Over at my little music site Salut! Live, I have been interviewing Leon Rosselson, who has been writing and performing songs for so long that some of his work was featured on the groundbreaking satirical programme That Was The Week That Was.
His latest album, Where Are The Barricades?, is also his last; at 82, he has decided to call it a day at least as far as recording goes. The full interview can be seen at http://www.salutlive.com/2016/12/the-big-interview-leon-rosselson-no-longer-turning-the-world-upside-down.html.
Rosselson is a political writer, a class warrior, a polemicist and a mischief-maker. Not all readers of Salut! would share all of his views or analysis, and some would share none.
The album may be bought at Salut!'s Amazon link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B018TI0UHM/salusund-21
I have always appreciated his work and sometimes agree, sometimes disagree with the messages he seeks to convey.
When writing about folk music for The Daily Telegraph, I had no difficulty in persuading successive commissioning editors to publish reviews of his albums.
That was the beauty of the Telegraph of my era; a haven for tribal Tories but broad-minded enough to find room for all sorts of off-message writing. I was not, in any case, preaching revolution on Rosselson's behalf, merely drawing attention to his wonderful way with words.
This last of his albums contains songs that are sufficiently well crafted to suggest his retirement may be premature.
His defence of looters in the 2011 UK riots, suggesting that they were emulating the actions of such esteemed figures from British history as Sir Francis Drake and Clive of India, will jar with many ...
.. Aren't they just following in the footsteps
Of those who made this country great?
But maybe we just need to look at our history with a a more critical eye. And he is spot-on when denouncing, in his sleeve notes, the scandalously harsh sentences handed out for quite trivial misconduct ("10 months in jail for stealing two left-footed trainers").
And there is compelling poignancy and non-selective compassion when he juxtaposes the stories of two murdered children in The Ballad of Rivka and Mohammed; Rivka killed by Nazis in 1942 along with thousands of other Polish Jews in the Vilna Ghetto of Vilnius, Mohammed, the victim of an Israeli shell while playing football on the beach in Gaza 70 years later.
Rosselson is Jewish but steadfastly supports the Palestinian cause (his parents arrived in London as refugees from Tsarist Russia, a story told in an older song of his that I especially admire, My Father's Jewish World). But his gifts extend way beyond agitprop to embrace the human condition. On his own count, he has written 317 songs and I do not pretend to know them all.
On the new album, Marital Diaries is not even a song but part of a series of depressing if recognisable chronicles of domestic conflict. But Paris in the Spring, while deeply melancholic, is a beautiful song, adopting the narrative of French chanson and sung not by Rosselson but one of his guests, Liz Mansfield.
The bustling crowds,
Le Grand Cafe 'Monsieur, l'addition, s'il vous plait'
She discards her phone, she knows he'll never call
Takes off her ring and lets it fall
The clip at the top of this page offers perhaps my favourite Rosselson song, capturing the bitterness and regret of an old man nearing the end of a life devoted to futile support of communism. It also demonstrates that we are not discussing a great singer.
But I do think the texture and tone of his voice suit the songs like a glove. The delivery is that of the quizzical plain man and that works, too.
Leon Rosselson's best-known song, World Turned Upside Down, live by Oysterband
Considering that I worked for a Conservative newspaper from which his world outlook was miles apart, we have always got on well enough. Except once.
Rosselson took exception to one review because I was raising an eyebrow at the need for a "Rosselson by others" album featuring his friends and fellow musicians or singers. It was called And They All Sang Rosselsongs, and the review was published in the Telegraph in 2005.
It talked of the "extraordinary cleverness of his words rising above [his own, self-acknowledged] glaring vocal frailties. It praised the artists who contributed to the album but said it was Rosselson's voice that best conveyed "his anger, irony and spirit of rebellion".
Today's article serves as an invitation to read in full my interview with this outstanding songwriter at at Salut! Live.
Let me end where I started (in the headline) with this extract from the interview:
Q: Turn back the clock 60-odd years, Would you do it again? A: Yes. I think I was meant to write songs. I never had the stamina for the novel.
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