A Ron Bennington Interview with Bill Bailey

This week Ron Bennington sat down with Bill Bailey– one of Britain’s most successful and critically acclaimed stand up comics.  He sells out stadiums routinely, and has a long list of tv and film appearances, and he came by the Sirius XM studios to talk to Ron about his current US tour.    

Ron Bennington: Bill Bailey in studio with us. Gigantic comedian in England. Massive comedian, now coming to the States much like Oasis did.

Bill Bailey: (Laughs) Without the inter-brother fighting.

Ron Bennington: Now as you prepare for this tour of the United States, references change, stuff like that. You’ve got to keep an eye on the act, I guess?

Bill Bailey: For sure.  There’s stuff which I look at and I think, this isn’t going to go over, and this isn’t going to translate. I’ve written a lot of stuff about America and being in America. A lot of the stuff I’ve toured around the world– like in Australia, New Zealand and around Europe so its kind of got an international feel to it. There’s a lot of music in it.  Music tends to kind of translate.

Ron Bennington: Isn’t that the funniest thing in the world? Music will translate anywhere in the world but with comedy even the slightest word sometimes can stop an audience right in their tracks.

Bill Bailey: That’s exactly right. And sometimes those words– the different vocabulary that you use – are like stumbling blocks to a routine or a bit going over. And afterwards you think, well what the hell was wrong with that? What the hell happened there? That usually kills. And the audience is going [cheering] and then whuh? What the hell’s a bloke?

Ron Bennington: If they even hear a hometown reference– if you use a street name and mispronounce it, BOOM the audience stops cold.

Bill Bailey: Yes. That’s right. But I noticed that people in America have a lot more pride about people and the places they come from– towns and cities. There just isn’t that in Britain. People just hate where they come from. You tell people in Britain– Hey! Birmingham! And they’ll go aww shit. There’s no sort of sense of civic pride.

Ron Bennington: You’ve arrived here during a real pride time because it’s the ten-year since of 9/11. And we just had giant flags all over the country. The football games had flags as big as stadiums.

Bill Bailey: I’ve never seen flags as big as these. They must be the biggest flags in the world.

Ron Bennington: And some people are being bitched at because their flags are too small. Look at the size of this flag. You obviously don’t love our country.

Bill Bailey: A flag is such a potent, a powerful, iconic thing in America…much more so than in Britain. The Union Jack has become sort of tainted because it became associated with a sort of jingoistic sense of you know, sabre rattling and it kind of almost got slightly hijacked by the nationalists of the extreme right.

But the American flag is extraordinary! When I was reading stuff about the American flag…there’s so many rules! You’ve got to sew it in a certain way, its got to be higher than all the other flags of other nations, if you’ve got a building with other flags they’ve got to be the size of a postage stamp. And the other thing that I found extraordinary, is that you can’t collect fruit with the American flag. You can’t do that! If you were out foraging in the woods for a bunch of fruit… “Has anyone got a bag or something?” “No but I’ve got this enormous American flag.” “Don’t put the fruit in there! You call yourself a patriot!? There’s pears in there.  Apples!”

Ron Bennington: No, you’re totally right. We can’t collect fruit with our flags.

Bill Bailey: And that’s a big loss I think.

Ron Bennington:  But like you said, you’ve gotten past that thing in your country..of patriotism being seen as an overt thing…where we keep an eye on other people’s patriotism here still. We’ll be like, “Stand up! The anthem! Stand up!”  we’ll yell at each other.

Bill Bailey: I suppose that the thing is..America is a vast federation of states which are almost countries themselves. And to kind of keep that together, there’s a kind of unified sense of it. Whereas in Britain– its such a small country by comparison, and yet within that country you’ve got England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland– all of these people incredibly sort of national pride about their own country. You look at the United Kingdom, it isn’t that United at all.  People are at each others throats! You go to Scotland, and this is the equivalent distance in America as four hours down the road. That wouldn’t get you across Texas. So you go from London to Scotland and people will be like (with Scottish Accent) “Yer English! English Bastard!” And this is four hours away on the train! Wales is a totally different thing …(with Wales accent) “come over here, you English. I can’t stand bloody English coming here!”

Its extraordinary. There’s an amazing amount of localized national kind of pride within the United Kingdom. Scotland’s devolved. Scotland has its own parliament now. Wales has an assembly. Ireland has an assembly. And that’s why its kind of fueled this jingoistic kind of England thing. The actual England flag is a red cross on a white background and you see that all over England. Much more so now.

Ron Bennington: Particularly I think when a world cup is going on or anything like that. Suddenly the pride shows up in a way there that is just phenomenal.

Bill Bailey: Absolutely. You’ve got to have a flag, and so the flags come out. And that flag comes out, not the union jack.

Ron Bennington: It’s something that people need, I guess, isn’t it? This thing of “let me be in a group that other people aren’t in” it’s the nuttiest thing in the world.

Bill Bailey: Without getting into the psychology of it, I think its kind of like a new religion. Its what’s replaced a lot of religion in the UK. Church attendance is down, people aren’t that religious, we’re a more secular society. And so people like to be part of something. So sport is huge, you want to…support your football team. You want to go see bands, you want to go see comics. Hey I’m not complaining. People want to be a part of something and that allows them to do it.

Ron Bennington: We do an amazing thing here, particularly in the south where we take patriotism and sport and add Jesus to it. So Jesus–  you might not know this– he was an American, when you get down to the south– and by the way he was a Republican American, and also loves the flag and loves the Dallas Cowboys and wants them to win.

Bill Bailey: That’s quite a specific set of data. I saw an extraordinary thing down in lower Manhattan. I saw a guy, a big guy, and he had a big cigar, and he looked like some kind of record producer. And he was sitting down, and he got a piece of A4, an A4 pad with a sharpie and he’d just written Christ, with a sharpie on this bit of paper. And he was puffing on the cigar, and just pointing…”eh, eh, eh? Christ! Eh?” This was great! I love this!

Ron Bennington: You arrived as they all came in. Because the security was crazy when you got here. Then the Jesus people showed up. Then the 9-11 truthers showed up. They were all down there at the same time.

Bill Bailey: They were. I was hanging out with them. It’s an extraordinary group. I had different expectations. I thought they’d be very quiet, very reverential and yet there was this intense atmosphere of debate and sort of street argument. There were arguments going on. You know guys saying “this was all conspiracy voodoo nonsense” and then other guys “no you don’t know the truth”. And there’s huge banners– like HUGE banners– THE WHOLE THING WAS SET UP BUSH LIED HE KNEW! AND Then other guys going– this is all bullshit. It was extraordinary. It was quite invigorating. I thought, well this is debate– its happening on the street. Its healthy.

Ron Bennington: How many cities are you playing in the states on this trip?

Bill Bailey: I’m in New York, and Boston, Chicago. It’s a little tour. I’m playing up in Toronto as well. It’s just a kind of toe in the water thing. I came here, it was ten years ago I played here. And I had a great time and loved performing in America for many of the reasons that we’ve been talking about. It’s just a very fertile place to just bounce off. There’s a bit of energy about it and I love that, so I hope to come back next year and do a bigger tour.

Ron Bennington: It’s amazing how many people come over from England and end up loving it here. At first, they pull their head back but Gervais feels very comfortable in New York now.

Bill Bailey: I think that years ago, there was sort of a sense of …oh yea comedy, it wont translate. You can’t go to America. But then I’d see a load of American comics coming over to America, with Dennis Leary and people like Dom Irrera and Rich Hall and then laterally Chris Rock has been performing there, and you think, well this kind of works here fine. I think it’s a myth that there’s some kind of gap between the comedy. And certainly the last few years with YouTube and the internet. People are a bit more saavy about comedy I think. They’re a lot more aware of what’s around. And you can, you know suss it out.

Ron Bennington:  And you’re doing a lot of music on this tour?

Bill Bailey: There’s a lot of music. Yea. There’s some straight stand up, there’s a bit of that kind of observational stuff. I like to make it into a show, like a spectacle. I use screens of film, animation. So that the stand up kind of relates to the filming and the animation. I think the things to kind of talk to each other. I play a lot of instruments, keyboards and you know I like to use interesting instruments. I use a very ancient Iranian thing, like a lute. Well, it’s a challenge. If I can get comedy out of this…whoooah, I pat myself on the back. I use all kinds of stuff like that. Over the years I used guitars and keyboards but I got bored with that. It a kind of multi media spectacular.

Ron Bennington: You started as a musician– you started in bands. So if that would have worked out, you never would have had to go to comedy at all. You would have just been very happy.

Bill Bailey: Yea, I had this ridiculously, sort of overly optimistic plan. And that was, that I was going to be in Talking Heads, right? I wanted to be the keyboard player in Talking Heads and I didn’t make any effort to do that. I didn’t contact David Byrne I didn’t actually make any effort. I just played the piano in my house, in the west country of England, hoping that perhaps Talking Head’s tour bus would drive past, the window would be open, they’d go hey! Who is that guy? We need him! And that didn’t happen.

Ron Bennington: Was that the band for you when you were a kid though, Talking Heads?

Bill Bailey: Yea. Punk bands. I was into British Punk bands. I loved the Pistols, the Stranglers, Souxsie and the Banshees, The Damned, all of that was my era. I think I first heard, in 1979 or 1980, the first Talking Heads. I think for me it had the synthesis of all that, it sort of had that punk ethic, but it also had the show– the spectacle of the showman. David Byrne I think is kind of genius in a way. He looks like he’s from another era or another planet. Everyone else is almost fixed in the era, by, I dunno by either how they’re dressed or how they are. And he looks like he could have stepped off a stage right now.

Ron Bennington: He almost looks like the dad that would be unhappy with the rest of the band, you know what I mean? Like if the father came down, said turn that down, and then started playing and singing. But Talking Heads are the only band that haven’t got back together when there’s a ton of money waiting if they would just do another tour.

Bill Bailey: I’d be there. If he’s listening, and you need a keyboard player, I’m ready.

Ron Bennington: So this is very very cool to have you do this tour. But you’re doing so much tv in England right now. Would you do that in the United States? It seems like that would be the spot to wake everybody up in the States.

Bill Bailey: Absolutely.  I’ve known there’s been comics in the past that have come here, and try to give it the, ‘oh I’m a big star and blah blah blah.’ And I don’t want to do that. I just wanted to come in, and play a few gigs. Do the kind of thing I’ve done back home, play a few clubs and little theaters, get some word of mouth, and see a bit of America. I just love traveling around and seeing the place.

Ron Bennington: How are you going to be traveling?

Bill Bailey: We’ve got Ozzy Osbourne’s tour bus.

Ron Bennington: Wow, I would definitely take the lysol to that first, just to be sure.

Bill Bailey: It looks like a nice hotel room. I’ll bet Ozzy doesn’t even know it’s a bus. I bet he steps out, he’s in another city, he thinks he’s been beamed there. (Imitating Ozzy) “Sharon!”

Ron Bennington: I’m sure even just seeing the scenery pass by– its like that in a regular hotel room for him anyway. He’s just seeing mountains…that never stop. Bill Bailey so nice to have you come in, and I wish you all the best.. It’s the American Tour. And you’re throwing Toronto into the mix. Have a great time and we’ll see you next time through.

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