BIGSOUND: Billy Bragg 'If You Want Change, It's Your Responsibility, Not Mine.'

Billy Bragg imparted wisdom from over 30 years of performing to a capacity crowd in today's opening BIGSOUND keynote speech, covering politics, the music industry and the audience's importance in the power of music.

Speaking of his decision to join the army after the breakup of his first band in the late 1970s, Bragg first touched on the power of music and how it can be misunderstood.

“I wanted to press the eject button on my failed attempt to change the world through punk rock,” he said. But his stint in the army just inspired him to write more songs.

He described his decision to become a solo artist as “a last gasp” and his desperation for his debut Life's A Riot With Spy Vs Spy to work.

“It was me against the world, that's how I felt about it,” he said of trying to get people to notice his music. Not knowing anyone in the music industry, he would cold call record labels; even pretending to be a video repairman to get into the office of The Clash manager Peter Jenner and buying a curry for John Peel to get his song on his show.

A deeply political songwriter, Bragg said the idea of writing political songs came from black America in the 1960s and the civil rights movement. But he spent a lot of time talking about whether or not a songwriter can change the world.

“[American protest singer] Phil Ochs committed suicide because he was so passionate that music could change the world that he was devastated when it didn't,” Bragg said, before admitting the miners' strike in the mid-1980s was a test for him to see whether music could elicit change.

“Singer-songwriters can't change the world,” he said. “The only people who can is the audience. Our job as performers is to bring people together to express their solidarity about ideas.”

“If you want change, it's your responsibility, not mine.”

Bragg credits going to Rock Against Racism in 1978 for giving him the courage of his conviction, but said that it wasn't The Clash that made him felt empowered, but the audience in which he stood.

On being pigeonholed as a political songwriter, he expressed a certain amount of frustration but accepts that it is his own doing.

“I've made that bed and I'll lie in it,” he said. “I'm not really a political songwriter, I write songs about things that piss me off. It's like therapy.”

He touched on the feud with Wilco's Jeff Tweedy following the making of their Mermaid Avenue collaboration, saying he didn't like mixes of his songs that Wilco did. He called being mentioned by Bob Dylan in his Chronicles book “equal to a knighthood”, took digs at Oasis and gave props to Ed Sheeran.

On the business side of music, he called the record industry “a scary place” and believes – in the digital age – artists should be entitled to a larger percentage of record sale revenue; calling for a paradigm shift. He believes that if an artist receives a higher cut of royalties, it will go a long way to curbing piracy.

He finished with practical advice for burgeoning artists, saying that proactivity is key to getting anywhere in music, urging artists to do things themselves and not expect anyone to come and find you and help you.

“The only way to do it, is to fucking do it,” he said.