Aussie Pm Albanese is a music fan and did a bit of amateur DJing in his time. Here he is at the PMs desk rocking a Radio Birdman t- shirt. RB was a seminal Sydney punk band.
Clinton played sax, Blair bass and Obama loved publicising his playlists. Gilberto Gil was a Govt minister.Peter Garrett of Midnight Oil was one. Youssou Ndour is one.if I go back Athol Guy of the Seekers was a State ( regional ) minister. Any others?
Ted Heath had an orchestra.
Chelsea FC’s biggest fan, David Mellor, opera buff and has a show on Classic FM.
Wrong Ted Heath, although the politician played the mighty Wurlitzer…
Think FS may have been joking about TH (I certainly hope so).
Wasn’t Sonny Bono mayor of some Californian city before he
hit the piste.
IIRC, Country Joe’s old schoolmate in the Fish, Barry Melton
also went on to become if not a State AG then at least a
heavyweight lawyer
There is also a House of Commons band although I’m
buggered if I can remember who was in it
While Monster Raving Looney Party founder Screaming
Lord Sutch was dismissed as a crank, many of the policies
he espoused when standing against Harold Wilson in the
60s eventually passed into Law
Apologies, Steve – not enough coffee!
J – there’s also a House of Commons string quartet on the go, but I also can’t remember the members…
Likewise, I must stop posting before I’ve had my breakfast and two mugs of tea.
Though the politician Ted Heath was thought an accomplished amateur conductor and conducted theLSO among others.
Wasn’t he a decent pianist, too? Politics aside, he at least had serious interests in outside life. Sailing as well. ‘Morning Cloud’.
To all appearances he didn’t have a romantic or family life and that would have freed up a bit of time for hobbies.
He had been an organ scholar at Cambridge, so he was quite an accomplished musician.
Dennis Healey also played the piano, and I have a vague memory of seeing him on TV playing a piece for three keyboards by Bach, alongside Helumut Schmidt and another politician. He had other interests, such as photography, and I think originated the idea that politicians should have “hinterlands”, which made them more rounded personalities. This was sometimes used to criticise someone like Tony Benn, who never seemed to have many interests outside politics, apart from his family, although it’s not a view I share.
His son Tim was on TV reminiscing about him – he seems to be a figure in the folk world as a promoter and writer. He obviously admired his father and spoke and looked exactly like him, apart from the fact that he had a ponytail.
Heath and Healy went to Oxford together, and were good friends. And like many MPs of the time had seen action in the war.
The likes of Rees-Mogg et al need rather more of a hinterland than just serving in the culture war.
Some honourable exceptions named in the OP – but when we’ve discussed this subject before, it’s always been noted that politicians as a group either have anodyne musical tastes or lie about it when asked, choosing what they imagine the voting public would like to hear. Which do we think it is?
If some collective freak-out meant that I was elected to high political office, I’d like to think that my formed tastes would stay in place, and that I wouldn’t feel that I had claim to like, say, Taylor Swift. Does it really sway that many voters?
Alan Johnson played guitar in a band called The Area, who released a single titled ‘Hard Life’ in 1967. Someone stole his guitar and he couldn’t afford to replace it. He became a postman before entering politics. The world of rock ‘n roll’s loss was the Labour Party’ s gain.
Norman St John Stevas depped on bass in the Neil Ardley Orchestra from time to time, frequently alongside skronkmeister tenor man Rhodes Boyson.
He was one of the many famous people lying dormant under the floorboards of Max Splodge’s humble abode.
‘We are the Rhodes Boysons, and this is our hour’.
Centrrrres of excellence!
When Parky died, I posted an extraordinary interview he did with Kenneth Williams and a prominent union leader in the early 70s. There was a section where they took questions from the audience and there’s a pre “fame” Rhodes Boyson – all young and dark-haired – but already sporting his distinctive facial hair.
The sidies were his freak-flag – he was an absolute fusion tragic.
My Bradford uncle called them (and I’m sorry about this) “Bugger Grips”.
Yeah that expression is quite common… I’m both senses
Boyson must have thought the ‘burns a good look, but when he was in government, they looked really out of time. I wonder if the League of Gentlemen had him partly in mind for Hilary ‘Special Stuff’ Briss?
Are you Moose?
Lawks! During my absence my typing hasn’t improved…
Rhodes Boyson liked Weather Report, Return to Forever, later Soft Machine, Brand X, and the Mahavishnu Orchestra? We should have been able to tell.
Peter Wishart, from “the Scottish band” has been MP for Perth & North Perthshire since 2001. Donnie Munro, onetime singer in the same band, planned a similar career in politics, but failed to win his chosen seat, for the Western Isles. Munro was a Labour candidate and Wishart is SNP.
Dornie Munro left Runrig to stand as a Labour candidate (he lost).
In this case both Rock & Roll and Politics gained.
(I was still typing! 😉
You snooze, you lose
IIRC, Ursula Van Leyden of the EU was big into punk when she was a student in London
Ireland’s Leo Varadkar is a huge Kylie fan and got into big trouble when he used his official Head of State letterhead paper to invite her round to tea
Pete Wishart, however, gave up the keyboards to stand, and won.
Former Australian PM Paul Keating has a better claim on this than most. In his much younger days he was manager of a band called The Ramrods who are remembered now only because Paul Keating once managed them.
Think he met the Beatles. Took the Kinks round to see some local bands, if memory serves.
When in politics his interest focussed on Mahler.
Peter Garrett of Midnight Oil was mentioned in the OP. He’s still at it.https://youtu.be/ufRws_odwRE?si=n0kDb-0at-BlYLnY
I think in his case we have to say that his career as a musician was a mere prologue to his political career – like Alan Johnson if he’d actually made it big.
Peter Garrett is the one that springs to mind most readily because he fronted a properly successful band.
I recall that Bill Clinton liked the odd jazz session in the Oval Office but my memory might be a bit hazy.
“Sir, your saxophone’s out of its case” (Week Ending, Radio 4, 1998)
Betty Boothroyd was a Tiller Girl at the London Palladium before becoming an MP for West Bromwich. She later became Speaker of the House of Commons and was made a Barroness. Quite a formidable lady.
Are the Tiller Girls hip? I must be really out of touch
Indeed a most formidable lady I had to photograph her when she opened the Boothroyd building in Dewsbury.
Did you have to say ‘Will you please stop high-kicking love?’
I find Keir Starmer’s seemingly genuine love of Orange Juice strangely reassuring even while he’s seemingly condoning genocide.
He’s doing it right there, the monster!
Not quite a politician but Jeff “Skunk” Baxter drifted from the Dan to being an expert in missile defence systems, becoming national Spokesman for Americans for Missile Defense at one point.
It fits perfectly that any Danster would go into a nerdy and possibly quite sinister career in civilian life. In another life Donald is some kind of black ops CIA man. Maybe he is anyway, who knows?
Vaclav Havel was a Zappa fan wasn’t he? Apparently his favourite Zappa record was Bongo Fury, which indicates that the only Zappa records available in 70s Czechoslovakia were Bongo Fury and the Flo and Eddie ones.
Pretty soon after the Velvet Revolution Zappa and other rock aristocracy like the Stones were invited to Prague. The new government were all “heads”.
Zappa accepted Havel’s invitation to be Czechoslovakia’s official trade representative to the USA. The US State Department made it plain that if they wanted any trade at all with the USA, Zappa could not be their representative, so the idea had to be dropped.
Having given up all live performance after the band mutiny that prematurely ended his 1988 world tour, he was semi-seriously considering running for US President when he learned of his cancer diagnosis.
John Hall played guitar on All That You Dream. He was later elected to Congress, representing the Democratic Party, between 2007-2011. How cool would it be to have an MP who played with Little Feat?
The guy from John Hall and Daryl Oates?
That was in an alternative universe where they both got on.
No mention yet of Ugly Rumours, featuring Mark Ellen of this parish and one T. Blair.
Ken Clarke is a huge Jazz buff.
Wasn’t Dave Rowntree of Blur a Labour councillor?
Feargal Sharkey’s middle-aged kicks are from environmental activism.
Melodeon maestro Simon Care has spent time as a parish councillor for his home town of Moulton.
Didn’t Johnny Marr ‘ban’ David call me Dave Cameron from liking the Smiths? I think he was also a Jam fan.
…not a Citizens for Boisenberry Jam fan…?
Rose Simpson of the Increds was Lady Mayoress of the of Aberystwyth.
The new Shadow Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport, Thangam Debonnaire, studied music and was a professional cellist for a bit. So we are in danger of having a culture minister who actually cares and knows something about it.
Starmer himself was a young scholar at Guildhall
https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/sir-keir-starmer-flute-recorder-guildhall-scholar/
She gets arty kudos for the name alone.
Jacinda did a lot of DJing – the footage of her in clubs with headphones on etc was everywhere when she was younger – but I have never heard her talk about music.
Boris Johnson can allegedly play the riff to “Smoke on the Water”. Mike Weatherley (deceased Tory MP) was an Iron Maiden fan. But this may not be “hip” enough, I suppose. MPs are a square bunch, but I prefer that to their anxiously trying to triangulate sounding like they like the “right” music, or turning up to Glastonbury in a suit.
Well, the riff for SOTW is so simple that that is the noise a guitar makes if you drop it on a hard surface. So no points for Johnson there.
Not exactly hip, but Richard Nixon played the piano
He even had the gall to play Happy Birthday for Duke Ellington (at the end of this clip)
That’s a hell of a band.
Condoleeza Rice (Secretary of State to George W. Bush) is a very accomplished pianist
In 1993 former Victorian Premier Joan Kirner sang “I Love Rock And Roll” on a popular TV comedy show…then-Shadow Minister for Finance and Major Projects David White did the guitar break.
Hitler was rather fond of Wagner
Christ knows why. He was the worst thing on the X Factor until Honey G came along.
Hitler was on X Factor? Did he make it to (Das) Boot Camp?
It’s a no from me.
(Joke about the X Factor dies on its arse on the Afterword shocker. “What on earth is an ITV1?”)
This will come as no surprise, Moosey, but it made me laugh.
Thank you. I’ve been away too long and got used to the gales of helpless hysteria that greet my every witticism in real life.
Top Labour MP Stella Creasy is chums with the Wedding Present and wrote the sleeve notes to the vinyl reissue of “Seamonsters”.
I’ve always thought Stella Creasy sounds like the name of an 80s indie band anyway.
They have a single that breaks into the top 40 and somebody like Tony Blackburn misannounces them as “Creasy Stella”
Towards the end of his undeservedly long life, Sir Oswald Moseley
discovered he rather liked Oi music
In an account of a bit of argybargy at a BUF event in the thirties, Orwell supplies the bizarre detail that someone got hit over the head with a trumpet. You can’t trust these jazz fellows I tell you.
Them and their jizz cigarettes!
The old guard of the German Green Party have a lot of connections to the German music scene. Jürgen Trittin used to DJ even when he was a member of the Parliament, and Claudia Roth in the 1970s was manager of German Hippie rebel band Ton Steine Scherben, who founded the first musicians-owned independent label in West Germany. She also later managed the successful solo career of their singer, Rio Reiser (one of only three true German rock heroes).
And current President FW Steinmeier is a known record collector (favourites being Nick Lowe and Tanita Tikaram, apparently).
Tory austerity enthusiast George Osborne and Gordon Brown henchman Ed Balls have a band called The Centrist Dads. Not that Osborne was remotely centrist.
In an article yesterday, Beth Rigby points out that Starmer is “now looking distinctly like a David Cameron/George Osborne tribute act”. I wonder if he’ll form a tribute band?
https://news.sky.com/story/keir-starmers-economic-plan-risks-him-looking-more-like-a-cameron-tribute-act-than-an-heir-to-blair-13022984
According to the Bonzos two political veterans joined then on The Intro and the Outro.
And that Wagner-loving fellow looking very relaxed on vibes.
Hullo there!
Sometimes I think that the first four Bonzos albums accounts for about 80% of the information in my brain.
…….BLIMEY!