The Song That Reminds
Me of Growing Up
Engelbert Humperdinck
TheLastWaltz 1967
“My dad died in ’76, but when I
was a kid my parents spent a lot
of time going to dinner dances.
They really liked to ballroom
dance, that was their thing. So until I was
old enough to complain about it and stay at
home, I was always at these dances where
I was knocking around. They always played
this at the end of the night, and when that
song played I knew at last I was bloody
going home. [Laughs]”
The Song That Made Me
Want To Play Guitar
DerekandtheDominosLayla 1970
“I spent a lot of time in my bed-
room with a tennis racket play-
ing along to that. It was the first
time I can really remember
thinking, this is an instrument that really
had some effect on me. The guitar playing
is immense, the work between Duane All-
man and Eric Clapton. And if you listen to
“She Came Along To Me” off Mermaid Av-
enue, at the fade out [keyboardist] Jay Ben-
nett does a kind of impersonation of the
tailend of ‘Layla’. He just did it, and I went,
‘Oh, man, you’re really messing round with
my soul here, buddy!’”
The Song I Wrote When Homesick
Billy BraggYar ra Song 1985
“Being in Australia, homesick-
ness is something that does
come to mind. You’re such a long
way from your family. I actual-
ly wrote a song about being homesick in
Australia called ‘Yarra Song’, which is real-
ly about finding in Melbourne the nearest
you could probably get to an English vibe,
and kind of feeling at least a bit at home
there, but then trying to understand Auss-
ie Rules and suddenly realising I’m on the
wrong side of the planet again. When I see
those guys who look forward to going on
the road to get away from their families, I
think, mate, you’re not doing it right. If you
don’t miss your kids, there’s something
wrong with you.”The Greatest Song Ever WrittenSmokey Robinson & the Miracles
TheTracksofMyTears 1965
“Easy. Three chords, titanic pro-
duction, every emotion that you
want. The heartbreak that’s in
there: ‘Outside I’m masquerad-
i ng , i n s ide my hop e s a r e f a d i ng ’. It ’s s o s i m -
ple as well. It’s immense. It could have sunk
the Titanic if the Titanic had hit it. The first
music I owned was all stolen from some-
body else, but I must have bought this fuck-
in’ album at least a dozen times. So Berry
Gordy got his bloody money in the end.”The Song That Earned Me the
Biggest Royalty ChequeBilly BraggNew England 1983
“Kirsty MacColl had a hit with
it in ’84. I never put it out as a
single, so she recorded it with
her then-husband Steve Lilly-
white, and they did this shiny pop version,
which was just brilliant, cos it showed peo-
ple that I can write great pop songs, it’s just
that I don’t record them that way. My mum
never really understood my job. If I was
home she’d say, ‘How are you working? How
are you making any money?’ ‘Yeah, but
mum, somewhere in the world someone’s
playing my record on the radio, someone’s
buying it in a shop, and that all accumu-
lates.’ [She’d say], ‘It’s not right.’”The Song I Wish I Hadn’t RecordedBilly BraggYouMakeMeBrave 2008
“The producer really loved the
version that I’d sung. He said,
‘Don’t sing it again, you’ll never
get that feeling again.’ But I
hadn’t quite finished writing it, and there’s
a line that says, ‘I fear for the future and
what it might hold’. It should be, ‘Should I
fear for the future?’ But I’d only just writ-ten it that afternoon, I was just throwing it
out there, and whenever I hear it I think,
fuck, that’s just not me. I don’t want to be
saying I’m afraid of the future. I’m a glass
half full kind of guy. My own cynicism is
something I work very hard to suppress.
And that’s a very cynical line. And the fact
t h a t no one b oug ht t h a t a lbu m [Mr Love &
Justice] and no one hears that track is no
comfort to me. Cos I fuckin’ hear it.”The Song That Reminds
Me of SchoolThe Delfonics La La Means I Love You
1968
“That was the song that always
seemed to be played at the
school disco, and I didn’t get to
dance with any of the girls that
I wanted to dance with. Was I a good stu-
dent? No, I’m not very academic. We had an
[exam] called 11+ in the UK, and you took
it when you’re 11 and that decided whether
you’d go to secondary modern or grammar
school. Grammar school you’d to go univer-
sity; secondary mod you went to the car fac-
tory. And I failed my 11+. I’ve come to realise
t h a t a lo t o f u s i n pu n k w e r e g u y s w ho f a i le d
their 11+ but were too smart to go and work
in a car factory. Me, [Paul] Weller, Mick
Jones, I think [John] Lydon as well.”The Song You Wouldn’t
Expect To Find on My iPodAaron Copland Appalachian Spring
1944
“I don’t think people would
think of me as someone who lis-
tens to much classical music. It
has a kind of taste of the new
world in it. One time I heard it in some con-
t e x t a nd i t r e a l l y d id s p e a k t o me o f t h a t mo -
ment in the tour bus when you wake up re-
ally early in the morning and you’re sitting
next to the driver and you’re driving
through the hills and the sun’s just coming
up. And you know you’re going somewhere
today, something’s going to happen. It’s full
of possibility, and ‘Appalachian Spring’ has
that.”MY SOUNDTRACK
36 | Rolling Stone | RollingStoneAus.com Ju ne, 2017
R&R
The ‘Bard of Barking’ on the songs from his youth,
and the greatest track ever writtenBY ROD YATESBilly Bragg