As we rode up from Manhattan to the picturesque town of Ossining, I remembered that Sing Sing was the prison that movie gangsters in the ’30s and ’40s referred to as “up the river,” as in up the Hudson River from New York City. To say that I was having complex feelings would be an understatement. Entering this iconic penal institution would be the first time I’d been in a prison since I’d left the Federal Correctional Institution in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1978, as prisoner 00180-190.
Sing Sing is intimidating: 20-foot stone and concrete walls, with gun towers every few hundred yards, it stretches over 130 acres. This penitentiary carries the history of American punishment inside its walls, and has been the scene of some of the worst abuses. Six hundred and fourteen men and women were executed there until the abolition of the death penalty in 1972. Today would be a considerably more positive event.
To its credit, New York’s Department of Corrections has been attempting to make up for the tragic mistakes of the last 50 years, the massacre at Attica being foremost for me. Their willingness to let a bunch of debauched rock musicians and political agitators into one of their maximum-security prisons spoke volumes about their resolve to move corrections into the twenty-first century. New York has decreased the population of its prisons and closed many, while simultaneously reducing crime rates. They have created a system of drug courts, nonviolent courts, and mental health courts to cope with the complex challenges many of us face in life. It’s not perfect, but today, New York is doing better than many states.
I had lived in denial for decades about my time in prison. Of course, I talked about it some, and even recorded one light-hearted song about it, but I’d never really looked inside my heart and faced what it meant.
Sometimes, with certain people, I bragged about it, but as a rule my experience was so far beyond most people’s purview that talking about it made me feel like an alien. Most of the people I came into contact with had never experienced anything like a prison term.
Conversely, when I ran into someone else who had done time, I usually overdid it with an inappropriate level of fervor. I never addressed my shame and fear. I believe I was afraid of what happened to me and how it changed me, and I wanted to believe that I had everything under control. And yet, here I was, going back into a prison, and I was nervous about it. Of course, this was an utterly different circumstance, with none of those original fears—but really, why was I doing this? Why go to all the effort needed to round up these rock stars and wrangle them onto a bus at 8:00 in the morning after a big New York City gig the night before? I had wanted to do something to confront mass incarceration for a long time. This was going to be my start.
My mind was racing, as if something buried deep inside me was bubbling up. I was going to either cry, laugh, or puke. It wasn’t intellectual; it was emotional. I was both afraid and engaged. It was happening, and I had to go through with it.
The previous night in the dressing room of the Nokia Theater in Manhattan, Billy Bragg and I were talking about acoustic guitars. I had been doing more solo acoustic gigs, and I was struggling to get a decent onstage sound out of my guitars. His guitar was colorfully painted with slogans like “Stay Free,” “This Tool Kills Time,” and “Jail Guitar Doors.” Billy told me he’d founded an independent initiative in England, to provide guitars to prisoners for rehabilitation. He’d named it Jail Guitar Doors.
I hadn’t known anything about this when I invited him to come to New York to perform this show. I just knew he was a brilliant singer-songwriter, and that he supported social justice around the world. I hadn’t even thought about the song “Jail Guitar Doors” in decades.
Billy explained that he founded Jail Guitar Doors UK to celebrate Joe Strummer’s life’s work. It was Joe and the Clash who first inspired Billy to pick up the guitar and raise his voice for justice, so he named his initiative after their song.
“It’s an old Clash B-side. You ever heard it?” he asked.
“Yes, I know the song,” I replied. “It’s about me.”
He said, “Whad’ya mean?” And I told him the story of the Clash writing it about me when I went to prison back in the ’70s. He looked at me with a blank expression on his face.
“What’s the first verse?” I asked him.
He thought for a minute, sputtered, and his face turned red. “Bloody fucking hell, I completely forgot. It is about you!” We both cracked up. (For the record, there are also verses about Peter Green and Keith Richards, who were having trouble with the authorities, too.)
As the night progressed, we continued to talk prison, rehabilitation, politics, and the transformative power of music. But emotions were intensifying in me. We played that night for a few thousand ecstatic rock fans at the annual benefit concert for the NYC charity Road Recovery. We were joined onstage by my old pal, Iggy Pop, and he was superb.
We rocked the house. It was one of those rare nights in music when everything falls together beautifully. Everyone sounded good, looked good, and it was for a good cause. At the end of the show, Road Recovery’s founders Gene Bowen and Jack Bookbinder walked out onstage with three prison officials and presented me with a set of Sing Sing cell-door keys. I was knocked out. The symbolic value was not lost on me. The keys to freedom! All my musician friends surrounded me, everyone smiling big smiles; happy not only for me, but for all of us who pulled together to do the work we did. As Tom Morello put it, the night was “well and truly rocked.”
I have learned the value and meaning of service as a way of life, and it partially defines me. One of the ways I grow and heal is by being of service to my fellow man. The Buddhists say, “To be selfish and wise, do something for someone else and you will benefit, too.” I could say that almost everything good that has happened to me over the last two decades has been a direct or indirect result of helping someone else. This is more than just an ancient axiom. It is a design for successful living. The reward is in taking the action itself.
This is my route to durable fulfillment—doing for others, and accepting the accomplishment with humility and pride in a job well done. This is how I rebuild the self-respect and dignity I lost on my trip to the gutter.
So now, here we were at Sing Sing to meet and perform for a group of long-term, violent felony offenders who had made a commitment to positive change. On the bus with me were my friends: Don Was, Tom Morello, Boots Riley, Etty Lau Farrell and Perry Farrell, Daniella and Gilby Clarke, Jerry Cantrell, Matt Pinfield, Handsome Dick Manitoba, Dave Gibbs, Carl Restivo, Eric Gardner, and, of course, Billy Bragg. It was a big day for everyone: technicians, artist managers, prison staff, prisoners, and the musicians. We all took a giant leap of faith.
Most of my colleagues were grim-faced through the sign-in and security briefing process. There was no joking or cutting up, which is unnatural for any bunch of musicians.
The concert was held in the inmate dining hall. Our crew had set up the gear on the floor, and we did a quick line check before the inmates were escorted in. I had given some thought about my speech to the men. I knew I had to be rigorously honest. I wanted them to know that I identified with them, and that it was possible to successfully return to the free world. Afterward, the men asked questions, and we had a few good laughs over some of my missteps. Tom, Handsome Dick, and others in our group shared their own challenges. We had a good conversation together.
Billy opened the musical concert with a very powerful solo acoustic performance. He sang his own “I Keep Faith,” as well as the Bob Marley gem “Redemption Song.” When he got to the final chorus, the men spontaneously sang along, and I was moved to tears. Between songs, Billy talked about the power of the guitar as a tool for self-expression. He said that the donated JGD guitars were not gifts, but a challenge to the men to use them as tools to express themselves in a new and nonconfrontational way. These ideas rang true for me. He was talking about the inmates, but he was talking about me, too.
After Billy finished, the rest of us strapped on our electric guitars, plugged in, and rocked Sing Sing. Each performer squeezed the most out of their songs, and the fellows responded with cheering and whooping and hollering. We finished with a rousing version of “Kick Out the Jams.” In the end, they gave us a standing ovation.
The prison officials, particularly Deputy Warden Leslie Malin, felt things were going so well that she approved an aftershow meet-and-greet. We all sat at tables, talked with the guys, and signed shirts and set lists.
On the bus back to Manhattan, Margaret, Billy, and I continued to talk about Jail Guitar Doors. At one point, I told Billy, “What you’re doing in England is great. But I’m an American, I’ve done time, and I’m a musician. Maybe I could take this on in this country. Maybe I can be a bridge between the musicians on the outside and the musicians on the inside.”
“Right,” he said. “Because I was just about to task you with it. You’re the only one who can do it because you’ve been inside, and you know how the system works.” This was the moment to tie together some of the big-ticket themes of my life—love, music, prison, service, social justice, and political activism—into one neat package. So right then and there, on that bus, Jail Guitar Doors USA was born. Over the past three decades, I had watched with dread and anger as prison populations skyrocketed. More people just like me were going to prison for longer sentences under worse conditions. Now, I could do something to mitigate the damage.
Between 1975 and today, people would be sentenced to terms of up to 25 years for the exact same offense I pled guilty to. In some cases, life without the possibility of parole sentences have been imposed. These punishments hardly fit the crime.
Back at the hotel that night, nearly every musician pulled me aside to tell me their feelings about what they’d experienced. To a man, each was deeply struck by the fact that the inmates they’d spent the day with seemed to be “regular guys,” and that it could have been any of them doing time inside. But instead they were protected by celebrity, wealth, luck, or any number of resources the prisoners didn’t have. Handsome Dick was especially unsettled by the fact that he was returning to his abundant life in Manhattan, while those men returned to their cellblock cages.