One Track Mind #2: The Warmest Room

What's the best song Billy Bragg ever wrote?

I'd be prepared to hear arguments in support of A New England, Waiting For The Great Leap Forwards, Levi Stubbs' Tears, St Swithin's Day, Upfield, Accident Waiting To Happen or even Handyman Blues. At one time or another, I reckon each of those has been my favourite... and there's a bunch more I could add to the list if I thought a little longer.

The Warmest Room wouldn't leap immediately to my mind, but it came up on a compilation the other day and stopped me in my tracks. And thinking back, it's not the only time that's happened.

When did I first get into Billy Bragg? I'd love to tell you I caught that first, mushroom biryani-stoked John Peel radio play of The Milkman of Human Kindness (at the wrong speed, naturally)... but clearly I wasn't cool enough to be listening to Peel back in '83. I was still a Radio 2 man back then anyway. And I was far more familiar with Kirsty's version of A New England (although Billy always says that's his favourite anyway). It's possible then that I didn't pay much attention to Billy until he had first Number One in 1988. I do remember watching him sing She's Leaving Home on TOTP with Cara Tivey... and thinking, hey, that's much better than the A-side that actually propelled this single to the top of the charts. It was probably at this point that I bought my first Billy Bragg album, which I'm pretty sure was a vinyl copy of Worker's Playtime. 

Soon after I acquired the CD re-issue of Billy's self-proclaimed "Difficult Third Album", Talking with the Taxman About Poetry and discovered The Warmest Room. It's tucked away at the end Side 2, long after the Johnny Marr-fuelled glory of Greetings To The New Brunette and the devastating gut-punch of Levi Stubbs... but in its own way, it's just as wonderful.

Whenever I've seen Billy live, he's keen to state that there are two types of Billy Bragg fan - the ones who come to him for the politics, and the ones who prefer the humanity of his relationship stories. I'm firmly in the latter camp - while I agree with many (if not all) of his political opinions, and can appreciate how heartfelt they are when he puts them to song, I'd much rather listen to his tales of woe. Of course, the politics do creeps into those songs too, as Billy confesses in The Warmest Room...

Though you cannot be blamed
But I've become inflamed
With thoughts of lust and thoughts of power
Thoughts of love and thoughts of Chairman Mao

...but maybe it's more the politics of love and war in this instance. Whatever - The Warmest Room is a love story, and it even starts with a hint of sex to grab our attention...

A rainy afternoon
Spent in the warmest room
She lay before me and said
Yes, it's true that I have seen some naked men

To me, that opening reeks of unrequited lust. A flirtatious young woman toying with a love-struck young dupe who probably doesn't have the nerve to make a move... 

The best songs are malleable - we bend them to fit our own experiences.

As she made for the door
Leaving me on the floor
I wish I'd done biology
For an urge within me wanted to do it then

I particularly like that line, because it suggests a sexually inexperienced young guy, well out of his depth in this "relationship". There's also a big difference between the way she provocatively "lays before" him in the previous verse, and then leaves him "on the floor" here. You can immediately tell who holds all the power.

Then comes the chorus, where all that desperate yearning becomes crystallised...

And here she comes again
And I'm sitting on my hands
And she sings to me that siren song
Here she comes again and I'm biting my lip
But it won't be long

She's a Siren - and yet he's sitting on his hands, unable to make any kind of move, biting his lip with nerves... and kidding himself he has some kind of chance. Been there, got the T-shirt.

What do Sirens do? They lure men to their doom... although in this case, the Siren might well be using her feminine wiles to lure Billy into supporting her own personal political ideologies. Not that he'd need such pretty persuasion nowadays... but whenever I listen to this song, I do wonder if that's how he first became interested in such things.

And then, to lighten the mood, a little comedic interlude...

As Brother Barry said,

As he married Marion,

"The wife has three great attributes:

Intelligence, a Swiss army knife and charm."

What I love about this joke, from an English teacher's point of view, is that it utilises the Rule of Three... in a most unusual fashion. That trusted comedic trope usually works thus...

Item 1 - introduce the topic...

Item 2 - establish what looks like a pattern...

Item 3 - surprise us or confound our expectations to create a humorous reaction.

For example...

Have you ever woken up next to someone and you can't remember what their name is, how you met, or why they're dead?

By the regulations of comedy then, this lyric should go...

"The wife has three great attributes:

Intelligence, charm and a Swiss Army Knife."

That's how the joke would normally work. But there are competing masters to be satisfied here, and the songwriter's need to scan trumps the comedian's need for a laugh. And yet... it works. Better than the alternative, I'd argue, but maybe that's down to familiarity - after all these years, I can't imagine the line any other way.

And then it's time to mix the pop with the politics again...

And she did speak her mind
And told them all that she believed
The only way to disarm is to disarm

The repetition of "disarm" allows for multiple interpretations. The one to do with stopping warfare ("let's make love not war" was always a dodgy chat up line) but also "to remove hostility, suspicion, etc. by being charming: a disarming smile." But who's disarming who in this tale? Is it possible the Siren feels threatened by Billy's advances? Is he actually what we might call a stalker or a sex pest nowadays? That's not an interpretation I favour, but as I said... songs are malleable.

Then we get to the crux of the matter: the insinuation of seduction as indoctrination, and the idea that Billy's Marxist ideology was originally stirred by post-adolescent hormones. Of course, he wouldn't be the first young man to engage with a political theory in order to get his end away, and does it really matter how we arrive at our individual belief system as long as it's the right one for us?

However, before Billy becomes completely inflamed with thoughts of lust and thoughts of power, we first have to contend with his own resistance efforts...

I know people whose idea of fun
Is throwing stones in the river in the afternoon sun
Oh, let me be as free as them...

For me, these are among the best lines Billy's ever written. They're simple, yet they speak volumes. Putting aside everything else this song is about, here's a straightforward plea to live in the moment, to not (as Wendell Berry puts it in The Peace Of Wild Things) "tax [our] lives with forethought of grief". Don't we all want to be as free as them? Sadly, it's clear our narrator fears that won't be possible once his Siren returns...

Don't let her pass this way again!

It's like his brain is screaming out in a rare lucid moment, knowing full well the fug of lust will soon descend and he'll be lost again.

All of which leads us to the denouement, and the only lines I don't have a clear interpretation of...

We have such little time
At your place or mine
I can't wait till we take our blood tests
Oh baby, let's take our blood tests now

The first two - fine: it's romantic desperation mixed with an ever more desperate chat up line. But the blood tests? I've seen those interpreted as a response to the AIDS crisis in the 80s, and maybe that's partly it... but I also wonder if it's not just another excuse to string the hapless, lovesick fool along with. This Siren's got no intention of letting Billy have his way... but boy, does she enjoy the attention! When those blood tests do come back, you can bet there'll be some other reason to delay the evitable...