Rock Stories #3: Billy Bragg & Eliot Katz

Rock politico connects with Beat generations

Eliot Katz is a poet, an associate and protégée of Allen Ginsberg with seven volumes of verse to his name. In 2016, Katz released the volume The Poetry and Politics of Allen Ginsberg (Beatdom Books), which academic Kurt Hemmer, editor of the Encyclopedia of Beat Literature, called ‘the most engaging and rigorous analysis of Ginsberg’s political poetry yet attempted.’

His contribution to our new series ‘Rock Stories’, in which we chart encounters between members of the Beat world and popular musicians, Katz recalls a connection he made with British singer-songwriter Billy Bragg, a significant bridge between the radical folk protests of Woody Guthrie and the visceral social commentary of UK punk, with Ginsberg himself also a memorable part of the interaction. He relates his story below…

In mid-1988, months before the US presidential election, the terrific political British singer-songwriter Billy Bragg did a North American tour, spreading both his music –playing solo with an electric guitar, a kind of mix between Woody Guthrie and the Clash – and his political vision as a democratic leftist. If I’m remembering correctly, I think he was calling this his ‘Help Save the Youth of American Tour’.

At each of his shows, Billy invited youth activist groups to table, to give out informational flyers and also register young people to vote. More than most US musicians, Bragg researched grassroots activist groups in different cities and states to figure out which would be the best groups to invite to do that tabling.

Before this tour had started, Billy had befriended the late, great US activist Abbie Hoffman, who in his last few years was devoting much of his time and energy to advise and help build new national student activist projects, including National Student Convention ’88, which took place at Rutgers University, and Student Action Union, a national student group founded in North Carolina and based loosely on Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) of the 1960s.

My then-partner, Christine Kelly, who worked diligently as one of the core organizers on both of these projects (both of which I also worked on), was Abbie’s favorite student organizer in the country during those last few years of Abbie’s life. (Abbie died of suicide in April 1989, and, sadly, Christine, who I went out with for seven years from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, recently died of pancreatic cancer in late 2022, just a few weeks after she had turned 60.)

Pictured above: Poet Eliot Katz, portrayed by Vivien Demuth

For the New York City stop of Billy Bragg’s 1988 tour, he was scheduled to do a nighttime show at the Roseland club, and he had interestingly reserved space in a smaller room at the club to hold an afternoon panel of student activists from throughout the New York area, seeing it as one of his goals in this tour to use his shows to help build more connections among American student organizers.

Because he was asking advice from Abbie, Billy had invited Christine to be one of the speakers at that afternoon panel, including to talk about Student Action Union, and, when the panel discussion was over, Billy told Christine that he thought she had been the best of the afternoon’s presenters. At that night’s concert, Abbie Hoffman was asked to introduce Billy Bragg, and he introduced Billy as the Phil Ochs for our time.

I smiled at that because I had previously told Abbie that Bragg reminded me of Phil Ochs, since Billy had been singing moving political songs like ‘Help Save the Youth of America’, ‘Between the Wars’ and ‘Days Like These’, one of my favorites of his songs for which Billy had written both a UK and a US version. And soon after that show, Billy started playing a new song, ‘I Dreamed I Saw Phil Ochs Last Night’, modeled after the old song for the IWW songwriter, Joe Hill.

For the next few years, Christine and I would go back stage and hang out with Billy Bragg and his entourage, including his then-manager Peter Jenner whenever Billy came to NYC to play a show. And we would send Billy and Peter flyers and articles about the activist projects we were working on.

A few years after Abbie’s death, in the early 1990s, I offered to help Johanna Lawrenson, Abbie’s wife and co-organizer with whom I am still in regular contact with today, to put together a benefit show to help raise funds to organize Abbie’s extensive political archives.

As a poet and activist, I had also been a friend of Allen Ginsberg’s ever since I had done an apprenticeship with Allen at Naropa Institute in Boulder in the summer of 1980.

As my poems improved during the ensuing years, Allen had written publishers to advocate that they publish my poems, he had invited me to open for him at a number of poetry readings, he sent me postcards from his travels and liked to ask me what I reading, he had supported several of the political activist projects on which I had worked (student activism, housing for homeless people, antiwar, anti-apartheid), and he had written a generous introduction to my first full-length poetry book, Space & Other Poems for Love, Laughs, and Social Transformation.

For the upcoming benefit for the Abbie Hoffman Activist Foundation Archives Projects, Johanna and I decided that we would invite Allen Ginsberg and Billy Bragg to perform at NYC’s Lonestar Roadhouse. We would ask Allen to read some poems and then introduce Billy Bragg.

Allen and Billy both quickly agreed to participate in the benefit concert. For Allen, his speedy agreement was based on his longtime friendship with Abbie Hoffman, since he had not yet heard any of Billy Bragg’s songs. Because he was going to be the one to introduce Billy Bragg, Allen wanted to be at least somewhat familiar with Billy’s work, and so I went over to Allen’s apartment a few weeks before the show to play Allen some cassette tapes with Billy Bragg’s songs.

Allen listened closely, including reading the lyrics that were printed on the cassette covers, and, after about 5 or 6 songs, Allen looked up and smiled and said that Billy Bragg reminded him a lot of Bob Dylan, which was about the highest compliment that Allen Ginsberg, as a friend and admirer of Dylan’s, could ever give a songwriter.

Before the Lonestar Roadhouse show started, I enjoyed having the chance to introduce Allen and Billy to each other in one of the club’s side rooms, but I had to help with event logistics and I didn’t get a chance to hear any of their conversations. When it came time for the show, we had a packed house and both Allen and Billy did terrific, engaging performances.

The last time that I saw Billy Bragg was in 2001 or 2002, after he played a small event at a NYC bookstore. When the event was over, I waited on a line to talk with Billy and I gave him a copy of a small collection of political poetry – Poems for the Nation – that Allen had started putting together before his death in 1997, a collection that Andy Clausen and I helped complete as assistant editors and that was ultimately published by Seven Stories Press in 2000.

I couldn’t tell then whether Billy remembered me or not, but I was pretty certain that he had remembered Allen, and I would very much enjoy hearing today if Billy remembers his conversations with Allen Ginsberg at that benefit event for the Abbie Hoffman Activist Foundation archives.

– Eliot Katz, September 2023