big Boy. Decorating the sleeve with Mayakovsky's poem, Bragg takes seriously his role as poet in a workers' land – the minstrel, gleeman, troubadour, retaining certain community traditions yet sending counter-myths crashing. Poetic rhymes are a "caress, a slogan, a bayonet".
Total word count of piece: 652