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Newspaper Article
'My theory is that Bowie's death has unhinged reality'
2017
Overview
\"I saw lots of people's backyards on that train, more parts of the old weird America than I'd ever seen, because the railway goes through places that were important when the track was laid 120 years ago,\" [Billy Bragg] says. \"And on the second leg of the journey, from San Antonio to Los Angeles, the train follows the border with Mexico. It was possible to look out one side of the train and see El Paso, and on the other side Juarez. You could throw a rock from the train into Mexico. I think it was on all our minds that this was where [Donald Trump] was going to build his wall.\" \"That got me thinking about American train songs, and the railroad as a metaphor,\" says Bragg. \"You know, car songs tend to be about driving a car. But train songs are so much more abstract. Think about a song like Folsom Prison Blues by Johnny Cash - that's actually a train song. The train is the catalyst for the emotions that he's feeling. It's not the prison. It's that lonesome whistle blowing. There's something in our common pop culture about songs about the railroad, in which the railroad becomes a metaphor for aspiration, for heartbreak, for death. The railroad has an immediate and evocative sense of distance, hope and fear.\" When we speak, it is coming to the end of 2016, and we discuss the year in which we lost Bowie, Cohen and Prince. \"Unbelievable. Unbelievable,\" he says. \"My theory is that Bowie was holding reality together, and that his death has unhinged it all. I'm kind of hoping that on New Year's Day, at a performance of his musical Lazarus - get the reference - he's going to reappear and say that the whole thing was a dream and that, actually, Chelsea won the Premier League. That's my hope.\"
Publisher
The Irish Times Ltd
Subject
