Raising the heat with Steve Earle

By GRAHAM REID

"The problem," says Steve Earle, "is the President is, umm, is ... well, possibly retarded. But I don't hold that against him."

Earle doesn't laugh or even pause for effect. That wasn't a punchline, just a statement of fact as he sees it. He carries on.

"You know, George Bush doesn't scare me, Dick Cheney scares the living **** outta me and I think he's genuinely dangerous. He's running the country more than anyone realises and he isn't having to be accountable because, who gives a **** about the Vice-President of the United States?

"So we're in a dangerous period and I happen to be more afraid of an assault on our civil liberties than I am about being attacked by terrorists."

When Earle speaks like this - and he is an eloquent, plain-speaking advocate for the repeal of the death penalty and other liberal causes - you'd be forgiven for thinking he was a spokesman for some leftist organisation.

The self-described "borderline Marxist" speaks repeatedly of the dangers of America - the country of his birth and which he loves with a passion - rolling back the civil liberties and freedoms it has fought for since its founding in the wake of September 11 last year.

The Patriot Act signed into law a year ago, which allows for widespread and random surveillance of citizens through phone taps and monitoring of computers, worries Earle, although he says "that can be undone and I think it will eventually".

"The idea of our Constitution is it supposedly allows us, as we make mistakes, a way of correcting them. But basically we just defeated that process ourselves. What's even scarier than the Patriot Act is that in this climate [Attorney-General] John Ashcroft is a right-wing fundamentalist Christian and he furthered his agenda, taking advantage of September 11 and dishonouring the memory of 3000 people and their families."

And so Earle goes: railing against the erosions of democracy in a country that would pretend to be its finest example, discussing the fundamental precepts of Marxism, the success of a moratorium on the death penalty in Maryland, and how Bush became President through "a coup" in Florida.

Surprisingly, this articulate advocate of free speech isn't running for public office or heading any organisation. He is 47, a road-hardened musician who started in the country-rock corner 16 years ago with the acclaimed Guitar Town album which articulated the dreams and lives of ordinary people. Copperhead Road which followed was even more successful, but Earle spun out, became a junkie, served time, came out clean.

In the past seven years he has produced a remarkable, diverse body of work which reaches effortlessly from acoustic ballad to rock'n'roll and, for The Mountain album, authentic bluegrass married with songs of dissent.

His latest album, Jerusalem, crosses musical boundaries from banjo ballads to Stones-style riffing on Amerika v 6.0, country rock, an affecting love ballad with Emmylou Harris, and into Tex-Mex Farfisa-organ pop. Many of the songs are infused with his political spirit - sometimes apocalyptic, sometimes optimistic - and in the States one in particular has drawn special attention.

For John Walker Blues, Earle adopts the voice of John Walker Lindh, the Marin County teenager named after John Lennon who became disillusioned with American life and found his future in the words of Mohammad and the Koran. He joined the Taleban in Pakistan after studying Islam in Yemen, trained with al Qaeda soldiers and was captured in Afghanistan. In July the 21-year-old pleaded guilty to charges of assisting the Taleban and now faces 20 year in prison.

That Earle chose to not only sing about Walker but did so from a non-judgmental position meant it would inevitably be controversial in America. Earle was branded a traitor in some circles, and this former favourite son of the Nashville country music establishment found radio jocks calling for a boycott of his album. It was also notable that his work was seen as an act of dissent in the prevailing conservative political climate in the United States.

"[The reaction] was what I expected from the people it came from," says Earle, "which were a very, very right-wing radio talkshow host and the New York Post, which is toilet paper. And the Wall Street Journal, which is a little classier toilet paper.

"The truth is, in none of the mainstream press I've talked to no one has questioned my right to write what I want to when it gets right down to it. No intelligent person has challenged my motives for writing that.

"My motives were that I have a 20-year-old son and I think it could have happened to him or your 20-year-old son, that's what it was about. It was about disillusionment with the culture - and also scapegoating, which is very dangerous and ugly, like racism."

Earle's political position doesn't come without humour, although the joke often has point.

"I still believe that my country wasn't created by a revolution of people but a revolution of rich farmers who didn't want to pay their ****ing taxes, and we're still basically a bunch of rich farmers who don't want to pay our taxes. But we did create something that's bigger than we are in our Constitution. It's a document that may be bigger and more effective than its framers intended. It's proven to be pretty durable and I think it'll survive this."

He notes that television channels in America very much want a war with Iraq and have a vested interest in one - "Never forget that CNN is what it is because of the Gulf War, and that's not lost on anyone in the television business" - and the most irresponsible thing about the present Administration is "when they blur the lines and make Iraq and 9/11 the same thing. The only way you can get to that is racism, and that bothers me."

Earle admits that while he doesn't sell millions of albums, his kids are in private schools, he drives a new car and makes an embarrassing amount of money.

"But how much money can you spend? I don't feel guilty about it, although I probably did at one time. I don't have any problem with commerce as long as it's not at the expense of almost everyone else," he laughs. "When I call myself a borderline Marxist it's because I believe everything Karl Marx said about economics is true. Basically when you boil down those big fat-arsed books, all they say is capitalism is fundamentally oppressive simply because it depends on a surplus of labour to thrive.

"In other words, you have to have a workforce out of work to keep in place the workforce that is working in case they get out of hand and start wielding too much power, or attempt to.

"There's nothing wrong with being entrepreneurial, but I don't believe you deserve to starve to death simply because you are not entrepreneurial, and I don't believe it's okay for people to go hungry in the richest countries in the world, or anyone to go without decent healthcare - which happens in my country.

"Thirty-five per cent of the American people don't have any health insurance. Those are all human issues and I feel guilty about that. I could take my truck and give it away but I don't think it's going to help anything. I travel all around the world, and if I let myself I could surrender myself to pretty expensive tastes. But I've figured out you go down the right-hand side of the menu and the stuff that costs the most is the good stuff .

"But I believe everyone has the right to have enough to eat, a roof over their head and decent healthcare. And a job. Give people something to ****in' do! In the so-called Western world that we are so proud of, I think that's all possible, the resources exist."

And so a conversation with a musician goes by without music being mentioned and, unlike most such conversations, the artist barely mentions the new album which he is, at least in theory, supposed to be talking up.

But Earle is a man with a bigger agenda and his music is simply his chosen vehicle. The interview process allows him the opportunity to discuss more pressing matters than a bunch of songs on yet another album out in the marketplace. So the talk is political even when it is ostensibly about art.

"Yeah, but I think art is inherently political even when you are not writing about politics. There's always a political component in what I do. The songs on The Mountain, my bluegrass record, are pretty left-wing, but people were more concerned they were bluegrass songs and were shocked by that.

"Well, this time the rules are different. This is the only record I could have made in this political climate. I'm a pretty political person but not an overly political songwriter, but I don't think Woody Guthrie was either.

"He was a songwriter who lived in politically charged times and I am living in them too. Whether I like it or not."

* Jerusalem is out now.