Thursday, November 26, 2015

Folk-rocker Frank Turner says, "I’m a libertarian"

Frank Turner: ‘I’m a libertarian. That doesn’t go down well in the music industry’ - Music - Hampstead Highgate Express - Charlotte Beale :

November 26, 2015 - "Frank Turner is back home in Holloway, for a brief stint, between three months on the road across the US, Europe and the UK.... Turner’s respite in Holloway is short-lived, however; after returning to his regular haunt at Alexandra Palace tonight, he and his band The Sleeping Souls will set off to the US and Mexico for more tour dates, finally wrapping up in December. It will mark the end of yet another hugely successful year for the former Million Dead frontman, who, since releasing his first solo record, Sleep is for the Week in 2007, has become one of the biggest folk rock stars in the UK.

"The singer’s latest album, Positive Songs for Negative People, which reached No. 2 in the UK charts in August, opens with a song called The Angel Islington, which mourns a separation. 'I’ve broken all the things that I could break', Turner sings.

"Does he agree that Islington is being broken – 'socially cleansed', as his MP Jeremy Corbyn claims – by the combination of Tory housing benefit cuts and exorbitant property prices?

"'I think "social cleansing" is taking it a little too far, myself. Obviously there are concerns about the disadvantaged, but Holloway is a resolutely mixed area in my experience, and I don’t see much sign of that changing myself.”

"Turner, 33, won’t be drawn further on his MP’s new leadership of the Opposition. 'For personal reasons, I try to maintain a distance between my art and my politics, partly because I operate within a left-wing milieu and I’m a libertarian. 'Being pro-market, libertarian, extreme liberal - however you want to put it - doesn’t go down particularly well in the music industry.

"'It’s a moral conundrum for me, because part of me wants to stand up for what I believe in, but at the same time I’m much more interested in making music and in sound and art and song-writing, than I am in spending my entire life arguing with people on Twitter and Facebook about politics.'"

Read more: http://www.hamhigh.co.uk/etcetera/music/frank_turner_i_m_a_libertarian_that_doesn_t_go_down_well_in_the_music_industry_1_4326304
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