National Myth and The First World War in Modern Popular Music2017

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STUDIES IN
PALGRAVE SUBCULTURES r Gr
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HISTORY O ULAR MUSIC
AND POP
Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and
Popular Music
Series Editors
Keith Gildart
University of Wolverhampton
Wolverhampton, UK
Anna Gough-Yates
University of West London
London, UK
Sian Lincoln
Liverpool John Moores University
Liverpool, UK
Bill Osgerby
London Metropolitan University
London, UK
Lucy Robinson
University of Sussex, Brighton, UK
John Street
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Peter Webb
University of the West of England
Bristol, UK
Matthew Worley
University of Reading, Norwich, UK
From 1940s zoot-suiters and hepcats through 1950s rock ‘n’ rollers, beat
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Peter Grant
National Myth and

the First World War
in Modern Popular
Music
Peter Grant
Cass Business School
City University of London
United Kingdom
Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music

ISBN 978-1-137-60138-4 ISBN 978-1-137-60139-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-60139-1
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Acknowledgements
Especial thanks go the following: Terri Blom Crocker, for lots of advice
and information on the Christmas Truce as well as comments on earlier
drafts; Al Stewart, Karl Willetts and Verity Susman for interviews; Kmaa
Kendell for information; Arnaud Spitz for many of the French examples
and to his excellent website on popular music and the First World War
(www.great-war-music.com); Julian Putkowski, for information on the
Christmas Truce; Emma Hanna for further comments; Greg Harper,
for background information on his songs; The Decemberists and Jason
Colton at Red Light Management; PJ Harvey and Jan Hewitt at ATC
Management and to PJ Harvey, Bolt Thrower, Leon Rosselson, Verity
Susman, Al Stewart and Guv’Nor for permission to quote from their lyrics.
Also to all of the following who suggested songs to include in the book:
Stephen Badsey, Rod Beecham, John S. Connor, Paul Cornish, Emmanuel
Debruyne, Dominiek Dendooven, Chris Drakeley, Alun Edwards, Jason
Engle, Damien Fenton, Stuart Hallifax, Julia F. Irwin, Maurice Janssen,
Alan Kaplan, Eva Krivanec, Thomas Michael Littlewood, Edward
Madigan, David Mastin, Mahon Murphy, Nicolas Offenstadt, Justin
Quinn Olmstead, Giorgio Rota, Chris Schaefer, John Seriot, Jan Van der
Fraenen, Michael Walsh, Jon Weier, Vanda Wilcox and David M. Young.
v
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 National Myth and the First World War 13
3 Remembrance, Memory and Popular Music 49
4 Words and Music 67
5 The Voice of the People 87
6 Butcher’s Tales and Gunner’s Dreams 121
7 Shrill Demented Choirs 147
8 Football in No Man’s Land 183
9 The Gospel According to St Wilfred 203
vii
viii Contents
10 Bombazine Dolls and Orders from the Dead 227
11 Conclusion: Music and the Centenary 259
Bibliography 273
Index 277
List of Figures
Fig. 2.1 The ‘Ring of Remembrance’, Notre Dame de Lorette,

near Arras, France (Courtesy of Philippe Prost) 38
Fig. 4.1 Word cloud for all lyrics in English 74
Fig. 4.2 Word cloud for all lyrics in French 74
Fig. 4.3 Word cloud for lyrics by British writers 75
Fig. 4.4 Word cloud for lyrics by American writers 75
Fig. 4.5 Word cloud for lyrics by folk writers 75
Fig. 4.6 Word cloud for lyrics by metal writers 76
Fig. 5.1 Jean-Pierre Leloir’s famous 1969 photograph
of Jacques Brel, Léo Ferré and Georges Brassens
(© Archives Leloir) 92
Fig. 7.1 Bolt Thrower at the Artillery Monument, London
(Courtesy of Bolt Thrower) 164
Fig. 7.2 Jo Bench performing at Damnation 2014
(© Kirsty Garland) 167
Fig. 7.3 Sabaton at the Ataturk memorial in Gallipoli
(Courtesy of Pär Sundström) 168
Fig. 8.1 n gram of occurrences of the phrase ‘over
by Christmas’ between 1880 and 2015 184
Fig. 8.2 n-gram of occurrences of the phrase
‘Christmas Truce’ between 1880 and 2015 185
Fig. 9.1 Electrelane at the time of ‘The Valleys’
(Courtesy of Verity Susman, photo by Louis Décamps) 221
Fig. 10.1 The Decemberists (Courtesy of The Decemberists) 232
Fig. 10.2 Diamanda Galás (Courtesy of Diamanda Galás) 239
ix
x List of Figures
Fig. 10.3 PJ Harvey in performance, Rock on Scene Festival 2003

(Photograph by Jean Baptiste Lacroix © Getty Images) 251
Fig. 10.4 PJ Harvey in performance at the Royal Albert Hall 2011
(Photograph by Annabel Staff © Getty Images) 252
List of Tables
Table 4.1 Total songs and number of bands from main countries 69
Table 4.2 Number of songs released by year 70
Table 4.3 Number of songs and bands by genre 71
Table 4.4 Genre and decade of production 71
Table 4.5 Percentage of country’s songs in each genre 72
Table 4.6 Readability of selected songs 77
Table 4.7 Comparison between ‘Somewhere in England 1915’
and ‘The End’ 82
Table 4.8 Key Canadian and Australian war myths 85
Table 4.9 Comparative analysis: ‘Remembrance Day’ (Bryan Adams) and
‘And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda’ (Eric Bogle) 85
xi
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
When PJ Harvey’s Let England Shake was released, Guardian music critic
Alexis Petridis suggested that ‘rock songwriters don’t write much about
the first world war’ (Petridis 2011b). Intrigued, I began researching
whether he was right and, to date, have identified over 1,500 songs on
the subject, not all ‘rock’ songs but a far from negligible number. They
come from more than 40 different countries and though the largest pro-
portion are from First World War combatant nations many are from non-
belligerents. The third line of the opening song of Harvey’s album asks a
question this book seeks to answer: are we, especially in Britain, ‘weighted
down’ by the ‘silent dead’ of the First World War? Do the War’s six million
victims inhibit artistic expression and ensure conformity to stereotyped
depictions of a conflict which, at the time of its centenary, still ‘haunts
modern society’? (Wilson 2013, p. 1).
Martin Stephen, one of the most perceptive writers on the poetry of
the First World War, lamented that ‘military history and literary criticism
do not sit easily side by side’ (Stephen 1996a, p. xiv). Military historians
are frequently appalled at the lack of knowledge of First World War battles
and commanders demonstrated by cultural historians whilst their cultural
counterparts are equally mystified by the military historians’ lack of under-
standing of key artistic texts from Wilfred Owen to Blackadder. This book
seeks to find a balance and stimulate dialogue between them.
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 1

P. Grant, National Myth and the First World War in Modern
Popular Music, DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-60139-1_1
2 P. GRANT
APPROACH AND STRUCTURE
This study inevitably entails an inter-disciplinary approach as it covers
both historical and musical analyses, the nature of myth and the impor-
tance of memory and remembrance in modern society. This means
explaining something of the theoretical background to these topics. So
Chapter 2, National Myth and the First World War, examines the key
concepts of nation, myth and remembrance and their relationship with
history. It then briefly describes the key myths of the First World War in
significant countries. Chapter 3, Remembrance, Memory and Popular
Music, looks more closely at remembrance formation and practice and
the role popular music plays in it. The following chapters utilise a range
of approaches to the music itself. Chapter 4, Words and Music, is the
most analytical. At the macro level it looks across all of the songs on the
basis of categories such as country of origin and genre. This is followed
by some more detailed textual analysis of lyrical content, a consideration
of other critical factors including gender and a closer look at a small
number of songs that exemplify important approaches. Chapters 5, 6
and 7 cover the musical genres that most frequently reference the War.
Chapter 5, The Voice of the People, looks at French chanson, other
French music and folk from the Anglo-Saxon world, the genres most
usually associated with political and social themes. Chapter 6, Butcher’s
Tales and Gunner’s Dreams, considers a wide variety of ‘mainstream’
styles broadly defined as pop, rock and jazz whereas Chapter 7, Shrill
Demented Choirs, focuses specifically on more ‘extreme’ music pro-
duced by industrial and metal artists. Chapter 8, Football in no-man’s-
land, is a case study of a single War myth, the Christmas Truce of 1914,
and how it has been approached by popular musicians. Chapter 9, The
Gospel According to St Wilfred, discusses the myths that have attached
themselves to the war poets and poetry’s relationship to songs about the
War. Chapter 10, Bombazine Dolls and Orders from the Dead, identi-
fies those artists whose approach is distinctive or radically alters the way
we think about the War and its mythology. The final chapter considers
how popular music is being deployed during the commemorations of
the centenary of the War and draws some conclusions regarding the
changing nature of national myth.
INTRODUCTION 3
DEFINITIONS
I should define what I mean by ‘popular’ music and how a composition
qualifies for inclusion in this study. I refer broadly to all ‘popular’ music
produced since the advent of rock-and-roll in the late 1950s, including
French chanson, jazz, folk, rock and its close relatives (for example pro-
gressive and psychedelic rock) and then the myriad of genres that have
developed from rock including punk, industrial, rap, hip-hop and heavy
metal and its more extreme derivatives. What is excluded is the music com-
monly referred to as ‘classical’. There is also a definitional issue regarding
what to call each piece of music. I have decided to use the term ‘song’
even though some of the pieces have no lyrics. I use ‘War’ (with a capital
‘W’) when I mean the First World War and ‘war’ (lower case) when war
in general is meant. Titles of songs are given in single quotation marks,
album titles in italics and on first mention of notable examples their date
of first release and record label.
My main criteria for inclusion of a particular song is that the influence
of the War, whether directly or through ‘signifiers’ or references, is dis-
cernible in the title or lyrics. Here I follow the definition of Santanu Das
in relation to First World War poetry when he suggests that to qualify ‘the
war does not have to be directly present or mentioned, but […] some
context of the war has to be registered and evoked’ (Das 2013, p. 9). So
the Rolling Stones’ ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ qualifies as it connects the
War with the fall of the Romanovs, but Boney M’s ‘Rasputin’, which is
solely about the ‘mad monk’, does not. One or two songs that are more
about war in general are included because they reference the First World
War in another way —a good example being Paul McCartney’s ‘Pipes of
Peace’ which makes no reference to the War but whose accompanying
video depicted the 1914 Christmas Truce.
I also exclude songs written for the soundtracks of musicals, films
or television shows; most cover versions of the same song, unless they
add a new dimension; and new versions of songs composed or popular
during the War itself unless they add something significantly new as do
Bill Carrothers’ jazz album Armistice 1918 and Art Abscon(s) version of
‘Roses of Picardy’.
4 P. GRANT
MUSICAL GENRES
Fabian Holt has pointed out that ‘generic categories underpin all forms
of culture’ yet genre in music is a highly contested area with some seeing
genres as restrictive stereotypes that inhibit artistic expression (Holt 2007,
p. 2; Walser 2014, p. 7). Musical genres are often more useful to the sell-
ers of music than their producers, and fans often vehemently argue about
whether a band is a ‘true’ member of a particular genre. Simon Frith sees
genres as the result of collusion between producers, distributors and con-
sumers and they are also collective; an individual singer, band or indeed
fan may have their own ‘style’ but it takes a critical mass to make a genre
(Frith 1996, p. 88; Holt 2007, p. 3). My approach is to utilise ‘genre’ as
being a widely understood term and deploy it similarly to David Machin
who suggests ‘there are really no fixed genre boundaries’ but that we can
identify signifiers that demarcate genres (Machin 2010, p. 5). Among
these are the music adopted (chords, mode and so on); instrumentation
(what instruments the band members play); the vocal style adopted by the
singer(s); dress (including make-up and jewellery); performance (gestures
on stage, body language); lyrical content and what kinds of words are used
(slang or swearing for example) and visual symbols (album art, merchan-
dise and, at live shows, lighting or props).
Though it is difficult to accurately describe the ‘rules’ that constitute dif-
ferent genres we usually have no difficulty quickly determining the genre of
a band or artist simply by looking at a photograph of them or picking up a
copy of one of their albums (Fabbri 1982; Machin 2010, pp. 4–5). However
genre boundaries are frequently transgressed which can lead to the forma-
tion of new ones so that genres also develop historically. There are some
overarching ‘metagenres’ such as rock, which transcend historical epochs
and others, such as progressive rock or punk, which do not. Subgenres in
particular are ‘intrinsically tied to an era’, coming about through specific
circumstances and then either fade from view or mutate into other forms
(Borthwick and May 2004, p. 3). New genres emerge when musical, tech-
nological, commercial or social forces combine, as Mikhail Bakhtin sug-
gested ‘individual genres are themselves the product of an ever-mutating
dialogue between historically contingent features’ (Borthwick and May
2004, p. 3; Cope 2010, p. 91). Genres, especially long-lasting ones, are
also highly fluid and bands or singers do not always remain within a specific
genre. Individual performers may move between genres in their careers, on
individual albums or even within specific songs (Kahn-Harris 2007, p. 12).
INTRODUCTION 5
This seems especially true of songs that have the First World War as a theme.
Some artists eschew their usual styles when performing these specific songs
(examples include Motörhead and Electrelane). All these provisos need
bearing in mind but in most cases I have accepted the genre definition of
the artists concerned or that of music critics reviewing the song. In a few
cases I have allocated a song to a specific genre myself.
MUSIC, LYRICS AND MEANING

As Emma Hanna has pointed out in relation to The Great War on the Small
Screen there are dangers when historians begin to analyse artistic creations.
Just as some literary or film critics have a shaky understanding of history
so many historians have an equally shaky or partial understanding of lit-
erature, film or music (Hanna 2009, p. 3). It is imperative for a writer to
understand both the ‘language’ of music, something about its sonic quali-
ties, and the more specific ‘language’ of the genre they are writing about.
Yet many writers seem incapable of realising this. To take one example,
extreme metal music is not just inexplicable noise or, always, unintention-
ally camp, it just ‘speaks a different language’ (Hodgkinson 2015). Even
some knowledgeable musicologists, from Theodor Adorno on the left,
to Roger Scruton on the right, are blind to the qualities of most popular
music (Adorno 1941, pp. 17–48; Scruton 1998, p. 90; 2010).
These and other writers have discussed the ‘language’ of music and this
raises the question as to where the ‘meaning’ of a popular song lies. Is it in
the music, the lyrics (if any), other factors (such as the nature of the per-
formance or production), or a combination of these? This book has more
to say on the lyrical content of songs than the music which, for example,
means that instrumentals are covered less fully. My justification is twofold.
Firstly the study is about the songs’ approach to the First World War and
that is usually (though not exclusively) clearer in the lyrics than the music.
Secondly, though there are problems in adopting a socio-cultural approach,
there are even more in adopting a purely musicological one. As Burns and
Lafrance admit ‘it is difficult to write music-theoretical analysis in such a
way that a general reader can follow the argument’ and Frith has suggested
that musicology is ‘for people who want to compose or play it’, whereas a
sociological analysis is ‘for people who consume or listen to it’ (Burns and
Lafrance 2002, p. 38; Frith 1996, p. 267). This is not to say that musicol-
ogy is entirely redundant. One must have some way of analysing how the
music works and so, where appropriate, I rely on some key musicological
6 P. GRANT
texts that make their theories understandable for a wider readership.

Overall my approach is that adopted by Ron Moy in his excellent study of
the work of Kate Bush: ‘academic, yet inter-disciplinary and […] intended
to be as accessible as the complexity of some of the analysis and debates
allows […] yet at times openly emotive and affective’ (Moy 2007, p. 5).
Middleton is however right to conclude that ‘a simplistic content analysis
of lyrics is insufficient’ as they ‘are not verbal texts but […] sung words,
linguistically marked vocal sound-sequences mediated by musical conven-
tions’ (Middleton 2000, p. 7). But, with the exception of the addition of
the musical element, does this make musical ‘texts’ that much different
from other forms of art whether poetry, literature, film or painting? In
some ways it does because ‘music’s representational capacities are limited
and ambiguous compared with literature, painting and other art forms; the
meaning of a musical design must be clarified by some kind of text’ (Gracyk
2007, p. 67). With a purely instrumental work this might be what the com-
poser or performer has said about it or be a critical interpretation. In many
cases it is because the music is accompanied by spoken or, more usually,
sung words. But it is certainly true that ‘no authorial intention or other
mechanism can fix or fully determine the meanings and values of […] songs
and performances… [W]ithin popular culture meanings always remain to
some degree open-ended’ (Gracyk 2007, p. 45). Anyone has a perfect right
to disagree about the ‘meaning’ of a song and, in this sense, the author’s
intention is no more important than anyone else’s (Moore 2012, p. 1).
But this is not to say a song might have any meaning, there are con-
straints on what meanings can be read from a particular work (Bicknell
2009, p. 115; Negus and Astor 2015, p. 240). A good example of these
differences is to be found in two songs, both titled ‘Remembrance Day’
and both, clearly, about the sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland. One,
by Midge Ure (from Answers to Nothing, 1988, Chrysalis), sticks closely
to its subject. Ure uses words that have very specific meanings, mainly by
the song being in the first person but also by his choice of images such as
the colours associated with both sides. In contrast the heavy metal band
Demon’s song (from Taking the World by Storm, 1989, Sonic) is much
more ambiguous. They utilise less precise language and the song is in the
detached third person, giving it a wider, more universal, anti-war message.
So there are many other considerations to take into account as well as
the actual words, ‘the voice invests the words with feeling, and hence with
meaning. Contained in different versions of the same song […] are different
visions, different narratives’ (Street 2012, p. 107). One only has to hear the
INTRODUCTION 7
updated versions of popular First World War tunes in the martial industrial
genre or the different versions of Eric Bogle’s ‘No Man’s Land’ to under-
stand this point. Different performances add ‘expressiveness’ if not a specific
emotion. Some pieces quote from other music where a specific meaning has
already been commonly accepted and thus may be understood by listeners
who recognise the musical or lyrical reference. Examples here range from
the synthesised bagpipe lament at the opening of Barclay James Harvest’s
‘The Ballad of Denshaw Mill’, used to invoke the idea of loss or death, to
Havergal Brian’s musical quotation from Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben
in his satirical First World War opera The Tigers, used ironically to underline
the regiment’s cowardly nature. Some songs have more ‘closed’ meanings
than others. Here one might mention System of a Down’s ‘P.L.U.C.K.’
which stands for ‘Political Lying Unholy Cowardly Killers’ and is about the
Armenian genocide and the Turkish government’s complicity. It is hard to
see how the song could be interpreted as anything other than an all-out
assault even though it does not actually mention Armenia or Turkey.
Perhaps it is best to see music as being on a continuum of ‘meaning’.
At one end you have music with words that are very clear and the music
appears to match: a football team singing ‘We Are the Champions’ when
they have just won the League title. They really are champions. At one
remove are their fans singing the same song, as it is not the fans who have
won the League. Then there is the song by Queen where the refrain has
no specific meaning. At the other end of the continuum you have purely
abstract music: perhaps sounds randomly generated by a computer or, if
that is not thought to be music, randomly generated chords. Yet, even
here, people will naturally try to find some meaning in the randomness.
POPULAR MUSIC AND WAR

Popular music has become an intrinsic part of historical events; it both
‘forms and informs our history’ and increasingly functions ‘as a discourse
for articulating public memory of peoples and nations at major official
events’ such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, Princess Diana’s funeral, the
Soccer World Cups and the Olympic Games (Street 2012, p. 117; Holt
2007, p. 1). When music interfaces with war this becomes an ethical issue
as music can be both ‘a poison to excite hostility and a potion to foster
friendship’ (O’Connell 2011, pp. 112 and 117). There are examples
of the former in this study—such as the Ukrainian fascist band Sokyra
Peruna—though fortunately they are a small minority. Far more follow
8 P. GRANT
the latter course in honouring history’s victims in the hope of preventing

the repetition of tragic events (Misztal 2003, p. 68).
Modern popular music thrives on references to popular mythology and
composers and lyricists try to rework these into new or arresting images
that convey a message to the listener. With the First World War one only
has to mention ‘trench’, ‘mud’ or ‘barbed wire’ and listeners immediately
understand the reference. They are shorthand for war in general and the
First World War is appropriated as an example, often an extreme one, for all
wars. Popular musicians are also ‘investigators of alternative memories’ an
ethical dilemma that is increasingly being studied by Ethnomusicologists
in conflict situations (Arnold 1993; Pieslak 2009; Baker 2010, Cusick
2006). However there is little literature on popular music and its interpre-
tation of conflict or, indeed, other historical events. On the First World War
and music there are four relevant books: Glenn Watkins Proof Through the
Night (2003) discusses classical composers’ responses to the War whereas
Les Cleveland’s Dark Laughter: War in Song and Popular Culture (1994),
Regina Sweeney’s Singing Our Way to Victory: French Cultural Politics
and Music during the Great War (2001) and John Mullen’s The Show Must
Go On! Popular Song in Britain during the First World War (2015) are
about wartime popular music rather than post-war compositions. These
studies identify five main types of First World War songs:
1. Propagandist—urging people to ‘support the cause’.

2. Satirical—critiquing the propagandists.
3. Sentimental and romantic—longing for home and the war to end.
4. Ironic—mocking authority or the singer’s situation.
5. Songs of remembrance—looking back on comradeship or loss.
There are hardly any modern songs in the first category, a few in cat-
egories 2 and 3 and the majority from the last two.
THE FIRST WORLD WAR IN POPULAR MUSIC BETWEEN

1919 AND THE LATE 1950S
There are examples of popular songs about the First World War from the
1920s, 1930s and 1940s. They include Al Dubin and Harry Warren’s
‘Remember My Forgotten Man’, the standout finale from the film Gold
Diggers of 1933, and the Gershwin’s 1927 satirical musical Strike up the
INTRODUCTION 9
Band (Watkins 2003, p. 416). However it was not until the late 1950s,
first in France then in Britain and the USA, that popular musicians gave
the First World War any significant attention. Major historical changes
both within popular music itself and in society were responsible. It was
not until the later 1960s that rock-and-roll, or rock, developed to the
point where it started dealing with wider social or political subjects. Yet
both chanson and folk had always tackled these topics so why not the First
World War? The answer here is that, like writers from Homer to Tolstoy,
songwriters allude to the present through the past and it was not until the
late 1950s that the War had sufficient cultural (or mythical) significance.
Cultural and national myths do not develop in a vacuum, they come about
because of their present-day utility, and it was only when the War became
useful as a myth that said something about the modern world that song-
writers began alluding to it (Wilson 2013 pp. 16–19). French songwriters
began referencing the War in order to comment on the conflict in Algeria
either indirectly, for example Barbara or Jacques Brel, or more directly
such as Georges Brassens in ‘La guerre de 14–18’ (1961). When Michael
Flanders translated Brassens’ song into English three years later, the refer-
ence to Algeria was dropped in favour of one about Vietnam and many of
the songs from the English-speaking world for the next ten years, includ-
ing by Bob Dylan, Don McLean and Eric Bogle, were more about the
Vietnam conflict than about Ypres or the Somme. There are broadly three
reasons why popular musicians turn to historical subjects:
1. To comment on the event itself and tell an interesting or arresting

story that helps us understand the world by communicating an his-
torical experience (Clover 2009, p. 2). This is a less common
approach as popular song is not the ideal medium for an historical
narrative. Occasionally a song does capture the complexities of his-
tory, though this is usually about recent events with which the
writer/performer has a personal connection. Many of the early
songs of Bob Dylan such as ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’,
Neil Young’s ‘Ohio’ or Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On are exam-
ples. Al Stewart is a leading exponent of this approach and his songs
often work like history lessons in the best possible meaning of that
term, for example his ‘Roads to Moscow’ (from Past, Present and
Future, 1973, CBS) is an exemplary presentation of the Soviet expe-
rience of the Second World War.
10 P. GRANT
2. To use the event to draw comparisons and make a point about

contemporary society and often songs that appear to fit the first
category are more about the period they were written. The largest
number of songs discussed here fall into this category. Many make
highly relevant, sometimes revelatory, comparisons whilst others
choose inappropriate or trite ones.
3. To use the event as a metaphor for more personal topics. Using real
events in this way is a well-trodden one in popular music since the
mid-1960s, whether it was John Lennon utilising newspaper head-
lines (in ‘A Day in the Life’) or Elvis Costello commenting on the
Falklands War (in ‘Shipbuilding’). This category fits a significant
proportion of the songs discussed here, mainly in the more ‘self-
reflective’ genres such as chanson or progressive rock, as well as
Electrelane’s ‘The Valleys’ discussed in Chapter 9.
A small number of songs operate at more than one of these levels at

once, or even all three, which is one reason Polly Harvey’s songs on Let
England Shake are so extraordinary.
Yet some people consider historical subjects inappropriate for popular
songs. In discussing Dylan’s ‘With God on Our Side’ one of the most
respected of rock critics, Greil Marcus, wrote that both the Dylan song
and the Cranberries’ ‘Zombie’, about the history of sectarian violence
in Ireland, create a ‘displacement’, that it was ‘bizarre’ for a rock song
to refer to events before the lifetime of its audience and that both con-
stitute ‘a strange violation of an art form’ and the Allmusic Guide says
of ‘Zombie’ that it ‘ends up sounding trivialized’ (Marcus 2010, p. 184;
Raggett 2002, p. 263). This is a frequent criticism when popular music
tackles historical or political topics, especially when they are not in suppos-
edly ‘authentic’ genres such as folk, punk or rap. Rock criticism is riddled
with notions of ‘authenticity’ which privileges certain genres over suppos-
edly ‘inauthentic’ ones, of which progressive rock and heavy metal are the
most usually reviled. So musicians who decide to approach the subject of
the First World War take up a poisoned chalice. The chances of ridicule
are high and yet the potentialities are enormous. It is why the subject has
attracted such a diverse group of artists from passionate pacifists to preen-
ing narcissists and even a few extreme militarists. The examples that follow
may sometimes be crass or simplistic but far more often they are arresting
and intelligent.
INTRODUCTION 11
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CHAPTER 2
National Myth and the First World War
IMAGINED COMMUNITIES
Nations are mythical constructs. In the influential words of Benedict
Anderson they are ‘imagined communities’ who, through perceived
similarities of race, language and history, conceive themselves as unified
entities (Anderson 1983; Fulbrook 1997, p. 72; Archard 1995, p. 474).
Nationalism played a leading role in the conflicts of the twentieth cen-
tury and, though the modern concept of the nation has its roots in post-
Enlightenment Europe, the prelude to the First World War saw it develop
into new, more aggressive, forms (van Evera 1994; Rosenthal and Rodic
2015). All belligerents exhibited exaggerated concepts of themselves as
‘nations’, whether to enhance the status of relatively recent creations
(Germany, Serbia, Australia, Canada, even the USA); promote imperial
unity between conflicting national groups (Austria-Hungary, Russia, the
Ottoman Empire, Great Britain); or proclaim renewed independent iden-
tity (Poles, Kurds, Czechs and many others). The nationalist paradigm was
further foregrounded in the debate over the extent to which Woodrow
Wilson’s concept of national self-determination would shape the post-War
world. In the 100 years since Versailles the mythical nation has continued
to dominate international relations in Europe and beyond: in aggressive
and belligerent form from Hitler to Milošević, the Irish Republican Army
(IRA) and the Basque Homeland and Liberty (ETA), or in more benign
incarnations such as Alex Tsipras’s reinvention of Greece, the resurgence

14 P. GRANT
of Scottish nationalism or even John Major’s idea of England as the ‘coun-

try of long shadows on cricket grounds [and] warm beer’ (Moschonas
2013; Spourdalakis 2013; Major 1993).
Anderson’s concept has been utilised to analyse the social, cultural and
political consequences of war and the memory of warfare remains of pri-
mary significance in forming national identity (Purcell 2000, p. 188). All
nations are underpinned by national myths and they create commemo-
rations, monuments and traditions as symbols of unity (Misztal 2003,
p. 38). The ‘new nationalism’ of the First World War significantly added
to or modified these myths and their nature is explored later in this chapter
(Rosenthal and Rodic 2015, p. 2).
NATIONALISM, HISTORY AND MUSIC

The rise of nationalism in nineteenth-century Europe was accompanied
by new forms of nationalist music, often incorporating folk idioms or
the selection of mythical, historical or political subjects (Kennedy 2006;
Daniel 2015; Kolt 2014, pp. 1, 5). This came at a time when a more scien-
tific and ‘objective’ approach to history, based on written documents, was
rejecting myth-making about the past, leaving the field of myth to artists,
most notably musicians (Samuel 1994; Misztal 2003, p. 40). Musicians
express national identity in a multitude of ways and, despite becoming
more multi-cultural, music still plays a significant role in the construc-
tion of national mythologies (Bohlman 2004; Connell and Gibson 2002,
p. 118; Weisenthaunet 2007, p. 194; Bohlman 2003, p. 50). Bohlman
suggests that, contrary to many predictions, nationalism in music has not
declined and cannot be separated from its nationalist potential (Bohlman
2003, p. 56). One of the conclusions of this book is that the suggestion
that music is the servant of a constantly evolving and destructive national-
ism is unduly pessimistic.
In relation to popular music there is significant discussion about the
nature of ‘place’ at the local, national and global level. Biddle and Knights
suggest that, in the Anglo-American tradition, nationalism is not dealt
with very constructively and there is ‘tension between the centralized cul-
tural policies of nation-states and the “local” or more distributed practices
of popular musicians’ (Biddle and Knights 2007, pp. 8–9, 12). Whether
this tension still exists when popular musicians conceptualise ‘the nation’
is not made clear and there is confusion in Biddle and Knights’ work
between the concepts of globalisation and transnationalism. Globalisation
NATIONAL MYTH AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR 15
is a ‘colonising’ approach where cultural ideas from the dominant culture

sweep aside local models. Transnationalism is more democratic and con-
sensual, allowing local cultural forms to co-exist with ‘imported’ ones.
The positive aspect of transnationalism is supported in different ways by
both Patrick Mignon and Keith Negus. Mignon compares national pop
culture with Anderson’s imagined community whereas Negus describes
how music operates ‘beyond the boundaries of the nation state’ as a
transnational alliance for solidarity and resistance (Mignon 1996: Negus
1996a, pp. 188–91; 1996b; Looseley 2003a, p. 99). The sense of place
inscribed in popular music is also relevant in the development of social
capital. Music helps form the associational bonds which are critical for
many aspects of people’s lives. So a relevant question in our analysis is
which ‘imagined community’ is the song addressing: a local, national, or
transnational one?
For both George Lipsitz and Simon Frith popular music is the main cul-
tural product that crosses national boundaries (Biddle and Knights 2007,
p. 7). Lipsitz believes that through popular music people ‘can experience
a common heritage’ and ‘acquire memories of a past to which they have
no geographic or biological connection’ (Lipsitz 2001, p. 5). The link
with Anderson’s ‘imagined communities’ is obvious and suggests popular
music can build transnational identities that breach narrow nationalisms
or, as Connell and Gibson confirm, ‘music nourishes imagined communi-
ties, traces links to distant and past places’ (Connell and Gibson 2002,
p. 271). Lipsitz also outlines a critical interrelationship between popular
music and history. He argues that popular music is ‘dialogical’, a concept
he adapts from the work of Mikhail Bakhtin. By this he means that it is
the product of ‘an ongoing historical conversation’ whereby it depends
upon the ‘recovery and re-accentuation of previous works’ (Lipsitz 2001,
p. 99). Here he is at odds with Frith who sees references to the past in
popular music as innately conservative (Frith quoted in Lipsitz 2001,
p. 104; Negus also suffers from the same inherent bias, Negus 1996b,
p. 130). Conversely Lipsitz suggests that a significant reason for the pow-
erful effect of popular music ‘is its ability […] to make both the past and
present zones of choice that serve distinct social and political interests’
(Lipsitz 2001, p. 104). Dialogic criticism, he contends, avoids both pitfalls
and reconnects popular music with history. Lipsitz essentially identifies
popular music as being in a dialectical relationship with society and whilst
its commercialised forms can reinforce ruling ideologies it can also, in
16 P. GRANT
the words of Stuart Hall, ‘work transformations’ (Lipsitz 2001, p. 108).

Lipsitz’s ability to locate historical reference within popular music criti-
cism has important resonance for the current study. It provides a means
of analysis that locates a specific song within the history of popular music
while enabling interpretation of the song itself as an historical artefact.
THE NATURE OF MYTH

Myths simplify, exaggerate, dramatise or reinterpret events into a form
that serves as a symbolic statement about social order and reinforces
social cohesion and functional unity. They are the ‘social cement’ that
bonds groups together and builds walls between them and other groups
(Smith 1988, p. 2; Overing 1997, p. 7; Archard 1995, p. 475; Chernus
2012). Myths do not endure because of some ‘quirk’ or ‘error’ in
people’s interpretation of history but because of their utility for the
present: ‘for what they reflect about contemporary society, rather than
their historical accuracy’ (Wilson 2013, p. 21). Myths also comprise
a number of symbols—words, visual images or a combination of the
two—so that ‘one need not recite the whole myth to communicate
its full meaning and power’ (Chernus 2012). Thus a mere mention of
‘mud’, ‘trench’ or ‘machine gun’ can activate a person’s understanding
of the First World War.
It is never correct to say that people’s conception of the past is formed
of two opposing elements: facts and myth. There is always an element of
myth in any ‘factual’ account and, equally, myths have to contain some his-
torical reality even though that element may be quite superficial (Cohen
1969, p. 349; Tudor 1972, p. 139). Instead myths are used as a ‘lens
through which [people] see the world and judge what is true and false’
(Chernus 2012). This explains why myths ‘stay alive in the face of over-
whelming evidence to the contrary’, examples include the deterrent effect
of the death penalty or even belief in a supreme being (Chernus 2012;
Donohue and Wolfers 2006; Lamperti 2010; Chan and Oxley 2004).
However, the greater the gap between myth and historical facts ‘the more
likely it is that the myth will not survive. Some falsities are simply impos-
sibly hard to sustain’ (Archard 1995, p. 478). This is important for myths
of the First World War as it determines how those who accept the myth
deal with elements or ideas that do not ‘fit the myth’. The strong view in
Britain that the First World War was a futile waste of life presided over by
blood-thirsty, incompetent generals arose during the 1960s and had a close
connection to the conflict in Vietnam and potential nuclear Armageddon

(Bond 2015, p. 23). Given this context, a myth about the horror and futil-
ity of war was a necessity for those opposing US or Soviet policy.
Whilst it is erroneous to see myths as simple lies or distortions there are
negative elements contained within them, as Roland Barthes expounded.
For Barthes the function of myth is to make dominant cultural and his-
torical values, attitudes and beliefs seem entirely ‘natural’, self-evident and
timeless. Crucially myths remove any role for people to construct their
own meanings, often referring back to stereotypes embedded in gender,
racial or class hierarchies (Barthes 1972). Even if someone knows a myth
is a distortion they may still be affected by it more than by the ‘facts’
(Archard 1995, p. 477). So we judge myth ‘the way we judge a poem or
a painting, by its power to move us emotionally; to challenge or reassure
us intellectually; to shape, reshape, or reaffirm the way we experience the
world’ (Chernus 2012).
Though Barthes did not use the example of popular music others have
noted the ability of popular music to present and reinterpret myth. In
discussing the creation of lyrics Antoine Hennion suggests that the best
way of describing how songs operate narratively is that they ‘bridge the
gap between current events and timeless myths’ (Hennion 1983, p. 194).
Previously Claude Levi-Strauss made the connection between the struc-
ture of myth and that of music more widely, ‘like myth, music is exchanged
and replayed continuously to provide allegories and metaphors for the
rest of life’ (quoted in Rojek 2011, p. 56). This suggests three possible
approaches artists, including popular musicians, can take to myth, how-
ever they are not exclusive, rather a continuum with one merging into the
other:
• Myth affirming: They use myth to reaffirm their view of the world—
they accept the myth as a ‘true reflection’.
• Myth shaping: They use myth as a ‘lens’ to understand the world—
they take myth as a starting point but do not view it as truth.
• Myth reshaping: They utilise myth as a stepping stone towards recon-
ceptualising the world which involves fundamentally challenging the
basis of the myth.
We encounter examples of all three in this study.

18 P. GRANT
THE FIRST WORLD WAR AND MYTH

Many writers have suggested that the First World War engendered a dis-
tinctive form of memory and that the myth of the War ‘supplied with
coherence by literary narratives, upgraded the status of national memory’
(Misztal 2003, p. 45. See also Benjamin 1968; Fussell 2000; Wohl 1979;
Eksteins 1989; Hynes 1990). More recently Bart Ziino has written that
‘private and detailed understanding of the [First World] war has been
increasingly populated with national myths developed and redeveloped
over the decades following the war’ (Ziino 2015, p. 6). But what is a
‘national myth’ in this context? Firstly, as has already been alluded to,
nations themselves are myths. They suggest that ‘mankind is naturally
divided into distinct nations, each with its peculiar character, and that
everyone must, again as a matter of nature, belong to a nation’ (Smith
1988, p. 1). Myths play a vital role in the construction of national iden-
tities and there can be no real ‘nation’ without its myths of origin and
descent (Archard 1995, p. 473; Smith 1988, p. 14). As part of this ‘cer-
emonies of remembrance come in: they tell tales of sacrifice for the greater
good’ and music plays a vital role in this process (Edkins 2006, p. 105).
But not everyone embraces every myth, ‘there is always vigorous discus-
sion and disagreement about those meanings and values’ and a great deal
of political debate is, ‘at the deepest level, debate about myths and/or the
meanings of myths’ (Chernus 2012). In Britain this was made very appar-
ent during the 2015 General Election campaign in the widely different
concepts of ‘Britain’ employed by David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Nigel
Farage and Nicola Sturgeon. This is why studying myths is important, as
such study has a practical political and social purpose.
Myths are also multivalent—they are capable of expressing different,
often conflicting meanings simultaneously. Myths of the First World
War can be strong, complex and deeply embedded and ‘the richer, more
potent, and more fundamental the myth, the more multivalent it is likely
to be’ (Chernus 2012). So myths of the First World War can be used
both to support and oppose other wars for example ‘as both a conserva-
tive and dissenting factor in the accounts of the development of the “War
on Terror”’ (Wilson 2014, p. 294). It is also true that defeats can be
as, or even more, crucial to a nation’s mythology as victories because, of
course, defeats must be avenged. This was precisely the danger that helped
lead to the genocides perpetrated by the Milošević regime in the former
Yugoslavia (Ray 2006, pp. 148–9).
Myths only retain their power as long as they have relevance and though
there is an imbalance of power in proselytising national myth ‘no one person
or group is ever in full control’ (Chernus 2012). There are people officially
charged with reciting myths, political leaders and mass media journalists
being the most obvious, and ‘close observation reveals all sorts of pressures
coming from all sorts of places that lead the official myth-tellers to change
their stories, even if ever so slightly, over time’ (Chernus 2012). There was
a time when the concept of the War as a worthwhile cause was more domi-
nant in Britain and the myths of futility or stupid generals was the belief of
a small oppositional group. So myths are open to change and in this process
popular culture has a critical, possibly the critical role (Chernus 2012).
National myths also conform to certain typologies and Schöpflin’s tax-
onomy identifies several categories relevant in relation to the First World
War (Schöpflin 1997, pp. 28–31):
• Myths of territory, claiming there is a particular place where the

nation first discovered itself or found its finest form. Gallipoli,
Vimy and Verdun are examples of the ‘sacred land’ of, respectively,
Australia/Turkey, Canada and France.
• Myths of redemption and suffering. Specific examples include
Armenia and Greece in relation to the genocide or the transnational
myths described in the following section.
• Myths of unjust treatment, such as the Easter Rising in Ireland.
• Myths of election, that the nation has been entrusted by God or by
history to perform some special mission. The conflicts in the Middle
East since the First World War are fuelled by these.
• Myths of military valour which, in relation to the First World War,
are often reinterpreted through the concept of the soldier/victim.
• Myths of rebirth or renewal, including the idea that the First World
War was a ‘watershed’ moment in history that changed everything,
forcefully expressed in many key texts such as Marwick’s The Deluge
(first published 1965) and Fussell’s The Great War and Modern
Memory (first published 1975).
• Myths of foundation, where one might include the ‘forging of
nations’ such as Canada and Australia and even the concept that
women’s suffrage was brought about by the War.
• Myths of ethnogenesis and antiquity, the idea that ‘we were here
first’, often expressed in the reigniting of ‘repressed’ nations such as
Finland or Poland.
20 P. GRANT
• Myths of kinship and shared descent, which is an aspect of the bonds

that are now expressed between Australia and Turkey, with Gallipoli
being the crucible for both nations; or the idea that all soldiers in the
trenches were united by their common suffering.
We should be careful though not to think that these national myths

have complete dominance, as there are always oppositional voices and the
myths of minority groups. Though the following section attempts to chart
the dominant myths across different countries, many minority or disso-
nant ones are expressed in the songs that follow (Ashplant et al. 2000,
pp. 16–17).
How are these myths perpetuated and, in particular, what role does
popular culture play? Ross Wilson, in critiquing the approach of much
recent historiography, suggests that ‘revisionist historians have sought to
assert that the “popular memory” of the war is a product of media con-
sumption’ (Wilson 2013, pp. 15, 114–5 and 152; 2014, p. 292). He sees
this trend as ‘simplistic’ in that it dislocates ‘the “history” from the “mem-
ory” of the conflict’ (Wilson 2014, p. 293). He portrays interpretations
such as those of Hanna, Pennell and McCartney as one-dimensional—the
media influencing the public as a hegemonic theory of popular culture—
when instead media should be regarded ‘as a means of expression for soci-
ety […] to understand current socio-cultural and political issues’ (Hanna
2009; Pennell 2012b; McCartney 2014; Wilson 2014, pp. 293–4). Whilst
he is correct to see the interplay between public perception and popular
media as a dynamic, two-way process, his suggestion that these authors do
not is a misreading. All three would be entirely comfortable with Wilson’s
view of popular culture and its role in memory. Wilson is enlightening in
explaining how the British myth is used but less so on how it was formed
in the first place. His narrative is helpful in emphasising the complexities
involved in myth formation; popular myths of the War are ‘not the result
of a nostalgic, sentimental vision […] brought about by viewings of Oh!
What a Lovely War or readings of Birdsong’, which most people have not
seen or read (Wilson 2014, p. 296). He is right that this was not just a case
of a few left-wing arty types (Joan Littlewood, Richard Attenborough,
A. J. P. Taylor and others) whose ideas transferred themselves to the bulk
of the British public but what he does not explain is why it was the ideas
from these examples that had most impact (Wilson 2014, p. 300). As
Wilson suggests, the reason myths become dominant is because it is that
myth (as opposed to others) which is most useful in explaining the world
and better at meeting contemporary needs. However its adoption had to

come from somewhere and the examples cited by ‘revisionist’ historians
are ones that helped cement the myths in public memory, which has a
lot to do with how they work as cultural objects or texts and do so more
effectively than other potential texts. Wilson’s main contribution is that he
emphasises Pierre Nora’s history/memory dichotomy (see next chapter)
and assigns a key role for popular culture as a lieux de mémoire within which
music plays a significant role. Popular culture always says a great deal more
about the present than it does about the past and it is a critical mechanism
for ensuring that the First World War does not become ‘merely’ history
(Wilson 2015, p. 66). Wilson may also be right to suggest that historians,
quite naturally, try to do the opposite—they attempt to wrench the War
free from memory. However the more astute of them (including several
he cites) are well aware of this and would be in agreement with Wilson’s
depiction of popular media as ‘an active engagement with cultural materi-
als to preserve the trauma of the event’ (Wilson 2015, p. 68). Though
many have suggested that with the deaths of the last veterans the War has
moved ‘from memory to history’, they are premature (Gammage 1994,
p. 34; Economist 2009; Western University 2011; Kurchinski et al. 2015).
The First World War shows few signs of breaching this barrier and popular
media, not least popular song, helps ensure it does not do so quietly.
TRANSNATIONAL MYTH AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR

In his seminal study The Great War: Myth and Memory Dan Todman shows
how, in many countries, the last quarter of the twentieth century was a
period in which the First World War was reduced to a single set of easily
communicated myths (Todman 2005; Webber and Long 2014, p. 276).
Todman and others suggest that these still dominate, despite their factual
basis having been seriously undermined by academic scholarship. Examples
are that the outbreak of war was greeted with enthusiasm across Europe
(Becker 1977; Verhey 2000; Chickering 2007; Ziemann 2006; Geinitz
1998; Gregory 2003; Hallifax 2010, pp. 103–22) or that those at home
were poorly informed or misled as to conditions at the front (Pennell
2012a; Hirschfeld 2011; Beaupré 2006, 2011; von Strandmann 2011;
Beurier 2008; Gregory 2008; McCartney 2005). The suggestion in many
historical studies is that the First World War is universally seen as a futile
waste of millions of lives. Yet this is not the full picture, as it is predomi-
nantly a British perspective. Other writers suggest that war memories are
22 P. GRANT
‘undergoing radical restructuring by the process of globalization’ (Ashplant

et al. 2000, p. 15; Spohn 2005). This concept of the ‘transnationalisation’
of myth extends the work of Levy and Sznaider who proposed that along-
side nationally bounded memories a new form of memory, ‘cosmopolitan
memory’, has arisen (Levy and Sznaider 2002). Some overarching trans-
national myths relating to the First World War are emerging, most notably
those that see it as a deep historical trauma and which depicts soldiers,
of all nationalities, as victims of powers beyond their control. These twin
ideas are strengthening, challenging the dominance of some (though by
no means all) long-standing national myths of the War. In Europe the
merger of First World War myths into an overarching transnational narra-
tive can be viewed as part of a strategy to forge a closer European identity
in the context of an expanding European Union. The changing remem-
brance of the Holocaust has also been key to this new approach which
transcends ethnic and national boundaries (Levy and Sznaider 2002, p. 88;
Frevert 2005, p. 88). In proposing a similar development for First World
War national mythologies I would argue that the trend is less linear than
that of Holocaust ‘memory’ with more movement ‘forward and back’
between national and transnational myth, influenced by both national and
international social and political changes. Even in Britain, one of the most
nationalist in terms of myth, the movement is certainly in the direction of
transnationalism, which is strongly influenced by trends in cultural repre-
sentation of which popular music is a significant element.
Victimhood and Trauma
It has been claimed that ‘since the mid-1970s, and more rapidly since
1989, there has emerged a transnational discourse of trauma, victim-
hood and human rights’ (Ashplant et al. 2000, p. 25). Helen McCartney
suggests that key to notions of victimhood was the American experience
in Vietnam and the official designation of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
(PTSD) in 1980 which ‘made a psychiatric diagnosis more socially accept-
able’ (American Psychiatric Association 1980; McCartney 2014, p. 308).
Public sympathy towards traumatised veterans has greatly increased and
the ‘portrayal of soldiers in newspapers, art, documentaries and museum
displays as routinely suffering from psychological injury’ is now so com-
mon that today there is an overwhelming ‘expectation that most soldiers
will be psychologically damaged by war’ (McCartney 2014, p. 308; Winter
2006b, pp. 70–2). This is demonstrated in many ways. The campaign to
grant pardons to all First World War British soldiers executed for coward-
ice and desertion relied heavily on the proposition that they were psycho-
logically traumatised and therefore not responsible for their actions. The
ability to both oppose the West’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan
and absolve ordinary soldiers from responsibility also rests upon the argu-
ment that (at least those below a certain rank) are also victims (McCartney
2014, p. 311; Hutchinson 2014, p. 39). So the concept that you can
be pro-soldier but anti-war can be used by those of all political persua-
sions, and is encountered time and again in the songs studied here (Wilson
2013, pp. 60–3).
Equally prevalent in most countries, and closely connected to the
idea of the traumatised soldier/victim, is the view of the First World
War itself as trauma and catastrophe (Smith 2001). Traumas represent
the extremes of human experience and ‘are the occasions on which col-
lective identities are most intensively engaged’ (Misztal 2003, p. 139).
Psychoanalytical approaches postulate that, just like individuals, nations
need to ‘talk through’ past traumas in order to progress and, by fore-
grounding trauma within collective memory, suggest the individual too
is an important ‘site of memory’ (Misztal 2003, p. 141). Thus trauma is
personal, national and transnational and a process of healing or reconcili-
ation can have positive impacts at all three levels. In the past nation states
rarely admitted their wrongdoings. In recent years, strongly influenced
by the ‘re-remembering’ of the Holocaust, things have changed. We have
seen apologies from Germany with regard to the Second World War and
from Britain for the Irish Potato Famine as well as similar approaches to
reconciliation in a number of other countries (Lind 2008; Neal 1998).
Several writers have emphasised that traumatic memories are more depen-
dent on sensory perceptions than are non-traumatic ones, which immedi-
ately privileges music in these processes (Culbertson 1995; Brison 1999).
So the First World War ‘maintains value and meaning due to its perception
as an historical trauma – a lesson in human suffering and loss – through
which current concerns can be critiqued or justified’ (Wilson 2015, p. 59).
Wilson pin-points why trauma has become one of the key focal points of
war remembrance as it ‘acts to focus identity and build social, political and
moral bonds within a community’ (Wilson 2013, p. 79). This community
can be narrow, for example in the myth of the War portrayed by highly
nationalistic groups such as the British National Party or Vlaams Belang
(the Flemish nationalist party), as wide as pan-European or even global.
Popular culture plays an important role in fostering and cementing
these transnational myths. They were a key part of English language fea-
ture films from the 1960s onwards, both those about Vietnam and the
24 P. GRANT
First World War. Notable among them on Vietnam were Michael Cimino’s
The Deer Hunter (1978); Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979)
and Oliver Stone’s Platoon (1986); and, for the First World War, Stanley
Kubrick’s Paths of Glory (1957), Joseph Losey’s King and Country (1964),
Richard Attenborough’s Oh! What a Lovely War (1969) and Peter Weir’s
Gallipoli (1981). Tom Tunney suggests that in the British films every sol-
dier is depicted as a helpless victim of ‘the merciless, class-ridden, rituals
of the British Army’ and the American Vietnam films were little different
(Tunney 1999). The definition of PTSD has only consolidated an idea
that has been prevalent in art and popular culture for much longer. Most
notably it served to validate Wilfred Owen when, in the draft preface to
his poems, he stated that his ‘subject is War, and the pity of War’ (Owen
1918). Whilst in the 1930s W. B. Yeats contended that ‘passive suffering
is not a theme for poetry’ the tide of opinion from the 1960s onwards has
been against him (Yeats 1940, p. 113). Though the influence of the British
war poets has not been as great outside English-speaking countries, at least
until very recently, Owen’s manifesto is gaining transnational support.
Both concepts, of war as trauma and the soldier/victim, display the clas-
sic characteristics of myth—though in these cases transnational—and have a
significant influence on popular songs about the War. Nevertheless there are
still many national differences in the way in which the War is conceptualised.
If the adoption of transnational myths represents the democratic trend, the
impact of globalisation, which is more commercially driven, has contributed
towards a quest for identity for many groups and nations, from Scotland to
Catalonia (Misztal 2003, p. 93; Thompson 1996, p. 104). But one strength
of the transnational myths of trauma and victimhood is how easily they can
exist alongside the majority of national myths; the two are by no means
mutually exclusive. In the section that follows I briefly outline some key
national myths for countries whose songs feature prominently in the book.
NATIONAL MYTHS OF THE WAR
Britain
This section also discusses some concepts that are applicable to all countries.
This is relevant in terms of both geographic and socio-economic factors. In
Britain is the First World War viewed differently in different regions most
especially in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland? With regard to Northern
Ireland there is little doubt that the prevailing myths are different as they
are inextricably bound up with those relating to Unionism, Irish national-

ism and republicanism and the Unionist myth of the War is significantly less
negative than in the rest of Britain. However, though Scotland and Wales
have nuances of their own, it is not clear that the myths here are greatly dif-
ferent. There are differences in some Welsh and Scottish Nationalist myths
of the War, for example Paul Turner’s 1992 film holds that the great Welsh
poet Hedd Wyn (Ellis Evans), killed at Passchendaele, was both anti-war
and anti-English when the documentary and literary evidence for this is
minimal (Thacker 2014). In Scotland the independence debate contested
at the time of the War’s centenary might have been expected to illumi-
nate national differences in popular memory yet the major historical myth
prominent in the campaign was William Wallace and events from more than
700 years ago. One commentator noted that neither the Commonwealth
Games (held in Glasgow) nor the 700th anniversary of Bannockburn made
any impression on the referendum and that ‘the First World War, in which
Scots and English had fought and died side by side’ was actually a unifying
factor (Berry 2014). Without public survey research evidence that differen-
tiates English, Welsh and Scottish respondents it is difficult to prove but it
does seem that, with the Irish exception, there is little difference in national
memory of the War between the nations of Great Britain.
Do class, education, gender or age entail differences in popular mem-
ory? YouGov polls about potential intervention in Syria show that age
makes a greater difference to attitudes to war than gender, political affilia-
tion or region. Eighty-one per cent of Britons over the age of 60 opposed
sending British troops, against 44 per cent between the ages of 18 and 24
(Towle 2013). Contrary to what most of the media portray this poll backs
up the majority of research evidence, that older people are more opposed
to war than the young. In relation to the First World War older people and
men were also more likely to think that the generals did a bad job than
younger people and women (YouGov 2014a). Political affiliation made
little difference on this question, though UK Independence Party (UKIP)
supporters were the most hostile to the commanders. Younger people
were more inclined to think that all countries were equally responsible for
the War, though a significant majority still placed greatest responsibility on
Germany and Austria. In all cases class differences were negligible. Overall
this suggests that the idea that negative myths of the War in Britain are the
product of left-wing Guardian readers is false.
Whichever country we are discussing in relation to their national myths
of the First World War we inescapably also have to draw in their conception
26 P. GRANT
of the Second World War. David Reynolds makes the perceptive observa-
tion that four of the major belligerents in the First World War—Germany,
France the United States and Russia—have been able to develop narratives
that link the two world wars and help give overall meaning to the second
half of the twentieth century (Reynolds 2015, p. 229). He could easily have
added Turkey, Canada, Australia and Poland to his list. Britain is an excep-
tion to this trend because we ‘failed to construct a positive sequential nar-
rative of the two world wars and their aftermath’ (Reynolds 2015, p. 229).
Instead Britons have composed an ‘oppositional’ narrative that has negative
repercussions for our overall view of Europe and European integration.
One problem to overcome in the mythologisation of the First World
War in Britain is the reason for British involvement. The prevention of
German military domination and the violation of Belgian neutrality seems,
to many, especially at a distance of 100 years, a poor excuse for nearly a mil-
lion British and Empire deaths. The fact that Britain went to war again in
1939 for entirely the same reason (with Poland substituting for Belgium)
is now lost on a British public whose somewhat morbid fascination with
the evils of Nazism and, entirely justified, revulsion at the Holocaust has
retrospectively turned the latter conflict into a moral crusade. Most British
people have forgotten, or do not wish to know, that our involvement in
the Second World War was but a sideshow in a war won by massive attri-
tional battles on the Eastern Front where losses dwarfed those of even the
Somme or Passchendaele. In order to attain their mythical status events
such as Dunkirk, the Blitz and the Battle of Britain also required a con-
trasting set of events, ones that were mythically futile, and the First World
War where thousands were killed to move Sir Douglas Haig’s ‘drinks cabi-
net six inches closer to Berlin’ provided the ideal contrast (Curtis and
Elton 1989). It became necessary for the First World War to be depicted
as futile in order to demonstrate Britain’s key role in victory and the moral
superiority of the Second. Whereas other European nations were able to
situate the trauma of both wars within a positive journey towards peaceful
integration, a large proportion of the British people remain aloof from the
concept of European unity and their isolationism is significantly strength-
ened by adherence to these biased, even jingoistic, mythical constructions
of the two world wars.
Reynolds agrees with virtually every writer, both popular and aca-
demic, in identifying the dominant British view of the War as ‘tragic folly’.
However, there is a notable tendency for other writers to present the British
myth as ‘typical’ of all countries when, as Reynolds shows, it is far from it
(Taylor 2006, p. 229). There is also a notion that the myth had its origin
in a small number of poets and writers—Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon
and Robert Graves being the three most notable—who were significantly
atypical of the mass of the British military in 1914–18. Closely connected
to this idea is the nature of the detailed studies that have ‘busted’ the
myth. The key point however is that they are, almost without exception,
historical works. The ‘revisionist’ trend of British First World War studies
has, to date, not been taken up in most cultural and literary studies. The
lack of impact of ‘revisionist’ history can be seen by reference to recent,
highly regarded, additions to the literary analysis of the War. In his intro-
duction to The Cambridge Companion to the Poetry of the First World War
Santanu Das is at pains to stress that the contributors ‘challenge many of
the prevailing myths’ (Das 2013, p. 17). Yet the very first chapter devotes
an entire section predicated upon the ‘extraordinary release of war-feeling
in summer 1914’, a myth long since discredited (Sherry 2013, pp. 42–3).
In many ways Randall Stevenson’s Literature and the Great War (2013)
is an excellent summary, yet among the myths perpetuated are that the
majority experience of British soldiers was a trench in a ‘lively’ section of
the Western Front (p. 168); there was a gulf in outlook between soldiers
and civilians and the public had no conception about what was happening
in the trenches (pp. 24, 35, 39–40, 44, 83); and the First World War was
quite unlike all other wars, before or since (p. 44). None of these ideas is
entirely untrue, however they do not conform to most recent scholarship
and are asserted as fact rather than put forward as one possible way of
looking at things. John Mullen’s The Show Must Go On!, one of the few
books about popular music and the War, is even more negative. It repeats
numerous myths such as ordinary soldiers’ ‘hatred’ for senior officers and
that all thought it would be ‘over by Christmas’ (Mullen 2015, pp. 174,
191–2, 213, 187 and 159). If one did not know the outcome of the con-
flict one would assume from the book that Britain had lost the War. The
reason these conceptions remain ‘entrenched’ is that they retain their use-
fulness in British society, both in our unique relational model of the two
world wars and in uniting left and right whenever we need an example of
bureaucratic bungling (Wilson 2013, ch. 2). Until another historical event
surpasses the First World War in exemplifying futility it is to that conflict
that Britons, with the exception of historians, will refer.
But does the futility myth remain quite as dominant as most writers
suggest? One can certainly find a good deal of evidence that it is as strong
as ever, especially if one turns to comments on, for example, the Amazon
28 P. GRANT
website or newspaper articles such as those of the Guardian’s George

Monbiot (Monbiot 2008). However, there is also a case for suggesting
that it was the mid-1990s that was the highpoint of the negative War myth
in Britain. Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy was published between 1991
and 1995, Sebastian Faulks brought out Birdsong in 1993, Blackadder
Goes Forth aired in 1989 (with its video release between 1990 and 1995)
and in 1998 came the Daily Express campaign to have Haig’s statue in
Whitehall torn down (Thacker 2014, p. 270; Daily Express 1998). The
situation today is more complex and recent studies—one on the use of the
First World War in British schools; the others surveying public attitudes—
provide a somewhat changed picture (Einhaus and Pennell 2014; YouGov
2014a). Catriona Pennell and Ann-Marie Einhaus undertook a year-long
survey to discover whether the impression that schools utilise Blackadder
Goes Forth as their historical model for the War was indeed true (Paxman
2013). The findings were that ‘teaching goals are a far cry from attempt-
ing a simple moral lesson and promoting a knee-jerk reaction to the First
World War as futile slaughter’ (Einhaus and Pennell 2015, p. 78). The use
of popular culture and art was nuanced and where popular representations
such as Blackadder were used it was ‘as a window into deeper discussion’
in order to give young people a critical understanding and appreciate that
the War is ‘subject to multiple and contradictory interpretations’ (Einhaus
and Pennell 2014, p. 1). Einhaus and Pennell’s research supports the
argument of the War myth becoming one of universal trauma and refutes
the contention that British children are taught that Blackadder is history
(Holmes 1999; Badsey 2001; Bond 2002; MacCallum-Stewart 2012).
Two surveys on public knowledge and attitudes to the War have been
carried out. The first, in September 2013 (published February 2014), by
Anne Bostanci and John Dubber was international covering Egypt, France,
Germany, India, Russia, Turkey and the UK (Bostanci and Dubber 2014).
The second was conducted in the UK alone (YouGov 2014a). In the trans-
national survey 64 per cent of UK respondents said the focus of commem-
oration should be on ‘human suffering and loss of lives’ and only 8 per cent
that it should not be commemorated at all (Bostanci and Dubber 2014,
p. 7). Sixty-seven per cent in the UK knew about the Christmas Truce but
only 30 per cent in Germany and 38 per cent in France (p. 8). Seventy-
two per cent across the seven countries surveyed felt that their country is
still affected by its consequences and 28 per cent said the War contributes
strongly to their country’s identity. This was highest in Turkey (47 per
cent), the UK (42 per cent) and France (34 per cent) (pp. 8 and 10).
The UK survey confirmed some of the supposed British myths of the

War, with 52 per cent agreeing that British troops were badly served by
their generals who needlessly wasted thousands of lives and only 17 per
cent thinking the generals were competent. Opinion was more divided
about how we should now remember the War: 34 per cent considered
Britain’s involvement as something to be proud of; 15 per cent that British
involvement should be regretted; and 23 per cent that both should be
considered. This makes an interesting contrast to the transnational study
which asked: ‘Does the UK’s role in the First World War and the peace
negotiations that followed it have a positive or negative effect on your
views of the UK today?’ Indian respondents had the most positive bal-
ance, 45 per cent positive or very positive, only 13 per cent negative or
very negative (Bostanci and Dubber 2014, p. 11). Thus Britain’s role in
the War is, on these findings, seen more positively in India than in Britain
itself. Together these surveys confirm some of the received views about the
British view of the War but by no means all. They give additional credence
to the idea of a ‘transnationalisation of myth’ but are not wholly conclu-
sive, as questions directly testing this hypothesis were not asked.
Ireland
Among the Unionist community in Northern Ireland, the War has been
seen differently to the rest of the UK. The enlistment of virtually the
entire Ulster Volunteer Force in 1914 as the 36th (Ulster) Division and
their subsequent bloody involvement in the Battle of the Somme provided
the key focus for Loyalist myths of the War. In popular depictions, such
as street murals, ‘the imagery of the battlefields is not evoked in a sense
of “victimhood” and “suffering”, but as a place of heroism and sacrifice’
(Wilson 2013, p. 81). On this point Unionists are as selective in their
memory as Irish Nationalists and past Irish governments—in the former
case about the Republicans who fought alongside the Unionists and, in
the latter, regarding the 100,000–200,000 Southern Irish who volun-
teered (Leonard 1997, p. 60).
The Easter Rising and Irish Civil War quickly overshadowed the Great
War in Irish national myth and popular culture. Between 1919 and 1924
around 120 First World War veterans were killed ‘simply as a retrospective
punishment for their service in the Great War’ and though between 1919
and 1925 a Remembrance Day ceremony was held each year in Dublin, it
was often marred by open violence (Leonard 1997, p. 63; Mcauley 2014,
30 P. GRANT
p. 125). War memorials, especially in the Republic, remained a target for

potential attack and culminated in the North with the Enniskillen bomb
in 1987 when the Provisional IRA killed 11 and injured 63, an incident
linked with its First World War roots in several of the songs covered in
this book (Jeffrey 2015, p. 169; Mcauley 2014, p. 128). Enniskillen was
a watershed moment in public opinion and as reconciliation in Northern
Ireland progressed there was a distinct, in some cases remarkable, change
in public perception and recognition of the War. In 2001 the Gaelic Games
Association lifted its ban on British soldiers’ participation that had been
in place since the War itself and new physical memorials have been raised
both in Ireland and on the former battlefields. At Mesen (Messines) in
Belgium the Island of Ireland Peace Tower was dedicated on 11 November
1998 by Irish President Mary McAleese, King Albert of the Belgians and
Queen Elizabeth II, ‘the first time the heads of the Irish state and the
United Kingdom had joined in any sort of war commemoration’ (Jeffrey
2015, p. 171). President McAleese went on to dedicate new memorials
in Killarney (2009) and at Suvla Bay, Gallipoli (2010) and the Queen, in
what the Dublin press described as a ‘transcendentally healing’ event, paid
a first ever state visit to Ireland in 2011, laying a wreath commemorating
all those ‘who gave their lives in the cause of Irish Freedom’ (Jeffrey 2015,
p. 176). Reconciliation has inevitably had its critics from the more extreme
wings of Republicanism and Unionism but it is notable that, though all
the above events had their vociferous opponents, when a new war memo-
rial was proposed and dedicated in Wexford in 2013 there was no opposi-
tion whatsoever and the centenary commemorations are being promoted
on both sides of the border as an opportunity to promote an ‘inclusive and
accepting society’ (Jeffrey 2015, p. 178; Community Relations Council
n.d.; Grayson 2014).
Reconciliation is not the only catalyst for changing myths in Ireland;
there is also the part the Republic played in the Second World War to con-
sider. The Irish role in defeating Germany in 1914–18 is perhaps seen as
more morally justifiable than its neutral stance in 1939–45. Certainly the
myths are changing in Ireland but some historians have warned that old
myths are in danger of being replaced by ‘sanitised’ new ones, designed
to suppress ugly or inconvenient facts (Fitzpatrick 2013, p. 132). In this
sense what is happening with Irish myths of the War is a further extension
of transnational, or at least, trans-European myth-making.
France
Part of the impetus for the tendency in recent years for the mythology of
both world wars to take on a new transnational veneer has been the chang-
ing nature of the European Union. Nowhere is this more apparent than
in France and Germany and the various acts of reconciliation between
those countries since 1945. One significant event came in 1951 when a
historians’ Commission from both countries signed an agreement that no
one nation was responsible for the First World War (Mombauer 2002,
p. 123; Pearson 2015). Consequently there was a shift away from nation-
alistic mythology. In Germany this initially entailed a schism between
the ‘new nations’ of the Federal Republic and the German Democratic
Republic (DDR) followed, after 1989, by a reforging of a united con-
cept of ‘Germany in Europe’. In France the shifts in war myth have been
less dramatic and one can still see elements of nationalism in the French
conception of the First World War. Given that their country was invaded,
France unsurprisingly sees the War as necessary whereas Britain views
it negatively; with regard to the Second, ‘the situation is almost totally
reversed’ (Bell 2013, p. 156; Reynolds 2013, pp. 324–5). France’s defeat
in 1940 and the continuing conflict between the myths of collaboration
and resistance mean that the First World War is elevated in status (Reynolds
2015, p. 225). Broadly speaking ‘the French are proud to have won the
war’ and though it is viewed as an immense human tragedy it was one
that was meaningful rather than futile (Hadley 2014, p. 42; Hutchinson
2014, p. 37; Reynolds 2015, p. 224). In this sense France’s view of the
First World War fits Schöpflin’s category of a ‘myth of redemption and
suffering’ linked to Armstrong’s concept of the antemurale myth where
‘the nation in question bled to near extinction precisely so that Europe
could flourish’ (Schöpflin 1997, p. 29; Armstrong 1982). If one accepts
this categorisation then it is all the more apparent why the ‘the battle of
Verdun remains the symbol of the Great War for France’ (Hadley 2014,
p. 42). The use of Verdun as the key symbol of the War is even greater
than between Britain and the Somme or Passchendaele and its centrality is
borne out in French popular song.
Germany
For most Germans the First World War ‘is history and far away’ and has
been completely overshadowed by the Second, mainly due to the fact
32 P. GRANT
that German responsibility is so much clearer and the loss of life so much
greater in the latter (Mix 2014, p. 43; Kettenacker 2006, p. 87; Stibbe
2014, p. 205). Even so there have been periods when German respon-
sibility, if not the War itself, has assumed greater prominence. The first
was in the 1960s following the publication of Fritz Fischer’s controversial
book Griff nach der Weltmacht in which Fischer argued, against the earlier
historians’ agreement, that Germany’s expansionist foreign policy culmi-
nated in their launching a war of aggression in 1914. Revisionist historians
challenged Fischer’s thesis and have been bolstered recently by the suc-
cess in Germany of Christopher Clark’s The Sleepwalkers seen, somewhat
incorrectly, as repudiating German guilt for the war. Clark’s book rapidly
sold over 30,000 copies in Germany and was praised by the Eurosceptic
Alternative für Deutschland party (Posener 2014, p. 21). Aside from these
somewhat academic concerns ‘the Great War registers only weakly in con-
temporary consciousness’ and in schools the only mandatory topic is the
Treaty of Versailles (Schaffer 2014; Stibbe 2014, p. 221). At government
level, even more so than in France, the War has been used to emphasise the
importance of European integration (Posener 2014, p. 21). Frevert claims
that it was the experience of the First World War that ensured that Europe
became a major component in German national self-definition but, whereas
from 1914 to 1945 Germany sought to ‘Germanize’ Europe, there is now
a ‘sense of European connectedness that prevails among Germany’s politi-
cal, economic and cultural elites’ with a clear indication being the number
of university posts redesignated from ‘German history’ to ‘European his-
tory’ (Frevert 2005, pp. 87–9). Even so it is indicative that a commission
established by the Office of the President to agree plans for the War’s
centenary was dissolved and the German government spent a mere €4.5
million on events commemorating its outbreak (Paterson 2014).
Overall, Germany has weak national memory of the First World War,
with some commentators suggesting it did not develop a national iden-
tity comparable to Britain or France after 1945, in part because ‘official
war commemoration in Germany cannot have a unifying character but is
always polarizing’ (Knischewski and Spittler 1997, p. 239). Such lack of
clarity perhaps makes usage of the War fertile ground for more radical,
or reactionary, interpretations and is one reason that the overwhelming
proportion (over 90 per cent) of German ‘songs’ about the War are in the
extreme metal and martial industrial genres.
Australia
There is probably no Australian who would not immediately know both
the location and the date of its founding myth: 25 April 1915 at Anzac
Cove in Gallipoli, and Mark McKenna suggests that Australia is unique in
that ‘no other nation has established its founding moment 15,000 kilo-
metres away from its own soil’ (Garton 1998, p. 96; Stanley 2014, p. 41;
Australian War Memorial n.d.; McKenna 2014, p. 154). A version of this
myth established itself in the Australian psyche immediately after the War
and, after a period of neglect, it has been revived in a modified but even
more mythologised form.
As with the British myth, Australia’s was partly constructed from popu-
lar and artistic sources and today ‘it is in the commemoration of war that
Australian popular culture finds its most profound sense of nationhood’
(Curthoys 2000, p. 129). In 1916 H. L. Galway celebrated the achieve-
ments of Australians at Gallipoli in his poem ‘The Australiad’, and oth-
ers drew parallels between the Australians and the Greeks at Troy (Garton
1998, p. 91). The interwar literary climate in Australia was very different
from the depiction of British literature in Paul Fussell’s The Great War and
Modern Memory: ‘Instead of the traumas of war promoting a modernist
and ironic sensibility […] the interwar years in Australia were marked by
a conservative, anti-modernist aesthetic in which the “heroic” virtues of
Anzac manhood stood supreme’ (Garton 1998, p. 89). This conservatism
ensured that neither during the War, nor the interwar period, was the Anzac
story at all anti-British and neither was the myth of Anzac all-pervading
(Reynolds 2015, p. 232). It seems almost inconceivable today but when
the Australian National Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux was inaugurated
in 1938 Australian Prime Minister Joseph Lyons did not even attend, the
unveiling being carried out by King George VI. After the Second World War
the myth of Anzac suffered further decline so that by the 1960s Anzac Day
was largely treated with indifference and became the focus of anti-Vietnam
War protests. In the 1950s when Alan Moorhead visited Gallipoli prior to
publishing his book on the subject, he noted that there were no more than
half a dozen visitors a year and even in 1984 the dawn service attracted only
300 (Carlyon 2001, p. 534). In 2015 more than 42,000 Australians applied
for the 8000 available places at the centenary ceremonies on the peninsula.
Bruce Scates dates the revitalisation of Anzac commemoration to Australia’s
involvement in Vietnam and, in cultural terms, it began with the publication
of books like Bill Gammage’s The Broken Years: Australian Soldiers in the
Great War (1974) and Patsy Adam-Smith’s The ANZACS (1978) (Scates
34 P. GRANT
2009, p. 65). It was boosted by the phenomenal success of Peter Weir’s film
Gallipoli in 1981, for which Gammage acted as an advisor. The poster slogan
for the film is indicative of the state of the Anzac myth at this point: ‘From a
place you have never heard of … A story you’ll never forget’ (Reynolds 2013,
pp. 372–3). Weir’s film in particular emphasised that this resurrection of a
‘tradition that was once grounded in British race patriotism’ had decisively
shed this mantle (Holbrook and Ziino 2015, p. 45). Exactly how this shift
occurred is still much debated but its manifestations are clear. The myth of
Anzac is the single most important aspect of Australian identity and more
young Australians now ‘invade’ Çanakkale each April than Anzacs who went
ashore during the first landings (Beaumont 2015, p. 1; Scates 2009, p. 58).
The synergy between popular and official myth makes the Anzac story espe-
cially strong and Graham Seal notes how it has been malleable over time to
meet the needs of new generations of Australians moving away from their
Imperialist past to a more transnational future (Seal 2004).
A contested element of the contemporary myth is the extent to which
it embraces militarism. It has frequently served Australian politicians’
interests to foreground elements of military heroism but Marilyn Lake
and Henry Reynolds oppose this reading, suggesting it is inappropriate for
a modern, democratic and multi ethnic nation (Lake and Reynolds 2010,
pp. 3 and 167; Wellings 2014, p. 53; Hutchinson 2014, p. 42). Their cri-
tique created a furore among both the public and historians in Australia,
one journalist comparing them to Islamic extremists though many
Australians, especially the young, though taking pride in their history, are
far less inclined towards a militarist interpretation (Holbrook and Ziino
2015, p. 40; Cochrane 2015). Curthoys believes that ‘Australians have
traditionally regarded themselves as victims […] rather than invaders or
oppressors’ and Christina Twomey has argued that ‘the “trauma” perspec-
tive […] has been the principal reason for the resurgence of enthusiasm for
the Anzac tradition’ (Curthoys 2000, pp. 130–1; Cochrane 2015). This
interpretation, again emphasising transnational themes, is the one taken
up by most Australian popular song writers. Songs about Anzac Day are
not a manifestation of ‘the rise of a sentimental and conservative national-
ism’ but another example of subtle change in the direction of a transna-
tional myth of trauma and pity, ‘a shift in focus in war commemoration
in the late twentieth century from the national to the international and
transnational spheres’ (McKenna 2014, p. 156; Beaumont 2015, p. 4).
Nevertheless the Anzac myth still amounts to what Bongiorno has
called a ‘civil religion’ and one takes on the myth at one’s peril (Bongiorno
2014, p. 96; Hastings 2015, p. 38). In recognition of this the Australian
government agreed to spend $140 million on the centenary (£74 m or

£3.15 per head of population), significantly more than any other country,
and the myth of Anzac has claims to being the strongest national First
World War myth of all (Wellings and Sumartojo 2014).
Canada
There are obvious parallels between Australia and Canada’s First World
War experience. Both were young nations within the British Empire that
utilised the War as a nation-defining event and, in the immediate post-
War period, their ‘mythology was almost identical’ (Cook 2014b, p. 419;
Beaumont 2015, p. 5). Both countries were seriously divided over the
issue of conscription, introduced in Canada in 1917 but never in Australia,
however there are also some significant differences. In part this stems
from the nature of the Australian and Canadian contingents. A very simi-
lar proportion of the male population of Canada and Australia fought,
13.48 and 13.43 per cent respectively, though Australia suffered a greater
casualty rate—8.5 to 6.04 per cent (Andrews 1993, pp. 254, 216). But
the nature of these contingents was significantly different with British-
born Canadians making up a far larger proportion of their army. In the
Australian army only 18 per cent had been born in Britain whereas in the
Canadian this proportion was nearer 50 per cent, even though only 11 per
cent of its overall population was British-born (Beaumont 2014, p. 401).
This may be one reason why no anti-British element has penetrated the
English-speaking Canadian War myth and there are no Canadian versions
of such anti-British songs as ‘What’s a Few Men’.
The nation-building theme appears in nearly all accounts of the
Canadian myth, despite there being more divisive elements than in
Australia, especially between French and English-speaking Canadians
(Young 1994; Vance 1997; Cook 2014a, b). The conscription issue ‘split
the nation, pitting farmers against city dwellers, labour against bosses,
French against English’ and the ‘nation’ created was not one but two
with the War strengthening ‘the two nationalisms of French and English
Canada’ (Granatstein 2014; Vance 1997, p. 10; Cook 2014b, p. 419).
Vance’s study demonstrates how the Canadian War myth arose in the
interwar period and Cook brings the story more up to date, suggesting
that the transnational concept of the War as ‘pointless carnage’ has now
entered Canadian popular memory (Cook 2014b, p. 418). Recently there
has been ‘a powerful resurgence of the First World War in the Canadian
imagination’ and, despite the divisions, the overall view of the War is ‘as a
36 P. GRANT
unifying myth of the nation and one about which we can and should feel
proud’ (Susan Fisher quoted by Grace 2014, p. 455).
Within this overall mythology two events stand out, one more than the
other. The first was the stoic resistance of the Canadians at the Second
Battle of Ypres in April 1915, the first major engagement of their forces.
It was during Second Ypres that John McCrae wrote his famous poem ‘In
Flanders Fields’, a reference point for a large number of popular songs
both from Canada and beyond. The second was the successful assault on
Vimy Ridge in April 1917. Vimy is the site of Canada’s largest overseas war
memorial and, more than any other engagement, is the defining Canadian
myth of the War (Canada 2012). Prime Minister Stephen Harper even
went as far as describing the battle in biblical terms as ‘our creation story’
(Grace 2014, p. 217).
As both Second Ypres and Vimy, unlike Gallipoli, can be seen as victo-
ries this may have had an influence on popular myths of the War. Another
might be Canada’s far less positive views on the Second. Unlike Britain and
Australia, which stood in danger of invasion, in Canada events such as ‘the
disastrous defence of Hong Kong, the disastrous raid on Nuremberg […]
the disastrous battles for Verrières Ridge [and] the failed raid on Dieppe’
contributed towards a more negative image of that war which stands in con-
trast to more positive views of 1914–18 (Vance 1997, p. 11). Canada is per-
haps more similar to France than it is to Britain and Australia and their more
positive image of the Great War is carried through into songs, even though
the War is still regarded as one of ‘tragic heroism’ (Canada 2011, p. 11).
USA
The USA’s relatively short involvement in the First World War and the cul-
tural domination of the Second and then Vietnam, the former positive and the
latter negative, have tended to sideline the Great War in American memory
and national myth. The trend after 1918 was towards disenchantment with
American involvement or even, in more extreme versions, seeing US entry as
having been manipulated by British propaganda and self-aggrandising arms
manufacturers (Reynolds 2015, p. 228). The decision of the American gov-
ernment to allow repatriation of soldiers killed in the War, which was taken
up by roughly 70 per cent of families, also played a role in fading memories,
as there is no specific focus for US pilgrimage such as Vimy or Gallipoli.
There is however some recognition of the First World War in the USA
as demonstrated by a recent survey of adults. A significant majority, 76
per cent, consider the War is still relevant today and 70 per cent of those
who expressed a view said that the US had a responsibility to fight in it

(YouGov 2014b). The view of the War as relevant was not significantly
affected by any of the demographic factors tested: gender, age, party iden-
tification, race, family income or region. Belief in US intervention, though
not impacted by five of the factors, was differently perceived across age
groups. Only 29 per cent of 18–29-year-olds agreed that the US had a
responsibility to intervene but this rose to a peak of 64 per cent in the
over 65s. Overall most Americans thought that their country did most to
win the War (43 per cent) with 24 per cent naming Britain and 8 per cent
France as the key to victory.
Inevitably the War’s depiction in the cinema had an impact on popular
myth and critical early works include King Vidor’s The Big Parade (1925)
and Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). Vidor’s
silent film was one of the first depictions of ‘disillusion’, though it was
quickly eclipsed by Milestone’s anti-war classic which had the advantage
of sound. Since then the US myth, though not as strong, has tended to
mirror that of the British, a trend strengthened through the popularity of
the works of Fussell, Barker and Faulks (Reynolds 2013, pp. xvii, 430).
Though a recent commentator has suggested that ‘Snoopy’s showdowns
with the Red Baron aside, there are few traces of the war in American pop-
ular culture today’ he might be surprised that there are over 250 American
popular songs about the War. With no overwhelming national war myth
of their own many of these either draw parallels with other events—nota-
bly Vietnam – or comment on other nations and their obsessions (Bures
2014).
CONCLUSION
Chernus points out that ‘a group of interlocking myths can conveniently
be called a mythology’ and in some countries—Britain, France, Australia
and Canada—there can be said to be a full-blown mythology of the First
World War (Chernus 2012). Elsewhere there are individual myths, often
connected to a wider mythology than just the War. No countries see the
War as a ‘good thing’ but some have far more negative mythologies than
others and popular depictions and memories show no signs of decreas-
ing. There is development towards more general transnational myths of
war as symbolic of human suffering and trauma and the idea of the sol-
dier/victim. In concrete terms no single lieu de memoire better depicts
this transnational mythology, and challenges Pierre Nora’s view that these
38 P. GRANT
express purely national remembrance, than the ‘Ring of Remembrance’

unveiled at Notre Dame de Lorette, near Arras, on 11 November 2014
by Presidents Hollande and Merkel and Prime Minister Cameron. The
memorial, by architect Philippe Prost, ‘takes the form of a 328-metre
ring of dark, lightweight concrete barely touching and, as if by magic,
projecting over a plateau set below the neo-Byzantine chapel and soar-
ing lantern tower of the National Necropolis, the biggest of all French
military cemeteries. Inside the ring, 500 sheets of bronzed stainless steel
list 579,606 names’ (Glancey 2014). The names are of all those killed in
northern France during the War arranged in alphabetical order irrespec-
tive of nationality or rank, so that they are ‘united now and forever in their
common humanity’ (Prost 2014). Dr. Markus Meckel, President of the
German War Graves Commission, commented that: ‘It is in places such
as Notre Dame de Lorette that we can and must assert loud and clear
that the European Union is more than just a financial and economic pro-
gramme. It is a major step towards peace and reconciliation which must
not just be preserved and developed but which represents all our futures’
(Glancey 2014). Whilst in Britain Boris Johnson or Nigel Farage might
disagree, there is compelling evidence that in relation to the First World
War the transnationalisation of myth is gaining momentum (Fig. 2.1).
Fig. 2.1 The ‘Ring of Remembrance’, Notre Dame de Lorette, near Arras,
France (Courtesy of Philippe Prost)
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CHAPTER 3
Remembrance, Memory and Popular Music
MEMORY AND REMEMBRANCE
The nature of myth in relation to memory is vital to clarify in order to
understand how popular music plays a part in remembrance and what it
is that is being remembered. Memory studies is a subdiscipline that has
grown in importance over the past 30 years. War has been one of the
key subjects it has addressed and, especially through the writings of Jay
Winter, the First World War has assumed significant relevance (Ashplant
et al. 2000, p. 6). Winter’s initial book on the topic Sites of Memory, Sites
of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press 1995) has been complemented by other
important studies (Gregory 1994; Lloyd 1998; King 1998; Connelly
2001; Macleod 2004; Goebel 1997; Todman 2005; Watson 2004; Hanna
2009; Meyer 2009). A key source for these is Maurice Halbwachs who
was the first to argue that individual memory develops in relation to social
networks and the larger community (Halbwachs 1992, fp 1925). As the
product of social change Halbwachs argued that memory is itself a pro-
cess, an ever-changing representation of the past. We therefore encounter
the idea of ‘social’, ‘collective’ or ‘public’ memory, which are often con-
trasted with ‘private’, ‘individual’ or ‘personal’ memory. Halbwachs used
the term ‘collective memory’ though many since prefer the term ‘cultural
memory’, while historians and social scientists mostly use the term ‘social
memory’. Several writers suggest that collective memory shares many

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similarities with myth, especially in the formation of national identity,

though Halbwachs was careful to say that collective memory could apply
to any group of people and was not coterminous with national memory
(Kattago 2015b, pp. 3–5). Others have challenged the idea of collective
memory as too vague a term and less useful than myth, tradition or stereo-
type which are more specific (Bell 2013, p. 26; Cubitt 2007, p. 6). Winter
suggests abandoning the term ‘collective memory’ and replacing it with
‘remembrance’, because the latter suggests an active process of negotia-
tion between individuals (Winter 2006a, p. 4). Bell, though still utilising
‘collective memory’, further explains the relationship between memory,
remembrance and history, seeing collective memory or collective remem-
brance as ‘the product of individuals (or groups of individuals) coming
together to share memories of particular events’ with memory becoming
visible through the social interaction of acts of remembrance. (Bell 2003,
p. 65). Whatever our view of these terms there is certainly a role within
them for popular music for, as van Dijck explains, ‘recorded music is vital
to the construction of personal and collective cultural memory’ (van Dijck
2006, p. 357).
We can further clarify the distinction between collective memory and
myth by explaining that it is not a question of quality, with memory being
more ‘factual’ than myth, but one of selectivity and utility. In the context
of the First World War some collective memories have become myths,
others have not, but all myths of this kind have their origin in some form
of collective memory, re-emerging as myths often many years later, such
as in the case of the Christmas Truce. This brings us to the question of
the relationship between memory and history. Some scholars suggest that
memory and history are quite separate whereas others disagree. The main
difference between the two terms is that memory tends to mythologise the
past and engages the emotions whereas history is, supposedly, grounded
in critical distance and based on ‘objective’ documentation (Misztal 2003,
p. 99). Jan Assmann has suggested that the social memory of an event
changes once there is no one alive to tell the tale from their own experi-
ence. In an effort to bridge the gap between ‘social’ and ‘cultural’ mem-
ory, Assmann argues that, at this point, ‘communicative’ memory will
transform itself into ‘cultural’ memory (Assmann 1992, p. 56). Winter
takes Assmann’s point in proposing the term ‘historical remembrance’ for
the period after living memory which ‘draws on both history and mem-
ory’ and these narratives are utilised by both historians and artists of all
kinds (Winter 2006a, p. 9). Assmann further suggests that ‘in the context
REMEMBRANCE, MEMORY AND POPULAR MUSIC 51
of cultural memory, the distinction between myth and history vanishes’

whilst Pierre Nora, one of the key founders of memory studies in the
1980s, takes this further and strongly argues that ‘memory and history,
far from being synonymous, appear now to be in fundamental opposition’
(Assmann 2008, p. 113; Nora 1989, p. 8). For Nora ‘memory attaches
itself to sites, whereas history attaches itself to events’ and a constructed
mythologised history has replaced true memory as represented by fabri-
cated and artificial lieu de mémoire (sites of memory) (Nora 1989, p. 22).
These sites can take four forms three of which (functional, monumental
and topographic) are physical in nature whereas one, the symbolic, (which
includes commemorations, anniversaries and emblems) is non-material
(Nora 1996, p. 20). Today, in Nora’s view, there is an acceleration of his-
tory which is driven by globalisation and the advent of mass culture (Nora
1996, p. 6). Both he and Bell have presented social memory as a realm of
resistance against the public, dominant version of memory that is known
as ‘history’ (Bell 2003, p. 65).
There are, however, problems in presenting history as merely a more
‘intellectualised’ version of myth. Though both are constructions of the
past and part of social memory, history is an intellectual discipline that,
though open to continuous reinterpretation, ought to be underpinned
by verifiable facts whereas myth does not imply such a connection and
historians must have some responsibility to point out when myth slips
into deception or falsehood (Bond 2015, p. 217). Equally history does
not have to be believed by any significant number of people whereas myth
must (Cubitt 2007, pp. 26–7). Winter suggests that Nora’s obituary for
collective memory is premature, which I would support adding that Nora
also overemphasises the nation as the source for collective memory to the
detriment of transnational trends (Levy and Szaider 2002, p. 90). There
is clearly value in the idea that both history and myth are a form of social
memory though we still need a boundary between them even if the merg-
ing of myth and remembrance is apparent, for example in the official com-
memoration of the Christmas Truce in December 2014 (Wellings 2014,
p. 49). One significant point made by Nora is that memory is necessarily
selective. We sift memories for their personal and cultural significance, and
those that ‘sit most easily with current constructions of national identity’
usually take precedence (Noakes 2009, p. 136).
A further idea, Erving Goffman’s theory of ‘frame analysis’, can also be
of assistance in reflecting upon cultural and national memory. Goffman
argues that social organisation and social structure are responsible for
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framing people’s experience and that they continuously project these

frames of reference into the past (Misztal 2003, pp. 82–3). Frame analysis
can provide balance to the idea that cultural memory or national myths
are formed by a one-way transmission from popular culture; for example
that the reason people think the First World War was futile is because
they have watched Oh! What a Lovely War or Blackadder. Instead frame
analysis suggests that we consider cultural forms as historical texts ‘that
are constructed within society to comprehend the past and view the pres-
ent’ (Wilson 2013, p. 18). In other words a popular song will always be
saying more about the time and circumstances of its writing than about
the War. We make meaning by appropriating an historical event as a way
of interpreting a current one for example when a popular song recalls the
First World War in order to make a comparison with a current conflict
(such as Dylan’s ‘With God on Our Side’, Brassens’ ‘La Guerre de 14–18’
and Saxon’s ‘Where Are They Now?’). So frame analysis can explain why
certain memories retain their power but not how they came about or why
a particular ‘frame of remembrance’ has more resonance than another.
Nevertheless the concept adds to a rich palette of potential models for
analysing memory and remembrance.
MUSIC AND REMEMBERING
Remembrance has been defined negatively as ‘the necessity to never for-
get’ and individual memory is highly subjective and can differ dramati-
cally as ‘eye witness’ descriptions of significant events constantly remind
us (Misztal 2003, p. 11). When no eye witnesses remain, who is remem-
bering what becomes even more significant. So, in discussing works of
art about the War we need to give particular attention to factors such
as when the song was written and recorded and who is speaking—the
songwriter, a historical character or an imagined one? (Todman 2009,
p. 23). Whilst remembering is an individual experience, remembrance is
communal and public memory is ‘inseparable from discourses of national
identities’ (Hodgkin and Radstone 2006a, p. 170; Ashplant et al. 2000,
p. 18). To create a nation requires the simultaneous creation of a way of
remembering the past and its key events. This leads us back to mythology
and whether this public memory sufficiently coincides with how individu-
als construct their own remembrance, creating a highly political issue and
a ‘site of struggle and contestation’ (Edkins 2006, p. 101). This struggle is
of crucial importance for artists. Which remembrance is being constructed
in their work—their own memory, that of their nation, an oppositional

memory or a combination of one or more of these?
Remembrance has become a serious topic for academic study but
this ‘memory boom’ has not been confined to academia (Winter 2006a,
p. 150). The increasing popularity of family history has resulted in a
plethora of books, TV programmes and websites all catering for those
researching the lives of their ancestors. Yet, as we have seen, the notions
of ‘collective memory’ and ‘cultural memory’ remain contested with no
common agreement as to the full meaning of either term (Dessingué
2015, pp. 93–4). Despite this, both remain useful concepts in that they
suggest the ways in which communities can remember and how memory
can become both transnational and transcultural. Collective memory can
therefore be seen as a dynamic interaction in which an absent object of
remembrance (in this study the First World War) is represented by a pow-
erful initiator of memory (the writing and performance of a song) to an
audience (which may be a small group, a nation or a transnational one)
(Ballinger 1998, p. 109; Beyen 2015, p. 4).
In his research using a Mass Observation study of 500 individuals John
Sloboda found that the most valued outcome people place on listening to
music is the remembrance of past events (Sloboda 1999, pp. 354–5). More
recently Ben Anderson and Michael Pickering and Emily Keightley have
conducted primary research into the way people use music in remember-
ing (Anderson 2004; Pickering and Keightley 2015). The latter demon-
strate how recorded music is ‘densely woven into the fabric of vernacular
memory’ and takes on ‘a deeply personal and interpersonal resonance and
significance’, more so than any other form of remembering (Pickering and
Keightley 2015, pp. 12 and 106). The way music facilitates remembering
helps us to integrate memories into life narratives and make ‘meaning,
order and coherence out of all that happens to us’. It helps us assess the
quality and value of our experiences and form notions of our own identity
(Pickering and Keightley 2015, p. 15). So, as Tregear suggests, the chal-
lenge for both artists and critics when using art commemoratively is not
‘simply to help us remember epochal events and their impact upon us, but
also to enable the much more difficult task of reflecting critically both on
that past and ourselves’ and the topic of remembrance has been a fertile
one for song writers and musicians (Tregear 2012, p. 168). Music can be
used collectively as part of events or be produced individually. Most of the
songs in this study are the creation of individuals but the centenary of the
War is providing many examples of collective activity. These can be official
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events, such as the ‘Last Post’ project in Britain during November 2014
which involved hundreds of participants playing versions of the famous
bugle call, or unofficial, such as the rock and metal festival held in March
2015 in the province of Çanakkale in Turkey organised by Iranian band
Master of Persia. Headlined by Orphaned Land from Israel the festival
included bands from Turkey, Lebanon, Dubai, Georgia and Bulgaria
under the banner ‘love and peace around the world’ (Hurriyet Daily News
2015; Persian Rock/Metal Festival 2015).
‘REMEMBRANCE DAYS’ AND REMEMBRANCE SONGS

Inevitably there is an element of remembrance/remembering in all songs
about the First World War. For example artists in the martial industrial
and neofolk genres often promote a very specific form of remembrance
(see Chapter 7). A quick search of iTunes or the Amazon music store
reveals well over 100 songs with remembrance in their title, many written
or re-recorded to coincide with the centenary. There are anthologies for
remembrance in general or Remembrance Day itself which contain some
appropriate selections (‘Flowers of the Forest’, ‘Amazing Grace’, The
Lark Ascending); some rather less appropriate (Stanley Myers’ ‘Cavatina’
which pre-dates its use in The Deer Hunter, or Samuel Barber’s Adagio
for Strings, whose composition had no connection to war); to the slightly
bizarre (‘The Final Countdown’). Some songs utilise Remembrance Day
to focus on more recent conflicts or events; Midge Ure’s ‘Remembrance
Day’ is about Northern Ireland whereas Michael Nyman’s 11th Symphony
and the Justice Collective’s version of ‘He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother’
memorialise the Hillsborough stadium disaster. Another group utilise
remembrance imagery, including the Day itself, as a metaphor for per-
sonal relationships. These include Yorkshire gothic rock band Rhombus’
‘Remembrance Day’ (2007, Resurrection) and Canadian Martha
Johnson’s similarly titled track (from Solo One 2013, Muffin).
Remembrance songs that directly reference the First World War fall
broadly into three types. Sitting outside these categories are instrumentals
that, as we have noted with song meanings, make their relevance to the
War problematic. Irish post-rock trio God is an Astronaut’s ‘Remembrance
Day’ (from All is Violent, All is Bright 2005, Revive) is not entirely with-
out vocals but these are wordless and processed through a vocoder. It
is hard to judge the meaning of the title, though an Irish connection
seems likely, and its melancholy soundscapes are not far distant from the
more modernist passages of Cyril Rootham’s For the Fallen (composed in

1915) or John Foulds’ World Requiem (1919–21). Though still wholly
instrumental Fairport Convention violinist Ric Sanders’ ‘Remembrance
Day’ (from his solo album Still Waters 2008, Talking Elephant) is clearly
intended as ‘programme music’ or a modern ‘tone poem’. The main
theme might be taken to represent the men who went to war. The song
then introduces a martial theme with military-style drums and finally frag-
ments into a dissonant finale sounding like a siren or shellfire, surely meant
to depict their fate in battle. The three categories of more directly rel-
evant works are songs that treat remembrance and Remembrance Day as a
sacred or at least significant patriotic event in line with its ‘official’ status;
songs that take the opposite tack, treating Remembrance Day especially as
a hypocritical revision of history; and songs that take a more neutral stance
or adopt an internationalist or pacifist message without political polemic.
In the first category is former Dire Straits frontman Mark Knopfler’s
‘Remembrance Day’ (from Get Lucky, 2009, Mercury). It features his dis-
tinctive guitar style in a slow, pastoral elegy about servicemen from a single
English village who lost their lives. It begins with images of the may-
pole, Morris men and cricket on the green before, as in Mike Harding’s
‘Accrington Pals’, listing the names of those carved on the war memo-
rial. In the penultimate verse Knopfler is joined by a children’s choir and
intends the lyrics ‘when the vicar comes to say, may God bless them every-
one’, to be taken at face value and without irony, a contrast with Leon
Rosselson’s approach examined below. In less skilled hands this would
make the song more than a little trite but Knopfler’s is both effective
and quite moving, especially when performed live as at the Remembrance
Day concert in Trafalgar Square in aid of the British Legion in 2009, to
whom Knopfler donated the proceeds from the song’s release. However
it is certainly possible for remembrance practices to be taken to extremes.
On an individual level one recalls Queen Victoria’s mourning the death
of Prince Albert and Patrick West has suggested that Britain as a country
often engages in ‘recreational grief’ such as over the death of Princess
Diana (West 2004). This elevation of the dead is most extreme when
remembering those who died in events that form part of a nation’s core
mythology and when artists or commentators ‘dissent from established
norms’ they invite opprobrium for their ‘inferred criticism of the dead
themselves and their sacrifice’ (Marshall 2004, p. 44). This tendency is
noticeable in Britain through such social mores as wearing poppies so that
‘it has become almost obligatory for anyone in the public eye or media to
56 P. GRANT
wear a poppy in November, and the poppy has gained an almost sacred
status’ (Andrews 2015, p. 109). In an incident that would have delighted
Roland Barthes Downing Street publicists even deemed it necessary to
PhotoShop a poppy onto a picture of David Cameron, leading to wide-
spread ridicule (Perraudin 2015).
There are a number of songs that reject this ‘sanctification’ of remem-
brance, instead using it as a starting point for a sharp political critique.
The best of several punk bands to cover the topic are Bristol-based
Disorder (on their 1983 EP Perdition) and the English/Dutch collabo-
ration Antidote (from the 1987 EP Destroy Fascism). Disorder sandwich
a trip to the trenches in all its blood and gore between a cynical pair of
verses ‘on Poppy Day’ with ‘polished medals on display’ in a raw and bitter
snarl of rage against the waste of human life and its sanitisation through
the modern ceremony. Antidote, a collaboration between anarcho-punks
Chumbawamba (originally from Burnley, Lancashire) and The Ex (from
Amsterdam), oppose Remembrance Day being taken over by neo-fascists
‘with tiny brains and outsize boots/Chanting seig heils and throwing
salutes’ under the protection of a reactionary police force. It is an effec-
tive and deliberately simple piece of sloganeering which suggests that the
fascists have no conception of what it is they are supposed to be remem-
bering and ends with a call to arms echoing the cry of La Passionara from
the Spanish Civil War or the Battle of Cable Street, ‘they shall not pass’.
Veteran folk/protest singer Leon Rosselson takes very much the same
material but approaches it from an ironic, blackly humorous standpoint.
Active since the 1950s, Rosselson specialises in clever anti-establishment
lyrics which even the Daily Telegraph has recognised as containing ‘gen-
uine wit and poetic value’ (Daily Telegraph 2004). Perhaps his great-
est ‘coup’ came in 1987 when former MI5 agent Peter Wright’s book
Spycatcher was banned from publication in the UK. Rosselson read it
and turned its key contents into a song, ‘Ballad of a Spycatcher’, that
was published in the New Statesman and broadcast widely without any
attempt to censor it, thus pointing up the hypocrisy of the ban. His 2004
album Turning Silence into Song (Fuse) is a collection of 14 songs from
his career and fRoots suggested that you could ‘buy this album and ruin
a dinner party with a heated political debate. Not many people can do
that’ (fRoots 2004). Originally written in 1969, when it referred to the
Biafra war, ‘Remembrance Day’ is set at the annual Cenotaph ceremony
attended by the Queen and dignitaries. Its overall intention is entirely seri-
ous, ‘the hypocrisy of memorialising one war while planning for the next’
when ‘from Horse Guards Parade, a gun sounded/And normal life started
again’ (Rosselson 2015; my emphasis). As the two minutes’ silence begins
the narrator hears a coarse and ill-bred voice rise up out of the darkness
saying ‘I am the voice of the fallen/And I am the voice of the dead’. In
many hands this ‘ghost’ would deliver portentous words of warning or
tendentious political slogans. In Rosselson’s the voice of the dead soldier
proclaims that the dead ‘don’t want your two minutes’ silence/So stuff it
up your arse’. The lyrics here closely resemble the Christmas Truce scene
in Oh, What a Lovely War! where, in response to the German’s rendition of
‘Stille Nacht’, the Tommies respond with the scatological ‘Christmas Day
in the Cookhouse’ with Private Shorthouse suggesting ‘we don’t want
your Christmas Pudding, you can stick it up your …’ (Littlewood 1967,
p. 50). Though Rosselson’s song attacks the hypocrisy of the occasion as
‘a strange aroma of corpses hung round the Cenotaph’ it is also one of few
that recaptures the black humour of the trenches. In its updated version it
has contemporary relevance when he relates that ‘a small bunch of fanat-
ics’ tried to ‘dishonour the day by shouting “Remember Iraq”/But they
were soon hustled away’ and ends after ‘the bishop conducted a service
for the ones who never came back’. The words ostensibly praise the bishop
and condemn the ‘fanatics’ but the intention, and clear meaning through
Rosselson’s witty delivery, entirely reverse this. Rosselson’s characteristi-
cally good natured delivery, jaunty tune and ironic humour make him the
nearest Britain has come to producing an equivalent of Georges Brassens
who Rosselson referenced in his song ‘The Ghost of Georges Brassens’.
In 2016 Rosselson released what he says will be his last album (Where are
the Barricades? PM/Free Dirt) which concludes with the song ‘At Dawn’.
It is broadly based on Yves Montand’s ‘C’est à l’aube’ (first recorded in
1954) which is indirectly about a military execution. Rosselson makes its
connection with the First World War totally clear with both execution and
hopeless attacks scheduled for that hour but concludes with a call to arms
that predicts that the revolution that will sweep away capitalism may also
begin at dawn.
Robb Johnson, a sometime collaborator of Rosselson’s, and the a cap-
pella trio comprising Barry Coope, Jim Boyes and Lester Simpson are all
closely associated with the series of Passchendaele Peace Concerts organ-
ised by Piet Chielens, coordinator of the In Flanders Fields Museum.
Coope, Boyes and Simpson’s work combines many contemporary War
songs with newly composed ones such as ‘Standing in Line’ and ‘Tyne
Cot at Night’. The trio have performed on stage at performances of
58 P. GRANT
Michael Morpurgo’s Private Peaceful and their beautifully sung harmo-

nies are most easily accessed on the 2014 double album In Flanders Fields
(No Masters). Robb Johnson’s album Gentle Men is more intriguing from
an historical perspective. It first appeared in 1997 but was re-issued in
2013 (Irregular). Essentially a family history the double album tells the
story of Johnson’s two grandfathers who, though surviving the War, were
both ‘forever in its shadow’ (Johnson 2013, p. 2). Jay Winter has sug-
gested that ‘the richest texture of remembrance is always within family
life’ whilst James Wallis views family history as ‘a constructible resource
that can be tailored by individuals so that it reaffirms what they believe the
First World War to have been like, by drawing on the dominant popular
memory to frame their stories’ (Wallis 2015, p. 29). In his 2013 album
notes Johnson makes his stance clear that ‘in writing these songs one of
my intentions is to express the opinion that war, particularly nation-state
organised conflict, is abhorrent, senseless, counter-productive and best
avoided’ (Johnson 2013, p. 113). He draws parallels between the First
World War, the Falklands (‘The Music from Between the Wars’) and Iraq,
condemning Tony Blair as a ‘multi-millionaire warmonger’. He extends
his critique to all wars, especially in ‘Hindsight’, which ironically suggests
that ‘we sent you off to die, but not in vain/And tomorrow why we’d
do the same again’ (Johnson 2013, p. 115). Johnson is certainly sincere
in his sentiments and his attempts to meld family history with a more
universal pacifist message are commendable but, ultimately, Gentle Men
falls short. Despite several fine tracks, especially the closing pacifist anthem
‘Nobody’s Enemy’, the album is too strongly myth affirming. ‘An English
Heaven’ critiques both religion and the class system as well as empha-
sising the similarities between British and German soldiers and ‘Home
by Christmas’ suggests everyone thought the soldiers would be. The first
song adds nothing that has not been said many times before and the latter
flies in the face of all recent evidence. Some statistics get misapplied such
as the suggestion that one grandfather’s battalion ‘lost’ 92 men during the
Third Battle of Ypres when these were overall casualties rather than deaths.
Though the album notes describe how both grandfather’s views of their
commanding officers were positive Johnson himself is strongly critical of
the War’s commanders and repeats Alan Clarke’s ‘lions led by donkeys’
misappropriation (Johnson 2013, pp. 26 and 100). Johnson’s grandfa-
thers’ stories refuse to coincide with his mythologised depiction and he
cannot sufficiently depict their complexities and ambiguities. The fact that
the album has four ‘authorial’ voices extends this confusion. There is Robb
Johnson the grandson, the two men themselves and Robb Johnson the
historian. Too often the last of these gets in the way of the other three.
A similar ‘research-led’ approach is taken by Gary Miller, former lead
singer and guitarist of the Whisky Priests, whose 2010 suite of songs
Reflections on War (Whippet) covers both the First and Second World
Wars. The creative process that led to the composition and recording of the
album came from his involvement in a community arts project at York Art
Gallery where Miller facilitated a series of song writing and poetry work-
shops (Miller 2012). Working with the participants Miller wrote a new set
of songs based on the ideas and memories of the workshop members. The
six songs about the First World War are inspired either by contemporary
drawings and paintings or the true story of a Royal Field Artillery veteran,
Archibald Mill. Like Polly Harvey, Miller has a good knowledge of the
War and the songs are well researched. However, occasionally, this lets
Miller down and he falls into the same trap as Robb Johnson. On ‘Twa
Scots Soldiers’ (whose tune and some of the words Miller adapts from the
traditional Scots folksong ‘Twa Recruiting Sergeants’) the protagonists
join up ‘spurred on by Kitchener’ and fight ‘from Mons to Ypres all the
way through the Somme’. If they were Kitchener volunteers they could
not have fought at Mons. More notable are the two songs taken from
workshop participant Susan Eliot’s memories of her grandfather, ‘Bold as
Brass’ and ‘Grandpa Mill’. ‘Soldiers of the Lord’ is a take on the Angel
of Mons legend based on a series of paintings by Alfred Pearse and is
also ‘a deliberate parody of such overly jingoistic war hymns as “Onward
Christian Soldiers”’ (Miller 2012). Probably the best, certainly the most
original, songs on the album are ‘Yellow Bird’ and ‘Somewhere at the
Front, Somewhere’. The former, inspired by an ink drawing by Charles
Ginner titled ‘Shell Fillers’, is the story of a munitions worker. They were
known as ‘canaries’ because inhaling the cordite used to fill the shells
turned their skin yellow. It serves as a fitting tribute to those on the home
front who also made sacrifices and suffered privations in order to help win
the War and it suggests the complex relationship between ‘the Barnbow
Lassies and the Gretna Girls/The Woolwich Arsenal gang as well’ and
the results of their labours. All three were sites of major munitions works
during the War. ‘Somewhere at the Front, Somewhere’ was inspired by
a notepad of cartoons of trench life drawn by A. Richards of the 10th
Hussars. The song captures some of the black humour of the soldiers but
is prone to cliché in contrasting the lives of the Tommies and that of their
commanders.
60 P. GRANT
Somewhere in the middle ground between these two approaches lie a

number of songs which attempt greater political balance by drawing wider
contemporary comparisons. English punk/rock band GuvNor recorded
their song ‘Remembrance Day’ in 2009, sold in aid of the charity Combat
Stress. A doom-laden overture performed by the Chamber Orchestra of
Wales leads into a mainly acoustic-backed vocal. It is deliberately sung in a
clearer than usual voice, and with great feeling, by Stu Armstrong ‘for the
poets before they die’. The final verse is particularly effective and entirely
in keeping with the sentiments of Remembrance Day itself:
In hills and vales the church bells toll,

Poppies grow here for each lost soul
In the steel-grey light and the cold November rain
They’ll say my name upon Remembrance Day.
The verse also seems to contain a musical quote after the words ‘the
cold November rain’ when Steve Meredith plays a guitar solo heavily
reminiscent of Slash’s on Guns N’ Roses’ rock classic ‘November Rain’.
Staffordshire-based band Demon formed in 1979 and was at the fore-
front of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. In the 1980s they moved
more in the direction of progressive rock and their 1989 album Taking the
World by Storm was released to much critical acclaim, winning Which CD?
magazine’s heavy metal album of the year award. Written by lead vocalist
Dave Hill and keyboardist Steve Watts the song ‘Remembrance Day’ is
specifically about the Remembrance Day bombing in Enniskillen. A track
of epic proportions, and one of the first symphonic metal songs, the lyr-
ics paint a more universal picture and relate these events to their origin in
the First World War as well as projecting them forward into what could
be a more peaceful future. It begins with a simple folk-inflected tune on
the tin whistle, suggesting an Irish connection, which is joined first by a
harp, then piano and synthesiser and finally guitar and drums when the
lyrics begin. The scene is set with the crowd wearing their poppies with
pride at a stage of hope in the Northern Ireland peace process before
the carnage of the bombing. But the song has no hatred or bitterness
for the republican perpetrators, instead suggesting that the true spirit of
Remembrance Day should link enemies together and rejects pessimism
insisting that ‘there’s another way for voices to be heard’. It ends with a
repeated refrain that ‘in a great and proud land’ the sons and daughters of
both victims and perpetrators ‘will walk hand in hand’ and that the streets
will no more echo to the ‘sound of the gun’. Encyclopaedia Mettalum sug-
gests that the song is, especially musically, ‘totally over-the-top’ and that
it is ‘almost impossible to make such a song work, and yet they pull it off
effortlessly, making a true classic’ (LH 2006). ‘LH’ compares it to Deep
Purple’s ‘Child in Time’ whereas Metal Observer suggests ‘Stairway to
Heaven’ as a comparison (Metal Observer2004).
A more recent addition on the theme of memory is a concept album
by Sam Sweeney, fiddle player and youngest member of Bellowhead, who
won Musician of the Year at the 2015 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. In
2007 Sweeney bought an apparently new violin but discovered an inscrip-
tion inside the body indicating the instrument had actually been ‘made in
the Great War’ by one Richard Spencer Howard in Leeds in 1916. After
extensive research Sweeney discovered that Howard had been a music hall
violinist, conscripted in 1916 and killed during the successful attack on
Messines Ridge in June 1917. Made in the Great War links songs—both
old and new—with dialogue spoken by Hugh Lupton telling Richard’s
story. The music is varied and evocative with marches, traditional tunes,
music hall songs and imitation Paganini, culminating in Sweeney’s epic
‘The Ballad of Richard Howard’, which cleverly reinterprets the tradi-
tional folk song ‘Cruel Sister’ through the metaphor of Richard’s body
re-created as a violin. As the Guardian review accurately points out ‘the
first world war offers a rich harvest for such productions – and a glaring
temptation to strangle it in overwrought sentiment and cliché’ though
Sweeney ‘avoids such pitfalls in a wondrously fresh and slightly quirky
take on an old theme’ (Irwin 2014). In a similar vein to Bolt Thrower (see
Chapter 7), though radically different in genre, Sweeney eschews hind-
sight or easy moralising. He does this by telling Richard’s story without
imposing parallels, allowing listeners to draw their own conclusions, and
the album is much the stronger for it.
In their approach to the theme of remembrance several popular art-
ists might be compared with one of the most remarkable classical works
to emerge from the aftermath of the War. John Foulds’ World Requiem,
though initially popular and played at the Albert Hall on Armistice night
in the early 1920s, was subsequently neglected for 80 years (Cowgill 2011;
Grant and Hanna 2015). The work is very different from the approach
of his contemporaries, notably Vaughan Williams, in that Foulds ‘set his
face against musical nationalism in general and folk-song based English
national music in particular’ (Richards 2001, p. 160). The World Requiem
is a fascinating combination of the old and new in music, almost a ‘battle’
62 P. GRANT
of styles at times, and van der Linden suggests that Foulds can be seen
as the forerunner of such contemporary British composers as Jonathan
Harvey and John Taverner as well as a precursor of Western minimalist
music and the so-called ‘New Spiritual Music’ of Henryk Gorecki and
Arvo Pärt (van der Linden 2008, p. 182). There are many modernist
touches: unusual chord progressions, innovative use of quarter tones and
its ‘counterpoint of timbres’ as Foulds described the shifting use of instru-
ments. The nearest comparison, especially in the use of the boys’ choir
in the Pax, is Gabriel Fauré whilst the chord progression of the first sec-
tion is quite similar to that of Pärt’s Fratres (various versions from 1977)
which, though not intended to be programmatic music, has been used in
films such as There Will be Blood and the BBC documentary Auschwitz:
The Nazis and the ‘Final Solution’, as a quasi-requiem. Foulds’ interna-
tionalism and pleas for the brotherhood of nations is far more acceptable
in today’s artistic climate and is followed by many songs with Demon’s
‘Remembrance Day’, with its sincere attempt at reconciliation, the most
similar in this regard. Another comparator, especially in the section about
the dead speaking to the living, is Rosselson’s ‘Remembrance Day’.
As the songs discussed in this chapter suggest Dan Todman was correct
in predicting that:
In the short term, Britons will still be convinced that they should care about
the First World War. Interest will be renewed around the centenary of the
war. Remembrance of the First World War in popular culture will outlast
not only those who experienced the war, but those who knew them too.
(Todman 2005, p. 229)
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CHAPTER 4
Words and Music
This chapter examines songs about the First World War in several ways.
Firstly some basic facts: where do they come from, what year were they
recorded, what genre are they, and are they recorded by male or female
artists? This is followed by a textual analysis of lyrics and how they depict
the War, the words and phrases employed, what this tells us about their
approach to War myths, and what the differences are between British and
French writers and between folk and metal artists. Finally there are two
studies of individual songs as a guide for how a deeper analysis might be
undertaken.
GENDER AND ETHNICITY
The topics of war in general and the First World War in particular are highly
gendered and ethnocentric. In Africa, the Caribbean and the Indian sub-
continent the War is not as prominent as other historical memories, notably
the struggles for independence, and so features less strongly in their national
mythology. Until the centenary brought forth a number of books and televi-
sion programmes that revived the histories of the millions of Indian, African
and Asian troops and ancillaries who fought and died alongside their white
counterparts their role in winning the War for the allies had been almost for-
gotten. These facts largely explain why there are so few recordings by black
artists on the topic of the War. Ben Bop’s ‘Enfant Soldat’ (from his self-titled
album, 2009, Le Village Vert) which is more concerned with today’s conflicts
67
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
68 P. GRANT
in Africa, Billy Cobham’s ‘Red Baron’ (from Spectrum, 1973, Atlantic) and
reggae duo Clint Eastwood and General Saint’s ‘Nuclear Crisis’ (from Stop
that Train, 1983, Greensleeves) were almost the only examples. There is also
some recognition of the role played by black American troops in German
industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten’s album Lament (2014, Mute)
which includes ‘On Patrol In No Man’s Land’ and ‘All Of No Man’s Land Is
Ours’, written by James Reese Europe musical director of the United States’
369th Infantry Regiment, also known as the Harlem Hellfighters (see
Chapter 7). However, 2013 saw the release of the most significant album
on the War by black artists, a collaboration between Britain’s Vibronics and
Brain Damage from France. Their Empire Soldiers is discussed in more detail
in Chapter 10 and may help spark greater interest from a wider range of black
musicians.
Women are excluded from most key myths of the War with the possible
exceptions of those around nurses, munitionettes or key ‘icons’ such as
Edith Cavell or the Russian Women’s Battalion of Death. Though women
are more accepted in some genres than others, folk being a notable exam-
ple, they are more often marginalised in popular music. In her analysis of
gender in the music industry Marion Leonard found that even when you
add together female solo artists, female-centred bands, bands with one or
more female members and bands with female vocalists this only accounted
for between 8 and 22 per cent of entries across ten rock guides and ency-
clopaedias (Leonard 2007, pp. 43–4). In the first 29 years of the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame (up to 2015) just 41 of the 312 inductees were
women or bands with at least one female member (13 per cent) (Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame, 2015). Likewise just 7 per cent of Rolling Stone’s ‘500
Greatest Albums of All Time’ were made by female artists (Faupel and
Schmutz 2011, p. 25). Women instrumentalists are an even rarer species.
In her study of the music scene in Tampa, Florida, Adele Fournet found
they accounted for just 5 per cent of musicians (Fournet 2010, p. 20; Moy
2007, p. 73). Faupel and Schmutz also analysed the original reviews of
albums now admitted as ‘landmarks’ by women including Janis Joplin, Joni
Mitchell, Patti Smith and PJ Harvey and found that ‘after these musicians
achieve consecration […] critics erase or downplay stereotypical notions of
femininity that threaten to delegitimise consecrated female artists’ (Faupel
and Schmutz 2011, p. 34). Phrases such as Mitchell being ‘giggly and
nervous’ on Blue; Joplin being ‘hysterical’ and ‘pathological’ or Harvey
‘bawling and shouting’ (on To Bring You My Love) ‘pigeonhole women as
emotional creatures, prone to hysteria’ but disappear when they get raised
to the status of revered auteurs (Faupel and Schmutz 2011, p. 30).
WORDS AND MUSIC 69
An analysis of the number of female artists who have recorded songs about
the First World War finds a similarly small proportion. Just 5 per cent of the
total (28 out of 607 artists and bands) are solo females, whereas 38 per cent
are solo males. There are 61 bands with at least one female member (10 per
cent) and just six all female groups (1 per cent) whereas 47 per cent are all
male bands. Though the proportion of women artists is small their contri-
butions often represent significant divergences from ‘mainstream’ represen-
tations of the War and challenge its key myths. These include solo artists,
notably PJ Harvey and Diamanda Galás, bands with prominent female instru-
mentalists, such as Bolt Thrower (bassist Jo Bench) and The Decemberists
(multi-instrumentalist Jenny Conlee), and the all-female band Electrelane.
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN
The leading nations are unsurprising with the two main victors Britain and
France, and the USA, the world’s most prolific producer of popular music,
accounting for over 60 per cent of the total. The two most interesting
entries are probably Australia, whose relatively large output confirms the
centrality of the War in their popular culture, and the Netherlands, whose
sixth position is especially high for a non-belligerent (Table 4.1).
Table 4.1 Total songs

Country Number Number
and number of bands of songs of bands
from main countries
England 454 180
France 280 111
USA 251 96
Australia 102 40
Germany 80 37
Netherlands 67 21
Canada 37 23
Belgium 34 14
Italy 30 21
Scotland 30 13
Ireland 24 16
New Zealand 21 6
Turkey 12 10
All other countries (29) 144 81
Total 1566 669
70 P. GRANT
YEAR OF RELEASE AND GENRE

The growth in the number of songs until the mid-1990s was slow but
since the millennium has been dramatic and significantly pre-dates the
centenary of the War (Table 4.2).
As has already been noted genre can be a contested term but Table
4.3 offers some indication of the broad genres of the songs. It suggests
that metal bands and especially jazz artists are more likely to produce a
group of songs or a concept album on the topic than others. Though
harder to demonstrate I would suggest that metal as a genre and espe-
cially the ‘industrial’ category are more prevalent here than in popular
music as a whole.
Table 4.4 offers a clearer picture as to which genres accounted for
the huge increase in songs around the millennium. There were signifi-
cant increases in rock songs, a greater expansion of metal and a massive
surge in the industrial genre. More recently industrial songs have (as a
200
180
160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
1958
1961
1963
1965
1967
1969
1971
1973
1975
1977
1979
1981
1983
1985
1987
1989
1991
1993
1995
1997
1999
2001
2003
2005
2007
2009
2011
2013
2015
Table 4.2 Number of songs released by year

WORDS AND MUSIC 71
proportion) declined and the greatest recent increase has been in the folk
category with many of these linked with the centenary. Table 4.5 dem-
onstrates that countries dominated by the industrial genre are also those
who were either losers (Germany), had ambitions thwarted (Italy) or
were neutral (the Netherlands) in the War. The British Isles and Belgium
are the most folk-oriented.
Table 4.3 Number of songs and bands by genre

Genre Number of Number of Av songs
songs bands per band
Folk and world 343 136 2.5

Metal 291 96 3.0
Industrial, electronic and ambient 276 128 2.2
Pop and rock 275 163 1.7
Punk and hip hop 119 68 1.8
Chanson and cabaret 91 38 2.4
Jazz and avant garde 71 11 6.5
Country 37 22 1.7
Table 4.4 Genre and decade of production

72 P. GRANT
Table 4.5 Percentage of country’s songs in each genre
NARRATIVE AND TEXTUAL ANALYSIS

Unsurprisingly many of the songs written about the First World War tell a
story that unfolds in time, with a beginning and a middle if not always an
end. However the story is always one in which the writer and singer have
not taken part themselves. Sanna Pederson has discerned that there are two
different approaches adopted in considering music as narrative: ‘The first
inhabits narrative poetics and compares and contrasts narrative in the liter-
ary and musical media’ whilst the second rejects this approach as formalist
and ‘instead treats narrative as a producer of meaning and interprets musical
narratives in light of the cultural work they accomplish’ (Pederson 1996,
p. 179). I would not necessarily see these as exclusive and both can be useful
in different contexts. The way in which words interrelate with music is clearly
of significance and here Richard Middleton’s model is helpful. Middleton
suggests a three-pole model where the relationship can be one of:
• ‘Affect’. Words as expression which tend to merge with melody and

the voice tends toward ‘song’.
• ‘Story’. Words as narrative which tend to govern rhythmic/
harmonic flow and the voice tends towards speech.
WORDS AND MUSIC 73
• ‘Gesture’. Words as sound which tend to be absorbed into music and

the voice tends towards becoming an instrument (Middleton 1990,
p. 231).
Though it is something of a simplification one could suggest that the

first is characteristic of genres such as jazz or progressive rock, that nar-
rative is more often adopted by folk and, most notably, chanson and ‘ges-
ture’ is found especially in metal.
We also need to consider the issue of authorial intention over perceived
intention. Even in a song in which the author has a specific intention in mind
listeners may not discern it or even substitute one of their own. This is a fre-
quent occurrence and many who bought high-selling singles such as The
Farm’s ‘Altogether Now’ or Jona Lewie’s ‘Stop the Cavalry’ might have been
unaware of their First World War credentials. In this regard the context in
which one is listening will also have an impact. A song heard at a remembrance
or centenary event will make a connection with the War unlikely to be missed.
There are other issues to consider such as Lipsitz’s adoption of the
concept of dialogics which examines how meaning is produced intertex-
tually in music (Middleton 2000, pp. 13–14). Both textual and musical
analyses provide important ways of understanding but meaning is also
produced ‘through dialogue within the textures, voices and structures;
between producers and addresses; between discourses, musical and other’
(Whiteley 2005, p. 2). To this Whiteley adds that we need ‘a concern
with sexuality and gender, the singing style’ and other elements includ-
ing ‘historical and cultural data’ which together, though never forming a
definitive interpretation, combine to produce a plausible ‘reading’ of the
song(s) (Whiteley 2005, p. 2). This approach is the one I have adopted
here, for example in the section below looking at two pairs of songs. At
times certain elements will be foregrounded over others and there will
always be other interpretations, but my key objective has been to relate
interpretation back to issues of the depiction of the War and situate that
depiction within a wider national, cultural and mythological framework.
Word Frequency
One way of analysing some of the themes addressed is to examine the
words used by lyricists and the frequency of their occurrence. This is most
easily achieved visually through the utilisation of ‘word clouds’ in which
the frequency with which a word appears is indicated by the size the word
74 P. GRANT
appears in the ‘cloud’. Here I only have space to examine the differences
between three pairs of writers (Figs. 4.1 and 4.2).
Whilst some key words have similar prominence, war and death for
example, there are also differences. English writers seem more concerned
with the individual ‘man’, with fighting and fire as well as thoughts of
home as their soldiers were fighting abroad. French writers accentuate
time, the earth of the homeland as well as concepts of love and the heart.
Barbed (wire) is prominent and the centrality of Verdun as ‘a sacred place:
a place of sacrifice and consecration’ is very evident (Antoine Prost quoted
by Kattago 2015a, p. 184). There are clear differences here but what
about between British and American lyricists? (Figs. 4.3 and 4.4).
For the British home is still prominent but so too is love, the idea of
togetherness, the age of the soldiers and, most notably, remembrance.
In the USA there is more about the universality of the War (world),
death and, critically, religion (god and hell). Finally how does genre
affect content? This is perhaps the most revealing of all as the differences
Fig. 4.1 Word cloud for all lyrics in English
Fig. 4.2 Word cloud for all lyrics in French

WORDS AND MUSIC 75
Fig. 4.3 Word cloud for lyrics by British writers
Fig. 4.4 Word cloud for lyrics by American writers
Fig. 4.5. Word cloud for lyrics by folk writers
between folk and metal writers is greater than between countries sug-
gesting that the way myth is treated may also show greater differences by
genre than country (Figs. 4.5 and 4.6).
Key words utilised by folk songwriters indicate a greater number of
words connected to British and American myths, young boys and fields, as
well as a concentration on remembering and the individual. Metal writers,
76 P. GRANT
Fig. 4.6 Word cloud for lyrics by metal writers
in contrast, emphasise the brutalities of war (death, fire, hell, killing) and
its details (battle, mud, shells) but also introduce the idea of both glory
and victory, entirely absent in the other word clouds. These differences are
explored further in the following chapters.
Readability
The following table analyses 20 key songs across a variety of genres for
their readability, the ease with which a written text can be understood.
Of course lyrics are sung and not read and many other factors come into
play in how a listener will interpret them, however it makes possible some
comparison between the ‘literary sophistication’ of the songs. Three ‘tests’
were employed:
• The Flesch–Kincaid reading-ease test, one of the most popular and

rigorously tested formulas. In this a higher score indicates material
that is easier to read. For example an average 12-year-old student’s
essay has a readability index of 60–70 (and a reading grade level of
6–7) whereas the Harvard Law Review has a score in the low 30s.
• The Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level Formula which presents a score as
a US school grade level. In the table this varies from 5 (an average
reading age of 10–11) to 20 which indicates a postgraduate standard.
• The percentage of ‘complex’ words (more than three syllables) in the
song (Table 4.6).
WORDS AND MUSIC 77
Table 4.6 Readability of selected songs

Genre Flesch–Kincaid Grade Percentage of
reading ease level complex words
‘Stop the Cavalry’—Jona Pop 91.4 5 4.12

Lewie
‘Paschendale’—Iron Maiden Heavy metal 91.1 5 3.37
‘Butcher’s Tale (Western Front Psychedelic 91 6 0.55
1914)’ —The Zombies rock
‘Remembrance Day’—Bryan Rock 89.8 5 4.53
Adams
‘…For Victory’—Bolt Death metal 89.8 5 4.61
Thrower
‘One’—Metallica Thrash metal 89.6 6 2.93
‘Something about England’— Punk 87.2 6 4.87
The Clash
‘The Words That Maketh Alternative 86.6 6 4.92
Murder’—PJ Harvey rock
‘Orders From the Dead’— Avant garde 85 6 3.86
Diamanda Galás
‘Some Mother’s Son’—The Rock 84.7 7 2.51
Kinks
‘Do U Remember?’—Brain Dub/Reggae 81.2 6 10.31
Damage meets Vibronics with
Sir Jean
‘Passiondale’—God Death metal 79.5 7 7.91
Dethroned
‘The Accrington Pals’—Mike Folk 78.7 8 3.06
Harding
‘The End’—Cryptic Black metal 78.2 7 5.73
Wintermoon
‘The Soldiering Life’—The Indie rock 74.3 9 5.94
Decemberists
‘And The Band Played Folk 74 9 5.29
Waltzing Matilda’—Eric
Bogle
‘High Wood’—Fish Progressive 64.4 12 7.33
rock
‘All Together Now’—The Pop 59.8 11 23.28
Farm
‘Somewhere in England Folk rock 49.9 16 7.01
1915’—Al Stewart
‘The War of 14–18’— Show 35.9 20 6.54
Michael Flanders and Donald
Swann
78 P. GRANT
It is not that surprising to see ‘The War of 14–18’ or ‘Somewhere in

England’ as the most ‘complex’ lyrically or Jona Lewie’s novelty pop as
the simplest. Yet other songs do not perhaps ‘fit’ where we might expect,
for example the relative ‘complexity’ of ‘All Together Now’. Perhaps the
most striking thing about the analysis is not that certain genres of songs
are more, or less, sophisticated linguistically but that musical ‘complex-
ity’ operates quite distinctly from lyrical complexity. Flanders and Swann’s
song (or rather Georges Brassens as it was his original) is relatively straight-
forward musically in comparison to say, Fish or Iron Maiden.
CLOSER READINGS
Finally in this chapter I look at two pairs of songs that illustrate some of the
themes running through the book. The first is an analysis of two songs that
approach the topic of the War in highly contrasting genres. The second looks
at a pair of songs that depict their country’s differing national War myths.
‘Somewhere in England 1915’ and ‘The End’

‘Somewhere in England 1915’, is by the English folk-rock singer-
songwriter Al Stewart from the album A Beach Full of Shells (EMI 2005),
‘The End’ is the closing song from the German melodic black metal band
Cryptic Wintermoon’s 2009 album Fear (self-released).
‘Somewhere in England 1915’ is a complex song that mixes historical
episodes with a personal present. It begins in the present with the singer
on the ‘platform of an old railway station’. He begins daydreaming and
is reminded of the famous scene in Brief Encounter with Celia Johnson
bidding farewell to Trevor Howard. Given the song’s later references
this is clearly a personal reminder of his lost love. The scene then dra-
matically shifts to another farewell between lovers with an image of a girl
on a beach who ‘is an English Prime Minister’s daughter’. This is Helen
Violet Bonham Carter, the grandmother of Helena Bonham Carter, and
the only daughter of Liberal Prime Minister H. H. Asquith. She was
Winston Churchill’s closest female friend and, at one time, rather more
than that; it has been suggested that she may have attempted suicide
when Churchill became engaged to Clementine Hozier (Shelden 2013,
pp. 180–91). However the reference here is to another of Violet’s loves,
the poet Rupert Brooke, though the Churchill reference is still apt. In
the following lines:
WORDS AND MUSIC 79
She watches the ship disappear for the length of a sigh

And the maker of rhymes on the deck who is going to die
In the corner of some foreign field that will make him so famous.
Stewart explained that ‘Violet Asquith was very much in love with
Rupert Brooke. I don’t think it was reciprocated. She went down to the
beach when Brooke was on the troop ship heading off to his untimely
death waving goodbye and was the last civilian to see him’ (Stewart 2015).
Brooke was in the same company of the Hood battalion of the Royal Naval
Division as her brother Arthur ‘Oc’ Asquith and the Division were the first
volunteers to see action in the War, at the Siege of Antwerp in October
1914. Brooke’s death, from a poisoned mosquito bite off the island of
Skyros in April 1915, affected Violet deeply. A few months later she wrote
that ‘since Rupert’s death I’ve had a sort of numb feeling… One feels too
the living so mixed with the dead just now – one hardly knows them apart.
The living are so absent and the dead so present’ (Pottle 1999, p. 77).
Stewart’s comments on Brooke are very revealing: ‘In many ways he was
the precursor of Nick Drake. Rupert Brooke was Nick Drake before Nick
Drake […] and he died at the magic age that all these people die at […]
27’ (Allard 2013). Drake’s beautifully enunciated lyrics, as well as some
of his melodies and arrangements, were certainly an influence on Stewart
though Brooke’s poetry less so:
Paul Simon has this line ‘in words that twist and strain to rhyme’ and Brooke
seemed in the majority of his poems to be trying to shoehorn too many
words into a sentence and the grammar gets so obtuse in places. I didn’t
think he was a great poet frankly. I think he looked like a great poet and that
was about 90 % of what was going on. (Stewart 2015)
The scene shifts to the Western Front, where, in what is a reference to

the famous opening credits of the BBC Great War series from 1964:
A skull in a trench gazes up open-mouthed at the moon

And the poets are now Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon
Though it may seem that the link here is simply between three war poets
there is another in that, after the War, Violet Bonham Carter became infat-
uated with Sassoon (Wilson 2004, p. 259). The song then moves to pres-
ent (or at least recent) times in a personal reflection on a past relationship,
seen as analogous to that of the historical episodes. The linking refrain is
80 P. GRANT
that ‘nobody talks anymore about losing and winning’, the sense that the
First World War is often seen as not having been won by either side, and
that there are no winners in failed love affairs. It also depicts Stewart’s
overall view of the War:
Battles like the Somme and Passchendaele were such a mess and looking
back you just can’t believe some of the decisions that were made, including
the very first one to go to war in the first place. I still can’t work out why
England got involved. It doesn’t seem sensible and Asquith of all people you
would have thought would have been more sensible, he was a very thought-
ful man. (Stewart 2015)
The girl is then depicted reading and the narrator hopes ‘that she’s reading
King Lear, but it’s Twelfth Night instead’ which Stewart confirms is ‘just
a contrast between tragedy and comedy. It has no particular deeper mean-
ing, it just sounds interesting, even I don’t know what it means beyond
that’ (Stewart 2015). In the final verse we are ‘ninety years on’ and the
narrator is reading a newspaper where:
There’s a man on the cover we all know, defying the fates

And he seems very sure as he offers up his opinion
This is George W. Bush and his pontifications on Iraq. The suggestion
here is that though people, especially politicians, begin very certain of the
correctness of their views history often proves them wrong. Stewart had
already explored this theme in ‘A League of Notions’ (from Between the
Wars, 1995, EMI):
That has more references to World War One than any other song I’ve ever
written. The whole point of that song is that those maps [they were draw-
ing] were crazy and a hundred years on it’s still a problem […] So much of
it was just colonial madness, if Britain had Iraq France had to have Syria and
all of these disputing tribes had to be forced together into a single entity and
it has just not worked out. (Stewart 2015)
So the song ends when ‘the narrator eventually wakes up 90 years

later to find himself on the edge […] of yet another war’ (Lankford n.d.).
Musically the song mixes a wide variety of instrumentation within a folk/
rock idiom. It builds from a simple acoustic guitar accompaniment to add
firstly muted keyboards which develop further into separate piano and
organ lines, then drums and finally strings. Its final lines are prefaced by an
WORDS AND MUSIC 81
electric guitar solo but it is clear that it is the words that are predominant
as Stewart explains ‘I’m not a lead guitar player or, particularly, a singer,
I’m a lyric writer’ and his overall intention is ‘to shine a spotlight into the
dark corners of history rather than do all the obvious stuff’ (Stewart 2015).
Unlike Stewart who has been a significant figure since the 1960s Cryptic
Wintermoon are relatively obscure, a not unusual position for many bands
in the extreme metal genres. Founded in 1993 in Franconia they have
released four albums over an 11-year period and remain part-time musi-
cians with other careers. Currently a six-piece the band features a female
keyboards player in Andrea Walther and though most of their lyrics are in
English there are some German passages. Fantasy and war have been their
key themes and they had specifically referenced the First World War in the
track ‘Bonegrinder 1916’ on their previous album Of Shadows … And
the Dark Things You Fear. Though the song is about Verdun (the ‘bone-
grinder’ being German army slang for the intensity of the battle) it begins
with John McCormack’s famous version of ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’
and this juxtaposition is also utilised at the start of Fear which opens
with Tom McIvor’s ‘The Pride of Australia (21 Guns)’ (sung by Dave
Reynolds) about the Australian Light Horse at the Battle of Beersheba
in 1917 which is followed by the band’s version of the same events. The
album has a wide range of topics: ‘Dreadnought’ is told from the perspec-
tive of the battleship itself; ‘Down Below’ is about a Zeppelin raid; whilst
‘God With Us’ echoes the phrase commonly used on German military
uniforms from the German Empire to the end of the Third Reich. There
is also a fascinating song, ‘Hundert Mann und ein Befehl’, with a long his-
tory. It is a cover of Austrian singer Freddy Quinn’s 1966 song which was
an anti-war translation of the famous pro-war ‘Ballad of the Green Berets’
by Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler, which sold nine million copies, the biggest sell-
ing US song about Vietnam. Its tune is that of the American folk song
‘The Butcher Boy’ itself based on a number of earlier English broadside
ballads—a good example of how popular music ‘borrows’ from its earlier
history. ‘The End’ follows the themes of ‘Dreadnought’ though goes fur-
ther by making its narrator war itself, a unique approach to the First World
War in song. It suggests that though war has done its dreadful work ‘I will
rise again my mission not yet done’. Unlike several of the other tracks it
is performed without any keyboard solos (though the keyboards are still
quite prominent in places) in a ‘straight down the line’ black metal style,
with prominent blastbeat drumming and downtuned guitars (for more
details on this style see Chapter 7). The lyrics alternate between English
and German and reflect on how ‘mankind never learn[s that] war will be
82 P. GRANT
eternal’ and suggests the next war will be a ‘total holocaust genocide’.
Though there are some clichéd phrases such as a ‘phoenix from the ashes’
the song is a chilling and apt finale to an impressive album that deserves
significantly greater recognition.
Turning to a comparison between the two songs among the points of
interest are the following (in Table 4.7):
Though the two songs adopt entirely different approaches, persona,
musical styles and references, in their overall intention and suggestion that
mankind is caught in an endless cycle of destruction of their own making,
they are very similar. They are also not ‘enmeshed’ within the national
Table 4.7 Comparison between ‘Somewhere in England 1915’ and ‘The End’
‘Somewhere in England 1915’—Al Stewart ‘The End’—Cryptic Wintermoon
Music
Genre is folk/rock Genre is black metal
Instruments strongly separated Less separation between instruments
Acoustic guitar, keyboards, drums and Two electric guitars, drums, bass and
strings (electric guitar near end) keyboards
Instruments added incrementally Blastbeat drums and double guitar from start
A sense of progression Overall feeling of stasis
Song ends with strummed acoustic Song fades out into battle noises with
guitar and final piano chord descending, minor key, ‘doom laden’
keyboard theme
Lyrics and Delivery
Lyrics very clearly enunciated Lyrics growled/snarled
Singing style is intimate and Singing style is stylised and shouted
conversational
Narrator is a modern day male looking Narrator is war itself
back at historical events that parallel his
own life
Many historical and literary references Historical references are inferred but less
specific
Some lyrics are deliberately obscure Lyrics emphasise death and destruction and
in meaning are explicit in meaning
Lyrics make many references to the Lyrics are ‘transnational’ and make no specific
writer’s own culture references to the writer’s own culture
Overall Intention
Song is addressed to a wide audience Song is addressed to a wide audience
Song is a warning about ‘history Song is a warning about ‘history repeating
repeating itself’ itself’
WORDS AND MUSIC 83
myths of their two countries. Despite Stewart’s many specific references to

English history and even to the three key figures in the ‘innocence to disil-
lusion’ thesis (Brooke, Owen and Sassoon) he entirely avoids the obvious.
The historical allusions are utilised for their artistic and personal relevance
and the contemporary lessons drawn indicate that Stewart thinks of the
First World War as a symbol for the folly of war in general rather than
as an aberration in ‘futility’. ‘The End’ does to some extent follow the
‘official German line’ of emphasising post-war unity and certainly trans-
national responsibility for the War but it also subverts it to the extent that
the soldiers are seen as brave and honourable fighters for the ‘fatherland’
and that, even with pan-European unity, war is still unavoidable given our
tendency towards violence. Both songs ultimately seek a more universal
message of the senselessness of war: Stewart utilising his country’s national
mythology, Cryptic Wintermoon opting for more transnational imagery.
Canada and Australia: Contrasting Approaches

At least nine Canadian artists have recorded songs called ‘Remembrance
Day’ and none follow the ‘futility’ myth. Instead they either adopt a
very personal approach (Martha Johnson or Rising Waters) or celebrate
the role and sacrifice of Canadian forces (Sarena Paton and Matthew de
Zoete). Bryan Adams is possibly the most famous Canadian rock star with
a string of chart-topping records and numerous awards. His power bal-
lad ‘(Everything I Do) I Do it For You’ holds the record for consecutive
weeks at the top of the British singles charts. His signature anthemic or
stadium rock style is evident on his depiction of ‘Remembrance Day’ (from
Into the Fire, 1987, A & M), a top-ten hit on both sides of the Atlantic.
Robert Christgau is somewhat scathing of the album saying that Adams
was attempting to be ‘the voice of the common man or some such’ and
that the record contains ‘fifty-six full-fledged clichés’, even though none
he mentions are from ‘Remembrance Day’ (Christgau n.d.). Rolling Stone
was more complementary, rather celebrating Adams’s ‘common man’
approach and suggesting that ‘good populist rockers are hard to come by,
and for the past few years, Adams […] has been the best of a thin, incon-
sistent lot’ (Hochman 1987). Both views have some validity in relation
to the song. The lyrics are somewhat ‘over simplified’ but it also has a
sympathy with the ‘common man’, even though this may not quite match
Adams’ musical style. He tells the story of ‘lads from the farm and boys
from the cities’ who were ‘not meant to be soldiers’ but faced ‘the fighting
84 P. GRANT
with a smile’. Later in the song the story moves forward to 1918 when,
by October, Cambrai had fallen. The soldiers are eager for the War to end
and return home and, though the song does not explicitly say so, you get
the impression that most actually do. As such it is one of the few songs to
remind us that the allies won the War and that the majority who served did
come home. Adams’ positive take stems from the Canadian myth of the
War which is more positive than that of their British, Australian or even
French counterparts.
Australian songs about the War exhibit very different characteristics.
There are few Canadian songs about specific events but around 40 per cent
of Australia’s are about one specific campaign, Gallipoli, which accounted
for approximately 13 per cent of Australian deaths. One of these, Eric
Bogle’s ‘And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda’, is described more fully
in Chapter 5. It follows Australia’s key war myths that were outlined in
Chapter 2 and is one the iconic songs of the War. Stemming from Bogle’s
anti-Vietnam War stance it is the account of a young Australian volun-
teer during the Gallipoli campaign where he is maimed and his return
home bitter and disillusioned. One might summarise the Canadian and
Australian War myths as follows (Table 4.8):
There may be some historical reasons for the differences. Firstly a dif-
ferent view of the Second World War which is distinctly less positive in
Canada. Secondly the two country’s experience of the Vietnam War which
is highly negative in Australia because of their direct military involvement
and 520 dead but more positive in Canada, which became a choice haven
for American draft resisters and deserters.
One similarity in Adams’ and Bogle’s songs is that they begin by
emphasising the soldiers’ non-military origins and that they came from
all sections of society. But then they diverge and these are some of the
contrasts (Table 4.9):
In terms of their stature as songs there is no doubt Bogle’s is much
stronger. It brilliantly utilises the Patterson song and Bogle is a master
of narrative (even though there are some historical errors). But perhaps
Bryan Adams gets closer to what the majority experience of First World
War soldiers was. Bogle was deliberately setting out to write a polemic
and succeeded beyond his expectations; there have been over 40 notable
cover versions of his song. As far as I’m aware there is not one of Adams’
‘Remembrance Day’.
WORDS AND MUSIC 85
Table 4.8 Key Canadian and Australian war myths

Canada Australia
An important part of national identity An important part of national identity

The ‘crucible’ of the nation The ‘crucible’ of the nation
Caused division but ultimately pride of Caused division but ultimately pride of
achievement achievement
One key site—Vimy One key site—Gallipoli
Still see the reasons for War as positive See the reasons for War as negative
Still supportive of Britain Highly critical of Britain
Table 4.9 Comparative analysis: ‘Remembrance Day’ (Bryan Adams) and ‘And
the Band Played Waltzing Matilda’ (Eric Bogle)
Bryan Adams ‘Remembrance Day’ Eric Bogle ‘And the Band Played
Waltzing Matilda’
Upbeat (anthem) Downbeat (waltz)

Thick instrumentation Sparse instrumentation
Robust delivery Cynical delivery
Emphasises the collective experience of the Emphasises the individual experience
soldiers of the protagonist
Protagonist finds love Protagonist rejects love
He returns from the War ‘worldly wise’, He returns from the War traumatised,
invigorated and unharmed disillusioned and disabled
There is a sense of closure at the end There is no closure at the end of the
of the song song, the ‘futility’ continues
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CHAPTER 5
The Voice of the People
This chapter considers chanson, other French music and folk music from,
mainly, the USA and Britain. These are genres, along with the blues, most
often associated with being the authentic ‘voice of ordinary people’. Philip
Tagg posits an axiomatic triangle between folk, popular and art music.
Popular music, in his definition, is primarily distinguished by being con-
ceived for mass distribution, stored and distributed in non-written form
and only possible in an industrial monetary economy (Tagg 1982, p. 41).
This categorisation is not entirely convincing. As a society becomes more
industrialised does Tagg’s ‘folk’ decline and pop increase, or is pop simply
the ‘industrialised’ version of folk music? This confusion becomes obvious
in relation to songs composed during the First World War itself. Often pro-
fessionally composed songs (Tagg’s pop category) have been interpreted as
being folk music, the spontaneous compositions of amateurs in the trenches.
One division between popular and art music is notation—unimportant or
even non-existent in folk and pop; essential in art music. Thus the key dif-
ference could be in interpretation—art music being seen as elitist. But there
is certainly popular art music so is there a point at which it ceases to be
art music because it is popular? Some critics have suggested this in relation
to ‘popular’ modern composers such as Philip Glass and Arvo Pärt. More
recent studies have broken down Tagg’s divisions demonstrating that folk
often has decidedly metropolitan, industrial roots rather than rural ones and
that mass culture is often ‘authentically’ incorporated into the everyday lives
of ordinary people (Mukerji and Schudson 1991, p. 3; Sweeney 2001, p, 7).

88 P. GRANT
However one decides to define ‘folk’ music its ‘connection with protest
is time-honoured’ (Rolston 2001, p. 60). John Street argues that ‘folk
music chronicles contemporary reality. It is a form of news reporting, and
folk musicians are a form of journalist or political commentator’ (Street
2012, p. 48). It is therefore unsurprising that folk music has a long tradi-
tion of comment on war. There are several surviving songs from the Thirty
Years War of 1618–48; ‘Babylon is Falling’ (recorded by the Home Service
on I’m Alright Jack) is a song of the English Civil War; ‘Lillibullero’ dates
from the seventeenth century; ‘Heart of Oak’ and ‘The Girl I Left behind
Me’ from the eighteenth (Lynskey 2012, p. 686).
In the late 1950s it was the French chanson that first began to depict the
First World War. Larry Portis has noted that popular music in France dif-
fers significantly from that of Britain and the USA especially in ‘the promi-
nence of overt political criticism and social comment’ and Peter Hawkins
emphasises that songs in France have both greater symbolic impact and
that ‘the great moments of French history have been marked with popular
songs’ (Portis 2004, p. 3; Hawkins 2000, p. 3). Chanson is, if anything,
even more ‘narrative’ in construction than folk and chanson singers ‘effec-
tively “talk” their tunes’ (Frith 1996, p. 170). Lyrics are foregrounded to
a greater degree than in Anglo-American popular music and socio-cultural
comment is more common and acceptable (Hawkins 2000, p. 54). The
cultural importance of chanson in France is difficult to overestimate; it is ‘a
form of popular culture which is part of the national identity’, far more so
than, say, rock music in the USA or folk music in Britain (Hawkins 2000,
p. 3; Cordier 2014, p. 11). Though there were important precursors,
notably Charles Trenet, it was only in the late 1950s that chanson became
defined as being produced by a single auteur-compositeur-interprète, the
same person being responsible for music, lyrics and performance. It was
therefore no accident that songs commenting on the First World War
began appearing at this time. As with rock music in the USA and Britain in
the mid-1960s the genre had to develop first. This coincided with a reason
for referencing the War with the hugely divisive impact of events in Algeria.
CHANSON: JACQUES BREL AND LÉO FERRÉ

Chanson has acquired a label of ‘authenticity’ that is as mythical as that
attached to any musical genre—blues, folk, punk or rap – but its status goes
beyond these (Lebrun 2009, pp. 9–10). Chanson is both poetic and intel-
lectual in a way that other forms of popular music either do not claim to be
or even deliberately eschew (Looseley 2003a, p. 38; Portis 2004, p. 113;
THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE 89
Cordier 2009, 2014, pp. 9–10, 124). The three singers usually considered
the pinnacle of the chanson are Georges Brassens, Léo Ferré and, though
Belgian, Jacques Brel and all three recorded landmark songs about the War.
The lyrics of the three singers are studied in schools and universities, they
received state accolades when they died and have subsequently become
national myths as has chanson itself (Looseley 2003b, p. 31; Cordier 2014,
pp. 165–8). Of the three Brel is easily the best known outside France. He
had a triumphal performance at Carnegie Hall in 1965, there was a suc-
cessful stage show based on his songs in 1968 (Jacques Brel Is Alive and
Well and Living in Paris) and even Alastair Campbell is a fan (Cordier
2014, p. 10: Dickson 2014). This is certainly in part due to his perfor-
mance style. Whereas the lyrical references and vocabulary in chanson mean
that it is difficult to grasp for non-French speakers Brel partly overcame
this through his dramatic delivery (Cordier 2014, pp. 158 and 17). Where
both Brassens and Ferré were restrained, even reticent, on stage Brel threw
himself into his characterisations in a similar way to performers as different
as Janis Joplin or Meat Loaf, regularly being physically ill before concerts
and famously leaving pools of sweat on stage (Cordier 2014, p. 19).
Cordier has pointed out that both world wars provoked contradictory
feelings in French society with people aspiring to order ‘while at the same
time wanting to revolt’ and these contradictions were reflected in the
artistic and cultural movements of the time which had a significant influ-
ence on the post-war chanson (Cordier 2014, p. 89). War is a recurring
theme both in chanson in general and in the work of the three ‘mythical’
singers. However they each deal with war in different ways. Ferré depicts
war as a curse imposed by government on the people which needs to be
resisted, whereas Brel and Brassens express a more general philosophy of
peace (Cordier 2014, pp. 101–2). Furthermore, in Brel’s work, war is
depicted as destroying childhood and families, reflecting the fact that, as
the youngest of the trio, he was only a child during the Second World
War (Cordier 2014, p. 102). Brel’s ‘La Colombe’ (‘The Dove’) was one
of the first modern popular songs to feature the War. The song was based
on a traditional French children’s song ‘Nous n’irons plus au bois’ and a
poem by Théodore de Banville (Tinker 2005, p. 158). Recorded in 1959
it was covered several times in the context of opposition to the Vietnam
War (as ‘The Dove’), notably by Judy Collins and Joan Baez. Brel echoes
the words of Wilfred Owen and ‘the old lie’ of it being sweet and hon-
ourable to die for one’s country, relating this to some of the grandiose
memorials to war which attempt to suggest the validity of the aphorism.
Tinker and others have shown that Brel’s political commitment was of a
90 P. GRANT
different kind to that of the anarchists Brassens and Ferré. Though they all
took an anti-nationalist stance Brel was less of a revolutionary and more
fatalistic (Tinker 2002a, p. 133). In line with this more passive politi-
cal stance the song suggests no positive solution, rather it views war as a
depressing inevitability. Brel’s ‘synthesis of style’ on ‘La Colombe’ and the
rest of his fourth album (La Valse a Mille Temps, Philips) ‘was quite unlike
anything that had gone before’ in chanson combining ‘extreme pessimism,
passion and satire delivered with considerable dramatic force and musical
inventiveness’ (Hawkins 2000, p. 140). In ‘Los Toros’ (ep, 1963, Barclay)
Brel compares the bloodthirstiness of those who enjoy bullfights with our
capacity to slaughter each other in war, with specific mention of Verdun.
Tinker suggests that the song not only evokes pity for the bulls, but also
grants them moral superiority and alerts us to ‘the disturbing depths to
which humanity can descend’ (Tinker 2005, p. 158). Brel was much more
than a singer, he was also a consummate actor both in films and onstage
(he was Don Quixote in the original French production of Man of La
Mancha) but perhaps even more so in his own songs. His best songs
‘sweep the listener along to a frenetic, emotional climax’ or, as Robert
Alden said of Brel’s Carnegie Hall concert in 1965, ‘ he becomes the bit-
ter sailor drinking in the port of Amsterdam, the old person who is wait-
ing for death, the timid suitor, even the bull dying under the hot Spanish
sun’ (Tinker 2005, p. 158). A further song about war by Brel, though not
specifically about the First World War, is ‘La Statue’ (from Les Bourgeois,
1962, Barclay/Universal). Here the disillusioned war hero forever cast
in stone reflects that his military prowess can never compensate for the
failures of his private life which remain unknown to viewers of his statue.
Though Brel’s critique of war is non-partisan and he was not involved
in politics, he was concerned with social injustice. One of his last songs
was ‘Jaures’, released in 1977 on his final album Les Marquises (Barclay/
Universal), named after the islands where he had gone to live and indulge
his passion for sailing. Jean Jaures was the anti-militarist leader of the
French Socialist Party who was assassinated on 31 July 1914 and ‘”Jaures”
is the only explicitly socialist song by Brel, conceived as a historical tableaux
of man’s exploitation of his fellow men’ (Hawkins 2000, p. 144). The song
asks why he had to die and, by implication, whether he might have been
able to mitigate some of the War’s excesses but it is more about the fate
of the oppressed working classes who Jaures represented. Their lives are
described in graphic terms and Brel suggests that, though they were not
slaves, they were certainly not free. If they survived their terrible working
conditions they got sent to war to die on the battlefield. Accompanied by a

simple accordion tune ‘Jaures’ is a powerful and emotional song but it does
have a very fatalistic tone, Brel was already gravely ill with lung cancer at the
time it was recorded and died less than a year after the album was released.
Larry Portis has some criticism for Brel which is partly justified. In com-
parison to Brassens ‘the tolerant anarchist’, who used humour as a weapon,
Brel ‘was the crusading preacher’ whose songs are, at times, ‘almost wear-
ingly serious’ (Portis 2004, p. 119). Indeed Brel, in explaining his decision
to downgrade his singing career in the late 1960s, almost admitted as much
by saying that he had become too clever at song writing and ‘had learned to
manipulate literary images without feeling the need to express a real emo-
tion’ (Portis 2004, pp. 120–1). Despite this pessimism there is no doubt-
ing Brel’s outstanding use of language and the emotional commitment in
his best work, a politicised version of Leonard Cohen perhaps. Brel is one
of the few chansonniers to have made a lasting impact outside the franco-
phone world. His songs have been recorded by a wide variety of English-
speaking artists including Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, David Bowie, Tom
Jones, Marc Almond and, most effectively, Scott Walker. Ultimately Portis
is emphatic in his praise for both Brel and Brassens whose works ‘were
the truest expression of the moral and social convictions inspired by the
Resistance and the Liberation’ (Portis 2004, p. 122) (Fig. 5.1).
Drawing on an eclectic range of musical styles including classical, jazz,
Latin American and rock Léo Ferré’s songs were more directly political
than Brel’s, taking an overtly anti-nationalist stance and ‘making a signifi-
cant contribution to continuing debates around French national identi-
ties’ (Tinker 2002b, pp. 147–8). A self-declared anarchist, he contributed
to both the anarchist magazine La Rue, in 1968 and, in the 1980s, to
the founding of the Anarchist Federation’s radio station (Portis 2004,
p. 149). This led to conflict with both the authorities and the right-wing
paramilitary Organisation de l’armée secrète (OAS) who threatened
his life and bombed a venue he was due to appear at (Tinker 2002b,
pp. 148–9). However, though Ferré’s ‘repertoire is studded with songs
proclaiming […] his identification with the anarchist movement’ he ‘did
not advocate a specific political program, but rather other, more pro-
gressive values, such as dignity, liberty and social responsibility’ (Portis
2004, p. 150). A good example is ‘Mon Général', originally written in
1947 but only allowed to be published in the 1960s. This critique of de
Gaulle ironically compares him with Jeanne d’Arc and in its swirl of his-
tory is comparable with Brassens’ ‘La Guerre de 14–18’. Ferré’s ‘Tu n’en
92 P. GRANT
Fig.5.1 Jean-Pierre Leloir’s famous 1969 photograph of Jacques Brel, Léo Ferré
and Georges Brassens (© Archives Leloir)
reviendras pas’ (from the album Les Chansons D’Aragon, 1961, Barclay),
whose words are by the poet (and committed communist) Louis Aragon,
is equally notable as a forerunner of Eric Bogle’s ‘Waltzing Matilda’ and
Metallica’s ‘One’ being partly about a disabled veteran ‘sans visage, sans
yeux’ but also tackles wider issues such as the inadequacy, or hypocrisy, of
memorials with ‘un mot d’or sur nos places’. In setting words from major
French poets, including Baudelaire, Verlaine and Rimbaud, one of Ferré’s
objectives was to bring culture to the people ‘who might otherwise remain
deprived of essential cultural capital’ (Tinker 2002b, p. 148; Bourdieu
1986, pp. 241–58). Ferré’s stance also led him to consider more popular
musical forms, especially the French pop music of the 1960s known as
yé-yé, as of lesser value. Though Ferré’s approach is less elitist than an
Adorno or Scruton it is at best paternalistic—if not a little patronising—
and, despite his protestations, his work was not uninfluenced by American
rock and he was, somewhat paradoxically, a great admirer of Jimi Hendrix
(Tinker 2002a, pp. 140–1).
CHANSON: GEORGES BRASSENS

If anything Brassens is the most mythologised of the trio, an ‘historical
monument’ in his own right (Lebrun 2009, p. 5). Unlike Ferré ‘whose
compositions were characterised by his vibrant orchestrations’ or Brel’s
impassioned stage persona, ‘Brassens musical watchwords were discretion
and subtlety’ (Cordier 2014, p. 17). Other than himself and his guitar, he
was only ever accompanied by his bass player Pierre Nicholas so, in ‘La
Guerre de 14–18’ Brassens utilises a simple acoustic guitar accompani-
ment which at times mocks a trumpet fanfare. His work is often seen as
more accessible, popular and traditional than the intellectual, even preten-
tious Ferré though like his two great contemporaries Brassens was highly
political and socially aware in his song writing (Cordier 2014, p. 17).
Even though he refused to get involved with contemporary social debates,
between 1952 and 1964 almost half of his songs were banned from the
airwaves in France by state broadcaster RTF. Nevertheless Brassens was
awarded the prize for poetry by the Académie Française in 1967, virtually
the equivalent of being designated France’s National Poet. The bans were
one reason he turned to satire in songs such as ‘La Guerre de 14–18’ or
the, apparently smutty but ultimately incisive, ‘Le Gorille’ (‘The Gorilla’
1954), the tale of a randy zoo animal that escapes and has the choice of
raping either an old lady or a judge (Tinker 2002b, p. 155). He chooses
the judge who cries for his mother under the gorilla’s assault and, in a final
line that shatters the comic mood, screams just like the man who, that very
afternoon, he had sentenced to the guillotine.
Brassens’ songs of the Second World War are early examples of attempts
to re-establish Franco-German relations and achieve reconciliation. ‘Corne
d’Aurochs’, from 1955, ‘highlights the irrational fears of a small-minded,
myopic character who refuses to use a medicine, simply because it was dis-
covered by a German’ (Tinker 2003, p. 143). ‘Les Deux Oncles’ (1965)
questions the myth of the resistance in a song in which one uncle is a resis-
tance fighter, the other a collaborator whilst ‘La Tondue’ (1964) criticises
the treatment of supposed collaborators after the war ended. Humorous
interpretations of the First World War are very rare in popular song (unlike
those from the War itself) and ‘La Guerre de 14–18’ (from Les Trompettes
de la renommée, 1962, Philips) escaped the ban of other Brassens songs
such as ‘Les Deux Oncles’. Brassens rattles through a comparison of wars
from the Trojan to the Napoleonic, then the war of 1870 and the then
current Algerian conflict before deciding that his favourite war is that of
94 P. GRANT
1914–18 ‘as if he were choosing one from a shop window’ (Tinker 2005,
p. 157). Though Brassens’ approach to war is similar to Brel’s in that they
both disregard the political aspects to focus on the human consequences,
Brassens is totally unsentimental and uses irony, sarcasm and grotesque
imagery to denounce war’s inhumanity. Sung in Brassens’ jaunty style
‘irony is, however, generated for the listener who, anticipating a conven-
tionally serious, dignified tone, is actually confronted with light-hearted
lyrics, music and vocal expression’ (Tinker 2005, p. 13). In the song’s last
stanza ‘irony is taken to extremes’ when Brassens sings that: ‘From the
bottom of his bag of tricks/Mars will no doubt pull out another fantastic
war which will make a great impression/In the meantime, I persevere in
saying that my favourite war, the one I would like to fight in, is the war
of 14–18.’ Even after 50 years this remains the greatest humorous song
composed about the First World War. Modern songwriters usually see the
War as too serious for humour as they are overburdened by those ‘silent
dead’, and one wonders what the reaction would be to a recording of the
song today. Yet, as Bakhtin pointed out:
Laughter has the strength to make its object – including power and author-
ity – very close to the subject and thus turn it upside down, to dismember
and decompose it, to destroy any fear from or respect towards it, becoming
the basis of a realistic attitude to the world rather than a heroic or epic one.
(quoted by Passerini 2015, p. 76)
Cordier suggests that in their references to the Second World War Brel,
Ferré and Brassens all attempt to ‘carry out their own synthesis of memory
and history, and thereby contribute to providing their audience with an
acceptable vision of historical events which reconciles contradictions and
paradoxes, and reconciles society with its past’ (Cordier 2014, pp. 104–5).
In relation to the First World War this is partly true but their stance can be
more polemical as the divisions and enmities were fewer. One justifiable
critique of all three is their misogyny. Despite their progressive politics
they did little to challenge traditional French patriarchy and their songs
often cement the notion of the virile man and feminine woman (Tinker
2003, p. 146; Poole 2004, pp. 19–36). However, with the exception of
their approach to gender the First World War songs of Ferré, Brel and
Brassens are extremely modern in their content and outlook if not their
musical style. They do not reflect the dominant French myth of the First
World War instead substituting an oppositional, anti-war, anti-capitalist
and internationalist narrative. One might say that they demonstrate a clash
between two opposing national myths—the myth of the War and their
own mythological status in French culture—and that it is decisively the
latter that triumphs.
THE INFLUENCE OF BRASSENS: FLANDERS AND SWANN

AND FABRIZIO DE ANDRÉ
If Michael Flanders and Donald Swann are remembered in Britain at all it

is as very old-fashioned humourists who went out of style as soon as the
1960s wave of modern satirists appeared in the wake of Beyond the Fringe.
This is a very unfair depiction of a duo whose songs were more incisive and
more radical than is often appreciated. Both were products of the exclusive
Westminster School and they represent an aspect of ‘Englishness’ that is
rather middle class but at the same time can be decidedly radical and anti-
authoritarian. Swann was a Quaker and president of the pacifist Fellowship
Party who contributed to a number of other humanitarian and pacifist
causes (h2g2, 2003). Flanders, who had been confined to a wheelchair by
polio, was an early lobbyist for disability rights. ‘The War of 14–18’ trans-
lates Brassens’ song into English and dates from 1964, around the time
of the redefinition of the war as ‘pointless slaughter’. Flanders builds on
Brassens’ comparison, and the irony, suggesting that ‘the Boer War was a
poor war’ and ‘Britain’s war in Suez […] wasn’t a war at all’. It is also one
of the first songs about Vietnam:
There are certainly plenty of wars to choose from, you pick whichever one you
please, Like the one we’ve had all the news from liberating the Vietnamese
Few people would identify Flanders and Swann as having produced the
first British anti-Vietnam war song. ‘Twenty Tons of TNT’, the single’s ‘B’
side, refers to the fact that ‘the stock-piled mass destruction of the Nuclear
Powers-That-Be/Equals for each man and woman, twenty tons of TNT’.
Both songs criticise politicians and religions of every description and, ulti-
mately, and despite their comic tone, capture the paranoia and fatalism of
the era. Other political songs from the duo include ‘Ballad for the Rich’
and ‘A Song of Patriotic Prejudice’ which Flanders, jokingly, suggested
as a new national song for England. It beautifully captures English jingo-
ism but also their ability to laugh at themselves with its mock xenophobic
refrain ‘the English, the English, the English are best/I wouldn’t give
tuppence for all of the rest’. All these songs were released at the height of
the duo’s fame following the success of their reviews commencing with At
96 P. GRANT
the Drop of a Hat (1956) and seriously challenge the idea that Flanders and
Swann only sang nostalgic songs about slow trains or silly ones about gnus.
The connections between the chanson française and the Italian canzone
d’autore have often been noted (Haworth 2015). Both revolve around
the work of singer-songwriter-performers, experienced their heyday in the
post-Second World War period and loom large in their country’s popular
culture. Fabrizio de André, who died aged 58 in 1999, is widely acknowl-
edged as one of the canzone d’autore’s foremost exponents and has been
described as the finest Italian lyricist and musician of the twentieth cen-
tury, ‘a Genoese hybrid of Leonard Cohen and the French troubadour
Georges Brassens’ with ‘clear similarities […] from the point of view of
lyrics, themes, music, performance and outlook’ (Haworth 2015, p. 129).
Like Brassens he too was known for his sympathies for anarchism and
pacifism and ‘his songs often featured marginalised and rebellious people,
gypsies, prostitutes and knaves’ or attacked the hypocrisies of the Catholic
Church (Kington 2009). His 1974 album Canzoni was a collection of
his translations from Brassens, Cohen and Bob Dylan (Kington 2009).
Though he produced music in a wide range of styles De André’s two
key songs about the First World War are very close to that of his mentor
Brassens. He first approached the subject in one of his earliest record-
ings, the 1964 single ‘La Guerra di Piero’. A simple song about a dead
soldier, Piero sleeps ‘buried in a wheat field’ where he is watched over
by ‘a thousand red poppies’. He returned to the theme of the War some
14 years later with ‘Andrea’, from the album Rimini, (Ricordi) which also
includes his version of Bob Dylan’s ‘Romance in Durango’. It is a more
enigmatic song about lost homosexual love and a soldier who deserts the
army, which mirrors The Decemberists ‘The Soldiering Life’ but from a
far bleaker perspective. However the lyrics can be interpreted in a number
of ways; perhaps his lover has been killed and Andrea commits suicide?
The listener can make up their own mind.
BARBARA AND LATER CHANSONNIERS

Barbara, real name Monique Andrée Serf, was born into a Parisian Jewish
family and had to go into hiding at the age of ten during the German
occupation. One of her earliest recordings, in 1958, (re-released on the
expanded La Chanteuse De Minuit, 2001, EMI) contains Marcel Cuvelier’s
song ‘Veuve de Guerre’ which may be the first post-Second World War
popular song about the Great War. Told from the point of view of a young
widow the song is a universal comment on both the tragedy of war and
how life needs to go on despite its horrors and those who died. ‘Forbidden
love was a recurrent theme for Barbara’ and she tells of how when she was
18, first her husband, then a succession of lovers, including three in one
day, all meet the same fate (Lebrecht 2011). Ultimately the song is one of
fatalism and irony, yet there remains a strength to her narrator’s character
leading her to reflect that death and loss is merely another aspect of the
human condition and that, just as people have to live, they also have to
die. As such it is something of an antidote to another well-trodden myth
of the War, that of the ‘lost generation’. This idea, which originated in
the writings of Ernest Hemingway and Vera Brittan, claims that an entire
generation of young men, especially those who were likely to have become
its future leaders, were wiped out and that a generation of women were
left without husbands. The ‘lost generation’ myth only gained momentum
retrospectively in the late 1920s in the light of what many people saw as
a series of disappointed hopes. Jay Winter has provided the most detailed
rebuttal of this myth which is, simply, statistically wrong (Winter 1977).
Barbara recorded a version of ‘Tu n’en reviendras pas’ (on the album
Barbara 1962, Polygram) which also included the poignant ‘Le Verger
en Lorraine’, devoted to all those who shed their blood in Lorraine, not
just in the First World War, and who made its orchards: ‘A tender niche
to love/When the seasons return’. Given Barbara’s traumatic war years
she might have been forgiven if she had harboured a dislike for Germany
and yet exactly the opposite was the case. In 1964 she recorded the song
‘Göttingen’—first in French, later in German—which is a paean of praise
for the town and its people. It had a profound impact on Franco-German
relations, especially on a young student in her audience in Göttingen itself.
Gerhard Schröder later became Chancellor of Germany and recited the
words of the song in a speech marking the 40th anniversary of the Élysée
Treaty of reconciliation between the countries, a clear instance of the his-
torical power of popular song (Evans 2013).
Another 40 years on and chanson was still proving its value as a vehicle
for intimate conversations connected with the War. Of Algerian extrac-
tion Juliette Noureddine, who performs under her first name, included
the song ‘Une Lettre Oubliée’ on her 2005 album Mutatis Mutandis
(Polydor/Universal). Hawkins has described her as ‘first and foremost a
live performer with a highly theatrical style’ and her songs are often gothic
in sensibility with ‘a preoccupation with death and physical decay, but
this is exorcised by her dry sense of humour, producing a disturbing and
98 P. GRANT
original kind of comedy’ (Hawkins 2000, p. 44). Sung as a duet with the
late Guillaume Depardieu it is a dialogue between sweethearts and coveys
what many lovers must have felt about their letters and photographs. The
device of the letter is a relatively popular one for comments on the War. A
further example is François Hadji Lazaro’s ‘En cet Hiver de 1915, Il Vous
Aimait Très Fort’ (from the 2006 album Aigre-doux, Az). This takes the
form of a letter from the comrade of the dead soldier to his wife. Hadji
Lazaro is a highly versatile performer whose projects include the bands
Les Garçons Bouchers and Pigalle who hybridise punk and rock rhythms
with folk, waltz and tango (Looseley 2003a, p. 48). Tichot’s 2008 album
14–18, Une Vie D’Bonhomme has three tracks in the letter form as well as
songs based on the poems of anarchist Eugene Bevel and an excellent, tra-
ditional style, version of what is probably the most ubiquitous French song
of the War ‘La Chanson de Craonne’. Anonymously composed in 1917 to
the tune of ‘Bonsoir M’Amour’ it was sung extensively by those who took
part in the mutinies in the French army following the failure of Nivelle’s
offensive, Craonne being a village at the heart of the fighting. The govern-
ment offered a reward of one million francs and an honourable discharge
from the army to anyone who revealed the song’s author (which no one
did) and it was banned in France until 1974 (Sweeney 2001, p. 234).
Des Lendemains Qui Saignent (first released 2009, Casterman) is a col-
laboration between singer Dominque Grange, her husband the cartoonist
and illustrator Jacques Tardi and historian Jean-Pierre Verney. Active since
the early 1960s Grange is also a veteran political campaigner. She was a
participant in the événements de mai in 1968 about which she composed a
number of songs and in the Chilean Solidarity Campaign. Tardis has had a
long interest in the First World War, in which his grandfather fought, and
has produced several graphic depictions of which the best known is prob-
ably C'était la guerre des tranchées (1993). Des Lendemains Qui Saignent
contains ten songs, three newly composed by Grange and seven historical
anti-war songs including ‘La chanson de Craonne’, ‘La butte rouge’, ‘Tu
n’en reviendras pas’ and Boris Vian’s ‘Le Déserteur’. The couple have
performed the album as well as their more recent show Putain de guerre
in settings as diverse as the Musée de la Grande Guerre in Pays de Meaux
and Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.
One of the most insidious and horrifying aspects of modern war is how
it provides an opportunity for what has become known euphemistically as
‘ethnic cleansing’ or more graphically genocide. Though we now associ-
ate genocide with the Holocaust of the Second World War the First also
saw significant forced migrations and massacres of civilians of which the

most extensive was that carried out by the Ottoman and later Turkish gov-
ernments against their Armenian and Greek subjects. Estimates vary but
probably 1.5 million Armenians and 750,000 Greeks died in the period
1915–1923 (Forsythe 2009, p. 98; Gaunt 2006; Schaller and Zimmerer
2008; Dadrian 2003). Several musicians across the world have recorded
songs either dedicated to the memory of the victims of the genocide or
commenting on it, including System of a Down (SOAD) and Diamanda
Galás both of whose work is considered later. Charles Aznavour’s parents
escaped the genocide, settling in France where Charles was born. In 1976
he released the song ‘Ils sont tombés’ (‘They Fell’); since then he has
recorded English, Armenian and Russian versions. Inevitably it is a deeply
personal song and, though he usually delivers it in his relaxed style, this,
in some ways, makes its harsh narrative even more affecting. It is a song
that emphasises the victims whose ‘only guilt was fear’ and ‘whose only
crime was life’ rather than their executioners who, unlike in the songs of
SOAD or Galás, are hardly mentioned. Aznavour is also the founder of the
charitable organisation Aznavour for Armenia (established following the
1998 earthquake) and, in 2009, he was appointed ambassador of Armenia
to Switzerland, as well as Armenia’s permanent delegate to the United
Nations in Geneva.
OTHER FRENCH GENRES

Since the 1970s the boundaries between chanson and other genres have
become more blurred with a great deal of cross-fertilisation (Looseley
2003a, p. 37). Others have outlined how, since the 1980s, French pop has
undergone a ‘legitimisation process similar to chanson’s, morphing from
commercial pariah to national myth’ and that new forms of music have
challenged chanson as ‘reproducing the supposedly “national” character’
(Looseley 2003b, p. 33; Lebrun 2009, p. 10). Veteran Guardian music
critic Robin Denselow has noted that Marseilles-based Moussu T et lei
Jovents share some characteristics with folk metal in that they have revived
Occitan, the ancient language of southern France, in their songs which are
‘always quirky, charming and original’ (Denselow 2010). They are a mix-
ture of French and Brazilian musicians blending Provençal styles and chan-
son with black musical influences from the Americas that are a significant
part of the port city’s culture (Denselow 2010). ‘Paul, Émile et Henri’
comes from their 2005 debut album Mademoiselle Marseille (Harmonia
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Mundi) and utilises guitars and banjo with Brazilian percussion. Its three
protagonists are depicted as simple, ordinary boys who all died before the
age of 30 at, respectively, Verdun, the Somme and Gallipoli, three of the
iconic sites of the War and which reminds us that more French soldiers
(9798) died at the latter than Australians (8709).
If Anglo-Saxon musicians (and artists in general) have foregrounded
their own iconic battles of the Somme (though only the first day) and
Passchendaele for French writers, and some others, it is the Battle of
Verdun that takes precedence. The macabre nature of the German com-
mander Erich von Falkenhayn’s memo in which he said the aim was to
bleed the forces of France to death has embedded itself in the imagery of
the War (Horne 1993, 36). Though, retrospectively, other First World
War commanders (most notably Haig in relation to the Battle of the
Somme) described battles as more effective in wearing down the enemy
than achieving immediate goals, it is Verdun that established the idea of
grim, relentless attrition. In the sleeve notes for their album The Last of
the Lasts, French band Xang note that the ossuary at Douaumont on the
Verdun battlefield is ‘948 cubic metres of bones, or 130,000 unknown
soldiers, French, German united in death. Verdun is the battlefield with
the highest density of dead per square metre in [all] history’ (Xang 2007).
There are at least 35 songs and five concept albums about the battle rang-
ing from the progressive rock of Xang, through the Indie rock of Miossec,
to the death metal of Azziard. Outside France there are concept albums
from Britain, New Zealand and the Netherlands and songs from a huge
range of other nationalities and genres which demonstrates the mythi-
cal nature of the battle. These include Swiss gothic industrial band Jesus
and the Gurus, American Addie Brik’s alternative rock, Swedish hip-hop
from Dirty Cannibal Peasants, German black metal band NG (it stands for
Nerve Gas), Swiss progressive metal band Distant Past, Slovenian thrash
metal by Sarcasm, Danish synth-pop band Scatterbrain, Canadian jazz
musician Steve Raegele, English punk from The United, the thrash metal
of Colombia’s Neurosis Inc. and both German and Spanish techno artists,
Dawn and Alex Morgan respectively. Inevitably, the battle has been a topic
for French chansonniers including Michel Sardou (‘Verdun’ 1979) and
Michel Fugain (‘C’est pas ma faute si j’ai pas fait Verdun…’, 1970) but
perhaps the best known is Bernard Joyet’s ‘Verdun’ on the 2002 album
Prolongations (Le Rideau Bouge) whose graphic lyrics, with references to
sliced viscera, carcasses and insect-like soldiers, could be from an extreme
metal album. Joyet’s live version of the song (on Au Temps Pour Moi!
2004, Francophonia) is especially effective, even chilling, most notably in

the concluding lines which compare the battle to a living predator.
‘Né en 17 à Leidenstadt’ was written by Jean-Jacques Goldman who,
in the twenty-first century, is the second most successful French singer
after Johnny Hallyday. Goldman is part of a newer group of French
singer-songwriters known as la nouvelle chanson française ‘who cited
Brel, Brassens or Ferré as their models but who also [work] happily in
the pop idiom’ (Loosely 2003b, p. 35). The song was the third single
from the debut album of Goldman’s hugely successful collaboration with
Carole Fredericks and Michael Jones, Fredericks Goldman Jones (1991,
Sony/BMG), which sold a million copies in its first year. The song stems
from the group’s different backgrounds: Goldman is the son of Jewish
immigrants from Poland and Germany who both fought in the wartime
resistance; Jones is Franco-Welsh; and Fredericks African-American. They
performed two versions of the song, one wholly in French the other in
which they each sing in their own languages. The singers contemplate
whether they would have acted differently if they had been in the situa-
tion of Germans after the 1918 defeat and during the rise of Nazism and
the song deals with questions of freedom of choice within cultural and
ethnic confines. Jones’ verse considers the situation in Northern Ireland
and Fredericks’ that of South Africa. ‘Leidenstadt’ itself is an imaginary
city whose name means ‘city of suffering’ and though structurally the song
seems rather ‘rushed’, reaching a climax too quickly and trying to fit too
many complex lyrics into three verses, in other ways it is highly significant.
Its message reflects the content of Barbara’s ‘Göttingen’ but its transna-
tional line-up and references to Ireland and South Africa extend the idea
beyond Franco-German relations to embrace other international recon-
ciliations. It is one of the purest expressions of the transnational war myth
yet recorded.
Manau were formed in 1998 and are known for their combination
of traditional Celtic melodies with modern hip-hop in a uniquely Gallic
fusion. The band members trace their roots to Brittany and their name
comes from the old Gaelic name for the Isle of Man. Their debut album,
Panique Celtique (1998, Polydor) soared to the top of the French album
charts, selling over a million copies in its first year. The track ‘L’Avenir
est un Long Passé’ compares and contrasts the period of the First World
War with the Second and with today. It is less concerned with the futil-
ity of war than many other songs, instead being a meditation on racism
and discrimination, which are dramatically heightened in war. France is
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the second largest market for rap after the USA and its lyrical content
reflects one of the genre’s main preoccupations (Looseley 2003a, p. 55).
The semi-spoken nature of rap lends itself to the stresses and cadences of
the French language and its privileging of lyrics ‘sits more happily with
the chanson tradition than do genres like rock or world music’ (Looseley
2003a, p. 56). Manau’s combination of rap-style lyrics with a very French-
sounding instrumental backing, utilising prominent accordion, could eas-
ily have been a failure but instead is astonishingly effective. In its treatment
of racism in war the song parallels the multinational collaboration Empire
Soldiers examined in Chapter 10.
BOB DYLAN AND ERIC BOGLE

As with so many other subjects for protest and political comment in the
English-speaking world Bob Dylan was one of the first to record an anti-
war song that referenced the First World War. ‘With God on Our Side’
comes from his seminal 1964 album The Times They Are A-Changin’
(Columbia) and it set the tone for many others, not least in the way the
First World War is compared to other conflicts. Beginning with a condem-
nation of the USA’s genocide against Native Americans, the song moves
through verses about the American Civil War and the Spanish-American
War to a verse about the First World War which has again been a model
that many have copied, especially in its ironic comments on religion and
the way it is used to justify war. Placing himself squarely within the mythol-
ogy of the War as it was then solidifying, Dylan is mystified by the reason it
was fought. After a verse about the Second World War and the Holocaust
the song is brought up to date by reference to the Cold War and potential
nuclear annihilation. There is a suitable bitterness at the end when Dylan
suggests that if God really were on our side He would stop the next war.
In the original recording the song made no explicit reference to Vietnam
but in later live performances Dylan added a further verse which paired
Vietnam with the First World War as lacking any real justification.
William Ruhlmann claims that ‘“With God on Our Side” is one of
Bob Dylan’s most devastating songs of social protest. In its nine eight-
line verses, it is nothing less than a revisionist history lesson that under-
mines conventional attitudes about war and patriotism that prevailed in
the U.S. at the time it was written’ (Ruhlmann, nd). My view is that it
is one of Dylan’s weaker ‘protest-era’ songs and suffers by comparison
with Brassens’ ‘La Guerre de 14–18’. Though similarities between the
two singers have often been noted I am not aware of anyone making this
comparison despite the obvious parallels including a list of wars with a
wry comment on each. With hindsight Brassens’ humour and irony wins
out over Dylan’s rather ponderous and portentous language and in his
delivery of the song on record Dylan also seems to be trying too hard to
be Woody Guthrie.
Following Dylan many other folk and folk rock singer-songwriters have
been more direct in their engagement with the First World War, the most
prominent being Scottish-Australian Eric Bogle. His two songs ‘And the
Band Played Waltzing Matilda’ and ‘No Man’s Land’ (also known as ‘The
Green Fields of France’ or ‘Willie McBride’) have been covered count-
less times; Wikipedia lists 63 recorded versions of the latter (Wikipedia
2015). Jon Casimir calls ‘And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda’ ‘one of
the greats, a song that has dug itself so far into the Australian conscious-
ness in such a short time that it […] feels like a memory [of the War]’
(Casimir 2002). Written in 1971 it was conceived as an anti-Vietnam War
protest rather than a direct critique of the First World War and Bogle used
Gallipoli simply because he thought more people would know where it was
(Keane 2015). There is some ‘poetic licence’ in the lyrics as they say the
narrator enlisted in 1915 but was present at the Suvla Bay landings (which
means he would need to have enlisted in 1914) and it refers to the sol-
diers being issued with steel helmets when they were not introduced until
1916. Though the bitterness of Bogle’s protagonist was not typical of the
majority of, at least, British disabled veterans, there are several stories that
closely match his views, for example that of New Zealander Henry Lewis
(Cohen 2001; Shadbolt 1988, pp. 23–8). In structure the song is essen-
tially a rewriting of ‘Remember My Forgotten Man’, the key difference is
that Bogle’s disillusion is seen through the eyes of the veteran rather than
his sweetheart. The reference to Banjo Patterson’s original song, written
in 1895 and often referred to as Australia’s unofficial national anthem,
is a masterstroke. It acts as a refrain to the action being played when the
troops set sail, when they bury their dead after battle, when the narrator
returns from the war and is carried back onto the quay and again at each
Anzac Day. The irony is that, without legs, there will be ‘no more waltzing
Matilda for me’, the song title being Australian slang for travelling with
your possessions carried in a ‘Matilda’ bag. Unlike Patterson’s, Bogle’s
song actually is in waltz-time, concluding with a minor-key transposition
of the original, and there is no doubting its overall tone of bitter irony.
Despite this it is not without humour, for example in the description of the
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narrator’s maiming when ‘a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over head’
(‘tit’ in the Pogues version), which is another reason it stands out from
many others. At the time he wrote the song Bogle may well have been
right in that the veterans were ‘the forgotten heroes from a forgotten war’,
but most certainly not today. Bogle himself thinks that he failed to express
himself clearly at this point:
I knew what I was trying to say there. The old soldier knew why they were
marching, but he was heartbroken that they had to. But what comes across
is that he’s saying Anzac Day is a waste of fucking time. I said it clumsily. I’d
say it better now. (Casimir 2002)
The song’s first recording was in 1975 by Australian John Currie and
Bogle’s did not come until 1980 on the album Now I’m Easy (Celtic
Music). Its author did not expect it to last: ‘I thought that after the
Vietnam War finished and the boys came home […] the song would van-
ish’ (Keane 2015). However he sang it at the 1974 National Folk Festival
to great acclaim and it was later heard by one of England’s leading folk
artists, June Tabor, who recorded it on her 1976 album Airs and Graces.
Though it became a folk club fixture in both Britain and the USA Bogle
had no idea of its success until he visited the UK and was asked to perform
at a folk club as the author of a ‘famous’ song (Casimir 2002). Of all the
many versions it is the Pogues’ (from the album Rum, Sodomy and the
Lash, 1985, MCA/Stiff) that best captures its spirit. Shane MacGowan’s
loutish approach with ‘no resonance, no vibrato and no sense of shap-
ing of phrases’ perfectly reflects the song’s bitter tone, with some of the
vocals almost spat out (Moore 2001, p. 166). The band refuse ‘to add the
passing-notes and inverted harmonies of other available versions’ and the
arrangement begins with a simple phrase on the banjo building to include
other instruments and, ultimately, a brass section, giving a more epic, uni-
versal feel than Bogle’s simple, rather unimaginative, folk arrangement
(Moore 2001, p. 166).
The song has gone on to gain its own almost mythical status. In 1988
when Vietnam veteran and Medal of Honor recipient Bob Kerry (who lost
half a leg in the war) was elected to the US Senate he sang ‘And the Band
Played Waltzing Matilda’ to his supporters and also borrowed the first
line as the title for his autobiography When I Was a Young Man (Casimir
2002). ‘As Australian society changed and people began to get more inter-
ested, the song came into its time’ Bogle has suggested and in 2001 it
was voted 12th in the Australian Performing Rights Society’s list of the
best Australian songs of all time (Casimir 2002; APRA 2001). Inevitably
he was invited to attend the centenary commemorations held in Turkey
to sing the song, though not at the official commemoration. This was
Bogle’s first trip to the actual locations because ‘the thought of singing for
all those ghosts has always intimidated me’, a clear example of the influ-
ence of those ‘silent dead’ (Keane 2015). On 25 April 2015 he performed
alongside Ryan Gonsales, the youngest Pipe Major in the British Army,
before a crowd of over 500 mainly young Australians at the historic gun
battery, Fort Dardanos, in a ‘moving dawn Ceremony’ (medianet, 2015).
Bogle was also asked to write a song to commemorate the 75th
Anniversary of the Gallipoli landings. ‘The Gift of Years’ is based on a
letter that a Second World War Australian soldier left for his children fol-
lowing his death, telling them not to grieve but be thankful for all the
years they had spent together (Bogle 2009a). ‘No Man’s Land’, in various
guises, is even more performed than ‘And the Band Played …’ though is
a gentler, less bitter and more straightforward song. It reflects on the fate
of a 19-year-old soldier, Willie McBride, killed during the Battle of the
Somme, told from the perspective of a battlefield visitor who sits down
by his grave. It was written following a visit Bogle made to the war cem-
eteries in 1976 and the real William McBride was a Private in the Royal
Inniskilling Fusiliers who is buried in Authuille Cemetery near Beaumont
Hamel. When performing the song Bogle has told audiences that the text
is Tony Blair’s ‘favourite anti-war poem’ and though the ex-prime minister
knew the name of its author he thought Bogle had died in the War, a good
example of how a myth can start (Bogle 2009b). Its chorus makes refer-
ence to two famous pieces of military music, ‘The Last Post’ and the tradi-
tional Scottish lament for the dead of Flodden ‘The Flowers of the Forest’.
In good folk song tradition the melody, its refrain (‘Did they beat the drum
slowly/Did they play the pipe lowly’) and the subject matter is similar to
that of the American cowboy ballad ‘The Streets of Laredo’ which in turn
owes its origins to the eighteenth-century British ballad ‘The Unfortunate
Rake.’ ‘No Man’s Land’ is an excellent example of a battlefield visitor song,
like PJ Harvey’s ‘Battleship Hill’, but is less complex and a little prone to
cliché in places, as well as being unashamedly sentimental. This makes it
rather less of an achievement than ‘And the Band Played …’ but is also why
it has been covered far more often, its statement that ‘it was all done in vain’
is a simpler idea to project. Of the many cover versions that of The Furey
Brothers and Davey Arthur (1979) was rightly successful and there are
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others by bands as different as the Dropkick Murphys (2005), Skrewdriver

(1988) and Attila the Stockbroker (1987). The strangest recording has to
be that from the American pre-teen pop duo Prussian Blue (on the album
The Path We Choose, 2005, Resistance). The band, twin sisters Lynx and
Lamb Gaede, came to prominence in 2003 when they were the subject of
a Louis Theroux documentary Louis and the Nazis. They were formed by
the twins’ mother, a prominent member of the American fascist organisa-
tion the National Vanguard, and named ‘Prussian Blue after the residue left
in gas chambers used in the Holocaust, which has been touted as “proof”
of an alleged lack of evidence’ (Davisson 2010, p. 192). As Prussian Blue
is an antidote to heavy metal poisoning the name could also have been
selected as an attack on metal music (Love 2012, p. 12). On stage the twins
were known to execute Nazi salutes and said in an interview with ABC’s
Primetime that Adolf Hitler was a ‘great man with good ideas’ and that
the Holocaust was exaggerated (ABC News 2005). On their first album
(Fragment of the Future, 2004, Resistance) Prussian Blue covered songs by
Ken McClellan and a version of Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘The Stranger’, in
which the poet argues that different races can never truly comprehend one
another, as well as a song about Rudolf Hess. It has been suggested that
Prussian Blue’s music ‘presents a powerful combination of narrative and
strategic violence intended to recruit the next generation for global white
supremacy’, however their version of ‘No Man’s Land’ (called ‘The Green
Fields of France’ on the album) is the most insipid performance of the song
yet recorded (Love 2012, p. 1). The twins sing like zombies with no inflec-
tion or change of mood between the verses and the meaning of the song
entirely escapes them. As the twins have grown older they have renounced
extreme politics and their mother’s influence; in 2011 Lamb Gaede stated
that ‘I’m not a white nationalist anymore. My sister and I are pretty liberal
now’ (Gell 2011).
In 2014 ‘No Man’s Land’ was covered by Joss Stone as the official
Poppy Appeal single for The Royal British Legion. Her version created
controversy by omitting two and a half verses thus severely curtailing its
anti-war message. Bogle called it ‘a travesty’ though did not support those
who considered it changed the message to a pro-war one, ‘sentimentalis-
ing perhaps, trivialising even, but not glorifying’ (Bogle 2014). Bogle’s
own thoughts on war are rather more subtle than perhaps his strong anti-
war songs suggest. He admits that there are stories of genuine courage in
war and ‘the whole paradox of it fascinates me’ (Keane 2015). He views
soldiers as ‘a pretty admirable bunch’ who are ‘very rarely the sabre-rat-
tling mass murderers that some people would like them to be’ (Keane
2015). He will however not be writing any more songs about the First
World War; ‘it’s not that I’m scared of being typecast as that “World War
One songwriter”’ but ‘I don’t think I’ve got much more left to say on that
particular subject’ (Keane 2015).
SHIRLEY COLLINS AND JUNE TABOR

An early contender as a concept album about the First World War came
in 1969 from Sussex folk singer Shirley Collins and her sister, keyboardist
Dolly, together with David Munrow’s pioneering Early Music Consort
of London. Despite a career lasting barely ten years—he committed sui-
cide in 1976 at the age of 33—Munrow did more than anyone to pop-
ularise medieval and renaissance music in Britain. The Consort, which
included the harpsichordist Christopher Hogwood who went on to found
the world-renowned Academy of Ancient Music, was hugely influential
in film music (the soundtracks for Ken Russell’s The Devils, 1971, and
John Boorman’s Zardoz, 1974), television (where he composed the music
for both The Six Wives of Henry VIII, 1970, and Elizabeth R, 1971) and
radio (the music for one of the first adaptations of the works of J. R.
R. Tolkien, the 1973 BBC version of The Hobbit). Incredibly Munrow
recorded more than 50 albums in his short life and he also influenced
popular music where his lead was followed by bands such as Amazing
Blondel and Gryphon (Young 2010, pp. 199–213). The original sleeve
notes for Anthems in Eden (on EMI’s ‘progressive’ Harvest label) might
come straight from an advert for a production of Oh, What a Lovely War!
referencing ‘the ritual slaughter of the dearest and best generation of
country boys’ and links the past to the present where ‘today’s England
has a special generation […] with a clear historical and prophetic vision
of themselves’. It suggests that ‘no propagandist is going to fool them,
or government coerce them’ meaning of course that the young men of
1914 were either fooled or coerced, which is very much the argument of
Paul Fussell, Alan Clark and Littlewood. The music is vastly superior to
the sleeve notes and far less in the grip of the War myth. First performed
on BBC Radio 1 in August 1968 it is only the first side of Anthems, the
26-minute ‘Song-Story’ that directly addresses the War. It strings together
a number of well-known English folk songs (including ‘The Blacksmith’
and ‘Lowlands Away’) with instrumental ‘bridges’ played by Munrow’s
ensemble. Robin Denselow has written that Munrow’s contribution ‘gave
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the songs a toughness, a vitality, and an element of surprise that literally

shook them into life’ (Sweers 2005, p. 199). This is best illustrated in
‘Dancing at Whitsun’ for which Austin John Marshall, Collins’ husband at
the time, wrote new lyrics to the tune of ‘The Week before Easter’. A song
of remembrance which encapsulates the album’s main theme of a ‘lost
England’ it also links the First World War with the ‘wooden walls’ of the
Nelsonian Navy, the latter wasting trees the former young men.
Its melancholic tone is clear in both Collins’ version and that sung by
Tim Hart, with a beautiful string arrangement by Robert Kirby, on the
album Summer Solstice (1971, B & C). When it was first sung and recorded
in the 1960s there were many people still alive who lived through and lost
loved ones in the War and it could have a very disturbing effect. Originally
Marshall and Collins set the song to the tune of ‘The False Bride’, one of
the bleakest of folk songs, but the impact was too disturbing with many in
the audience in tears. Though aiming for contemporary relevance:
Such a pessimistic effect was not what was intended. So when Shirley
recorded the song we showed the way the spirit of the generation sacri-
ficed in the mud of France had been caught and brought to life by the new
generation born since World War II by concluding with the chorus of the
‘Staines Morris’. (Marshall n.d.)
The overall impact of ‘Song Story’ is one of a gorgeous melancholy.

The combination of Collins’ unadorned singing style, her sister’s plain-
tive organ and the Consort’s medieval instruments make it a highpoint
in both the English folk revival and folk ‘rock’ in general. It is a beautiful
and understated expression of remembrance and Rob Young rightly calls
the album ‘the high water mark of the 1960s traditional folk tendency’
(Young 2010, p. 214).
As well as her cover versions of both Eric Bogle songs (that of ‘No
Man’s Land’ is on Ashes and Diamonds, 2006, Topic, where she cou-
ples the song with her version of ‘Flowers of the Forest’) June Tabor
has recorded a number of other songs relating to the War. These include
a haunting version of Frederick Weatherly and Hayden Wood’s 1916
Wartime hit ‘Roses of Picardy’ (on 2001s Rosa Mundi, Topic) also one of
the more successful martial industrial songs in Art Abscon(s) doom-laden
version. The title track of Aqaba (1989, Topic) written by Bill Caddick,
is based on the life of T. E. Lawrence and the song imagines him after
the War riding his Brough Superior motorcycle, on which he was killed
in 1935, but dreaming of his days with the Arab Legion. It is one of the
most thoughtful songs about a First World War personality and may well
have been influenced by the portrayal of Lawrence in Terrence Rattigan’s
play Ross. The album also contains a version of the traditional Scottish
ballad ‘Will Ye Go to Flanders?’, originally about the War of the Austrian
Succession (1740–48), and ‘The Reaper’. Also by Bill Caddick the lat-
ter does not specifically mention the First World War but the reference
in the first verse to where ‘blood red poppies’ bloom in a field recently
subject to ‘the reaper’s blade’ makes the connection clear. In the best
tradition of English folk music the song connects the familiar reaping of
the cornfield with the grimmer work of death on the fields of France and
Flanders. As such it is a very close companion to both the Home Service’s
‘Scarecrow’ (from Alright Jack, 1985, Fledg’ling) and Steve Knightley’s
‘The Keeper’ (or ‘The Gamekeeper’) first recorded in 2004 (on Western
Approaches, Hands On Music) which parallels the title character driving
game towards the sportsmen’s guns with urging on his men at the Battle
of the Somme. Just one minute and 45 seconds long the meditative qual-
ity of ‘The Reaper’, emphasised by Tabor’s atmospheric delivery accompa-
nied only by a plaintive string backing, give it the feel of a poem, possibly
one by Houseman or Kipling.
STUCK IN MUD AND MYTH: MIKE HARDING

Lancashire folk singer Mike Harding has contributed two powerful songs
about the War, recorded nearly 30 years apart. Released as a single in
1977, ‘Christmas 1914’ is about the famous truce between British and
German troops near Ypres. The Truce has been a fruitful subject for song-
writers and is covered in more depth in Chapter 8. Harding’s songs are
extremely detailed in their descriptions and here we have the exchange of
presents, the football match and the soldiers’ sharing food, drink and sto-
ries of their sweethearts. There is a neat topping and tailing which begins
by describing how, in the silence before the Truce, the men hear a dog
bark and concludes with a fateful echo of the innocent dog’s barking as
well as a comment on religion, contrasting the pacifism of the Christian
festival with the fact that ‘good Christians’ also make the weapons of war
when ‘the Christian guns began to bark’. Harding is however entirely
mistaken when he claims that those who took part in the Truce ‘had lost
the will to fight’ and so were withdrawn from the line. In 2005 Harding
returned to the subject of the War with the song ‘The Accrington Pals’
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(on Bombers Moon, Moonraker, which also contains a version of ‘And the
Band Played Waltzing Matilda’). Probably influenced by Peter Whelan’s
1981 play for the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) of the same title,
Accrington is close to Harding’s own home town of Rochdale and pro-
vided perhaps the best known of the ‘Pals’ battalions that formed part of
Kitchener’s New Army. The strength of the Pals battalions was that friends
could serve together giving them instant camaraderie and higher morale
but the downside was that a small place (Accrington was a town of some
45,000 people) could suffer great losses at the same time. This is precisely
what happened to the Accrington Pals (more accurately the 11th (Service)
Battalion East Lancashire Regiment) on the first day of the Battle of the
Somme. Attacking the heavily fortified village of Serre, of an estimated
720 who took part, 235 were killed and 349 wounded within the space
of 20 minutes. Harding’s song relates the innocence of the pre-war pals
and the ordinariness of their lives playing childhood games together and
though it has employed a good deal of clichéd language up to this point,
it is certainly no more myth affirming than many other songs. However
in the remainder of the song he goes ‘over the top’ himself. Whereas in
songs like ‘And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda’ the historical errors are
minor and forgivable, being used for ‘scene setting’ and colour, Harding
ends up putting in too much detail. The friends all join up in 1916 and
are told (in a clear reference to Bob Dylan) ‘with God on our side the
battle will soon be won’. It would have been impossible for them to have
volunteered in 1916 and been in the front line less than six months later
but Harding wants to exaggerate their innocence and the haste with which
recruits were, supposedly, rushed into action. Harding also gives a wholly
false explanation of how the Pals battalions were formed both in the sleeve
notes and on his website. He claims that ‘in 1916 the British Army, run-
ning out of cannon fodder for the trenches, introduced a policy of recruit-
ment based on enticing men into the army from the same towns’ (Harding
n.d.). The policy was introduced at the commencement of the War, it was
conscription that began in 1916, after which the local identity of different
units was watered down significantly. When it comes to the description of
the battle itself Harding is determined to cram in as many First World War
stereotypes as possible and overall the song is both mawkish and distorted.
Harding ends the song by reading some of the names of the men who
died and there is a brass band arrangement of the 9/8 retreat march ‘The
Battle of the Somme’, written in 1916 by Pipe Major William Laurie of
the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. Others who have recorded ver-
sions of Laurie’s tune are Fairport Convention, on House Full (1977),

the German ‘krautrock’ band The Peter Rubsam Group (1972) and the
Albion Band (on Battle of the Field, 1976, Island) and there is also an
updated version by The Dubliners with Luke Kelly (from 1999’s Special
Collection, Arc Music). The listing of names is a technique which has often
been adopted to achieve psychological connections when commemorating
people we never actually knew. Musical examples include John Adams’ On
the Transmigration of Souls, written to commemorate the 9/11 attacks,
‘The Time is Now’ a 1970 anti-Vietnam War single by Everybody’s
Children and Michael Nyman’s Symphony No 11 which commemorates
the 96 Liverpool fans who died in the Hillsborough football ground disas-
ter. The psychological impact of this device, giving individual reality to
otherwise nameless victims, can provide closure and ‘a conflict-averse path
to catharsis in an age of instant gratification and short attention spans’
(Michael Kimmelman quoted by Tregear 2012, p. 161).
A HISTORIAN IN SONG: AL STEWART

Al Stewart’s long career started in the mid-1960s when he was close
friends with many of the key figures in the British folk revival and, at
one time, Paul Simon’s roommate. Of all folk musicians Stewart is the
one who most assiduously tackles historical subjects, ‘I thought there’s
probably room in the world for one historical folk singer, and no one else
wanted the job’ he quipped. (Stephenson 2014). His research is methodi-
cal and stems from his early fascination with the subject, ‘the only thing
I’ve done religiously since I left school was to read history’ he revealed
(Stephenson 2014). In describing how he selects a topic for a historical
song Stewart explained that:
What usually happens is I read a book and one of the characters appeals to
me. Then I pick up another book and it cross references to the first and after
you’ve got half a dozen of those you start to get different people’s opinions
about the characters and it’s at that point that the idea begins to germinate.
(Stewart 2015)
Stewart places prime emphasis on his lyrics explaining that he ‘went into a
fairly in-depth lyrical style. The lyrics are of great importance. The music
is important too but I try to make the music relatively simple… If I have
a philosophy it would be A: write songs that no one else is writing about,
112 P. GRANT
and B: use language that no one else is using’ (Allard 2013). He may be
partially correct but there are probably more writers in the first category
than he thinks and there are lyricists (Colin Meloy of The Decemberists,
for example) who are following Stewart’s lead. This approach means that
Stewart often tackles aspects of history that others ignore: ‘it would be
easy to write about say Napoleon or Robespierre or the better known
people but I kind of like writing about the more obscure things… It’s
kind of nice to shine a spotlight into the dark corners of history rather
than do all the obvious stuff ’ (Stewart 2015). Stewart has written several
songs about the First World War. ‘Fields of France’ (from Last Days of
the Century, 1988, Enigma) is not a reference to Eric Bogle, but instead
is set in 1917 and is about a girl whose sweetheart was an airman who
has been killed ‘high above the fields of France’. A love song that makes
no judgements about the War, it is more concerned with lost love and
remembering and concludes with the strong image that the woman’s
regrets will fade ‘like vapour trails of jets’. Stewart had previously made
indirect reference to the First World War in ‘Manuscript’ (from Zero She
Flies, 1970, CBS) and ‘Old Admirals’, both loosely based on the career
of Admiral ‘Jackie’ Fisher who resigned from his post as First Sea Lord in
1915 over his arguments with Churchill concerning the Gallipoli cam-
paign. The latter is a poignant plea to be called back to active service
and is part of an album, Past Present and Future, which also covers the
‘Night of the Long Knives’, the eradication by Hitler of Ernst Röhm
and prominent members of the SA, and ‘Roads to Moscow’ narrated
by a Russian soldier, who fights all the way from Stalingrad to Berlin
only to be sent to a Gulag in Siberia at the end of the war. Based on his
reading of books such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of
Ivan Denisovich and The Deserted House by Lydia Chukovskaya this song
encapsulates the entire Soviet experience of the war in its eight minutes
(Stewart 2015).
Further Stewart songs that touch upon the First World War include
‘Trains’ (from Famous Last Words, 1993, EMI) and ‘A League of Notions’.
The former contrasts the singer’s boyhood and adult experiences of rid-
ing trains with the use to which they were put in the two world wars: in
the First transporting the vast armies to the front, referencing the myth
that the War’s outbreak was predetermined by railway timetables; in the
Second the chilling comparison is with the transportation of Jews to the
death camps. The song also references Jean Jaures, linking it to Jacques
Brel’s song, and is the popular music equivalent of Steve Reich’s Different
Trains, his three-movement piece for string quartet and taped voice of
1988 which won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical
Composition the following year. ‘A League of Notions’ is an ironic refer-
ence to the post-War Peace Conference, its title borrowed from a 1921
musical review. It is especially concerned with the settling of borders in
the Middle East, and hence the impact on today’s world, condemning
the betrayal of T. E. Lawrence and the Arab cause and suggesting (delib-
erately ahistorically) that a ‘kink’ in the border of Transjordan was due to
Churchill having consumed one too many brandies. It is also one of the
few songs that ‘dares’ to be humorous ‘It was pretty tongue in cheek’,
explained Stewart, ‘I was being a little flippant. What is it? “we’re going to
take a bit of Turkey, then a lot of Turkey”!’ (Stewart 2015).
With ‘Somewhere in England’ (analysed in Chapter 4), as with ‘Roads
to Moscow’, Stewart demonstrates his exceptional lyrical talents. It is one
of his personal favourites and he suggests that the song ‘has things that
no one has ever written a song about’ (Allard 2013). Placing historical
characters such as these into a multidimensional narrative requires deft
handling if the song is not to fall into cliché or parody and Stewart is one
of very few musicians with this skill. His songs do not entirely eschew
historical mythologising, perhaps reflecting his own view of the War, but
they are both distinctive and effective. In describing those songwriters
he admires Stewart says they comprise ‘a whole group of people who are
“going against the grain”: Leonard Cohen, Richard Thompson, Tom
Waits. None of them sound like anyone apart from themselves, all using
language that’s easily identifiable as theirs. I tend to like these iconoclastic
pop stars if that’s what they are’ (Stewart 2015). Al Stewart is certainly
a member of this exclusive group and there are many books on the same
subjects that do not achieve the level of maturity or analysis he reaches in
his historical song writing.
OTHER BRITISH FOLK

The Whisky Priests tackled First World War themes centred on their native
North East in both ‘The Ghost of Geordie Jones’ (from The First Few
Drops, 1991, Whippet), an update of ‘Will Ye Go To Flanders’, about a
young man who fell ‘in a field of wire and mud’ and, more directly, in
‘Durham Light Infantry’ (from 1989’s Nee Gud Luck, Whippet). Written
by the band’s leader Gary Miller, the latter is another close relation of
Bogle’s ‘And the Band Played …’, narrated by a veteran of that regiment
114 P. GRANT
looking back on the War. It contains some graphic details of his friends’
fates, one losing a leg the other having ‘his balls blown off’ which, as we
have no knowledge of whether the narrator was himself wounded, gives
the song a more direct way of addressing the listener. He looks back with
regret and no little irony and bitterness for the waste of life whilst locating
their ‘sites of memory’ when ‘we’re left only with monuments’. It again
echoes Bogle in concluding with the narrator’s reflections on Armistice
Day, suggesting the blood-red poppies are poor representations when
‘we’ve paid too high a price with all that blood.’ Though powerful, the
song does not quite achieve the same intensity as ‘And the Band Played
Waltzing Matilda’. Bogle’s song talks of ‘the old men [who] march slowly,
all bent, stiff and sore’ followed by the ironic echo of the Patterson song,
both strong images of, respectively, the passage of time and the world they
have lost. Miller resorts to more conventional images of the Unknown
Soldier and poppies; yet the song is an outstanding example of the usage
of ‘sites of memory’ and symbolic references. In 2010 Miller returned to
the theme of the War in his solo concept album Reflections on War dis-
cussed in Chapter 3.
The English folk band The Unthanks produce songs of endless
beauty and invention in which a simple folk song becomes a Miles Davis-
influenced epic (‘Mount the Air’) or a prog classic (King Crimson’s
‘Starless’) turns up alongside a traditional Tyneside ballad. Their song
‘Flowers of the Town’ is a modern, urbanised, version of ‘The Flowers of
the Forest’ and comes from their 2009 album Here’s the Tender Coming
(Rabble Rouser). It was voted Folk Album of the Year by MOJO magazine
and Robin Denselow, in a four-starred review for the Guardian, called it
‘haunting, original and magnificent’ (Denselow 2009). The album con-
tains several notable tracks based on historical events; the title track is a
plaintive lament upon the impact of the press gang whilst ‘The Testimony
of Patience Kershaw’ (written by Frank Higgins in 1969) is taken from
evidence given by a young girl to Lord Ashley’s Mines Commission of
1842 which resulted in The Mines Act prohibiting the employment of
women and boys (Del Col 2002). The album is marked not just by the
sisters’ superbly natural harmony singing but by the adventurous arrange-
ments of Adrian McNally (Rachael Unthank’s husband and the band’s
pianist). On Here’s the Tender Coming the inspiration is minimalism: the
piano/percussion on ‘Annachie Gordon’ could be a Steve Reich piece;
the introduction to ‘Lucky Gilchrist’ is reminiscent of Michael Nyman;
and that to ‘The Testimony of Patience Kershaw’ more like Philip Glass.
Though the sleeve notes say that ‘Flowers of the Town’ is anonymous its
words are very close to those in the first of Cecil Day-Lewis’s ‘Two Songs’
(from A Time to Dance: And Other Poems, 1935). Published after the war
books boom and the turn towards pacifism the poem and song are most
notable for the accusation that the lads of the village/town were ‘lost in
Flanders by medalled commanders’. Though later becoming disillusioned
with communism Day-Lewis was a member of the Communist Party of
Great Britain from 1935 to 1938 and the song falls squarely into the
‘supporting mythology’ category. In September 2014 The Unthanks col-
laborated with fellow folk musician Sam Lee to create a musical evening
entitled A Time and Place which combined songs, poems and stories of
the First World War and which they are considering for a future recorded
release.
One person who found a novel way to escape the myths of the War was
the late Scottish folk singer Alistair Hulett. His 2002 album Red Clydeside
concentrates entirely on the home front in the period from just before
the War to immediately after. As a committed socialist Hulett was keen
to memorialise the struggle of the industrial workers of Glasgow, most
notably the contribution of revolutionary socialist John Maclean, one of
only two British political figures to have been immortalised on a stamp of
the Soviet Union. The songs follow Mclean’s story through his opposi-
tion to the War, neatly summed up in the lines ‘a bayonet is a weapon
with a working man at either end’, through his several periods of bru-
tal imprisonment to his early death in 1923. Especially effective because
of the brilliantly idiosyncratic fiddle work of Fairport Convention’s Dave
Swarbrick, the album is unashamed polemic but covers a little-explored
aspect of the War. So we have songs about the opposition to conscription
and, in the outstanding ‘Mrs Barbour’s Army’, the female-led rent strike
that forced the government into introducing controlled rents. Inevitably
the album somewhat swops one set of myths for another. Though Mclean
was lauded for his honest and courageous beliefs and 20,000 attended his
funeral this was not followed by great success through the ballot box and,
somewhat paradoxically, ‘Red Glasgow’ was also the most generous sup-
porter of wartime charities (Grant 2014, pp. 138–9).
With a few exceptions such as Hulett and Al Stewart, English and
American folk musicians have—even in recent times—been unable to
escape the straitjacket of myth. Mud, blood and futility are alive and well
in folk music—in sharp contrast to the great triumvirate of French chan-
sonniers we considered earlier in the chapter.
116 P. GRANT
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CHAPTER 6
Butcher’s Tales and Gunner’s Dreams
This chapter looks at ‘mainstream’ rock music from the 1960s to the pres-
ent day, together with progressive and experimental rock, punk and new
wave and, finally, jazz.
1960S ROCK IN BRITAIN AND THE USA

The development of rock has been well described by Robert Burns when
he suggested that ‘by the mid-1960s, the term “rock music” had become
a synonym for popular music that was influenced by blues revivalism while
remaining detached from the more commercial styles of popular music’
(Burns 2012, p. 120). This was the era of the ‘counterculture’ when the
received view is that the lyrical content of popular music changed and it
‘became a powerful medium through which to drum up political support’
(Shanti n.d.). It is, however, easy to exaggerate this imperative when, in the
USA in 1966 the bestselling album was not Revolver, Pet Sounds or Blonde
on Blonde but Whipped Cream and other Delights by Herb Alpert and
the Tijuana Brass and, in Britain in 1968, not Beggar’s Banquet, Electric
Ladyland or The Beatles ‘White Album’ but the soundtrack to The Sound
of Music. Nevertheless there is still some truth that ‘what made the 1960s
most remarkable […] was the fact that even chart-topping rockers like
The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Doors, and Creedence Clearwater
Revival contributed political songs to the mix’ and songs with quite radi-
cal lyrics, such as ‘Eve of Destruction’ in America or ‘Something in the

122 P. GRANT
Air’ in Britain, could top the singles’ charts (Pedelty and Weglarz 2013, p.
xvi). It seems unlikely that a call to ‘hand out the arms and ammo’ to start
the revolution would fare so well today. Despite the greater prominence
of political themes, politically oriented rock has been little studied by aca-
demics (Pedelty and Weglarz 2013, p. xi). Even so it is surprising just how
many mainstream artists have touched on the subject of the First World
War, some in a light-hearted way, others more seriously, and some of those
songs were very big sellers.
A prototype of these works was the American bubblegum pop act The
Royal Guardsmen in 1966. This was the height of the ‘British Invasion’
and the band even wore mock British Guards uniforms on stage. Their
hugely successful single ‘Snoopy vs the Red Baron’ reached number two
in the US, six in the UK and was based on the Peanuts cartoon strip and
Snoopy’s fantasy of battling against the famed fighter ace Manfred von
Richthofen, better known as the Red Baron after the colour of his plane.
With its catchy lyrics and chorus the song perfectly evokes the spirit of the
cartoon rather than the real person. The Baron has proved quite a popu-
lar subject with at least eight other versions of his career. There is God
Dethroned’s song on Under the Sign of the Iron Cross; an American heavy
metal version ‘Red Baron/Blue Max’ by Iced Earth (from The Glorious
Burden, 2004, SPV); another by Belgian speed metal band Iron Mask,
‘Shadow of the Red Baron’ (from their 2009 album of the same name,
Marquee/Avalon); and Billy Cobham’s jazz/rock instrumental (from
Spectrum, 1973, Atlantic). ‘Crimson Rider’ by German power metal art-
ists Masterplan (from Aeronautics, 2005, AFM) is a really strong example
with top-quality musicianship and though it starts by sounding as if it is
rather glorifying war by glamorising the life of the fighter ace its final cou-
plet asks ‘is it our destiny, killing our brothers?’ There are both Spanish,
Baron Rojo, and Brazilian, Barão Vermelho, rock bands named after the
Baron and the former’s song about him (from the album Larga Vida al
Rock and Roll, 1981, Bmg) concludes that if the Baron was living today
he would be the captain of a spaceship. Most recently Iron Maiden cel-
ebrated the Baron in the track ‘Death or Glory’ (from The Book of Souls,
2015, Parlophone). As a commercial pilot who also owns an aircraft main-
tenance business lead singer Bruce Dickinson has even flown a replica of
the Baron’s iconic Fokker Dr1 triplane at air shows and music festivals
(Hartmann 2014).
In Britain in the late 1960s two of the country’s finest, and most intel-
lectually stimulating, rock bands recorded songs about the War. The first
BUTCHER’S TALES AND GUNNER’S DREAMS 123
was the Zombies ‘Butcher’s Tale (Western Front 1914)’ which, rather like
the album on which it appeared Odessey [sic] and Oracle (1968, CBS),
is slightly mistitled. It is set in 1916 during the Battle of the Somme and
references to Gommecourt and Mametz Wood make it clear that we are
close to the opening day of the battle though not on 1 July itself. The
narrator who, symbolically, was a butcher in civilian life, is suffering from
shell shock. Though we are not told directly what becomes of him its tone
makes it clear he will not get his wish of going home. Like Dylan’s ‘With
God on Our Side’, ‘Butcher’s Tale’ takes issue with religion, specifically
the pro-war Anglican clergymen familiar from the poems of Sassoon or Oh
What a Lovely War. The track is also an outstanding example of the ‘sound
collages’ that followed in the wake of Sgt Pepper. The music is significantly
different to the soft, psychedelic rock of the rest of the album. The most
prominent instrument is a mellotron made to sound like an old-fashioned
harmonium, the kind often used in battlefield services. There are also
some sound effects that came from playing a Pierre Boulez album back-
wards and the high-pitch tone in the chorus was generated by engineer
Peter Vince ‘in a similar fashion to the tone used to align analogue tapes’
(Russo 2009, pp. 34–6; Palao 1998). The track is sung not by their usual
lead singer, the mellifluous Colin Blunstone, but by the much harsher
voiced Chris White, who also wrote the song. Alec Palao suggests that the
‘wheezing pedal organ echoes a desperate plea for life’ and Matt Kivel calls
it a ‘creepy war ballad’ suggesting that ‘The Zombies were taking chances
with instrumentation that no other band, Beatles aside, could dream up’
(Palao 1998; Kivel 2006). I would also agree with Jon Savage who sug-
gests that ‘this is a serious song about an extremely serious subject that
succeeds because of its restraint and complete synchronicity of form with
content, of music with lyric, of feeling with imagination’ (Savage 2011).
THE KINKS
An even more notable release came in the following year though from
a band who deliberately distanced themselves from the counterculture
(Gildart 2013, p. 133). The Kinks’ concept album Arthur (or the Decline
and Fall of the British Empire) (Pye) is, as the title suggests, nothing less
than an attempt to chart the story of post-war Britain (Kitts 2008, p. 131).
Andrew Palmer argues that songwriter Ray Davies was expressing ‘a self-
consciously eccentric Englishness [which] culminated in a uniquely direct
engagement with imperial decline’ (Palmer 2014, p. 211). The songs,
124 P. GRANT
originally intended to accompany a TV play written by Julian Mitchell

which was subsequently cancelled, tell the story of carpet layer Arthur who
was based on the Davies brothers’ real-life brother-in-law. ‘I was very close
to Arthur’, recalled Ray Davies, he was ‘a simple man, but he realised the
British Empire was fucked. His brother was shot and killed in the [First
World] war. Arthur realised that it was futile, that you could never get a
break in the British Empire’ (Rogan 1984, p. 104). Davies’ use of the
term ‘futile’ is interesting. He does not apply it to the War but instead to
the idea of fighting against the system. The album describes the England
that Arthur once knew including the emptiness of his superficially com-
fortable life and the promise of a new start in Australia for one of his sons.
It also extolls the resolve of the British people during the Second World
War (‘Mr. Churchill Says’); debates the privations of austerity Britain and,
in ‘Yes Sir, No Sir’ and ‘Some Mother’s Son’, engages with the meaning
of the First World War. ‘Yes Sir, No Sir’ tells of the individuality that is
left behind when the soldier volunteers, or is conscripted. With a refer-
ence to a contemporary War song Ray Davies skilfully sums up the plight
of the recruit, packing up his ambition in his old kit bag. It also exhibits
the 1960s contempt for authority and hints at the supposed indifference
of the higher command (Kitts 2008, p. 134). The music has both a mili-
taristic and old-fashioned feel with drum rolls and a brass band. The horn
section serves ‘as an appropriate backing to the song’s exchange of impe-
rial voices – the deceitful superior […] and the downtrodden soldier’,
whereas ‘the trumpets become, by turns, uplifting and ironic’ (Palmer
2014, p. 230 n23).
‘Some Mother’s Son’ is a more impressionistic, less direct or angry
song than ‘Butcher’s Tale’ or even ‘Yes Sir, No Sir’, concentrating on
the theme of loss: the lost innocence of the soldiers and the memories
of their families. As such it matches the album’s overwhelming theme of
nostalgia, which was not a common one in late 1960s rock music (Savage
1984, p. 114). Overall the album is complex and many voiced, far more
complex than other rock ‘operas’ of the period such as S.F. Sorrow, Tommy
or Quadrophenia, and ‘Davies literally voices all the characters, emphasiz-
ing their differences by adopting a range of vocal styles’ (Palmer 2014,
p. 217). Neither was Arthur a change of direction for the band, Davies
had previously satirised the English upper classes (‘A Well Respected
Man’, 1965) and commuters (‘Tin Soldier Man’, 1967) and sided with
workers (‘Dead End Street’, 1966). Their previous album The Kinks are
The Village Green Preservation Society was, especially in its wonderful title
track, referencing (among many other things) Desperate Dan, strawberry

jam, draught beer, Mrs Mopp and Sherlock Holmes, a full-blown expres-
sion of nostalgia for a lost England (Palmer 2014, p. 212).
Alan Moore suggests that ‘the Kinks became the most notable cele-
brators of mythical Englishness’ whereas Keith Gildart’s theory is that
‘Davies’s songs provide a significant historical source for making sense
of economic, political, social and cultural change in post-war England’
(Moore 2001, p. 101; Gildart 2013, p. 16). Davies has admitted to some
of the influences on Arthur including the ‘kitchen sink’ dramas of Alan
Sillitoe, Alan Plater, Tony Richardson and Ken Loach; Richardson’s
irreverent critique of Empire, The Charge of the Light Brigade, had been
released only the previous year (Palmer 2014, p. 213). However Davies’
is certainly not a consistent political viewpoint for, as Gildart has pointed
out, his politics have varied from patriotic, to socialist, to conservative, and
sometimes all three at once. Instead they are ‘rooted in a particular strand
of English working-class identity that was underpinned by a loose attach-
ment to the Labour Party and a strong connection to locality and com-
munity’ (Gildart 2013, p. 129). In this sense they are close to the outlook
of many working people of the 1914–18 period. Andrew Palmer has sug-
gested that Davies expresses ‘a curious mixture of lament for the Empire,
and diatribe against it’ and this ‘love-hate’ relationship with England will
also become apparent in the work of both Billy Chyldish and Polly Harvey
(Palmer 2014, p. 229 n16). However Davies’ particular form of nostal-
gic and anti-modernist ‘Englishness’ has distinct differences to Harvey
in particular and is far closer to the English Romantic art tradition as
well as the benign, romanticised socialism of George Orwell or, perhaps,
J. B. Priestley (Baxter-Moore 2006, pp. 145–65; Kraus 2006, pp. 201–12;
Gildart 2013, pp. 130 and 140). Like Orwell, Davies is a satirist if, ulti-
mately, an optimistic one who celebrates both England and its working
classes’ endurance and resourcefulness, the very qualities the First World
War brought out (Kitts 2008, p. 81).
Arthur was regarded highly by critics at the time, especially in the USA,
and also sold reasonably well. Perhaps more than any other band of the
period the Kinks ‘used popular music to make sense of the past and the
present in such a way that it connected with the record-buying public
in general and working-class youth in particular’ (Gildart 2013, p. 147).
In 1987 English band XTC released the second of two albums evoking
the heyday of 1960s psychedelia under their pseudonym The Dukes of
Stratosphear. They included the Kinks’ tribute ‘You’re a Good Man Albert
126 P. GRANT
Brown (Curse You Red Barrel)’ which is linked to the War both through
the comic reference to the Red Baron and in lines such as ‘brown was the
colour of the mud across the Somme; red was the blood you spilled upon
it’. In many ways the approach to the War on Arthur is the epitome of the
British War myth of the 1960s. It is not, however, a false or clichéd ver-
sion as, for example, those of Mike Harding or Sting. This is firstly because
the songs are a perfect evocation of the era in which they were written,
whereas Harding’s and Sting’s are outdated by at least 20 years. They are
also contained within a body of work that includes several albums, most
notably Village Green Preservation Society, which together make up one
of the most sustained examinations of England and the English character
ever attempted in any form of music, ‘a much richer and personalised
account […] than that provided by journalists and conventional com-
mentators’ (Gildart 2013, p. 128). These pieces are now attracting the
scholarly attention they deserve and Ray Davies is finally gaining some
recognition as popular music’s equivalent of George Orwell, even if when
asked ‘where are we as a nation’ he immediately replied ‘we don’t have
one’ (Simpson 2015).
THE BIG GUNS

Several of Britain’s biggest rock acts of the last 40 years have recorded
songs relating to the War. In 1982 Elton John included ‘All Quiet on the
Western Front’ on his album Jump Up! (Rocket). Though Bernie Taupin’s
lyrics have some links to the Remarque original they are rather ‘drowned
out’ by John’s theatrical delivery and Taupin later suggested that ‘it’s a
terrible, awful, disposable album’ (Hombach 2012, p. 455). Pink Floyd’s
‘The Gunner’s Dream’ (from The Final Cut, 1983, Harvest) is not one
of their best songs on what is also one of their weakest albums. This was
mainly due to the estrangement between the band members and, if it
had not been for contractual agreements, it might have been issued as a
Roger Waters’ solo work. It was the final album to feature writer and bass
guitarist Waters and was originally planned as a soundtrack for the 1982
film Pink Floyd—The Wall. With the outbreak of the Falklands War Waters
changed it into a critique of war and dedicated it to his father, a devout
Christian and Communist Party member, who was originally a consci-
entious objector but later became an officer in the Royal Fusiliers and
was killed at Anzio when his son was only five months old. The album is
therefore concerned mainly with the Second World War and the Falklands,
and ‘The Gunner’s Dream’ is set in the Second World War and told partly
from the point of view of an air force gunner shot down and parachuting
to earth. However its reference to ‘the corner of some foreign field’ also
gives it First World War credentials. It also cites ‘maniacs’ who ‘blow holes
in bandsmen by remote control’ which is a reference to the IRA Hyde
Park bombing of 1982. ‘The Gunner’s Dream’ itself is a world which is
at peace and where ‘no-one kills the children anymore’. The song’s senti-
ments are subtly expressed, as is so often the case with progressive rock
lyrics, and beautifully, if blandly, played, apart from a standout saxophone
solo. Though some critics praised the album rather more slated it. Mike
Diver lamented ‘rays of light are few and far between, and even on paper
the track titles – including “The Gunner’s Dream” and “Paranoid Eyes” –
suggest an arduous listen’ (Diver n.d.). It appeared in Q Magazine’s top-
ten list of most depressing records and Melody Maker called it ‘a milestone
in the history of awfulness’ (Blake 2008, p. 299). The accompanying
video, set in the present but with typically Floydian surrealistic touches,
includes a car radio announcement about the construction of a nuclear
fall-out shelter and images of the return of the Falklands taskforce on
TV. The album’s videos have the same characters appearing in each track,
including Maggie Thatcher herself. As an anti-war album The Final Cut
is bland and lacks the biting satire of Elvis Costello’s ‘Shipbuilding’ as a
comment on the Falklands conflict.
Waters returned to the War on his solo album Amused to Death in 1992
(Columbia) with greater impact. ‘The Ballad of Bill Hubbard’ uses the
oral testimony of First World War veteran Alfred ‘Raz’ Razzell describing
having to abandon his friend Bill Hubbard to die in no man’s land and
then, in a coda to the title track at the end of the album, tells how he saw
Hubbard’s name on the memorial to the missing at Arras 67 years later.
Raz’s recollections are accompanied by a plaintive instrumental with Jeff
Beck’s lead guitar prominent. Amused to Death is a more coherent, con-
centrated and bitter statement than The Final Cut and Waters utilises some
effective analogies such as when sports commentator Marv Albert narrates
a war like a game of basketball and with lines like ‘And the Germans killed
the Jews, and the Jews killed the Arabs, and Arabs killed the hostages, and
that is the news’ (in ‘Perfect Sense, Part 1’). John Garratt may well be
right that the album ‘could have been the Pink Floyd classic that wasn’t if
only Waters and David Gilmour could have sustained their working rela-
tionship a little longer’; yet Waters rather wears his research on his sleeve
and the lyrics lack the subtlety of Al Stewart and are also somewhat preten-
tious (Garratt 2015).
128 P. GRANT
Sting’s ‘Children’s Crusade’ appeared on the album Dream of the

Blue Turtles (1985, A & M). It draws on comparisons with the original
Children’s Crusade of 1212–13, a highly mythologised event which mod-
ern scholarship has recast as more of an ‘ambulatory youth-movement’ or
‘urban migration’ (Dickson 2008, pp. 79 and 127). Far from perishing
at the hands of evil slavers the crusaders ‘settled down in various cities
around Italy, some no doubt remaining poor, others finding new fortunes’
(Dickson 2008, p. 127). Sting compares the thirteenth century crusaders
with the volunteers of 1914, innocent children who are simply pawns in a
game. They end up enmeshed in barbed wire and dying in waves sent to
their deaths by ‘corpulent generals’ who are safely behind the lines. In an
interview disc from 1985, Sting said that:
‘Children’s Crusade’ is a fairly bitter song […] I realized this wasn’t the
only children’s crusade in history – there have been many. So I looked for
examples. And the examples in the song I used are the First World War,
where millions of young men, Germans, French, English, were killed for
reasons that even today we don t understand. A whole generation was wiped
out in a very foolish and cynical manner. (Annabelle n.d.)
There are several problems here. Firstly Sting takes an already mytholo-
gised event, the Children’s Crusade, which, if he had researched it in more
detail, does not work as a comparison. Secondly it suggests that those who
volunteered for the War were too young and naive to understand what
they were doing and that the entire War was totally futile. This clearly
follows one of the iconic myths of the War but is a highly distorted pic-
ture contradicted by all recent scholarship (Simkins 1988). Sting utilises
obvious stereotypes and then compounds his oversimplistic interpretation
with a final verse that draws parallels between the recruits of 1914 and
young heroin addicts. This is done through the link of the poppy but is
a comparison displaying the author’s cleverness rather than making a rel-
evant point. He explained that rich drug suppliers are ‘giving heroin away
to schoolchildren outside of the school gates, just to get them hooked’
(Annabelle n.d.). So we now have a modern urban myth piled on top of
two historical ones (Mann 2005; Cohen 2014, p. 49; Treadwell and Ayres
2014, p. 53). Also, at the risk of being pedantic, the Flanders Poppy,
papaver rhoeas, is entirely different from the opium poppy, papaver som-
niferum. As an example of how not to write a song about the First World
War, or any historical event for that matter, then ‘Children’s Crusade’ is a
prime candidate, myth piled upon myth, cliché upon cliché.
Harry Patch was the last surviving soldier known to have fought in the
trenches of the First World War. His autobiography, The Last Fighting
Tommy, was published in 2007 and musical accolades included Peter
Maxwell Davies’ The Five Acts of Harry Patch (2008) and a song from
the rock band Radiohead (Webber and Long 2014). ‘Harry Patch (In
Memory of)’ was inspired by ‘a very emotional interview with him’ in
2005. It was recorded shortly before Patch’s death in 2009 and released
as a downloadable single sold through the band’s website, with all pro-
ceeds donated to the Royal British Legion (Yorke 2009). The song is
certainly less obscure than many of Thom Yorke’s and dispenses with
Radiohead’s signature mix of rock and electronic instrumentation instead
featuring Yorke’s vocals against a relatively simple string arrangement by
Jonny Greenwood. The song comprises just eight lines chosen both to
emphasise Patch’s career and to give a more universal message, ending
with a warning for the future. Critical reception was generally good with
Marc Richardson comparing it musically to the work of British composer
Gavin Bryers and to Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings whose melancholy
strains have accompanied many films (Richardson 2010). Luke Lewis
in New Musical Express and Simon Vozick-Levinson in Entertainment
Weekly both saw resemblances with Wilfred Owen’s ‘Dulce et Decorum
Est’ (Lewis 2011; Vozick-Levinson 2009). Others reviewed the song less
favourably. Rob Harvilla thought it offered ‘nothing terribly earth-shat-
tering’ and disliked Yorke’s falsetto delivery which, he thought, ‘might
ruin your lunch’ whilst another critic compared Yorke unfavourably with
Jón ‘Jónsi’ Birgisson of Icelandic band Sigur Ros (Harvilla 2009; Malitz
2009). ‘Harry Patch’ is rather bland musically, though that might also be
a criticism of Radiohead in general, and the song therefore lacks power
or resonance. Perhaps the best that can be said about it is that the band’s
charitable gesture has raised significant sums for a worthy cause. What it
certainly does is play very strongly to the myths of the War, memorialising
Patch as its ultimate victim: ‘Patch’s life was reduced to key moments of
trauma. [He] became a kind of everyman, and [we] were invited not only
to venerate him, but to see [our]selves within him’ (Webber and Long
2014, p. 283). His iconic status was demonstrated in the popular press
through comments such as ‘[when] you shake Harry by the hand [you]
touch history’ and immortalised through accolades including Honorary
Degrees and poems from both past and present Poet Laureates (Ellam
2007). Explaining the reasons for writing his poem Andrew Motion said
it was because of ‘the heartjolting pictures of people like Harry floun-
130 P. GRANT
dering in the mud, or scrabbling over the lip of a trench and being shot
down. That’s why Harry and the few other survivors are so important to
us’ (Ellam 2007; Motion 2008). As Webber and Long suggest this placed
Patch, and a handful of other long-lived veterans, ‘within a set of tropes
that precluded any critical reflection’ (Webber and Long 2014, p. 278).
They suggest that final survivors such as Harry Patch are beyond criticism
which causes real problems for historians. However, in the mythologised
realms of popular culture, this is often a benefit (Webber and Long 2014,
p. 285). Patch, this time reciting lines from Laurence Binyon’s ‘For the
Fallen’, was utilised more effectively by English black metal band Imperial
Vengeance on the title track from their 2009 album At the Going Down
of the Sun (Candlelight). Here his frail voice, strongly emphasised by the
contrasting power of the band and vocalist C. Edward Alexander, provide
an aural metaphor for the ‘fading away’ of the Wartime generation.
PROGRESSIVE AND EXPERIMENTAL ROCK

With the possible exception of heavy metal (covered in the next chap-
ter) the popular music genre that has received most critical opprobrium
is progressive rock. It is often seen as escapist, pretentious and ‘inauthen-
tic’, mainly due to its lack of reference to the American blues tradition,
instead drawing on influences from European art music (Macan 1997,
pp. 167–78). Comments such as those of Lester Bangs on Emerson, Lake
and Palmer, ‘these guys amount to war criminals’ whose music befouled
‘all that was gutter pure in rock’, were not uncommon (Bangs 1974,
pp. 40 and 44). Other critics preferred more moderate condemnation
as when Simon Frith suggested, with no corroborating explanation, that
‘disco is a much richer musical genre than progressive rock’ (Frith 1987,
p. 134). This criticism is unjust; why does popular music have to avoid
escapism or the influence of art music? A similar criticism of films by, for
example, Busby Berkeley, George Lucas or Krzysztof Kieślowski would be
thought ridiculous.
Given the often complex nature of the themes explored by progres-
sive rock bands, especially their recourse to myth, it is not surprising to
find a number referencing the First World War, including IQ (‘Common
Ground’), Credo (Too Late… To Say Goodbye’) and Twelfth Night
(‘Sequences’) (Hegarty and Halliwell 2011, pp. 85–104; Macan 1997,
pp. 69–84; Lambe 2013, pp. 173–82). Comprising core members Paul
and Jack Davis and named after the group of 1920s philosophers chaired
by Moritz Schlick, Vienna Circle is clearly a band who take themselves

seriously. White Clouds (self-released in 2008) is highly ambitious, espe-
cially for a debut album, telling the story of a man who moves from south-
ern England to Germany in 1914. He becomes torn between his twin
allegiances after finding love in Germany but eventually returns home
to fight in the War. The band includes among their musical influences
the Beatles, Pink Floyd and Spock’s Beard founder Neal Morse. The last
two are certainly highly prominent in the style of the album which is at
its most effective in the ‘combat’ song ‘Conquered Air’, which mentions
the dates 5 and 6 August, though these do not easily relate to actual
battles in the War. The track ‘Argonne Wood’, which comprises archive
recordings of British and German veterans, offers some clues and would
appear to refer to the Meuse-Argonne offensive, though this took place in
September 1918. There may even be a suggestion that the protagonist is
shot for desertion at the end, as the penultimate track, ‘Her Green Eyes
Blew Goodbye’, contains the repeated refrain ‘I was trying to find my way
home, just trying to find my way home to you’, and ends with a heartbeat
followed by a rifle volley. The intent is deliberately enigmatic though the
album does seem to end more optimistically with the return of the title
track and the suggestion that the ‘white clouds beyond the hills’ may be
the better times coming after the War, or at least the return of hope. It is
an impressive debut with some excellent musicianship.
Scottish singer-songwriter Fish was lead singer and lyricist of the neo-
progressive band Marillion from 1981 until 1988 after which he pursued
a solo career. In 1994 his single ‘Fortunes of War’ linked boys’ war games
with their more deadly adult versions by allusion to historic battles. The
song begins at Waterloo but covers both world wars and deftly links the
First to Iraq in the line ‘desert storms and foreign fields’. In 2013 Fish’s
album A Feast of Consequences (Chocolate Frog) devoted half of its run-
ning time to a five-song suite based on the repeated attempts, during
the Battle of the Somme, to capture the Bois des Fourcaux, known to the
British infantry as High Wood in which at least 8,000 British and German
soldiers died. Both of Fish’s grandfathers fought for possession of the
wood and he said that it was a very personal project for which ‘I’ve never
done as much research […] as I’ve done on this’ (Fish 2013a). He also
visited the battlefields in 2011 and before writing the lyrics ‘storyboarded’
the songs assisted by his usual illustrator Mark Wilkinson. Wilkinson, who
also works with Iron Maiden, won the Storm Thorgerson Grand Design
Award at the 2014 Progressive Music Awards for his work on the album.
132 P. GRANT
The First World War element became more dominant as work progressed
and the result made Fish ‘more proud of this album than perhaps any
other piece of work that I’ve been involved with’ (Fish 2013b). Reviewer
Tim Hall concurred:
It starts with a picture of the battlefield in the present-day, with the sounds
of birds and agricultural machinery, before taking us back to terrible human
stories of the men who fought and died almost a century ago. The twists and
turns of the music through Celtic atmospherics and angry jagged riffs reflect
the initial enthusiasm of the recruits dashed against the horrors of war and
the ultimate futility of it all. Both musically and lyrically it's one of the most
powerfully moving things Fish has ever done. (Hall 2013)
As another reviewer suggests Fish mixes progressive rock, including

the use of what he terms ‘Zeppelin-esque guitars’, a reference to both
the band and the airships, with gentler folk-based elements (Bonfield
2013). Fish is a vocalist who adjusts his singing style to the subject of
the War and both this and the way he selects signifiers that fit the mood
he is trying to create reflect a more widely adopted use to which music
is put in remembrance (Anderson 2004, p. 7). Thus the image of the
‘iron harvest’, ploughed up each year by French farmers, is linked to the
shells which ‘gouged dark’ the same ‘golden fields’ in a ‘lethal iron cur-
tain’. Fish is certainly at his most effective, though somewhat verbose,
in the first two songs, ‘High Wood’ and ‘Crucifix Corner’, that link
past and present and strongly evoke the ‘site of memory’ of the wood
itself. ‘The Gathering’ is a song that covers both volunteering where,
somewhat inevitably, the recruits are told that ‘God’s on our side’, and
loss. It reflects many similar folk ballads on this theme, perhaps most
notably ‘Beaumont’s Light Horse’ and ‘Gresford Disaster’ about the
mine explosion near Wrexham in 1934 that cost 266 colliers their lives
(Bell 1812, p. 85).
The suite ends with ‘The Leaving’, taking us to end of the War and
‘a reminder of the carnage left behind […] Sweet strings over insisted
chopped keys, kept respectfully low in the mix. The lyrics paint an all too
visual picture of the landscape left behind’ (Bonfield 2013). There are
some fine moments and outstanding musicianship but the ‘High Wood
Suite’, whilst honourable and well-meaning, is rather too mythologised.
In his lyrics skylarks sing, offensives bog down, no one emerges victori-
ous and the men are all traumatised by their experience. Fish sticks too
rigidly to the idea that the recruits did not know what they were signing
up for and his stage comments about the Pals battalions are the ‘Mike
Harding’ version (Fish 2013c). Nevertheless the ‘High Wood Suite’ is a
serious attempt to get to grips with its subject and is an excellent example
both of the influence of personal memory in popular music and of ‘sites
of memory’. Prog aficionado and newsreader Gavin Esler recalled how he
once joined in with ‘an impassioned debate’ between Fish and two mem-
bers of Genesis ‘about the influence of the Battle of the Somme on morale
among French, British and German troops. Be as rude as you like about
prog rock, but you don’t get that at a Beyoncé concert’ (Esler 2014).
Welshman John Cale’s music has always been hard to categorise. After
studying at Goldsmith’s College in London Cale moved to the USA where
he collaborated with avant-garde pioneers John Cage and Le Monte Young.
In 1963, Cale and Cage participated in an 18-hour piano-playing mara-
thon of the first full-length performance of Erik Satie’s Vexations, often
considered the first ‘minimalist’ work. In early 1965 Cale co-founded the
Velvet Underground with Lou Reed, remaining with them for their first
two albums, before musical differences with Reed led to his departure in
1968. His solo career had already included a collaboration with another
minimalist pioneer Terry Riley (Church of Anthrax) before the produc-
tion of Paris 1919 in 1973 (Reprise). Musically the album was a shift away
from the avant-garde towards a lush baroque pop style and ‘the strings of
the UCLA Symphony Orchestra are used to magnificent effect’ (Holden
1973). The album’s title relates to the Versailles Peace Conference and
it’s subject ‘is nothing less than the entirety of Western European high
culture, viewed roughly from a post-World War I, Dada-Surrealist per-
spective […] an epic reassessment of history’ (Holden 1973). With such
influences its lyrics are unsurprisingly abstruse and therefore, despite many
geographic allusions and lively character depictions, it is difficult to deter-
mine whether the album’s references are historical, personal or merely
intended to evoke a mood. Thus ‘on the elegiac “Half Past France”, it is
left ambiguous whether the song’s narrator is a battle-weary WWI soldier
returning from the front, or simply an exhausted touring musician won-
dering where exactly on the map he is’ (Murphy 2006). A contemporary
review in Rolling Stone reveals both the highbrow, and somewhat preten-
tious, nature of both album and review when it says that Cale’s ‘cerebra-
tions are as Romantic as they are anti-Romantic, perhaps more the former,
since the music finally impels us to take him very seriously. Wit, humor and
irony are here in abundance. So too are metaphysical contemplation and
134 P. GRANT
sadness’ (Holden 1973). Overall Holden considered that Paris 1919 ‘is
one of the most ambitious albums ever released under the name of “pop”
[it] comes far closer to being a finished work of art than any previous
attempt to effect a rock-classical synthesis’ (Holden 1973). As might be
inferred from the above quotes Paris 1919 probably tries too hard to be an
‘art object’ and Holden’s summary should be somewhat discounted given
the passage of more than 40 years though Gray Taylor’s that it ‘could be
the greatest Welsh rock album ever made’ may still be defendable (Taylor
2013).
At the borders of popular music lies Mark Hollis’s self-titled solo
album (1998, Polydor). The former Talk, Talk lead singer extended his
distance from his early synth pop days by recording an album that has
been called ‘quite possibly the most quiet and intimate record ever made,
each song cut to the bone for maximum emotional impact and every note
carrying enormous meaning’ (Ankeny, nd). The album’s centrepiece, ‘A
Life (1895–1915)’ is based on Roland Leighton, fiancé of Vera Brittain,
though also intended to be more universal. As Hollis has stated in an
interview, ‘it’s the expectation that must have been in existence at the turn
of the century, the patriotism that must’ve existed at the start of the war
and the disillusionment that must’ve come immediately afterwards. It’s
the very severe mood swings that fascinated me’ (Beaumont 1998). Both
music and lyrics are sparse, with an NME reviewer suggesting that ‘“A Life
(1895–1915)” sounds like the apes from 2001: A Space Odyssey having
their first clarinet lessons. It is essentially eight minutes of atonal wood-
wind chirping, a gentle piano groove and a tambourine player slowly fall-
ing asleep three miles away. The “lyrics” consist of a slight moaning, like
a rather damp hangover’ (Beaumont 1998). Comprising just 14 words
the lyric is similar to a Japanese haiku and the music, which is entirely
acoustic, is also reminiscent of gagaku, classical Japanese music, though
neither haiku nor gagaku are actually imitated in the song. Other review-
ers compared the album to Nick Drake’s sparse and haunting final work
Pink Moon though I would reject the comparison as there is a psychologi-
cal gulf between them (Sclorosis 2008; Sirota 2008). Drake’s sparseness
was compulsive, hardly a conscious choice for an artist struggling with
his inner demons, whereas Hollis’s is a calculated artistic decision. Hollis
explained this choice by saying ‘the minute you work with just acoustic
instruments, by virtue of the fact that they’ve already existed for hundreds
of years they can’t date… I’d like to make music that can exist outside the
timeframe… working with instruments that by their nature don’t exist in
a time period’ (Young 2010, p. 583). Despite extravagant claims for the
album it is perhaps too sparse and too extended to make the impact it aims
for and Hollis is in the full grip of the myth that naive patriotism in 1914
turned to bitter disillusion.
ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES: NEW WAVE AND BEYOND

Punk, like rap, tends to deal with contemporary socio-political topics
rather than historic ones and, though there are still around 100 examples,
punk and new wave artists have not been as drawn to the First World
War as a topic as have their counterparts in folk or metal. French punk
bands have covered the War in some detail, notably Creve Tambour—on
their album Destination (2011)—and the prolific band Paris Violence, and
there are other notable examples even from the early days of the genres.
Siouxsie and the Banshees’ ‘Poppy Day’ is covered in Chapter 9 but their
British contemporaries the Clash also touched on the subject in the track
‘Something about England’ from their massive triple album Sandinista!
(1980, CBS, the album also contains the instrumental ‘Mensforth
Hill’ which comprises the music of ‘Something about England’ played
backwards). The Clash were always the most political of the successful
new wave bands and the album’s title (and catalogue number FSLN1)
demonstrated their support for the Nicaraguan revolution which had
overthrown the Somoza dictatorship the previous year. Though not as
radical as ‘Washington Blues’ on the same album, which lends support
for liberation movements in Cuba, Chile, Afghanistan and Tibet as well
as Nicaragua, ‘Something about England’ is still a highly political song.
It is something of a parallel to the Kinks’ Arthur as it covers the history
of imperialist England from the First World War to the present day. The
War itself is only briefly mentioned as the narrator tells us, ‘I missed the
fourteen-eighteen war. But not the sorrow afterwards’, but is alluded to
in the aftermath of 1945 when ‘the few returned to old Piccadilly [and]
we limped around Leicester Square’. Overall the track is more an attack
on the British class system and racism than a critique of the War. It is the
opening verse that gives ‘Something about England’ its real strength. The
lyric ‘They say immigrants steal the hubcaps of the respected gentlemen/
They say it would be wine an' roses if England were for Englishmen again’
remains as relevant today as when it was written 35 years ago. Musically
the album was highly innovative, strongly influenced by the work of Lee
‘Scratch’ Perry and anticipated future trends in world music. It combined
136 P. GRANT
funk, reggae, jazz, gospel, rockabilly, folk, dub, r and b, calypso and rap
and Dave Marsh considered that both the album’s topic and sound were
years ahead of its time (Marsh 1999, p. 78). On similar lines Pedelty and
Weglarz comment on the potential influence the band’s politics had when
they suggest ‘the idea that rock could be about more than sex, romance,
and celebration was new to the bored youth who made up the Clash’s
fan base’ (Pedelty and Weglarz 2013, p. xiii). Whilst this argument has
merits I am not convinced that the topic of the album was that innova-
tive, that there is convincing evidence about the makeup of their fan base
nor that these fans were as politically naïve as Pedelty and Weglarz sug-
gest. What is clear is that with both Sandinista! and the Clash’s previous
album, London Calling, the band cemented their credibility and critical
status. Both albums feature in Rolling Stone’s list of the ‘500 Greatest’ and
Sandinista! was Village Voice’s ‘album of the year’. There is no doubting
the importance and influence of the Clash nor the incisiveness of their
critique in ‘Something about England’ however they do suffer from the
same over-earnestness we noted with regard to Jacques Brel and some of
their supporters go too far in their hagiography. In his review of the album
Robert Christgau declared ‘I think – they must be, er, the world’s great-
est rock and roll band’ and Lester Bangs claimed ‘The Clash are authentic
because their music carries such brutal conviction’, remarks that are in dra-
matic contrast to theirs on progressive rock (Christgau 1981; Bangs 1988,
p. 227). Both are guilty of hyperbole and are seduced by the Clash’s ‘street
credentials’, especially in their debt to black music genres such as dub and
reggae. Their entire ‘authenticity’ argument is a determinist metanarra-
tive that gives critical legitimacy to what are simple prejudices (Barker and
Taylor 2007). After all Joe Strummer was the son of a diplomat whereas
Keith Emerson grew up in a council house.
Elsewhere the rock music scene is populated by a number of artists
who, though recognised as hugely talented and influential, have never
made the impression on the record-buying public their undoubted merits
deserve. Whether by design or, sometimes, by wilful perversity they often
defy classification and just at the point their fans or, more usually, their
record companies think they are on the verge of a ‘breakthrough’ they
produce an abrupt change of style or an album deemed ‘uncommercial’.
Both Roy Harper and Richard Thompson fit this pattern. Known for his
distinctive fingerstyle playing and lengthy, lyrical, complex compositions,
a result of his love of jazz and Keats, Harper’s influence has been acknowl-
edged by many including Led Zeppelin (in the song ‘Hats Off to (Roy)
Harper’), the Who, Kate Bush and Pink Floyd (for whom he sang lead
vocals on ‘Have a Cigar’ from Wish You Were Here). Ian Anderson of
Jethro Tull has said that Harper was his ‘primary influence as an acoustic
guitarist and songwriter’ and Guardian critic Alexis Petridis has called
him ‘the most original, and the most underrated of the singer-songwriters
who followed the 60s folk boom’ (Anderson 2006; Petridis 2011a). More
recently, Harper’s influence has spread across the Atlantic and is acknowl-
edged by both Seattle-based acoustic band Fleet Foxes and Californian
harpist Joanna Newsom, with whom Harper has also toured.
Released in 1980 The Unknown Soldier was Harper’s tenth album and
is best known for the songs ‘You’, a duet with Kate Bush, and ‘Short and
Sweet’ on which David Gilmour provides lead guitar. The title track was
the result of a trip Harper made to Verdun and its ossuary. Describing
the impact as ‘devastating’ Harper recalled that ‘I can’t remember the
journey home, except for its silence’ (Harper n.d.). He has described the
track as ‘a song for children’ and in it he takes on the persona of an old
soldier or rather a mythical soldier from across several wars as he conflates
them all as leading towards doomsday. There is also a suggestion that the
character is an incarnation of death himself (Sutherland n.d.). Though the
song is anti-war it is certainly not pacifist as Harper vows that, given the
opportunity he would hunt down those who perpetrate war ‘like a tiger’
and tear them to shreds after which ‘me and the kids we’d feed you to the
dead’. The song is strongly in the tradition of Owen, Dylan and, especially,
Sassoon in this respect. It plays with the myths of the War without, at any
point, succumbing to them.
Music critics often ask the question ‘why is Richard Thompson not bet-
ter known?’ His albums consistently receive the highest praise, he won the
Orville H. Gibson award for best acoustic guitar player in 1991 and his
song writing earned him an Ivor Novello Award. He stands at number 19
on Rolling Stone’s list of greatest guitarists and tenth in Mojo’s. His style
of playing is hugely admired and his songs have been widely recorded;
nonetheless he remains a peripheral figure in comparison to other singer-
songwriters such as Dylan, Neil Young and Paul Simon. Yet in many ways
he eclipses these artists. He is a superior musician to Dylan and Simon
and his output has sustained the highest calibre which is more than can be
said for the others who have all gone through ‘fallow’ periods. The lack
of recognition, or at least huge sales, is partly down to the content of his
songs which do tend towards the pessimistic and downbeat, and also to
his ‘Britishness’. Despite living in California since 1985 he has agreed that
138 P. GRANT
‘I’m not remotely American’ and that living there has had zero influence
(Varga 2013). As the son of a Scot brought up in London his references to
the different musics of Britain are numerous, whether in ‘imitation’ of tra-
ditional folk songs (‘Crazy Man Michael’), classical (‘Roll Over Vaughan
Williams’) or Scottish dance music (‘Don’t Sit on My Jimmy Shands’).
Thompson’s comments on the music of Vaughan Williams is revealing
both about the composer’s work but also his own:
A lot of people who are not English see much of English music as sentimen-
tal and nostalgic, but that’s the essence of the music and you need to accept
that as part of the style. But there’s a thing in Vaughan-Williams, he almost
personifies it, that you have to go back to go forwards. (Palmer 2007)
Thompson has a deep understanding and reverence for the history of

English music. He believes that it is important for an artist to understand
where their own particular style has come from in order fully to reinterpret
that history into a new synthesis of musical expression; in other words he
is articulating a dialogical approach in his work.
Thompson has been accused of being over-pessimistic, which is a sim-
plification. His viewpoint is better described as a darkly humorous melan-
choly and Thompson is perfectly capable of writing upbeat or humorous
songs, though they often contain a ‘sting in the tail’ (‘Dragging the
River’ or ‘Feel So Good’) as well as ‘straight’ rock songs (‘Can’t Win’
or ‘Cooksferry Queen’). Many of Thompson’s songs are narratives and
he has the ability to condense entire life histories into just three or four
verses. ‘I start out to write stories’ he has explained, ‘the particulars of
the song might be fictional, but the core of it can be very real. It’s some-
times hard to find the dividing line if you’re writing… It’s fictional and
personal’ (Varga 2013). His most successful songs follow this pattern,
including ‘Beeswing’, ‘Devonside’ and ‘A Love You Can’t Survive’, and
are among the very finest of their type from any performer. Another is
‘The Woods of Darney’ (from You? Me? Us? 1996, Capitol) and though
not perhaps in the very highest league of Thompson’s narrative songs it
is still deeply affecting. It describes a French soldier who finds a wedding
photo on the body of a comrade. He seeks out the dead soldier’s widow
and has a relationship with her, but both are haunted by the presence of
her dead husband. The soldier has to return to the front where ‘I’ll carry
your picture, the one that he carried/I’ll wear your innocence and take
my chance’. Even for Thompson this is a very doom-laden song in which
the soldier’s fate is predetermined as he suggests that both men end up

lying ‘in the darkness together, with your love to bind us, in the woods of
Darney’. Here Thompson plays with the idea of the innocence of the sol-
diers, instead placing it on the shoulders of the young widow. Thompson
has said of the song that ‘war is a very predominant twentieth century
theme. From the perspective of the ’90s, we almost forget that this has
been a century of cataclysmic wars – two huge world wars that changed
the world tremendously, and people’s lives. It’s important to reflect that in
songs’ (Thompson n.d.). Thompson also wrote and recorded ‘Al Bowlly’s
in Heaven’, the perfect Second World War companion piece to ‘And the
Band Played Waltzing Matilda’. Bowlly was one of the most popular sing-
ers of his day and was killed during the Blitz in 1941 but the song is about
a disillusioned, unemployed veteran who looks back with bitterness to
his wartime womanising. Thompson’s biographer compares its anti-war
message to Elvis Costello’s ‘Shipbuilding’ calling it ‘one of Thompson’s
most enduring and haunting songs’ and he certainly performs it far more
frequently than the ‘Woods of Darney’ (Humphries 1996, p. 249).
JAZZ
The War has not featured prominently in jazz recordings, with 46 of just
49 songs coming from two concept albums recorded 35 years apart. The
first was Mike Westbrook’s ‘gigantic anti-war symphony’ Marching Song
(Deram) which was also the first concept album based on the War (Clayton
1969). The album was recorded in spring 1969 following the piece’s
acclaimed premiere at the Camden Arts Festival. Originally two-and-a-half
hours long it was trimmed to one hour forty minutes to fit onto two LPs
and was equally well received. Westbrook said it had been inspired by an
especially disturbing nightmare in which he found himself in the midst of a
bloody battle but that he was ‘also influenced to some extent by my experi-
ence of national service in Germany in the early fifties’ (Hennessey 2009;
Heining 2012, p. 313). Significant sections were freely improvised, though
linked through ‘Westbrook’s artistic and authorial intentions’ (Heining
2012, p. 305). Mike Hennessey describes it as a ‘tumultuous, turbulent
work’ intended as ‘a portrayal of a country at war. It is about national pride,
pomp and patriotism, about death, destruction and devastation and then
the grim desolation of war’s aftermath’ (Hennessey 2009). The work opens
with ‘Hooray!’ which the original sleeve notes describe thus: ‘Through the
city streets the crowd cheers its heroes, off to the glory of war, young,
140 P. GRANT
invincible, drunk with patriotic pride, gleaming in the sun’ (Marching

Song, 1969). Several of the tracks are concerned with evoking the land-
scape through which the soldiers march, live and fight, making it an early
example of music which seeks to depict sites of memory before, in the title
track, the drums set a quick march tempo leading into the 12-bar theme of
‘Marching Song’ itself, which gets more and more frenzied as it progresses
(Hennessey 2009). There are similarities here with the ‘invasion theme’
from the first movement of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 in C major,
the Leningrad and indeed Heining suggests that Marching Song should be
placed within the category of ‘programme music’ to which the Leningrad
clearly belongs (Heining 2012, p. 305). Heining also identifies musical par-
allels with Haydn’s Missa in tempore belli, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis and,
in its use of birdsong, Vaughan Williams’s Lark Ascending (Heining 2012,
pp. 306–7). Later tracks are intended to convey the impression that ‘death
is not the heroic gesture, but a protracted, ignoble struggle to hold on to
life’, which very much matches the mood of several well-known war novels
and films, notably Henri Barbusse’s Le Feu (Under Fire), Ernst Jünger’s In
Stahlgewittern (Storm of Steel) and G. W. Pabst’s 1930 film Westfront 1918
(Vier von der Infanterie) (Marching Song, 1969). ‘Conflict’ is ‘an unre-
lenting orchestral assault’ that ‘aims to represent sonically the sounds of
battle and, perhaps, the emotional responses of those caught up in its vio-
lence’ and the work concludes with ‘Memorial’ a distorted pastiche of ‘God
Save the Queen’, an approach also utilised around the same time by Jimi
Hendrix with ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ (Hennessey 2009; Heining 2012,
p. 305). In these final two tracks Westbrook produces effects that are no
less disturbing than those of modern German industrial band Einstürzende
Neubauten described in the following chapter. Sunday Times critic Derek
Jewell described Marching Song as ‘the most moving, engaging and deeply
satisfying extended jazz composition ever to come out of this country’.
Others were even more gushing, with Canadian Barry Tepperman suggest-
ing in Coda magazine that Marching Song was ‘the supreme achievement in
jazz composition and arrangement to date’ (Hennessey 2009).
Heining aptly suggests that ‘Westbrook’s eye is that of a painter, as well
as a composer’ and he makes a connection with two of the best known
British painters of the War, Richard Nevinson and Paul Nash, suggesting all
three depict the soldiers as being ‘anonymous instruments in the conflict’
(Westbrook quoted by Heining 2012, p. 316). Westbrook asks questions
such as ‘how can anything grow again here? How can men forget?’ and
criticises tidying up the former battlefields ‘with a slab of stone, a flower
wreath, a row of ribbons on a cripple’s chest’ or a brass band simply hid-

ing ‘the screams of the dead’ (Heining 2012, p. 318). These parallels only
strengthen the linkage with landscape and Westbrook also comments that
‘human events are no more than momentary interruptions in the earth’s
cycle’, the same idea expressed by PJ Harvey in ‘On Battleship Hill’ dis-
cussed in Chapter 10. Marching Song is certainly a remarkable achieve-
ment, especially for its time, even if its sentiments are, unlike Harvey’s of
42 years later, firmly within the British war myth, after all it was recorded
in the year Attenborough’s film version of Oh! What a Lovely War was
released. Heining’s closing remark that ‘ultimately, both Marching Song and
Westbrook’s commentary find an echo in Paul Fussell’s The Great War and
Modern Memory’ is entirely apposite for both positive and negative reasons.
In 2004 American jazz pianist Bill Carrothers adopted a different approach
to Westbrook by adapting and updating a group of songs from the War
itself. On his double-CD release Armistice 1918 (Sketch) there are versions
of, among others, ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’, ‘Keep the Home Fires
Burning’, ‘Roses of Picardy’ and ‘There’s a Long, Long Trail a Winding’.
The second disc mainly comprises material written by Carrothers himself and
the whole is divided into three parts starting with a couple whose lives are
torn apart when he goes off to war (sung by Carrothers wife, Peg). It moves
on to life and death in the trenches and finally the Armistice. Carrothers stated
that ‘I’m trying to tell a story of that process, from the relative innocence of
1914 to the wasteland of November 11, 1918’ (Hamilton, n.d.). Armistice
1918 won the 2004 Grand Prix du Disque for jazz awarded by the Académie
Charles-Cros and also appeared in a number of jazz media ‘top tens’ that year.
In his review on AllAboutJazz.com Chris May called the album ‘understated,
reflective and at times almost unbearably poignant’ (May n.d.). I would agree
with the first two comments though not entirely the last. Part of the reason
is whether you consider the jazz trio arrangements (the other two musicians
are string bassist Drew Gress and drummer Bill Stewart) add anything to the
strength of the original songs and also if you warm to Peg Carrothers’s vocals.
Then there is the rather oversimplistic ‘innocence to disillusion’ progression,
which fails to capture the subtleties some other compositions on the War
achieve. Nevertheless Armistice 1918 is a hugely ambitious album, one of few
that attempt a survey of the entire War. If it ultimately falls somewhat short in
this ambition it is at least a heroic failure.
With a few notable exceptions the approach taken by the musicians
and critics covered in this chapter follow well-worn myths of the War.
It is very noticeable how often words like ‘innocence’, ‘disillusion’ and
142 P. GRANT
‘futility’ occur. In the next chapter we look at genres at the more extreme
end of the popular music spectrum and encounter a significantly different
perspective.
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Aug 2009.
Young, R. (2010). Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s visionary music. London:
Faber and Faber.
CHAPTER 7
Shrill Demented Choirs
This chapter covers music usually seen as being at the ‘extremes’ of popu-
lar music, industrial and heavy metal, owing both to their sonic nature and
to the transgressive themes they address.
TRIBUTE OR TRAVESTY? NEOFOLK AND MARTIAL

INDUSTRIAL MUSIC
According to a recent article in The Times martial industrial music is the
‘most niche’ of the 1,371 genres classified by Spotify (Dean 2015). Yet
the huge increase in the number of songs relating to the First World War
since the millennium is largely down to the emergence of the martial
industrial and neofolk genres. Though musically different martial indus-
trial and neofolk are often conflated, with parallels also drawn with black
metal by some writers, owing to the supposed right-wing ideologies of all
three (Granholm 2011). Although there were neofolk and martial indus-
trial bands, including Sol Invictus and Blood Axis, operating earlier, their
exponential rise dates from the mid-2000s. Their precursor, industrial
music, emerged in the mid-1970s with the founding of Industrial Records
by the band Throbbing Gristle and is a style of experimental music that
draws on transgressive and provocative themes. Martial industrial com-
positions often borrow from classical or neoclassical music, though more
frequently from traditional European marches. Martial industrial music
mixes these themes with elements of industrial and dark ambient music—a

148 P. GRANT
subgenre of ambient music that features foreboding, ominous or discor-

dant overtones—that produce an electronic wash of sound dominated by
military themes and which utilise spoken (often historical) dialogue. Many
martial industrial ‘songs’ about the First World War include contempo-
rary speeches or modern historical commentaries (giving casualty figures
for example) or rework well-known contemporary songs such as ‘It’s a
Long Way to Tipperary’ or ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’. Neofolk
emerged from post-industrial music, though with influences as diverse as
Shirley Collins, Comus (a British psychedelic/progressive folk band of the
1960s), Scott Walker, Nico-era Velvet Underground and the post-Velvets
experiments of Lou Reed (Webb 2007, pp. 61–2). Neofolk features tra-
ditional, mainly acoustic, instrumentation as opposed to the electronically
dominated industrial genres (Webb 2012).
Extreme metal, neofolk and martial industrial music have raised contro-
versy owing to the political stance of some of the bands, the iconography
they utilise and the content of some of the music. There are left-of-centre
martial industrial artists (an early example from the UK was Test Dept.)
and the majority purport to be apolitical, but there are others who have
adopted fascist or Nazi elements, either in their artwork or track titles.
Whilst there are some musical subgenres who define themselves as politi-
cally extreme, such as White Noise or National Socialist Black Metal, label-
ling an entire musical genre politically is problematical (Davisson 2010).
Martial industrial music may not be intrinsically a ‘fascist musical genre’
but can it still be a cultural reflection of fascism? Anton Shekhovtsov uses
the term ‘apoliteic music’ to describe the phenomena, ‘a type of music in
which the ideological message contains obvious or veiled references to the
core elements of fascism but is simultaneously detached from any practical
attempt to implement that message through political activity’ (Shekhovtsov
2009, p. 439). Neofolk themes are often drawn from old Germanic and
Scandinavian mythology, a trend shared by black metal, and martial indus-
trial music often depicts a highly idealised and mythologised concept of
Europe and its pre-Christian past. With some exceptions neofolk and mar-
tial industrial music are of European provenance, more specifically central
European. They reflect very specific interpretations of national myth and
are dominant in the countries who were not among the ‘winners’ in the
First World War, including both the Netherlands, who remained neutral,
and Italy, who gained little from the peace settlement. Martial industrial
historical topics tend to be drawn from more recent European history
than those of extreme metal, hence its fascination with the First World
SHRILL DEMENTED CHOIRS 149
War. It is here that one finds some of the most direct depictions of nation-
alist war myths in all popular music, though often ones that are now seen
as misguided or marginal. In this depiction the two world wars are seen
as lost European civil wars (with the USA being the ultimate victor) and
‘the theme of Europe’s death is represented in mournful images of cem-
etery sculptures, doleful people with bent heads, dead soldiers and their
personal belongings, abandoned battlefields and trenches’ (Shekhovtsov
2009, p. 447). This imagery is highly prominent in the three-volume CD
Tribute to the Dead Soldiers released in 2009 (La Caverne du Dragon)
comprising over 70 tracks from nearly as many bands. Though many mar-
tial industrial and even more neofolk artists would resent being depicted
as popularisers of fascism, others have dabbled openly in extreme poli-
tics. British artist Tony Wakeford, whose bands include Sol Invictus and
Duo Noir, is a former member of both the Socialist Workers Party (SWP)
and the National Front (Webb 2007, p. 71). Songs about the Second
World War and the death camps featured in Wakeford’s previous band
Crisis, and his work with folk musician Andrew King as Duo Noir on the
album Sintra (2010, Neo) includes musical settings of Kipling’s poems
‘Gethsemane’ and ‘Recessional’. Wakeford has said that ‘the politics came
before the music […] I was a socialist and I was a skinhead and let’s say I
had rather traditional views on Race and certain things like that’ (Webb
2007, pp. 71–3). Wakeford also commented that ‘ideologies and music
are very uncomfortable bedfellows’ and the Sol Invictus booklet for the
album Eleven discusses the futility of war and contains quotes from Rosa
Luxemburg and Albert Camus as well as Ezra Pound. However there is
still something unsettling about both his politics and his interpretation of
the European war myths of the twentieth century.
An especially interesting, and ambiguous, early martial industrial album
is The Gospel of Inhumanity by one of the few American bands in this
genre, Blood Axis (1995, Misanthropy). As with the majority of martial
industrial ‘bands’ Blood Axis is mainly the work of a single individual,
Michael Moynihan. This is a characteristic the genre shares with many
neofolk and several black metal bands, and one reason for the rise of these
genres is the development of digital technology making it possible for a
single individual to record entire albums at low cost outside of traditional
recording studios. This is certainly a positive aspect of these genres and the
means of production of their music can be seen as something of an antidote
to the mainstream. Webb suggests that the ability to self-produce means
‘the neo-folk milieu shows the way in which art and music production
150 P. GRANT
can provide a temporary autonomous zone in which ideas, practices, and

understandings can be developed and forged away from mainstream cul-
tural reference points’ (Webb 2007, p. 105). The Gospel of Inhumanity
opens with the final sequence of the original film of The Wickerman, fuses
the music of J. S. Bach and Prokofiev with modern electronics, and fea-
tures readings from Ezra Pound’s Cantos, as well as Nietzsche, Longfellow
and, in the track ‘Storm of Steel’, Ernst Jünger. The Gospel of Inhumanity
clearly reflects its creator’s obsessions and is difficult to locate politically,
probably ‘authoritarian’ and ‘libertarian’ best sum it up.
Some writers have depicted neofolk as being in the tradition of progres-
sive rock music, ‘a properly progressive fusion’ as Hegarty and Halliwell
put it (Hegarty and Halliwell 2011, p. 246). This leads them to dismiss
some of the more ‘political’ elements of the genre by suggesting that ‘the
ambiguous use of Nazi imagery by these bands [is] a means of opening a
crack through which shock value can expose widespread social violence’
(Hegarty and Halliwell 2011, p. 247). While this may be true of the main
neofolk band they discuss, Current 93, it is an insufficient explanation for
others, indeed something of a dismissive apology. Webb attempts to justify
Tony Wakeford’s former membership of the National Front in a similar
fashion by suggesting that ‘Tony’s gravitation towards the National Front
can be explained by the chaos and upheaval of the time and the experi-
ences he was going through’ and goes on to ‘explain’ how ‘anti-capitalist’
the National Front was (Webb 2007, p. 85). He further claims that fascist
imagery and themes were used ‘as juxtapositions and collage effects’ to
make a mark on a society that had ‘become intellectually and artistically
depthless and insipid’ (Webb 2007, p. 80). This is a tenuous argument
and, though it might have been true of the way some punk bands and fans
utilised fascist imagery in the 1970s, Wakeford and others take it much
further. The fact that he could be in the SWP and simultaneously express
racist opinions is revealing and disturbing.
One of the less problematic neofolk songs is ‘The Bowmen’ by French
band Pale Roses, comprising Arnaud Spitz and Benoit Sangoi. Sung
in English it takes its title and content from the short story by Arthur
Machen published in the Evening News and inspired by accounts that he
had read of the fighting at Mons. It described phantom bowmen from
Henry V’s army, summoned by a soldier calling on St George, destroying
their German attackers and became the basis for the legend of ‘The Angel
(or Angels) of Mons’. The song builds on the myth bringing in references
to German romantic poet Friedrich Hölderlin and Ernst Jünger. Spitz has
said of the band that ‘we draw inspiration from History (first and second
world wars), Mythology (Celtic, Norse or Greek), Fantasy [Pale Roses was
a short story by Michael Moorcock] and popular ballads (especially British
murder ballads)’ (Pale Roses n.d.). Their sound, comprising pastoral gui-
tar arpeggios, melodic bass lines plus some piano, is in the style of 1970s
British progressive folk band Spirogyra or American Tom Rapp’s psyche-
delic folk outfit of the same period, Pearls Before Swine. In 2016 Pale
Roses released the EP Farewell to Albion which includes the tracks ‘100
Years Ago’ and ‘Peter Pan in the Trenches’, referencing the fate of George
Llewelyn Davies, one of the boys for whose entertainment J. M. Barrie
invented Peter Pan and who was killed in 1915.
Tony Wakeford also makes a guest vocalist appearance on another neofolk
recording, Golgatha’s Seven Pillars (2006, Athanor) a concept album based
on the career of T. E. Lawrence. In other works the band, led by German
Christoph Donarski, have explored the poetry of T. S. Eliot, the ideas of
French philosopher Georges Bataille and the grail myth. The album’s tone
is generally contemplative and fatalistic. Some tracks are in a heavier, martial
industrial style with portentous lyrics, but there is also ethnic instrumenta-
tion and Arabic vocals plus extracts from the David Lean film. It is the
quieter passages that are most effective even if they ‘borrow’ liberally from
the work of other composers. ‘March 1911: Nadir’ utilises the piano triad
crotchets of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel (1978) which
has become familiar from its use in over 30 films and TV programmes.
The final track, which graphically depicts Lawrence’s fatal motorcycle crash,
ends with another Pärt piece, Für Alina (1976) which was the first publicly
performed work in his tintinnabuli style. One might say that the success of
the album is more attributable to Pärt’s beautifully simple piano works than
to the contributions of Donarski and his colleagues.
There are several full concept albums in these genres including Who
Doesn’t Listen to the Song, Will Hear the Storm… by Poland’s Across the
Rubicon (2010, Rage in Eden) and Storm of Capricorn’s Retours des
Tranchées (2005, Twilight Records). Storm of Capricorn is the alternative
project of Serge Usson, who also fronts the industrial band Neon Rain,
and Retours des Tranchées is perhaps better described as dark ambient.
This is a genre that arose as a counterbalance to Brian Eno’s original
vision that ambient music would be unobtrusive ‘musical wallpaper’, and
is characterised by passages of minor-key, doom-laden keyboards, eerie
sampling and treated guitar effects. Usson says in the sleeve notes that it
is ‘dedicated to those who never returned’ and though it features some
152 P. GRANT
vocals by Usson and partner Celine, it is topped and tailed by two contem-
porary recordings; opening with John McCormack’s famous version of
‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’ and closing with Henry Burr’s ‘The Boys
Who Won’t Come Home’. The sound is similar to British band In the
Nursery, like the accompaniment to a silent or documentary film about
the War. Though lapsing into hyperbole, comments about the band on
the Last fm website give a flavour of Usson’s approach: ‘lavish neoclassical
arrangements, bombastic and yet subtle percussions and heavenly chants
about the passing times, Storm Of Capricorn stands between a dreamt
reality and a dream come true’ (Storm of Capricorn n.d.).
Overall the approach that martial industrial and neofolk music take to
the First World War is an ambiguous one. Bands like Across the Rubicon,
Storm of Capricorn, Strydwolf (Netherlands) and The Pride of Wolves
(Germany) are not celebrating war in a direct reversal of the anti-war mes-
sages of Eric Bogle or Bolt Thrower, the genre is far too dark and pessimis-
tic for that. Instead they portray a very different response to the War than
other genres through the reutilisation of War myths reminiscent of the
fascist era, predicated upon a distorted version of European unity where
the concept of race is dominant. Whether this depiction is, as Shekhovtsov
suggests, a ‘powerful instrument of (mis)education’ is debatable but it is
certainly a genre that rewards scrutiny and analysis (Shekhovtsov 2009,
p. 451).
LAIBACH AND EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN

Poised somewhat uneasily between the extreme of martial industrial
and the musical mainstream are Slovenian avant-garde band Laibach.
Founded in 1984 they are the music wing of the Neue Slowenische Kunst
(NSK) art collective and their name is the German for Slovenia’s capital
city, Ljubljana. There has been significant critical debate as to whether
they are a political band and, if so, in which direction their allegiances
lie. Accused by some of having fascist tendencies and being tacit propo-
nents of the Milošević regime the band have always presented themselves
in artistic terms above politics but, equally, posing questions about the
political nature of art and ‘at any moment they may appear fascist, Stalinist
or Slovene folk nationalist’ (Currie 2015, p. 96). Often dressing in mili-
tary uniforms the band are best seen as provocateurs, deliberately eliciting
extreme reactions from their audiences and beyond. Their 1994 album
NATO (Mute) comprises cover versions of songs by artists including Pink
Floyd and Edwin Starr on the themes of war and nationalism. The main
First World War-related track is the Serbian patriotic tune ‘March on River
Drina’ retitled ‘Mars on River Drina’ for the album. Composed during the
War by Stanislav Binički the tune was popular in Communist Yugoslavia
and, with added lyrics, briefly became the official Serbian national anthem,
though it was later replaced as being overly nationalistic. Various versions
of the tune (some with different lyrics) have been recorded by a wide
range of artists including Patti Page, the Shadows, Chet Atkins and James
Last. Twelve years later Laibach reworked 13 national anthems plus their
own NSK ‘trans-national’ anthem on the album Volk in another provoca-
tive statement on the meaning of nationalism which, as Slavoj Zizek sug-
gests, compels us to take a position on the issue (Zizek n.d.). In 2012
Laibach appeared in performance at London’s Tate Modern and in 2015
became the first foreign rock band to play in North Korea. Whatever
one’s views of them Laibach have one of the most developed philosophies
regarding national mythology and, in 1996, asserted that ‘it is not the
past that shapes a nation’s mythology but a mythology that shapes its past’
(Currie 2015, p. 90).
There are examples of more ‘mainstream’ industrial artists whose com-
positions can be placed within a positive transnational mythology. One is
the album Myiasis from Canadian band Maggot Breeder. Veering towards
a doomier metal approach than purely industrial the band is essentially
Montreal artist Reuel Ordonez and the album is based on the Battle of
Passchendaele (Third Ypres) in which the Canadian army played a promi-
nent role. One review calls it ‘back to basics, dark, industrial music’ and
likens the overall impact to placing the listener ‘in a dark and sinister
alien world’ which is an apt description of its doom-laden tone (This
Quiet Army n.d.). The veteran German industrial band Einstürzende
Neubauten, founded in 1980, were commissioned by the Flemish town
of Diksmuide to compose music to commemorate the centenary of
the War. Though previously uninterested in the topic the band’s leader
Blixa Bargeld employed two researchers as well as undertaking extensive
research himself, notably in the archives of Humboldt University. The
resulting album Lament combines an array of styles in a soundscape that
is both eclectic and, at times, deeply unsettling. There are purely abstract
pieces—such as the opener ‘Kriegsmaschinerie’ depicting the nations
gearing up for war—which are similar in style to the band’s earlier work,
once described as ‘an industrial accident happening at the same time as
a catastrophic natural disaster and the finals of the All German National
154 P. GRANT
Shouting Championship’ (Petridis 2014). There are adaptations of poetry

and prose from the War as well as archive recordings of prisoners of war
(PoWs) and two songs originally performed by the ‘Harlem Hellfighters’,
the African-American regiment which was later placed under French
auspices because many white Americans refused to fight alongside black
soldiers. A further track, ‘Lament 3: Pater Peccavi’, takes a motet by six-
teenth-century composer Clemens non Papa, who is buried in Diksmuide,
slowing it down considerably and over-dubbing the PoW voices who
are reciting the parable of the prodigal son in their own languages. The
tracks that reveal most about the band’s philosophy towards the War are
‘Hymnen’ and ‘The Willy-Nicky Telegrams’. The latter utilises the late
July 1914 correspondence between the Kaiser and Tsar over a harsh musi-
cal setting, including a self-manufactured barbed-wire harp, to emphasise
the ‘petty’ nature of the causes of the War and the anachronistic and futile
niceties expressed by both emperors. The former derives from the iden-
tical musical origin of both ‘God Save the King’ and the Prussian royal
anthem ‘Heil Dir Im Siegerkranz’ with the track alternating between
English and German before the final verse which is Heinrich Hoffman’s
1851 parody of the Kaiser feasting on Christmas goose while his people
starved. Here is the suggestion of a common history as well as the under-
mining of national monarchy. Einstürzende Neubauten are clearly within
the movement towards transnational myth and, as befits a commission by
former enemies, are reaching across national divides.
Despite its musical complexity Lament was generously received by
critics and compared favourably to other art works of the First World
War including the paintings of Paul Nash and Otto Dix (Pinnock
2015; Foster 2014). Even so, much martial industrial music and
even Lament is in places just too literal in its depiction of war. This
was rather presciently foreseen by one of the War’s finest poets and
musicians, Ivor Gurney, who mused during the War itself, ‘I wonder
whether any up to date fool will try to depict a strafe in music. The
shattering crash of heavy shrapnel. The belly-disturbing crunch of 5.9
Crumps and trench mortars. The shrill clatter of rifle grenades and the
wail of nosecaps flying loose’ (Gurney 1991, p. 134). Many of these
bands do precisely that.
OVER THE TOP? HEAVY METAL AND EXTREME METAL
Metal History and Discourse

Within studies of popular music heavy metal is the genre most often pre-
sented negatively, even more so than progressive rock or rap. One might
say that it has become the most mythologised of genres. Heavy metal had
its origins in the late 1960s in the English midlands, notably Birmingham,
from a fusion of blues and psychedelic rock with Black Sabbath as its key
pioneer (Cope 2010). Confounding many critics, it has proved an extraor-
dinarily durable and flexible musical form (Phillipov 2012, p. xi). Today
the Allmusic Guide lists 23 subgenres of heavy metal and Wikipedia 28
plus a further 21 derivatives (Allmusic n.d.; Wikipedia n.d.). It has also
been suggested that, with a few exceptions, metal is overwhelmingly the
music of the white, male working class and not popular amongst those
of African heritage (Le Vine 2008; Hjelm et al. 2011; Wallach et al.
2011). Bryson (1997) suggests that among the less educated devotee’s
musical taste is increasingly defined by ethnicity, race, religious conserva-
tism and geography and Weinstein has continued to depict metal fans as
overwhelmingly male and working-class (Weinstein 2011). More recent
research has revealed that metal fans are often highly educated and are
becoming significantly more multicultural with the rise of metal in Latin
America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa (Finnigan quoted in Frith 1996,
p. 90; Fildes 2012; Christenson and Roberts 1998; Purcell 2003; Hjelm
et al. 2011, p. 11; Chaker 2010; Hickam and Wallach 2011; Wallach et al.
2011; Phillipov 2012, pp. 66–7). Many more female fans and musicians
are now found in metal, especially folk metal, and Cope goes as far as to
suggest that ‘heavy metal has brought about a clear sense of empower-
ment to women within the genre’ (Neilson 2015, p. 139; Cope 2010,
pp.79 and 142–5; Hill 2014; Kummer 2016).
Metal was largely ignored or vilified in ‘serious’ music criticism until the
early 1990s because of its supposed lack of a progressive social conscience
or positive political stance. Typical of this approach was Robert Christgau’s
review of Black Sabbath’s eponymous first album in which he described
one of the most influential records in rock history as ‘the worst of the
counterculture on a plastic platter – bullshit necromancy, drug-impaired
reaction time, long solos, everything. They claim to oppose war, but if
I don’t believe in loving my enemies’ (Christgau 1970). The influential
Dick Hebdige also denigrated metal as being characterised by ‘“idiot”
156 P. GRANT
dancing (again, the name says it all)’ and a ‘football terrace machismo’
(Hebdige 1991, p. 155). These arguments are hard to justify, perhaps the
only credible point is that by emphasising the Phrygian mode, represented
by the natural diatonic scale E–E (containing a minor 2nd, 3rd, 6th and
7th), which in western music is culturally associated with grief or gloom,
metal is darker in tone. We have already noted that though the martial
industrial genre may have a higher-than-average number of musicians who
are libertarian or authoritarian there are also examples of radical left-wing
artists as well. There are both right- and left-wing artists in every other
form of music and we should instead approach ‘musical genres on their
own terms, and not in relation to a predetermined evaluative framework’
(Phillipov 2012, p. 134). No musical genre automatically signifies politi-
cal meaning and, in this way, it is possible to ‘read’ many metal bands and
their songs in a more positive political light (Taylor 2009).
The depiction of metal is now showing signs of change, at least in spe-
cialist and academic music literature, and the term ‘metal studies’ is increas-
ingly being used, ‘suggesting the view that the study of metal constitutes
a multidisciplinary field in its own right’ and the best illustration of this is
the notable shift in coverage found in quality and broadsheet newspapers
(Spracklen et al. 2011, pp. 211 and 210). Nevertheless metal, especially
its more extreme versions, is still undervalued or derided in many quarters
and bands and fans persecuted in many countries. In China, Malaysia,
Iran, Turkey, Egypt and elsewhere ‘heavy metal continues to be banned
from radio and television’ (LeVine 2009, p. 7; Hecker 2012).
In the context of metal music and the First World War two subgenres
are especially prominent, both falling under the wider banner of ‘extreme
metal’. Death and black metal emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Both employ heavily distorted down-tuned guitars, tremolo picking,
double-kick and blastbeat drumming, minor keys and atonality. Tremolo
picking employs rapid downward and upward picking in a continuous
run on a single note. Double-kick drumming is achieved either by using
two bass drums or by a double pedal: ‘Blast beats are achieved through
the rapid, cut-time alteration of snare and bass drum’ and it ‘bear[s] an
uncanny resemblance to a prolonged burst of machine-gun fire’ (Phillipov
2012, p. 86; Hagen 2011, p. 186; Cope 2010, p. 100). The main distinc-
tions between death and black metal are the vocal style employed and
some of the thematic content. Death metal lyrics are usually ‘growled’ in
a very deep voice whereas in black metal they are ‘shrieked’, employing
a high, even falsetto voice. Black metal, as the title implies, places greater
emphasis on anti-Christian or pagan topics whereas death metal subjects

are more wide-ranging (Hagen 2011). For our purposes a further distinc-
tion is that whereas most death metal bands sing in English (emphasising
their transnationalism as part of the metal community) many black metal
bands utilise their native language or even ‘dead’ languages of the national
past (Weinstein 2011, p. 55). Extreme metal songs ‘frequently disrupt
conventional patterns of harmonic, melodic, and structural development,
and in particular, reject the drive towards climax and resolution […]
Rather than working to create continuities – songs with a clear beginning,
middle, and end – death metal disrupts many of the conventional patterns
of musical narrative’ (Phillipov 2012, p. 64). In this sense extreme metal
is continuing a tradition of ‘disruption’ characteristic of many modernist
art forms from the paintings of Picasso or Pollock to the cinema of Resnais
or Godard. Another parallel between modern art and extreme metal is an
emphasis on the grotesque. Kristeva explored the meaning of grotesque
presentations as part of her concept of the ‘abject’ which disturbs identity,
systems and order and visual artists who have explored the ‘abject’ include
Gilbert and George (in their Naked Shit Pictures 1994), Andres Serrano
(Piss Christ 1987), Vinicius Quesada’s series Blood Piss Blues (2010) and
much of the work of Tracy Emin or Jordan Eagles such as Hemofields
(2012) (Kristeva 1982).
An accusation often levelled at heavy metal is that the music and its lyrics
are intrinsically misogynist, brutal or destructive. Lester Bangs, who some
authorities incorrectly credit with the invention of the term ‘heavy metal’,
claimed that ‘of all contemporary rock, [heavy metal] is the genre most closely
identified with violence and aggression, rapine and carnage’ (Weinstein
2011, p. 37). Even quite progressive writers, such as Sheila Whiteley, depict
metal as fetishised male aggression whose lyrics are ‘frequently misogynis-
tic, often violently brutal’. In reality the lyrics of many metal bands, Black
Sabbath or Bolt Thrower for example, are far less misogynistic than most
heavy rock bands (Whiteley 2000, p. 14; Cope 2010, p. 74). Metal certainly
deals more directly with violence than other genres and occasionally the
actions of metal bands or fans have reinforced these claims. However there
are many musical genres that deal with similar themes and plenty of examples
of murderous musicians, from Carlo Gesualdo in 1590 to Charles Manson.
Explicit descriptions of sexual relations, androgyny and sadomasochism are
all major lyrical themes in chanson and death and misogyny are significant
features in the work of both Brel and Brassens (Tinker 2005, p. 11). The
anti-Christian stance of many bands and their songs is another theme shared
158 P. GRANT
with the chansonniers engagées. Critics are guilty of taking many of the lyrics
in heavy metal far too literally and their criticism is often used to legitimise
a view of the world that requires an identifiable group of ‘transgressors’
within the framework of a ‘moral panic’ or to contrast the genre negatively
with one favoured by the writer (Walser 2014, p. 22; Cohen 1973; Jones
2002; Weinstein 2000: ch. 1; Walser 2014; pp. 10–11). Phillipov, following
Kristeva, argues persuasively that the ‘horrors’ depicted in metal songs can
‘become aesthetically interesting and enjoyed in the absence of conventional
ethical, moral, or political precepts once they become disengaged from nar-
rative context and identificatory logic’ (Phillipov 2012, p. 129). This is
certainly true of the bands she is discussing, notably Carcass and Cannibal
Corpse, but is less the case with songs about the War where we are often
meant to interpret the gore more literally.
There is no doubt that in heavy metal sound is privileged and the voice
utilised more as an additional instrument instead of being distinct from
the rest of the band (McClary and Walser 1988, pp. 285–6). This ten-
dency is even more pronounced in death and black metal, which has led
some writers to claim that metal lyrics can be virtually ignored as the music
(or overall sound) is of far greater significance (Walser 2014, pp. 79–84
and 148). Though lyrical analysis can be taken to extremes that is not
to say that lyrics are unimportant for an understanding of extreme metal
songs or that metal fans do not pay close attention to them (Phillipov
2012, p. 89). Probably more than any other genre, metal bands print lyrics
in their CD booklets and fans are surprisingly adept at singing along to the
songs, even though their own vocal style cannot replicate what they are
hearing on stage. The best refutation of the idea that metal lyrics ‘don’t
matter’ is from one of their most significant singers and songwriters, Karl
Willetts, of Bolt Thrower and Memoriam. His explanation is that:
To a certain extent the voice pattern or style is used as another layer in the
overall sound […] but for me I take some time and pride in writing the lyrics
in the first place so I want them to be heard because to me they’re the most
important element… Perhaps for someone without an ear for metal, perhaps
they wouldn’t understand it but it is there, it is clear. (Willetts 2014)
Overall Weinstein is probably correct when she says that:
Analysis of heavy metal lyrics must be informed by figurative and contextual

interpretations rather than by a literal reading. Lyrics are not intended to be
tightly integrated systems of signifiers, although there are exceptions to this
rule. Most lyrics are best understood as a loose array of fragmentary signi-
fiers. (Weinstein 2000, p. 34)
She is supported by Phillipov who recognises that very often the imagery
of lyrics is more important than the specific meaning. This is of particular
relevance in discussing songs about the First World War as there are so
many recognisable symbolic images available to the lyricist, which empha-
sises the close relationship between music and the symbols of myth. If
you look again at the metal ‘word cloud’ (Fig. 4.6) more explicit words
such as death, blood, enemy, killing, mud and trenches are more prom-
inent than in non-metal songs. On Motörhead’s ‘1916’ (1991, WTG)
Lemmy Kilmister sings in an unusually clear voice and the same is true of
Kirk Hammett’s vocal on Metallica’s ‘One’ (on And Justice for All, 1989,
Elektra; Brown 2016, p. 77). For both it is important that listeners hear
the words indicating that these are especially important songs for their
lyrical content. It is notable that Metallica, a band that had eschewed the
use of videos in the promotion of their songs, broke the habit for ‘One’.
The band even went to the length of purchasing the rights to Dalton
Trumbo’s movie adaptation of his own novel Johnny Got His Gun so they
could include it in the video.
Metal in the Trenches
Perhaps only three (of the 96) metal bands to have recorded First World
War-related songs come close to the negative stereotype. Ukrainian fascists
Sokyra Peruna are discussed in Chapter 9. The others are Norwegian black
metal band Sturmgeist and American black metal band Minenwerfer. The
latter’s entire output (two EPs and two full-length albums) was devoted
to a depiction of the War from the German perspective. The band existed
in the same ambiguous political landscape as many martial industrial
bands with song titles taken from Nietzsche quotations such as ‘one has
renounced grand life when one renounces war’, ‘man shall be trained for
war and woman for the procreation of the warrior’ and ‘it is mere illu-
sion and pretty sentiment to expect much from mankind if he forgets
how to make war’ (all from Nihilistischen, 2012). Such quotes were heav-
ily influential upon Nazism but the band strenuously denied any politi-
cal affiliation with the far right. Sturmgeist comprises a single individual,
Cornelius von Jackhelln. Founded in 2003 the band name, meaning ‘storm
spirit’, was inspired by Goethe’s ballads and their 2009 album Manifesto
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Futurista (Inhuman Music), as the title suggests, explores the ideas of the
Italian Futurists. It includes the wordless track ‘Verdun’ and, as a whole,
it is difficult not to agree with the description in its press release that it
‘screams with fury and vengeance […] centred around blitzing blastbeats,
shattering riffs and hellish screams’ (Manifesto Futurista press release,
2009). Criticism of Manifesto Futurista would emphasise that this is an
album inspired by a group of proto-fascists whose leader, F. T. Marinetti,
declared that there are no masterpieces without ‘an aggressive character’
and who thought war was a necessity for the health and purification of
the human spirit (Marinetti 1909, p. 52; Marinetti 1911, p. 84). Then
there is the fact that Sturmgeist have been accused of inspiring one of
the worst mass killings in Scandinavia prior to those of Anders Breivik
when, in 2007 a young Finn using ‘Sturmgeist89’ as his YouTube login
killed nine people, including himself, at his high school in Jokela. This was
immediately linked by the popular media to similar crimes, such as the
Columbine High School massacre, where heavy metal music was accused
of inspiring the killers (Cloonan 2002, pp. 126–7). Von Jackhelln’s first
reaction was to consider giving up music entirely but he felt that this
would simply play into the hands of the critics. Instead he issued a press
release which stated that ‘although extreme metal as a genre deals with
topics such as isolation, misanthropy and despair, blaming the musicians is
both wrong and unfair. It is people that kill people. Not music’ (Manifesto
Futurista press release, 2009). He also recorded the song ‘Sturmgeist_89’
as a response, with the short question ‘why did you do it?’ as its repeated
refrain. Manifesto Futurista was his first album since the killings. Von
Jackhelln is also a writer of some note, Manifesto Futurista includes four
of his published poems and he has written several books on Norse mythol-
ogy one of which, The Fall of the Gods, won the Bonnier-Cappelen Great
Nordic Novel Competition. Ultimately, whatever one might think about
the music or ideas of von Jackhelln, he deserves to be considered as a
serious artist with a serious message. It is not without irony that many of
those in the USA who declare that metal music is an incitement to murder
also vigorously defend the right of Americans to bear arms, as if guns are
more benign than music. Whenever a mass murderer is a metal fan you can
be sure that the media will report this in detail; if they prefer Frank Sinatra
or country music no one will mention it.
Certainly the themes of heavy metal are not light-hearted and rarely
simplistically optimistic and ‘the death metal voice typically lends a more
generalized sense of brutality to the music’ (Phillipov 2012, p. 78). Macan
points out that the other genre that takes itself this seriously is progres-
sive rock. He also suggests that there were two sides to the 1960s coun-
terculture, an Apollonian or ‘spiritual quest’ and a Dionysian tendency
to hedonism and excess. It is not hard to see these two trends splitting
away from psychedelic rock in the 1970s into the twin genres of prog and
metal (Macan 1997, pp. 83–4). Weinstein distinguishes two main traits
in metal lyrical content: the Dionysian celebration of excess—the clas-
sic mix of ‘sex, drugs and rock-and-roll’—and the Chaotic—the power
of the forces of disorder (Weinstein 2000, pp. 35–43). She sees the lat-
ter as being distinctive to metal as a genre and it is this element that is
embodied in metal’s notorious explorations of religion. Death metal lyr-
ics, and even more so those of black metal, are slanted strongly towards
the chaotic rather than the Dionysian and many of the songs that invoke
the First World War are of this kind. Those of the death metal bands Bolt
Thrower (England), God Dethroned (Netherlands), Azziard (France)
and Humiliation (Malaysia) as well as those of black metal band Cryptic
Wintermoon (Germany), doom metal band Mourning Dawn (France) and
progressive metal bands Watchtower (USA) and Misanthrope (France) fall
into this category. Progressive metal combines the aggressiveness and vol-
ume of metal with the influence of progressive rock and its pseudo-classical
references whereas doom or drone metal is extremely slow with murky
guitars and a ‘sludgy’ mix intended to invoke a sense of impending doom.
An example is Black Boned Angel, a New Zealand project of experimental
musicians Campbell Kneale and James Kirk. They incorporate elements
of drone, industrial and dark ambient music and their main influence is
Seattle’s Sunn O))). One connoisseur suggests that ‘Black Boned Angel
understand what drone is about; no vocals, very simple drums, heaps of
feedback and massive guitar riffs that repeat over and over until your ear-
drums are all loose and bleeding from the vigorous bass-rape’ (‘Caspian’,
2009). Verdun consists of a single 52-minute track, split into three move-
ments and Anton Allen suggests that ‘this record reminds me more than
anything of Goya’s iconic scenes of suffering and slaughter’ (Allen n.d.).
The album is more ‘extreme’ in its overtones of oppressive doom than
even Lament’s instrumental pieces. It can certainly sound monotonous
but that is entirely intentional, as like the War it seems to go on forever.
War, and in particular the death and suffering it causes, has been a sig-
nificant theme in heavy metal from its earliest days (Cope 2010, pp. 33
and 90). In contrast to some of the depictions we have so far encountered
metal artists have been ‘fascinated by the visceral experience of warfare
162 P. GRANT
itself’ and today there are distinctive strains of folk metal and Viking or
battle metal based on the history and mythology of northern Europe (Puri
2010, p. 55). A significant band in this field are Latvia’s Skyforger formed
in 1995. They have been subject to accusations of neo-Nazism which the
band have strenuously denied. Their references and iconography are to
older Latvian history rather than the Second World War; however they
removed the thunder cross (an ancient symbol which was reutilised by the
Latvian ultra-nationalist, anti-Semitic political party of the 1930s) from
their logo because of repeated misunderstandings (Van Berlo 2006). Their
2005 release Latviešu strēlnieki (Latvian Riflemen, Folter) is the history of
this unit and their commander Frı̄drihs Briedis during the First World War.
Initially part of the Imperial Russian Army, after the 1917 Revolution the
majority of the riflemen transferred their allegiance to the Bolsheviks but
Briedis became prominent in the White Russian forces and was executed
in Moscow in 1918. Skyforger’s music is more diverse and darker in tone
than many folk metal bands and Latviešu strēlnieki is one of their heavi-
est and darkest. Skyforger, like similar bands from the Baltic States such
as Metsatöll and Raud-Ants (Estonia) or Obtest (Lithuania), embrace
their distinctive national myths as part of their country’s path away from
the former Soviet Union and here there is little trace of pan-European
transnationalism.
The New Wave of British Heavy Metal: Saxon and Bolt Thrower

War forms a recurring theme in the work of Saxon, one of the key bands
in the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWBHM), who formed in
1976 in Barnsley, South Yorkshire. Innocence is No Excuse (1985, EMI/
Parlophone) marked a move towards a more mainstream, US-oriented,
heavy rock sound for the band and features the song ‘Where Are They
Now?’ which compares the Somme, Vietnam, Northern Ireland, Stalingrad
and the recently concluded Falklands War. Its power chords and repeated
chorus line ‘where are they now, the broken heroes?’ prefigure the work of
Sabaton and have been a staple of their live performances. ‘Call to Arms’,
the title track from their 2011 album (EMI), is told from the point of view
of a First World War conscript. The album cover is a version of the famous
Alfred Leete recruiting poster featuring Lord Kitchener’s pointing finger
which has been utilised in myriad contexts since its original appearance
in September 1914. This indicates how musicians can engage with the
myths of the War in visual as well as aural terms, either through album art
or in performance as, say, Bruce Dickinson does by donning military uni-

forms on stage. Call to Arms was seen as something of a return to Saxon’s
NWBHM roots with a ‘pared down’ sound but the album ends with a
second version of ‘Call to Arms’, with full orchestral accompaniment, that
some may find more effective in the way it engages with other musical
forms of remembrance. Saxon’s latest First World War song is ‘Kingdom
of the Cross’ the closing number on Battering Ram (2015, UDR). The
majority of the song is spoken by David Bower lead singer of the band
Hell (aka stage and TV actor David Beckford). It is a song replete with
British War myths: the ‘lost generation’ and ‘lost innocence’ and the news-
papers saying ‘you’d all be home for Christmas’.
More than any other band Bolt Thrower has built their career around
songs relating to war, both in fantasy and reality (Kahn-Harris 2007,
pp. 36–7). They take their name from a weapon in the popular game
Warhammer Fantasy Battle on which the lyrics and artwork of three of
their early albums was based. Bolt Thrower also have one of the rela-
tively few female musicians in a death metal band, their bassist Jo Bench
who joined in 1987 (Cope 2010, p. 144). In the mid-1980s together
with Napalm Death and Carcass, Bolt Thrower ‘combined punk and early
death metal to develop an extreme sound that has been widely influential’
and they were also one of the first bands to utilise ‘low tessitura death
growl’ vocals (Kahn-Harris 2007, p. 109; Cope 2010, p. 133). Whilst
some have denied any political content to the band’s songs (Scott 2011)
Laura Wiebe Taylor suggests that:
Bolt Thrower’s discography offers a more concentrated line of socio-political

commentary, taking on the issue of widespread violence and the horrors of
war, not in celebration but as a way of confronting and criticising untamed
aggression, lust for power and social and political oppression. (Taylor 2009,
p. 95)
The band’s singer/songwriter Karl Willetts agreed when commenting on

the band’s influences: ‘we come from that old punk scene really. Our influ-
ences were [bands like] Antisect [and] Crass with their strong anti-war
stance [which] got me into the whole political idea about war even though
I don’t subscribe to their way of thinking’ (Willetts 2014). Bolt Thrower’s
interest in the First World War is by no means accidental and, as with several
other singers and bands (for example Robb Johnson and Fish), stems from
both personal family history and knowledge of their subject: ‘my grandfa-
ther served with the Warwickshire Regiment in Alsace and Lorraine which
164 P. GRANT
is why he called my mother Lorraine. He suffered from a mustard gas

attack and it affected him mentally. When he came back from the War he
never really recovered’ (Willetts 2014). Just as much as a novelist Willetts
researches the themes behind his songs, with visits to the Imperial War
Museum, which leads him to a deeper appreciation of the topic. For exam-
ple in ‘Salvo’ he takes some words from Harry Patch about the water always
tasting of dead people, an interpretation which is devoid of the clichés usu-
ally adopted in referencing Patch. ‘You often get a sense of the eyes and ears
but not of the taste [of war] which can be all-consuming and I like to put
those kinds of ideas in the lyrics that I write’ (Willetts 2014).
Two albums in particular, For Victory (1994, Earache) and Those Once
Loyal (2005, Metal Blade) focus on the First World War. The artwork of
Those Once Loyal depicts Gilbert Ledward’s highly realistic frieze of an
18-pounder gun in action which is part of the Guards Memorial in St
James’s Park, London. Both the album art and the song title are examples
of how metal bands engage with the remembrance of war and sites of
memory which is amply demonstrated in Figs. 7.1 and 7.3. The memorial
reminds us of those who were ‘loyal’ but the title suggests that our con-
cept of loyalty has changed or even been made redundant.
Fig. 7.1 Bolt Thrower at the Artillery Monument, London (Courtesy of Bolt
Thrower)
Both albums contain highly graphic, stylised, point-of-view songs,

where there is no identified protagonist—no ‘me’ or ‘he’—and no sense
of the ability of the individual to influence events. In this sense they fall
squarely into the soldier/victim category. The title track of For Victory
depicts the plight of battle survivors in no man’s land whereas ‘At First
Light’, from Those Once Loyal, describes the prelude to going over the top:
Waiting and anticipation is a recurring theme throughout the music we cre-

ate […] It’s about the psychological effects, the feelings rather than the
blood or death side of things which has been done and doesn’t really inter-
est me. It’s about the feelings inside and that very closely relates to the style
of music we play. (Willetts 2014)
This is not quite the image that metal’s critics suppose it conveys. Here
the songs are about the lulls in action not the action itself. Both songs
evoke the terrors and horrors of war, immensely magnified by the music,
but they do so in a very sober, neutral way that does not condemn war
outright, it simply presents the listener with its impact.
We don’t say war is a good thing, we don’t say war is a bad thing, we don’t
glorify it, we just say it is […] It’s easy to go down that line to condemn or
point fingers but we’re not there to do that. It’s reality, it’s there every time
you switch on the telly, it’s part of [life] ever since time began. We just say it
as it is and try and put war in perspective. (Willetts 2014)
This approach is utterly divorced from a glorification of violence and war,

but neither is it a simplistic condemnation either. Bolt Thrower, and sev-
eral other metal bands, tell the story from the soldier’s perspective. These
young men may have volunteered or been conscripted but, in most cases,
are not the ones responsible for war. ‘Songs like “For Victory” have a mili-
taristic edge to them musically’, explains Willetts, ‘and that for me triggers
a more militaristic approach and I can place myself within the character
that’s in the song as well so I’m in the battle, I’m in the war’ (Willetts
2014). This appreciation of the feelings of combatants is one reason why
Bolt Thrower are popular with many in the armed forces.
Bolt Thrower’s contemplation of war in general and the First World
War in particular is both complex and distinctive. They avoid stereotypes
and instead express the ambiguities of warfare; it is horrifying and glo-
rious, insane and necessary. Similar ambiguities occur in the works of
Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen who wrote of their utter contempt
166 P. GRANT
for the mindlessness of war but also remained (or returned) to their regi-
ments and fought with distinction. It is no surprise to learn from Willetts
that ‘the war poets, Wilfred Owen and Sassoon, have inspired me. Even if
it’s not the words it’s the rhyming structure [it] helps me formulate a plan
and a pattern’ (Willetts 2014).
Taylor has connected Bolt Thrower’s vision with the British tradition
of dystopian writing found in the work of authors such as H. G. Wells,
Huxley and Orwell. She suggests that it is possible to read some of their
songs in the context of this broader discourse:
Not simply as ways of negotiating or fantasizing empowerment and express-

ing frustration within a contemporary environment, but as a means of
exposing and resisting the corruption, inequity, violence and oppression
implicated in modern political and economic conditions and visible in the
distribution of technology, unchecked development, environmental devas-
tation and war. (Taylor 2009, p. 91)
It therefore comes as no surprise to learn that Karl Willetts gained his

university degree under Stuart Hall in the School of Cultural Studies at
the University of Birmingham. Regarding the influence of cultural studies
and post-modernism Willetts says he derived ‘the idea that there is no one
version of the truth [which] goes throughout my lyric writing, there are
always alternative perspectives. The concept of chaos as well really fits in
with the ideology of the band’ (Willetts 2014). In this sense Bolt Thrower
go beyond simply raging against war and modern society, they are hinting
at constructive, co-operative alternatives, demonstrating that metal music
is not as devoid of political content as many critics have suggested.
Bolt Thrower have also written some of the strongest songs about remem-
brance. An early example is the title track from the EP Cenotaph (1990,
Earache) which addresses the monument by saying: ‘alone you stand – the
final parody; destined to silence – a memorial to mortality’. The title track
of Those Once Loyal develops ideas of remembrance into what is one of
the most powerful examples in song on this theme. Its details include the
‘immortalised plaque of remembrance’, a reference to the bronze memo-
rial plaques that were distributed to the families of those killed in the War
called ‘Dead Man’s Pennies’ (also the subject of a Robb Johnson song) and
it concludes with lines that contrast the heroic deeds of the fallen with their
isolation from those left behind to remember. The imagery is distinctive and
the final line captures the skilful ambiguity at the heart of this band’s expert
analysis of war and sacrifice, ‘a monument – to war’s terminal conclusion’.
Criticism has been made of Bolt Thrower’s music suggesting that it is

too simple, ‘the AC/DC of death metal’ only good for headbanging (tcg-
jarhead 2011; Lee 2006). It is true that their style has hardly changed and
the music is some of ‘the purest, most primitive metal available’ (Wagner
2010, p. xiv). In comparison to other bands, Metallica or Dimmu Borgir
for example, the music is simple; some songs utilise just a single riff but
sometimes simplicity is a virtue. Bolt Thrower’s simplicity is what Robert
Walser has referred to as ‘constructed’, a tactic utilised ‘in many kinds of
ideological representations’ and in music from Stephen Foster and Aaron
Copland to Philip Glass and Steve Reich (Walser 2014, p. 128). Overall
Bolt Thrower thoroughly interrogate many of the myths of the First World
War in an oeuvre that has spanned more than 25 years. They see the War
as a turning point in British history but eschew most of the stereotypical
references of British popular mythology. As Karl Willetts summarises:
For me 1914–18 was a time of massive change. A real clash between old and
new, both ideology and technology. There was the massive waste of life and
massive disaster politically. But it was a fascinating time when things were
changing and the world moved to modernity. (Willetts 2014)
Fig. 7.2 Jo Bench performing at Damnation 2014 (© Kirsty Garland)

168 P. GRANT
Fig. 7.3 Sabaton at the Ataturk memorial in Gallipoli (Courtesy of Pär

Sundström)
In late 2015 Bolt Thrower went into hiatus following the sudden, unex-
pected death of drummer Martin ‘Kiddie’ Kearns. Karl Willetts has since
formed a new band, Memoriam, which, as the name suggests, are likely to
continue many of his previous ideas on war and history (Fig. 7.2).
Sabaton and God Dethroned

The songs of Swedish power metal band Sabaton cover all historical peri-
ods from ancient times through both world wars to modern conflicts such
as Iraq and the Falklands. ‘Angels Calling’ (from Attero Dominatus, 2006,
Black Lodge) is an impressionistic song, like phrases from a memoir, rather
than a coherent narrative, but by the time of their next album, The Art of
War (2008, Black Lodge), the band had developed both musically and,
especially, lyrically toward a more comprehensive meditation on war and its
impact. Inspired by Sun Tzu’s book, originally written in the second cen-
tury BC and still essential reading for aspiring military strategists, Sabaton
construct each song around one of the book’s chapters illustrated by refer-
ence to more recent conflicts. It contains two powerful First World War
songs, ‘Cliffs of Gallipoli’ and ‘The Price of a Mile’. Like many metal bands
Sabaton usually write and perform their songs in English, though later
release Carolus Rex comes in both English and Swedish versions. Lyricist
and singer Joakim Broden revealed that it took some time before he arrived
at the idea of war as a subject matter for his songs: ‘before that, writing lyr-
ics was a necessary evil [but] by choosing subjects that I actually care about
[…] all of a sudden it became fun and interesting’ (Broden 2011). ‘Cliffs
of Gallipoli’, which took three years to write, is a song about the dead, with
foe turning to friend in death, reminiscent of Owen’s ‘Strange Meeting’. In
the booklet notes the band agree that the ill-fated expedition was a badly
planned disaster but they praise the outstanding ‘courage and competence’
of some of the commanders: Monash and Chauvel on the Australian side
and Kemal on the Turkish (Sabaton 2008). This reflects the band’s overall
stance on war that it has both a positive and a negative side and can bring
out both the best and worst aspects of humanity. ‘The Price of a Mile’, like
the paintings of Paul Nash, describes the rape of the countryside with fields
that ‘once were green’ scarred by war, together with the fate of the soldiers.
It is one of the few songs that describe actual fighting but the listener has
no idea which side is being depicted, all you are told is that they are ‘a long
way from home’, which probably rules out the Belgians and French. Based
on the Battle of Passchendaele, the song describes the conditions as horrific
and the men as having no way out. The prolongation of the battle by its
commanders is condemned, in agreement with the assessment of most cur-
rent military historians. Both songs are set to Sabaton’s driving, epic style
of metal with stylistic flourishes including elaborate keyboards, guitar solos
and female backing vocals providing a high degree of drama and suggesting
there is excitement in war among the death and destruction even though
‘there is no glory to be won’
This ambiguous approach has led to the band receiving criticism for
covering topics such as Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division without explicitly
condemning Nazism. Though they are certainly patriotic, the expanded
version of The Art of War contains a version of the Swedish national
anthem and they were commissioned by the Norwegian army to make an
alternative version of ‘Panzer Battalion’, Sabaton’s stance is unambiguously
anti-war and anti-tyranny. They also belie the stereotype of dour metal
musicians. Though their songs are full of serious and portentous subject
matter, longer-standing band members bassist Par Sundstrom and Broden
are often noted as being chatty and jovial in interviews: ‘We’re happy fuck-
ers. We’re smiling and yelling “Clap along!” as we’re singing “The Price
of a Mile”, which is about half a million people dying in WW1’ (Broden
2011). This almost light-hearted attitude to death is extremely unusual in
170 P. GRANT
any popular musical treatment of the War. For nearly every other musi-
cian examined here the topic of the War and its participants is one that
requires a serious, almost reverent, approach in keeping with the subject’s
prominence in national mythologies. This is another cultural phenome-
non that has embedded itself in public consciousness and yet, immediately
after the War, the Armistice Night concert at the Albert Hall began with
works of serious remembrance but ended with an evening of ‘Armistice
jazz’. This celebratory element continued until 1927 when Beaverbrook’s
Daily Express rather ‘hijacked’ the event, substituting its own pro-Empire
agenda and music that assumed the now traditional emphasis on solemnity
(Mansell 2009; Cowgill 2011). This change was against the wishes of many
ex-servicemen who saw no reason why, without denigrating their oppo-
nents, they should not celebrate the fact that they had emerged victorious
from the War (Cowgill 2011, p. 79; Gregory 1994, pp. 77–8). To treat the
War as at all humorous, except in a space labelled ‘irony’ or ‘satire’ (such as
Blackadder or Oh, What a Lovely War!) has increasingly become taboo in
every country (Randell 2015, p. xii). In this reading it is entirely acceptable
for Sassoon or other war poets to have utilised black humour in speaking of
the dead but not for modern artists to do so. Ultimately Sabaton’s view of
war is that though they are not pacifists ‘any soldier worth his salt should
be antiwar’ but that ‘still there are things worth fighting for’. Broden sums
this up by saying that ‘I think the only thing we really “say” out loud in our
lyrics is that most of the time, it’s not the soldiers fault’ (Broden 2011).
Since their formation in 1991 Dutch death metal band God Dethroned
have gone through many of the complex and confusing line-up and other
changes that seem to define the extreme metal scene. Only singer and
guitarist Henri Sattler has remained as the driving force and one constant
member. After releasing two albums with another band, The Ministry of
Terror, it was not until 1997 that God Dethroned reformed for a second
album, The Grand Grimoire. The year 2002 saw further changes when
two members wanted a more extreme sound with a strong anti-Christian
message, whereas Sattler preferred a more melodic approach and a wider
pool of lyrical influence. Belgian guitarist Isaac Delahaye joined the band
for the recording of The Lair of the White Worm (based on the Bram Stoker
novel) in 2005, which proved a crucial meeting as Sattler explained:
The idea of doing concept albums is an old idea for which I somehow
couldn’t find the right topics until a young lad named Isaac Delahaye joined
our band in 2004. He happened to live in a town called Ypres… Being
confronted with its history and being a history freak at the same time, it all
became clear to me, this was the concept I was going to use for one of our
albums. (Stormbringer 2010)
Sattler got talking, and drinking, with British war tourists in Ieper, and
was impressed by how the town ‘breathes World War I’ and that so many
people were still visiting the places where their relatives had fought and
died (Sattler 2009). He began to research the War further and the result
was Passiondale (2009, Metal Blade), the title following the British sol-
diers’ ironic pronunciation of the battle’s name. Overall the songs lack the
schematic imagery of Bolt Thrower (with whom God Dethroned have
toured and who are Sattler’s favourite band) and the overpowering energy
of Sabaton but there are some standout moments. What works especially
well are the tracks where Sattler introduces a second narrator, Marco van
der Velde, whose ‘clear’ vocals contrast with Sattler’s more ‘conventional’
death metal growl. In ‘Poison Fog’ (about the effects of mustard gas)
Sattler’s voice is the detached observer, describing and commenting on
the War whereas van der Velde is the voice of the soldier/survivor who
saw his comrades ‘burn away’. He has the natural survivor’s guilt believing
that ‘my name should have been written between theirs on stones’ and the
dead return to haunt his dreams. Sattler screams about how War has lost
its ‘code of honour’ with the invention of a weapon that is only meant to
‘dominate, exterminate, asphyxiate’. He thus links the use of gas in the
First World War with that by the Nazis in the Holocaust of the Second.
This is a complex song that operates on a number of different levels and
an antidote to those who think that heavy metal, especially in its more
extreme forms, is simple-minded or reactionary. ‘Fallen Empires’ attempts
an even more difficult task, an overview of the wider political impact of the
War on the world map. It comments on the millions of displaced people
and prisoners of war created and their fate in the War’s aftermath and the
album concludes with a mighty and memorable instrumental riff entitled
‘Artifacts [sic] of War’. As part of the band’s promotion of the album a
tour of the Balkans was undertaken and, with his sense of history, Sattler
ensured that they played in Sarajevo on 28 June 2009, 95 years to the day
after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Sattler’s view of the
War is that, except in Britain, the rest of Europe treat it as an ‘unknown war
[…] because it’s overshadowed by World War 2’. He steers a path between
the various national War myths towards a more transnational approach
and is clear that he does not want to be judgemental in his songs: ‘I’m not
going to say anything about good or bad, people should know history to
understand it more’ (Sattler 2009). This detached view means that Sattler’s
172 P. GRANT
lyrics do not apportion blame, which enables him to escape the clutches
of the ‘futility’ myths. Instead he adopts a broadly anti-war stance in his
empathy with the troops, their deprivations and fears. Passiondale is a work
that examines the allied, especially British, perspective on the War whereas
2010’s Under the Sign of the Iron Cross (Metal Blade) turns to a German
view, based in large part on Ernst Jünger’s grimly realistic memoir. Sattler
suggests Jünger writes ‘in a very dry way but there’s so much aggression’
which explains why the music is more extreme than on Passiondale (Sattler
2009). Under the Sign of the Iron Cross covers several key myths of the War
including the battle of Verdun and the Red Baron. Sattler has commented
with great honesty that the album ‘includes some over the top hymnic and
bombastic tunes’ which he hopes ‘will stick in your brain forever’, and you
can only admire a band that takes on the task, in the title track, of explain-
ing the failure of the Schlieffen Plan (God Dethroned 2013). There are
again some very strong tracks including ‘The Killing is Faceless’, about
Verdun, which emphasises the technology of the War, where most fatalities
were caused by artillery fired by gunners who neither saw nor were seen by
their victims. ‘Through Byzantine Hemispheres’ concentrates on the con-
flicts in Eastern Europe and the Ottoman Empire but in a rather oblique
and perhaps superficial way in comparison to Diamanda Galás or System
of a Down. In the best tracks both albums have a strong melodic base and
taut lyrics but there are also several ‘fillers’ that are less memorable musi-
cally and over wordy, a result of a lyricist writing in his second language.
In 2012 Sattler officially disbanded God Dethroned however in mid-2014
it was announced that the band would re-form around a core of drummer
Michiel Van Der Plicht and Sattler. In 2015 they played a number of dates
in North America and Europe, including the Ieper Festival, and confirmed
that plans were in place to record the third instalment of their First World
War trilogy (God Dethroned 2015).
Metal Titans: Iron Maiden, Metallica and System of a Down

Iron Maiden are probably the best known and most successful metal band
in the world. Their musical legacy is significant and, from the outset, their
aim was to combine the power and dark themes of Black Sabbath with
elements of the musical complexities of progressive rock (Cope 2010,
p. 118). They have made many references to war and British history and
singer Bruce Dickinson is himself a history graduate. The opening of
1984’s Live After Death (recorded at a gig in Los Angeles) begins with
a recording of Churchill’s speech in the House of Commons on 4 June
1940 and ‘The Trooper’ (originally on the album Piece of Mind) makes
reference to Tennyson’s ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’. Their key
First World War song is ‘Paschendale’ (sic) which made its first appear-
ance on the 2003 album Dance of Death (EMI). Written by Adrian Smith,
‘Paschendale’ is a close relation lyrically to 1916 taking a similar viewpoint,
that of a recently killed soldier, with references to enlisting underage and
is strongly influenced by progressive rock in its length (10–12 minutes in
live versions), guitar solos, detailed structure and multiple tempo changes,
combining in what has been described as a ‘postmodern logic’ that under-
mines ‘the organic unities’ of most pop in a calculated way (Walser 2014,
p. 157). Like Bolt Thrower and Sabaton, Iron Maiden’s view is that war
may be superficially exciting ‘because of its intensity’ but is ‘ultimately
futile – both glamorous and horrible’ (Walser 2014, p. 152). Iron Maiden
are rightly considered one of the best live acts in rock music and the
DVD version of the song, directed by Matthew Amos, is invigorating and
impressive. Some fans criticised the video for its ‘machine gun editing’ but
though this may be distracting for other songs it is perfect for this one
(Death on the Road, 2007).
Metallica’s ‘One’ is from their fourth album And Justice for All (1989,
Elektra). It was the band’s first top-40 single in the USA and became the
first winner of the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance in 1990.
Written by the band’s main songwriters James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich,
the theme and lyrics refer to Dalton Trumbo’s 1939 novel Johnny Got His
Gun. Trumbo was one of the ‘Hollywood Ten’ blacklisted after refusing
to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947
and was not able to make his novel into a film until 1971, in which year
it won the Jury Prize at Cannes. Novel, film and song are told from the
viewpoint of Joe Bonham, a young GI terribly maimed during the War.
He loses his arms, legs, eyes, ears, teeth, and tongue, but his mind still
functions perfectly, leaving him a prisoner in his own body, the ultimate
depiction of the soldier/victim in popular culture. The video, directed
by Bill Pope and Michael Salomon, is a complex intercutting between
the original film and the band’s performance and the song is disturbingly
frank in its depiction of the maimed veteran, a more extreme version of
Eric Bogle’s crippled narrator in ‘And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda’.
The music builds from a relatively muted opening, with acoustic guitars,
then becomes more frenzied, with machine-gun-like blastbeat drumming
and power chords as the narrator becomes more alienated and angry. The
lyrics are frank and anti-euphemistic emphasising ‘in no uncertain terms,
174 P. GRANT
the reality of war’s effect on the human body [which] is described as the
very vulnerable organism it is, one that can be wounded, burned and dis-
membered’ (Floeckher 2010, p. 238). Jonathan Pieslak suggests that the
song ‘musically portrays violence and mental torment in a radically dif-
ferent way [to] that [of] the original movie soundtrack’, a conventional
orchestral score by Jerry Fielding (another blacklist victim) with no sug-
gestion of the destructive violence of Joe’s injuries (Pieslak 2009, p. 40).
Pieslak notes that ‘One’ is a favourite song among both American and
Israeli soldiers but then draws highly dubious conclusions from this usage
(Pieslak 2009, pp. 56 and 148). He suggests the music has ‘a transfor-
mative power that removes the humanity element from human identity’
and ‘becomes a means of dehumanizing an adversary or oneself’ (Pieslak
2009, p. 163). He ascribes too much direct causality to music, coming
close to the suggestion that metal causes violence, when it is the soldiers’
training that enables their violent response. The most that music does is
play a role as a trigger for their actions, very much like sportspeople have
‘trigger words’ that help them re-enact the skill they have trained for.
Music no more ‘causes’ soldiers’ violence than a word ‘causes’ a golfer to
hole a putt or a tennis player to serve an ace, an analogy soldiers’ them-
selves have endorsed (Gilman 2016, p. 91). ‘One’’s ‘classic’ status is now
confirmed by its inclusion on both S & M, Metallica’s live album recorded
with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and Kirk Hammett’s gui-
tar solo which, in 2008, was voted seventh in the ‘100 Greatest Guitar
Solos’ of all time by readers of Guitar World (sandwiched between Slash
on ‘November Rain’ and Don Felder and Joe Walsh on the Eagles’ ‘Hotel
California’). Samir Puri may be close to the mark by suggesting that ‘One’
is ‘metal in its portrayal of war at its most intense and most laudable’ (Puri
2010, p. 64).
American art-metal band System of a Down (SOAD) were formed in
1994 in Glendale California and is unusual in being one of the few suc-
cessful US bands to openly express radical political views. Placing SOAD
within a genre is not straightforward as they veer quite radically not just
between albums or songs but often within songs themselves. Their lyrics
confront the Armenian Genocide of 1915 as well as the ongoing War on
Terrorism and it was something of an irony that their album Toxicity sat on
top of the US charts at the time of 9/11. SOAD also produced a powerful
song against the Iraq War, ‘BOOM!’ which condemned US profiteering.
Its accompanying video, directed by Michael Moore, featured cartoon
versions of George W. Bush, Tony Blair, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin
Laden. Though MTV denied blacklisting the video it was never shown in
Europe (Scherzinger 2012, p. 98). All four band members are of Armenian
descent and singer and lyricist Serge Tankian’s grandparents lived through
the genocide and had ‘incredible, haunting stories of their survival’ (Grow
2015). SOAD’s take on the events of 1915 are uncompromisingly direct
and brutal. The band first approached the subject on their debut album
System of a Down (1998, American) whose cover is John Heartfield’s ‘the
hand has five fingers’ poster for the pre-war German Communist Party.
‘P.L.U.C.K.’ (the acronym stands for Politically, Lying, Unholy, Cowardly
Killers) starts like black metal and moves into rap-metal, interspersed with
fairly conventional rock riffs and Armenian folk tunes, all emphasised by
Tankian’s equally wide-ranging, theatrical singing style. The lyrics empha-
sise the continuing guilt of the Turkish government in not recognising the
Armenian massacre as ‘a whole race Genocide’. The song is controversial
and deliberately provocative, proposing revolution as the only solution and
confronts the Turkish government directly and unambiguously: ‘we’ve
taken all your shit, now it’s time for restitution’ (Bohigian 2010). Tankian
has stated at performances that ‘it’s time to make the Turkish government
pay for their fucking crime!’ and he links the fate of the Armenians with
other genocides of the last 100 years (System of a Down 2010; Armenian
National Committee of America 2001). In 2009 this provoked a response
by the Turkish government. Following an off-the-cuff remark by Tankian,
the Turks played up speculation that SOAD would represent Armenia at
the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest, then claimed to have foiled this non-
existent plot (Sassounian 2011). The band returned to the same theme
with ‘Holy Mountains’ from 2005’s Hypnotize (Columbia) and in 2015
they fronted a major European tour entitled ‘Wake Up the Souls’ which
culminated on 23 April, the eve of the commencement of the massacres,
with a concert in Yerevan, the first time they had played in Armenia.
Despite their uncompromising stance on Turkish recognition of the geno-
cide, SOAD do not see themselves as anti-Turkish, rather they wish to
raise consciousness of all acts of genocide through to present-day atroci-
ties by Assad and ISIS. As Tankian has commented ‘“part of it is bringing
attention to the fact that genocides are still happening… None of that is
changing. We want to be part of that change. We want the recognition of
the first genocide of the twentieth century to be a renewal of confidence
that humanity can stop killing itself.” He chuckles. “I say that, laughing,
because obviously it’s ridiculous”’ (Grow 2015). SOAD’s approach to the
War and the Armenian genocide is therefore framed within a transnational
identity of common trauma.
176 P. GRANT
CONCLUSION
In its various forms, heavy metal has made a highly distinctive contribu-
tion to songs about the War. By its very nature the music lends itself to
a depiction of war’s brutalities. In its more extreme forms, in death and
black metal, this verisimilitude is at its clearest, as Kahn-Harris has sug-
gested it ‘challenges notions of what music is. Extreme metal musicians
have pioneered sounds that can be heard nowhere else and developed new
musical fusions that challenge accepted music boundaries’ (Kahn-Harris
2007, p. 6). Phillipov emphasises a similar strength of extreme metal in
its approach to complex and multifaceted subjects such as the First World
War when she highlights the genre’s ‘emphasis on musical and lyrical dis-
ruption’ which offers ‘fractured, ambivalent listening positions […] in
which listeners can explore alternative responses to, and experiences of,
ordinarily contentious subject matter’ (Phillipov 2012, p. xix). Puri sums
up metal’s contribution to the debate by suggesting that war ‘provokes,
drives, and is driven by humankind’s deepest held primeval instincts – the
desire to compete, to survive, to uphold honour when affronted, and the
propensity towards feeling both intense compassion and intense hatred.
Metal music reflects a great many of these passions’ (Puri 2010, p. 64). So,
far from being the ‘mindless’ music many critics suggest, metal is a genre
with great depth, subtlety and intelligence. It is also a genre that engages
easily with myth and myth-making. Mythical subjects are a staple of metal
and genres such as folk and Viking metal take the engagement a stage
further. Some writers claim that ‘extreme and black metal is a music genre
infused with ideologies of elitism, nationalism, and exaggerated masculin-
ity’ but this engagement need not be uncritical or pro-nationalist, sim-
ply accepting widely held national myths (Spracklen et al. 2014, p. 48).
Instead extreme metal bands are constructing their own mythology and
imagined communities. Even where the intention is not this radical, for
example with Bolt Thrower, the very least their songs achieve is a signifi-
cant re-examination of some of the most deeply embedded national myths
of the War.
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CHAPTER 8
Football in No Man’s Land
AN EVOLVING MYTH
The myth that everyone in August 1914 shared the belief that ‘it would
all be over by Christmas’ has been decisively overturned by recent schol-
arship (Hallifax 2010). For example in The Times between 1 August and
25 December 1914 there is one reference to ‘over by Christmas’ and one
to ‘home by Christmas’. The first is in a letter from a boy in Germany
who states that ‘at first everybody thought that the Germans were going
to have a kind of picnic and that all would be over by Christmas’ (Times
1914a, p. 4). In the latter, captured German troops are reported to be
saying that ‘the officers are also endeavouring to encourage the troops
by telling them that they will be at home by Christmas’ (Times 1914b,
p. 8). There is just one other example of a similar phrase during the War
and in the same context. So the phrases were being used in exactly the
same way as today, to pour scorn on the suggestion. They are quoted to
emphasise the folly of the Germans in thinking such a foolish thing. Both
phrases were however in popular usage by the 1930s and, by the 1970s,
even veterans were claiming that they had all thought it would be ‘over
by Christmas’ (Times 1974, p. 2). This increasing use is demonstrated in
the n-gram below of the number of occurrences of the phrase ‘over by
Christmas’ in books in English between 1880 and 2015. The first peak
does not occur until after 1918 and its use was greater in the Second
World War than the First (Fig. 8.1).

184 P. GRANT
Fig. 8.1 n gram of occurrences of the phrase ‘over by Christmas’ between 1880
and 2015
The ‘over by Christmas’ myth finds its way into several songs about the
War, including Saxon’s ‘Kingdom of the Cross’ and, most prominently,
Robb Johnson’s Gentle Men which has two songs entitled ‘Home by
Christmas’ and, in the booklet notes, claims that the Christmas Truce so
incensed the generals that they ‘promised to shell their own troops back to
their trenches if it happened again’, a comment which has no basis in fact
and which somewhat devalues a set of songs that have some outstanding
and poignant moments (Johnson 2013, p. 22). The mistaken idea that
everyone thought they would not be fighting by 25 December 1914 has
influenced the modern view of the Christmas Truce and, in a war where
myth is so ubiquitous, there is no single event as mythologised in Britain.
In fact the profile of the Truce dropped after the War, rose in the mid-
1930s at the height of appeasement, fell during the Second World War
until, by the mid-1950s, references had virtually disappeared. However it
revived in the mid-1960s following Oh, What a Lovely War! and the 50th
anniversary of the War, then dropped back at the beginning of the 1970s
before beginning a slow rise until the millennium since when references
have taken off dramatically. Here again is an n-gram of its occurrence from
1880 to 2015 (Fig. 8.2).
The truce has been fertile ground for writers in prose, poetry and song
and it is a key scene in Oh What a Lovely War. Based on a number of first-
hand testimonies, both play and film have a group of British soldiers hear-
ing the Germans singing the carol ‘Stille Nacht’ before replying with a far
more scurrilous song of their own, and the scene has found its way into
many artistic depictions of the truce. Among these are Carol Ann Duffy’s
FOOTBALL IN NO MAN’S LAND 185
Fig. 8.2 n-gram of occurrences of the phrase ‘Christmas Truce’ between 1880
and 2015
poem ‘The Christmas Truce’ (written for Armistice Day 2011) and her
children’s book illustrated by David Roberts; further children’s books by
Hilary Robinson and Martin Impey, Aron Shepard and Wendy Edelson,
Michael Morpurgo, John Hendrix and James Bicheno; adult novels by
James O’Halloran and William Daysh; Christian Carion’s film Joyeux Noel;
and even an opera by Kevin Puts and a gay novelette by Laura Antoniou
in which British and German officers do rather more than fraternise. In
popular song there at least 25 depictions and many cover versions. Some
of these provide fanciful, not to say bizarre, retellings of an event that
needs little embellishment.
FUNERALS NOT FOOTBALL: THE FACTS ABOUT THE TRUCE

On the face of it the truce would seem to support those who believe the
War to have been futile and senseless, ‘a spontaneous outburst of pacific
feeling’ by the rank and file of both sides which ‘sprouted like a flower
in the desert […] amidst the brutality’ (Gilbert 1994, p. 117; de Groot
2000, p. 166). This version has British and Germans playing friendly foot-
ball matches in no man’s land and both agreeing the War was a terrible
mistake. The British generals are appalled and issue ‘explicit orders
threaten[ing] serious punishment should any similar incident ever happen
again’ (Winter and Bagget 1996, p. 99; Clark 1991, p. 41: Groom 2002,
p. 85; Ashworth 2004, p. 33). Stanley Weintraub for example says that the
truce occurred because ‘troop morale was very low’, that it was initiated
by the rank-and-file and that 1914 ‘was the only Christmas in the history
186 P. GRANT
of warfare where there was a truce’. He goes on to claim that the generals
stopped it because they thought it would end the War and rotated those
who took part out of the line moving in ‘troops who had been indoctri-
nated to demonise the enemy’ (Weintraub 2004). Some suggest that both
individuals and units were disciplined for taking part and many claim that
reports of the truce were withheld from the public. Even some of those
who took part retrospectively believed these myths (Crocker 2012, p. 20).
As is so often the case with key events in the First World War the reality
is somewhat different and more complex. The truce was often initiated
by officers, there were several recurrences (though not on the same scale)
and there were no hurried troop movements replacing those supposedly
on the verge of mutiny with hardened xenophobes. There is no indication
in any primary source of potential mutiny and it would be interesting to
know who these ‘indoctrinated’ troops were supposed to be, especially
in the British volunteer army. A recent detailed examination utilising,
unlike most of the above, primary sources concludes that though the
truce ‘would at first appear to confirm the dominant narrative of the First
World War’ it ‘demonstrates instead that many of the orthodoxies can
be disputed’ (Crocker 2012, pp. 99–100; Crocker 2015). Soldiers who
participated brought a gamut of feelings, from elation to suspicion and
many quite senior officers took part; in fact the most senior rank involved
was a colonel who would have been the highest-ranking officer stationed
close to the front line. The public, especially in Britain, were deluged with
details in the national and local press and though some senior command-
ers disapproved others were remarkably sanguine. Finally there were no
significant punishments meted out to participants on either side (Crocker
2012, pp. 74, 20 and 54; Brown and Seaton 1994, pp. xxiii–xxiv, 153–4,
160 and 163–4).
The truce was born out of the circumstances of two huge static armies
facing each other over very short distances during a period when fighting
would, in any case, have lessened during poor weather and at a time when
all armies shared a common religious holiday. There were further truces
during the First World War and similar events had occurred in the past,
for example during the Peninsular War, and have happened since, includ-
ing in Vietnam (Weber 2010; Brown and Seaton 1994, pp. xxii–xxiii).
Inevitably it was the British who fraternised more with the Germans than
the French or Belgians, whose countries had been invaded, though even
some of their units took part. However the truce was piecemeal and varied
in intensity from unit to unit. The singular ‘Christmas Truce’ is something
of a misnomer, Christmas Truces would be far more accurate as it was not

a single event but many, relatively unconnected ones. In some places the
Germans initiated matters, in others it was the British. Roughly two-thirds
of British front-line units participated in at least a ceasefire and truces were
initiated for many reasons of which the most common was simply to allow
burial of the dead rather than a desire to fraternise. And it was not all
‘sweetness and light’; if either side came too close to the other’s trenches
they were likely to be taken prisoner or, indeed, shot (Brown and Seaton
1994, pp. 66, 105 and 168; Crocker 2012, pp. 48–9 and 55).
A major element of the Christmas Truce myth is the football match:
‘Indeed, to some the whole event is not so much “the truce” as “the foot-
ball match”’ (Brown and Seaton 1994, p. 134). It is central to several of
the popular songs based on the truce, notably The Farm’s ‘All Together
Now’, and even one, Paul McCartney’s ‘Pipes of Peace’, which does not
even mention the truce. Football did indeed play a very significant part
in the British army during the War. It provided a way of remaining con-
nected with life back home and boosted morale and an analysis based
on a detailed survey of 500 official war diaries reveals that the average
British soldier on the Western Front spent more time playing football than
they did fighting the enemy (Mason and Riedi 2010; Corrigan 2008).
Though there were some instances of British and Germans playing foot-
ball together at Christmas 1914, they were far less common than the myth
suggests. Several times matches were proposed but did not take place or
were reported to have been played by someone else thus lacking con-
vincing first-hand detail (Brown and Seaton 1994, pp. 134–9; Crocker
2012, pp. 46–7). The one verifiable report of an actual game comes from
the war diary of the 133rd Saxon Regiment which records that ‘Tommy
and Fritz kicked about a real football supplied by a Scot. This developed
into a regulation football match with caps laid out as goals. The frozen
ground was no great matter. The game ended 3 – 2 to Fritz’ (Weintraub
2001, pp. 103–4; Magee et al. 2005, p. 301; Brown and Seaton 1994,
p. 223; Crocker 2012, p. 70). Most matches were more like the mass
games children indulge in on school playgrounds rather than properly
organised. Brown and Seaton quote Ernie Williams, a former Territorial
of 6/Cheshires, who recalls that ‘they made up some goals and one fellow
went in goal and then it was just a general kick-about. I should think there
were about a couple of hundred taking part… There was no referee, and
no score, no tally at all’ (Brown and Seaton 1994, p. 138). Bertie Felstead
recalled football in similar terms from a truce that took place in 1915:
188 P. GRANT
‘it wasn’t a game as such, more a kick-around and a free-for-all. There

could have been 50 on each side for all I know. I played because I really
liked football. I don’t know how long it lasted, probably half an hour’
(Felstead 2001). Felstead was in the Royal Welch Fusiliers and his story
closely matches that of Frank Richards (Richards 1933).
The centenary in 2014 demonstrated just how deeply the Christmas
Truce and its football matches have permeated the British myth of the
War. New football-related memorials were erected in both Belgium and
Britain and in Ieper the matches were ‘recreated’ by junior players from
Chelsea and Liverpool who lined up with teams from Hearts (Scotland),
Paris St Germain and Valenciennes (France), Anderlecht and Club Brugge
(Belgium), Borussia Mönchengladbach and Schalke (Germany) and Rapid
Vienna (Austria). This was officially supported by the British government
for whom Dr. Andrew Murrison, the minister in charge of the commemo-
rations, commented that ‘football has a particular part to play because
of the totemic significance of the Christmas truce in 1914’ and added
that staging a match was ‘a no-brainer in terms of an event that is going
to reach part of the community that might not get terribly entrenched
[sic] into this’ (Hopkins and Norton-Taylor 2013). This article was titled
‘Kickabout that captured futility’, though quite how the football matches
‘captured futility’ the authors fail to explain, unless it was a reference to
the futility of England ever beating the Germans on penalties.
The Christmas Truce is also supposed to have been an event about which
the public knew little or nothing. Though the German press said very little,
the event was widely reported in Britain over a period of some three weeks
(Brown and Seaton 1994, p. 178; Crocker 2012, pp. 61–86). However,
it is in the meaning of the truce that many writers, who otherwise report
the details accurately, lose their perspective. Weintraub certainly does and
Brown and Seaton also rather fail on this point. American Jim Murphy’s
children’s book Truce: The Day the Soldiers Stopped Fighting deserves clas-
sification alongside Mike Harding’s comments on ‘The Accrington Pals’
as ‘deliberate lies’. Despite purporting to be authoritative (he provides a
list of sources for example) Murphy claims in the Preface that those taking
part in the truce ‘openly def[ied] their commanding officers’. One of his
sources is Brown and Seaton who demonstrate categorically the untruth
of this comment. Unsurprisingly Murphy’s conclusion is that ‘some wars
are justified (such as the Second World War against Hitler and his allies)
while others are not’ (Murphy 2009, p. 103). Inevitably the book gets
unanimous praise and five-star reviews on the Amazon web pages. It also
shows that Americans have become as enmeshed in the mythology of the

truce as have their British counterparts, which is amply demonstrated in
song.
Was the truce a significant event, a moment of opportunity which, if
the participants had had their way, could have led to an end to hostili-
ties? The reactions of the soldiers involved give a resounding ‘no’ to this
pacifist interpretation: ‘They did not voice any belief that the existence
of the truce meant the end of the war, or that contact with the Germans
removed their rationale for continued fighting’ (Crocker 2012, p. 57).
Most regarded the truce as a welcome break from the prospect of being
killed but quickly resumed their soldierly role with undiminished commit-
ment. There were no impulses to suddenly love their enemies, shoot their
officers or throw down their weapons. As Alan Wakefield has concluded
‘the overwhelming majority of those taking part regarded it simply as a
festive interlude in a war that needed to be won’ (Wakefield 2006, p. 17).
A MYTH IN SONG
So what have popular musicians made of the truce? The first British art-
ists to record a song about the events, ‘Christmas 1914’, were the highly
obscure psychedelic rock band Shuttah on their 1971 album The Image
Maker Vol 1 and 2 (Vertigo). It almost sounds like an outtake from Odessey
and Oracle and the track is a gentle analogy between peaceful Christmases
and that of 1914 characterised by ‘sardonic holiday bliss, dark humour
and a Kinks-like delivery’ (Atavachron 2013). Overall the album ‘involves
the English war experience in the 20th century’ and there are references to
both the Boer War (‘Lady Smith’) and the Spanish Civil War (‘Guernica’)
though it is all done very subtly and tastefully (Atavachron 2013).
Extraordinarily, despite the excellent musicianship and high production
values of the album no one has any idea as to the identity of the band
members and even a search at UK copyright control did not show any
results revealing who Shuttah were. Christmas 1980 saw a song about the
truce, at least peripherally, reaching number three in the UK single charts
that still gets regular plays during the festive season. Jona Lewie’s ‘Stop
the Cavalry’, with its references to the Czar and being home by Christmas
(as well as to Churchill’s First World War frontline service, the Second
World War and ‘the nuclear fallout zone’), was something of a novelty
hit, with its Salvation Army brass band accompaniment. Lewie wrote it
as a protest song with ‘stop the cavalry’ being a metaphor for stopping
190 P. GRANT
all war. The accompanying video had Lewie in the trenches which may
have been an influence three years later when one of the world’s biggest
stars entered the fray. Paul McCartney’s ‘Pipes of Peace’ does not specifi-
cally mention the First World War but the video he made to accompany
the release begins with the title, ‘France 1914, Christmas Day’ (though
the actual truce took place mainly in Belgium). The video was produced
by Hugh Symonds, featured more than 100 extras, and has exceptionally
high production values. It sees McCartney playing both a German soldier
and a British Tommy to emphasise the similarity between them. It has the
mail being delivered on both sides of the lines with each soldier receiving a
letter from their wives and a photo including their new babies. It then re-
enacts the truce, complete with football match, with McCartney meeting
McCartney, until a shell burst shatters the peace. The video is outstanding
but the song, one of McCartney’s most sentimental, is not in the same
league as his erstwhile partner John Lennon’s anti-war songs such as ‘Give
Peace a Chance’ or even ‘Happy Christmas (War is Over)’. The video
was recreated almost shot-for-shot for the 2014 Sainsbury’s Christmas
advertisement which received much criticism for seeming to profit from
its depiction of the War but certainly had the British press in fine mytholo-
gising form with comments including the following from Ally Fogg who
called it: ‘a dangerous and disrespectful masterpiece’, apparently unaware
of the fact that it was blatantly plagiarised. Fogg succinctly summed up
the British myth by suggesting that nobody understood why they were
fighting, we still do not understand and the ‘sheer futility of the slaughter
is what made the truce possible’ (Fogg 2014).
Originally released in 1990 The Farm’s ‘All Together Now’ provides a
view of the event based around British and German soldiers playing foot-
ball together. Written by Peter Hooton and Steve Grimes it gives the basic
details of the truce, which they correctly place in Belgium. Hooton says
that he wrote the song after watching former Labour Party leader Michael
Foot being criticised for wearing a ‘donkey jacket’ at the Cenotaph
Remembrance Day service in 1981: ‘it’s about the working classes being
sent to war. People across a divide who probably had more in common
with each other than the people who had sent them to war in the first
place’ (Hooton 2010). It at least avoids the clichéd stereotyping of Sting’s
‘Children’s Crusade’ and the sentimentality of McCartney but ultimately
the song’s refrain of ‘let’s go home’ is the band imposing their interpreta-
tion of events rather than being the attitudes of the troops who took part.
The song is heavily influenced musically by the descending chord sequence
of Johann Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major (written c.1694) and it was the

catchy, repetitive chorus that made it a major hit in both Britain (where it
reached number four) and the USA (where it peaked at six). Since its first
release ‘All Together Now’ has become one of the most iconic football-
related songs. In March 1994 the band performed it at Anfield before
the last Merseyside derby in front of the old Kop (itself named after the
Boer War battle of Spion Kop). It has been used by Sky Sports as the
theme for coverage of Football League matches and a remake by Atomic
Kitten was an official song for the 2006 FIFA World Cup, though without
the references to no man’s land. Many listeners would have missed the
song’s socialist message but it could well be the most played of any of the
songs about the War. ‘All Together Now’ was re-recorded in 2014 by a
group including The Farm and other well-known musicians calling them-
selves The Peace Collective to raise funds for the British Red Cross and
Shorncliffe Trust (a charity seeking to build a heritage park and education
centre at the former Shorncliffe Barracks in Folkestone which was heavily
used during the First World War). It features an eclectic line-up includ-
ing boys from both English and German football clubs, Jona Lewie, the
Proclaimers, Englebert Humperdinck, Holly Johnson, Jah Wobble and
Jermain Jackson and produced by Suggs (Madness) and Mick Jones (the
Clash).
Across the Atlantic, The Royal Guardsmen revived their depiction of
Charles Schultz’s cartoon dog Snoopy and his battles with the Red Baron
in ‘Snoopy’s Christmas’ (1967, Laurie). The pair have a dogfight on
Christmas Eve in which Snoopy is defeated and forced to land. But instead
of inflicting the coup de grace the honourable German offers Snoopy a
holiday toast. American folk singer John McCutcheon’s ‘Christmas in the
Trenches’ (from his 1984 album Winter Solstice, Rounder/Select) has
strong links to Bogle’s ‘No Man’s Land’ and borrows Hubert Parry’s
tune ‘Repton’ (best known for its use in the hymn ‘Dear Lord and Father
of Mankind’). He invents a fictional Liverpudlian soldier, Francis Tolliver,
who is telling his story in 1917. He and his comrades hear the Germans
singing and some soldiers from Kent respond with ‘God Rest Ye Merry
Gentlemen’. The Germans then do a rendition of ‘Stille Nacht’ which
the British accompany in English. They meet in no man’s land before
returning, at daylight, to fight. It is remarkable how many songs about the
truce have it set during the hours of darkness which is clearly to increase
the impact and utilise images such as ‘a flare-lit soccer game’. When you
think about it, meeting in no man’s land in darkness would have been
192 P. GRANT
ridiculously foolhardy. The song claims that gas was being used at the
time when it was not deployed until April 1915 and leaps to wider conclu-
sions suggesting the truce ensured that: ‘The walls they’d kept between
us to exact the work of war/Had been crumbled and were gone forever-
more.’ This conclusion, as the historical evidence shows, is erroneous. The
vast majority of soldiers did not consider the truce a universal demonstra-
tion that peace should triumph. They were perfectly able to go back to
their lines and continue the War and, yes, attempt to kill the men with
whom they had fraternised. For the same reason former enemies are able
to become friends after wars are over, they can separate their professional
‘job’ from their personal relations. The song also lapses into easy blame-
making by saying ‘the ones who call the shots won’t be among the dead
and lame’. If McCutcheon is referring to generals then he’s entirely wrong.
No fewer than 58 British generals died from enemy action in the First
World War, in the Second the total was three (Corrigan 2010, p. 474).
This is clearly an important song for McCutcheon who often tells stories
about its composition or his meetings with veterans at concerts and he
later used it as the basis for yet another children’s book. Stanley Weintraub
says that McCutcheon’s song contains the story of Scots Guards officer
Sir Ian Colquhoun. Colquhoun was involved in a 1915 Christmas Truce
and court-martialled for disobeying orders. Initially he was reprimanded
but even that sentence was quashed by General Head Quarters (Crocker
2015). Weintraub claims that, in the song, McCutcheon says Colquhoun
was sentenced to death and ‘only George V spared him from that fate’
(Weintraub 2004). I have not been able to find any instance where
McCutcheon has said or written this (Weintraub provides no reference for
his quotes) and it is certainly not in the song.
The British Indie band GoodBooks song ‘Passchendaele’ (from
Control, 2007, Columbia) tells of a First World War soldier, Jack, who
dies at Passchendaele having previously ‘smoked German cigarettes on
Christmas Day’ and his son who is killed in his Spitfire in 1944. Australian
folk rock band Hunters and Collectors title track from their 1987 release
What’s a Few Men? (Atlantic, the album was titled Fate in the USA) is
based on A Fortunate Life, the autobiography of Gallipoli veteran Albert
Facey, published in 1981 just nine months before his death. The book
instantly became an Australian classic and made Facey a belated celebrity.
Facey’s narrative, like that of many long-lived veterans of the War, was
almost universally accepted as entirely factual until more detailed research
was undertaken. A history student challenged some of the assertions in the
book after she researched Facey’s war record in the Australian National
Archives (ULT Futures 2011). The book ‘purposefully distorts’ chronol-
ogy and includes episodes, such as Facey blowing out a light that has
burned in an Egyptian tomb for over 1,000 years, that are clearly apoc-
ryphal (Bliss 1991, p. 44). A Fortunate Life is, in fact, an example of
‘Papillion syndrome’, after the book by Henri Charrière about his incar-
ceration and escape from ‘Devil’s Island’ which he originally submitted
as a novel but whose publisher persuaded him to rewrite as autobiog-
raphy. ‘What’s a Few Men?’ adopts a popular Australian War myth, the
brave Aussie other ranks led (from the rear) to their deaths by uncaring
British officers. Though the Colonel agrees to a Christmas truce to bury
the dead, during which ‘we held the enemy in our arms’, it is soon over
and the refrain ‘what’s a few men’ is the officer’s indifferent mantra. In
the song, this has to be Christmas 1916 or 1917 as the Australians did not
arrive on the Western Front until the Spring of 1916 and it is a clichéd
idea that too easily shifts the blame for the War onto the ‘donkeys’ at the
top of the British Army and, because of this, loses some of its potential
impact as a more universal pacifist song.
Bread and Roses were a somewhat ramshackle folk-punk duo from
Boston. They interspersed their own original songs with renditions of
union ballads, covers of American folk music and country classics. In simi-
lar vein to The Decemberists their lyrics include potent political messages
as well as tales of sailors, whalers and the life of pirates. Their song set,
unusually, on ‘Boxing Day 1914’ is narrated by an old soldier who is remi-
niscing about the War with a friend and has an authentic, Woody Guthrie
feel. Very similar musically is English ‘industrial folk collective’ The Jar
Family’s ‘1914’ (2014) which is neatly summed up by Paul Lester as hav-
ing ‘the bohemian cheer of the Pogues […] combined with the broken
poetic spirit of Peter Doherty’ (Lester 2013). It also has a rather well-shot,
nostalgic video of the band and characters from the home front of the
period. Collin Raye’s ‘It Could Happen Again’ and Garth Brooks’ ‘Belleau
Wood’ are two of the relatively few Country and Western songs about the
War. Raye’s, with a spoken introduction by Johnny Cash, expresses the
hope that it will not happen again. Brooks’ song, about a key battle for
the US Army, takes the Oh, What a Lovely War! scene and transposes it,
entirely inappropriately, to the setting of Belleau Wood nearly four years
later, in the late Spring of 1918.
Irish singer Jerry Lynch acquired the song ‘A Silent Night: Christmas
1915’ from its author Cormac MacConnell and released it on his 1997
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album The Dimming of the Day (Dara). In it the narrator first tells of how
they heard a German ‘lad of 21’ singing; the troops then meet and are
‘all brothers hand in hand’. But of course the truce is short-lived and in
the next verse the song delivers its sting in the tail with the narrator kill-
ing the singer in battle. The intention is to deliver a powerful anti-war
message at such a bitter irony but the idea is clumsily handled. The ver-
sion of the song (on Celtic Christmas, 2011, Decca) by hugely successful
Irish pop band Celtic Thunder, named Top World Album Artist in 2009
by Billboard magazine, is made substantially worse by the band’s bland
pop which does not assist in making a serious point. Both the song and
this particular act fall squarely into a category of Irish music outlined by
John O’Connell which is conservative and wishes to preserve a particular
romanticised, and mythologised, view of ‘Irishness’ and the Irish nation
(O’Connell 2011). Lynch has since revisited the truce with ‘Christmas in
the Trenches’ on the concept EP Requiem for a Soldier (2009) which also
contains the song ‘John Condon’ about the soldier believed to have been
the youngest killed during the War at the age of 14 and whose story has
also been a subject for veteran English folk-rock band Fairport Convention
(on the aptly titled Myths and Heroes, 2015, Matty Grooves). It is now
thought probable from a birth certificate, census, war diaries and other
records that Condon was 18 at the recorded date of his death and that
the wrong individual may be named on the grave (Royal Dublin Fusiliers
website, n.d.). Set at Christmas 1915 US folk singers Tom Mank and Sera
Smolen tell the story of ‘Sergeant Oliver’ of the Black Watch who, they
say, was deliberately shot by his own side for fraternising. Both the singers
and their source, Paul Fussell (2000, p. 245), get the regiment and the
circumstances wrong. Oliver was in the Scots Guards and, as eye witness
reports make clear, was accidentally shot by the Germans as he stood on
the parapet (Brown and Seaton 1994, p. 203).
RE-SHAPERS OF THE MYTH
A significant problem for writers of songs that combine the First World
War and Christmas is that they get overwhelmed by the mythology. There
are so many stereotypes and clichés that even the most skilled songwriter
can easily get drawn into sentimentality, banality or outright distortion.
There are, though, two notable exceptions to this tendency. The first is
from the British progressive rock band Barclay James Harvest in the song
‘The Ballad of Denshaw Mill’ which comes from their 1993 release Caught
in the Light (Polydor). Denshaw Mill, also known as Broadmeadow Mill,

was a woollen mill which operated until the late 1880s but was already
derelict by the time of the First World War. It is located in the Friarmere
area of Saddleworth known locally as the Darkside (Ham and Bud, n.d.).
Writer John Lees’ home town of Oldham is close by and he now lives in
Saddleworth itself. The line ‘a hole as rotten as ever fouled the green earth’
is from a verse by Thomas Wrigley who worked at the mill, and Harold
McKlintock, to whose memory the song is dedicated, was an old friend
and neighbour of Lees and a source of inspiration when he wrote the
song (Barclay James Harvest Forum, n.d.). Though it never specifically
mentions the First World War the lyrics make it clear that this is when it is
set. It begins with something of a stereotypical image of the War, though
unusually set in England rather than on the Western Front, and with three
older men as the protagonists. In the next verse it becomes clear who these
three are or, at least, to whom Lees is comparing them when a bright light
appears in the East and ‘an angel came down on Denshaw Mill/Spreading
her light all around on the Darkside’. Though the angel is metaphorical,
Lees is clearly thinking of the old men as the Three Wise Men (or their
modern equivalent) and the lyrics also invoke the image of the Angel of
Mons as a protector of the soldiers. It is possible too that Lees had in mind
the generational gap that was clear at the time and became the subject of
famous works by both Wilfred Owen (‘The Parable of the Old Man and
the Young’) and Kipling (‘Epitaphs of the War’). The reference to the
‘darkside’ is also typical of the song’s complex set of meanings. It could be
seen simply as a factual comment but the vast majority of listeners would
have no idea that the real Denshaw Mill is situated in an area known as ‘the
Darkside’ and would inevitably draw the conclusion that the ‘darkside’
refers to the War or, more broadly, the dark side of the human psyche from
which wars arise. The chorus includes the line ‘he promised to be there
if you believe, to carry you home’. Lees is invoking the Christian story
of Christmas and the inevitable thoughts about the loved ones of those
away from home using it as a universal image of hope. As such, it would
have resonated with the soldiers at the front, or indeed the soldiers of any
period or religion.
The second verse turns to the thoughts of those at home as the angel
speaks and the old men hear laughter coming from the mill ‘the warm
sounds of their young men like a summer breeze’. Of course this is an
illusion and quickly fades, and here Lees could easily have slipped over the
edge into morbid sentimentality. Instead his image is a modern equivalent
196 P. GRANT
of the hopes of all those separated from their loved ones and an echo of the
sentiments in Richard Lovelace’s famous poem ‘To Althea from Prison’:
‘If I have freedom in my love and in my soul am free/Angels alone that
soar above enjoy such liberty.’ One achievement of ‘Denshaw Mill’ is that
instead of saying what happened to people or describing events, it con-
centrates on what they thought about universal themes such as love and
hope and, in this way, forges a strong link between the people of the War
and ourselves.
The next verse compares the decay of the Mill with the destruction at
the front but also stands for the decay of the world in the light of inhu-
man total warfare and though, in the final verse, Lees might be accused
of sentimentality, he also mirrors the interest in spiritualism which was
significantly boosted after the War (Hazelgrove 1999). Though many
of the soldiers never returned home the old men believed they had that
Christmas. It is a poignant, subtle and affecting song, sung in a straight-
forward, carol-like, style with a relatively muted musical accompaniment.
Mainly played on the synthesizer the song begins with a ‘bagpipe’ lament
in the style of ‘Battle of the Somme’ or ‘Flowers of the Forest’. There is
the sound of distant gunfire and ‘ghostly choir’ effects as well as a soft
military-style side drum. It ends with a strong guitar solo from Lees.
Though it contains some stereotyped images ‘The Ballad of Denshaw
Mill’ utilises them as a starting point for broadening the subject of the
song rather than, as Harding or Lynch, simply piling them on for effect.
The album itself got very lukewarm reviews from both fans and critics and
I have not seen one that mentions that ‘Denshaw Mill’ is about the War,
perhaps it was too subtle.
Another band who take the myth of the Christmas Truce and ‘repack-
ages’ it for wider purposes are the Israeli band Orphaned Land. Founded
in 1991, Orphaned Land started out as a death/doom metal band but
now combine Jewish, Arabic and other Middle Eastern influences with
a progressive metal sound, singing in Arabic, English, Hebrew, Latin,
Turkish and other languages. The band are all Jewish and they promote
a message of peace and unity between faiths. They are now a major inter-
national act, opening for Metallica on the latter’s 2010 show in Israel
and being voted Global Metal Band of the Year by the readers of Metal
Hammer magazine in 2014. They have large fan bases in many Islamic
countries and regularly play in Turkey where, in March 2015, they per-
formed alongside acts from Iran, Dubai, Lebanon, Turkey, Bulgaria and
Georgia to commemorate the centenary of Çanakkale/Gallipoli. Similarly
to many other metal bands Orphaned Land say they do not take sides in
any conflict though, coming from Israel, this has even greater significance
(Metal Blast 2013). For example, with regard to the recent devastation of
Gaza, vocalist Kobi Farhi commented that ‘the fact that more Palestinians
die doesn’t mean that they’re right, the fact that Israel is a democracy
doesn’t mean they’re right’ (Baker 2014). The album All is One (2013,
Century Media) was recorded in three different countries, Sweden, Israel
and Turkey, and its cover is a synthesis of the Christian cross, Jewish Star of
David and Islamic Crescent. ‘Let the Truce be Known’ was the first single
release from the album and updates the 1914 events to the current Arab-
Israeli conflict. The antagonists face each other across no man’s land when
the Arab begins to play a flute. The Israeli recognises the tune and joins in
the song and the two then meet, swapping stories of each other’s families,
before the dawn when they both have to return to base. The following
night they again meet, but this time in conflict, and shoot each other, the
ending being ambiguous as to whether this encounter is fatal and with a
subtlety lacking in Jerry Lynch’s similar tale. The band’s non-sectarian,
‘we are all brothers’ philosophy might be seen as utopian and the song as
hopelessly naive but it comes across powerfully and genuinely, a similar
impact to another Israeli song ‘It’s Cloudy Now’ (‘Achshav Me’unan’) by
Aviv Geffen, best known in the West for his version with Steven Wilson in
their band Blackfield. Inevitably Orphaned Land have received criticism
(and death threats) from fundamentalists on both sides of the conflict but
the impact they can make is summed up well by one fan’s analysis of All is
One who suggests that ‘this record is about more than just music because
it builds a bridge between all these different cultures and despite this
noble attempt, the music itself still remains catchy, emotional and inno-
vating [sic]. That’s where Orphaned Land become authentic and sym-
pathetic in comparison to the Bonos and Geldofs of this world’ (kluseba
2014). When receiving the Metal Hammer award for All is One Farhi
insisted on sharing it with Abed Hathut, leader of Palestinian band Khalas,
and, in the same year the band’s Jewish and Muslim fans joined together
to nominate the band for the Nobel Peace Prize which went instead to
the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (Scott 2016,
p. 24). This was, no doubt, a well-deserved honour but giving it to a heavy
metal band might have created more of an impact.
‘Let the Truce be Known’ is one of only four songs that reference the
event from outside English-speaking countries, re-enforcing the fact that
the truce is predominantly an Anglo-Saxon myth. Googling ‘Christmas
198 P. GRANT
Truce’ produced 430,000 hits whereas Trêve de Noël registered only

122,000 and Weihnachtsfrieden a mere 57,300. To emphasise the differ-
ent interpretation of the events, when Christian Carion came to make his
film Joyeux Noel in 2005 he applied for permission to use a military site
to recreate the battlefield. He was told that the French army ‘could not
be seen to be “involved in a film about rebels”’ (Carion 2014). If he’d
been British I have no doubt the government would have enthusiastically
agreed.
Though it does not challenge the prevailing myth of the truce one more
song is worthy of note. In 1864 Denmark lost the Second Schleswig War
to Prussia and as a result the Danes of North Schleswig found themselves
under German rule. The resentment caused was greatly magnified during
the First World War when many Danes found themselves conscripted into
the German army. A hundred years later two teenage Danish sisters Hanne
and Nina Ahnfeldt-Mollerup and their friend Maria Hjuler Suhr decided
to form a band. They called it Kmaa Kendell, an acronym of its members’
names, and considered what to write a song about. The Ahnfeldt sisters’
great great grandfather was one of the Danish German soldiers and they
had been told about the Christmas Truce by their parents. The result was
‘1914’ for which they wrote the lyrics, composed the music, recorded,
mixed and mastered ‘the whole thing ourselves’ (Kmaa Kendell 2015). Its
simple message that ‘tonight there are no borders’ is delivered with real
feeling by lead singer Hanne. Some may find the song cloying or senti-
mental but the group’s heartfelt naivety is, to me, very touching. However
the band went much further:
After the song was released we sent a message to all the embassies in the
world telling the story of our idea of creating a silent Christmas night, and
got surprisingly a lot of positive answers back. We even wrote to the Pope
to make sure that we did not leave anyone out… Back that summer all
we thought about was writing a song, but never did we expect to get the
song released, played in different Danish radios [sic], getting in contact with
Danish popstars and the different world embassies, and even a year after the
song was released, being contacted by an English writer who wants to men-
tion us in a book. (Kmaa Kendell 2015)
Though the song is very much in keeping with the myth of the truce it
has inspired a group of young Danes both to record a very moving song
and to make a remarkable statement for transnational reconciliation. Kmaa
Kendell demonstrate that though history attempts to tell us what actually
happened myth describes what should have happened.
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CHAPTER 9
The Gospel According to St Wilfred
Deafening explosions fill the air. The rattle of machine-gun fire is heard. In
the gun flashes you glimpse a trench parapet surmounted by barbed wire.
Figures, clearly British Tommies, move to and fro in silhouette. A single
great-coated figure appears wearing a German steel helmet. His first words
are taken from one of Wilfred Owen’s most famous poems ‘Anthem for
Doomed Youth’:
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns
He begins a song, the first words of which evoke Rupert Brooke’s poem
‘The Soldier’: ‘In a foreign field he lay, unknown soldier, unknown grave’.
Is this the latest film of the First World War, or perhaps a stage production
of Oh, What a Lovely War! or even Journey’s End? As is soon made clear this
is a rock concert, the band is Iron Maiden with lead singer Bruce Dickinson
fronting their live version of the song ‘Paschendele’ (Iron Maiden 2007).
The lyrics include images of blood-filled trenches, lifeless bodies hanging
on the wire, and soldiers drowned in mud and compare the battlefield to a
bloody tomb. The song suggests parallels between the situation of British
and German soldiers and draws comparisons with Christ’s crucifixion. Iron
Maiden’s vision of the Third Battle of Ypres is one of their most impas-
sioned and deeply felt songs, drawing on many of the key War myths we

204 P. GRANT
have been examining and its lyrics instantly evoke comparison with the
famous war poets, most notably Owen and Siegfried Sassoon.
Elsewhere I have suggested that a relationship between music and
poetry began during the War itself, that the changing nature of the war
poets’ depiction of remembrance is reflected in the interaction between
music and the remembrance of the War and, in Britain, ‘so much of
the continuing musical response to the Great War operates within the
constraints of a popular memory defined by the war poets’ (Grant and
Hanna 2015, pp. 111 and 124). Here I was referring to both popular and
classical music and it is the latter which is in greater thrall of War myths
(Wood 2014). Examples include Mark-Anthony Turnage’s The Torn Fields
(2001) as well as his opera based on Sean O’Casey’s play The Silver Tassie
(2000), Colin Matthews’ No Man’s Land (2011) and American Kevin
Puts’ Pulitzer Prize-winning opera, based on Christian Carion’s film,
Silent Night (2012). Many popular songs draw inspiration from the iconic
poetry of the War. Before looking at some examples we should explore
the similarities and differences between poetry and song and examine
the specific myths that, in Britain especially, the war poets have helped to
generate.
POETRY AND SONG LYRICS

Some writers suggest that ‘songs can work like poetry, providing an expe-
rience of transcendence beyond the banality of ordinary everyday living’
(Rolston 2001, 50). Others point out that song lyrics cannot be the exact
equivalent of poetry as the two are designed to perform different func-
tions (Woodard 2007). Frith suggests this holds true even for songs whose
words can ‘stand by themselves’ for once music is added new meanings
are produced and the very best songs ‘can be heard as a struggle between
verbal and musical rhetoric, between the singer and the song’ (Frith
1996, p. 182, emphasis in original). Not all would agree with this rigid
distinction and writing lyrics and poems involves many similar skills and
techniques, such as rhythm and repetition. There is clear overlap where
a poem has been set to music or a poet is more interested in the sound
of the words than their meaning (Frith 1996, pp. 180–2). A number of
volumes of poetry also include song lyrics and the boundary between
them is blurred by songwriters and poets as well as by listeners and read-
ers (Negus and Astor 2015, pp. 233–4). In some cases songwriters have
been poets before turning to song (Leonard Cohen and Patti Smith for
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST WILFRED 205
example) or have published volumes of poetry (Dylan, John Lennon, Gil

Scott-Heron). Polly Harvey has always been interested in the blurred lines
between poetry and song and her most recent work, the volume of poems
and photographs The Hollow of the Hand (Bloomsbury 2015) and the
album The Hope Six Demolition Project (2016, Island) explore this rela-
tionship with sung versions of several of the poems. Harvey says that in
writing the songs for Let England Shake she thought herself into the role
of an officially appointed war songwriter and asked ‘how would I report
back and try to do it in an impartial way… Like war poets or like any
foreign correspondent but trying to do it through song’ (Sawyer 2011).
In doing so Harvey’s songs emulate one of the key approaches of chanson
which is ‘a kind of poetic and musical journalism’ (Hawkins 2000, p. 4).
Indeed chanson has been accepted in France as another form of poetry
since at least the 1960s when Brel, Brassens and Ferré became the first
songwriters to be included as recognised poets in Pierre Seghers’ collec-
tion Poètes d’aujourd’hui. Perhaps Keith Negus and Pete Astor get closer
to the reality with their concept of popular musicians as ‘architects’ rather
than romantically inspired individuals (Negus and Astor 2015). They sug-
gest that song production is more like designing a building or, I would
add, directing a film, especially with regard to elements such as ambi-
guity and repetition. Both architects and film directors exist somewhere
between the ‘inspired individual creator’ of a poem or novel and the leader
or manager of a creative team. Thus whilst the lyrics of songs may closely
resemble poetry we might depict recorded song as being closer to film-
making (Moy 2015, pp. xvii–xxvi).
PAUL FUSSELL AND THE MYTH OF THE WAR POETS

When we read about the past we are constantly looking for points of ref-
erence, for people who appear to think and feel the way we do. We live
with the recent memory of two total wars and with the threat of nuclear
destruction so ‘we know now that war is dirty’, whereas ‘Edwardian
England had much less cause to feel it so’ (Stephen 1993, p. 298). In the
First World War there is however a group who, by their education, their
sensitivity and their reaction to war and death, very much fit the bill of
‘thinking like us’ and not like their fellow Edwardians—the war poets.
These young men were almost exclusively middle and upper class and the
War was uniquely shocking for them, just as it would be if we were sud-
denly transported into the trenches.
206 P. GRANT
In Britain the view that the truth about the First World War lies in a
small number of writers and poems became firmly established during the
1960s and has remained embedded in the perceptions of the public. The
interpretation of First World War poetry by more than one generation of
teachers, writers and others has been heavily indebted to one, ground-
breaking, but significantly flawed text. Paul Fussell’s The Great War and
Modern Memory (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1975) appeared at the
end of a decade in which the War had been utilised as a symbol for the
bankruptcy of an outdated class system and a blatant example of the folly
of war to parallel events in Vietnam. Fussell’s book provided the intellec-
tual validation for previous didactic works such as Oh What a Lovely War
(both the play and film) or Stanley Kubrick’s 1957 film Paths of Glory.
Though Fussell’s advocates point out that his book was not intended as
history it is often portrayed in that way and thus its shortcomings as such
need recognising. There are inaccuracies in depicting life in the front line
and tours of duty. Fussell gives you the impression of a never-ending suc-
cession of battles when, in reality, the average British soldier spent more
time playing football than fighting. Fussell falsifies casualty figures say-
ing ‘even in the quietest times, some 7000 British men and officers were
killed and wounded daily’ (Fussell 2000, p. 41). The true figure is about
1,600, still appalling but Fussell is wrong by a factor of four. Hyperbole
is passed off as fact. An example being the comments of Major Pilditch in
August 1917 that the war would last so long that ‘children still at school’
would end up in the trenches (Fussell 2000, p. 72). Fussell calls this com-
ment ‘brilliantly prophetic’ yet no critic appears to have pointed out the
absurdity of his statement. Chronology is distorted. The Battle of Neuve
Chapelle (10 March, 1915) is placed after the first German gas attack at
Ypres (22 April 1915) and the mine explosion at Messines is responsible
for the capture of Vimy Ridge (some 30 miles away and occurring two
months previously) (Fussell 2000, pp. 10 and 14). Fussell also suggests
that Vimy, one of the most notable successes of the War, was a failure and
that it is in Belgium when it is in France. Fussell’s account of the end of
the war is that Germany was defeated because she attacked so successfully
(Fussell 2000, p. 18). About the only analyst who would have agreed with
him on this point was Adolf Hitler. There is a total absence of anything
about the home front or, indeed, anything other than the trenches of the
Western Front. More crucial though are Fussell’s failings of literary analy-
sis. His three main assertions are that:
1. The war poets’ views are representative.

2. Their style marked a complete break from the past and meant that
euphemistic, over-patriotic, language could never be used again.
3. They opposed the War, which they considered unjustified and futile.
Many have pointed out the error of the first and several have scotched
the second, though few have seriously challenged the last (Gregory 2008,
pp. 271–2; Prior and Wilson 1994; Vance 1997, pp. 89–90; Stephen
1996a, pp. 26–9; Winter 2013, p. 250). Were the key war poets, Siegfried
Sassoon and Wilfred Owen in particular, as anti-war as Fussell and many
others suggest? If you read all of Owen’s war poems (not just the famous
half-dozen or so) or the post-war comments of Sassoon a somewhat differ-
ent, and far more complex, picture emerges. Sassoon and Owen were deter-
mined to ‘see things through’ and defeat Germany and were, along with
Robert Graves, highly ambiguous in their attitudes towards war. Though
Owen clearly despised war he still dragged himself back to fight and die in
it, even when an honourable escape had been offered to him. Both Owen
and Sassoon won the Military Cross and though Sassoon tossed the rib-
bon of his in the Mersey, he went back to active service after his famous
public declaration against the War and later replaced the discarded ribbon
(Egremont 2006, p. 203). In a letter to E. M. Forster in June 1918 Sassoon
states how he could no longer support Bertrand Russell’s pacifist ideas in
the light of Germany’s renewed militarism and also came close to repudi-
ating his statement when, in Siegfried’s Journey, he says that ‘I must add
that in the light of subsequent events it is difficult to believe that a peace
negotiated in 1917 would have been permanent. I share the general opin-
ion that nothing on earth would have prevented a recurrence of Teutonic
aggressiveness’ (Hibberd 1986, pp. 108–9; Sassoon 1945, p. 57). Turning
to Owen, my analysis of the approximately 100 poems he wrote during the
War is that only eight could be interpreted as at all ‘anti-war’ and in one,
‘1914’, he speaks of ‘The foul tornado centred on Berlin’. Though written
in that year he revised it in 1917–18 without amendment or ironic intent
(Owen 2004, p. 93). There are also great differences between the two
poets that are not often highlighted. Owen wrote a far smaller number of
poems about the War than Sassoon. Out of the 113 Sassoon wrote after he
enlisted only three contain no reference or at least allusion to the War and
he was obsessed by the War both during it and for the rest of his life. On
the other hand Owen, for whom we can only cite evidence from the War
itself, was far less obsessive. Of 80 poems written during Owen’s active
208 P. GRANT
service at least 30 make no reference whatsoever to the War. In many

others Owen utilises classical allusions and the kind of romantic language
Fussell claims he helped banish and which does not appear in Sassoon’s
work. He uses words like ‘forsooth’ and ‘foreknows’ in poems written or
revised at Craiglockhart and ‘The Wrestlers’, one of his last finished works
started in July 1917, features Heracles’ fight with Antaeus, utilises phrases
such as: ‘And fain would make all place for him’ and makes no connection
with the War (Owen 2004, pp. 81, 83 and 184–6).
At one point Fussell says that ‘any historian would err badly who relied
on letters for factual testimony about the war’ but it does not occur to
him that that it is even more dubious to rely on poetry because poems are
not factual accounts, they are works of art (Fussell 2000, p. 183; Stephen
1996a, p. 233). Poets, and most other artists including popular musicians,
have no difficulty separating their artistic purposes from historic fact yet
many interpreters of their work continue to conflate the two despite the
warnings of one of first critics to produce a systematic study of the war
poets. In 1964 Fussell’s fellow American John H. Johnston was quite clear
that ‘if we had to depend upon World War I poetry for our knowledge of
the causes and aims of the struggle, the ideals involved, and the military
purposes which governed the fates of so many millions of men, our under-
standing of these matters would not only be meagre but in some cases
rather seriously distorted’ (Johnston 1964, p. 16). Fussell’s ideas now have
a waning influence on much of academia, especially amongst historians,
but continue to be lauded by literary critics and the public. In 2011 Louisa
Young was typical in calling The Great War and Modern Memory ‘a his-
tory book’ in which ‘every sentence remains strong, valid and beautifully
put’ and of the 30 reviews on the goodreads website all are positive using
words such as ‘landmark’, ‘remarkable’, ‘classic’ and ‘illuminating’ (Young
2011; goodreads, various dates). Perhaps most revealing is the comment of
Susie Wilde when she says ‘I learnt more about WW1 from this book than
almost any other’, which of course means that it is the book which most
closely matches her own conception of the myth of the War (Wilde 2009).
OWEN AND SASSOON’S ‘REALISM’

One of the few books about music and the First World War, Glenn
Watkins’ Proof through the Night, concludes with an analysis of Benjamin
Britten’s War Requiem of 1961. Britten memorably fashioned nine of
Wilfred Owen’s poems into one of his greatest works. Watkins’ concluding
comment is that in the War Requiem ‘the meaning as well as the meaning-
lessness of the Great War had found a new and resonant echo’ (Watkins
2003, p. 429). This is, at best, an over-literal and incomplete interpreta-
tion of the work of both Britten and Owen. Though they utilise the First
World War in their imagery they are aiming for a more universal message,
to go beyond realism to expose the underlying nature of war. An example
from one of Owen’s best known poems is ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ where
he describes a gas attack as ‘a green sea’. He clearly means the chlorine
gas utilised in 1915. Owen himself did not get to the front until 1916
by which time chlorine gas had gone out of use, however the image of
the ‘green sea’ was a far stronger one than had he employed the ‘realism’
of phosgene or mustard gas, the first being colourless, the latter yellow-
brown, and neither would have served the artistic purpose of the poem
(Pruszewicz 2015). This sometimes confuses literary scholars. Stuart Lee
refers to the fact that Owen never experienced a gas attack as ‘one of the
great mysteries’ whilst the Poetry Foundation biography of Owen insists,
wrongly, that he was subjected to gas, on 12 January 1917 (Pruszewicz
2015; Poetry Foundation n.d.). Such comments show how fixed the idea
that poems such as ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ had to spring from first-hand
experience has become when in probably every other period of literary
history these critics would have no difficulty in accepting that the poem,
though based on real events, sprang from the writer’s artistic imagination.
It is also an error that some critics of popular music fall into as well, sug-
gesting that songs about, say, the breakup of a relationship, must come
from the artist’s own experience. This is equally fallacious as Alan Moore
aptly demonstrates in his analysis of Amy Winehouse’s song ‘Rehab’.
Given Winehouse’s well-documented issues with alcohol and drugs,
many see the song as pure autobiography but Moore illustrates that it ‘is
not a simple recounting of that actual experience… It is contextualised,
ironised, indeed it is made into an art object fit for interpretation’ (Moore
2012, p. 210).
In the preface for his planned book of poems Wilfred Owen wrote:
‘All a poet can do today is warn [children]. That is why the true [War]
Poet must be truthful’ (Owen 1918; the words in square brackets were
crossed through in the original manuscript). Owen here raises the issue of
the meaning of truth in relation to war. Both Owen and Britten intended
their work to apply to all wars not just the specific one in which Owen and
Sassoon fought with distinction, as Martin Stephen suggests they were
‘not poets of the First World War, or even trench poets, but poets of war’
210 P. GRANT
(Stephen 1996a, p. 192). Because the First World War is so mythologised

and has, in the public imagination, immediate resonances of ‘pity’ it has
become a symbol for a multitude of artists to express their rage at the
stupidity of armed conflict. Like Owen, Sassoon and Britten before them,
popular musicians also attempt to convey this universal message. There is
therefore more than a cursory link between popular music about the War
and the work of the war poets.
One of the key ‘truths’ Owen and Sassoon attempt to portray is that
of love and, as Stephen rightly points out, ‘their work can only be fully
appreciated if it is seen as love poetry and not war poetry’ (Stephen 1996a,
p. 191). This is a crucial factor in their work and yet one that often gets
ignored or forgotten, mainly because it can present significant problems.
Not because of its homoerotic nature but in its attitude towards civilians
and women, which is sometimes quite brutal (Gregory 1994, pp. 120–1).
Sassoon, other than in one poem ‘The General’, does not criticise the
military leadership of the War even in his ‘protest’ letter they are excluded.
Neither does he have any antipathy for the enemy. But ‘of all the culprits
Sassoon constructs, one group stands alone: women’ (Cole 2013, p. 99).
Poems such as Sassoon’s ‘Glory of Women’ or ‘The Hero’ or Owen’s
‘Disabled’ are deeply misogynistic and, if expressed by others or outside
the frame of war, would be heavily criticised. However within their con-
text where, for the two, ‘the masculine camaraderie of war produces a love
surpassing all others’ these ideas are overlooked (Campbell 1997, p. 833).
Campbell goes further by suggesting that in the war poems of Sassoon:
‘Death in combat, specifically the passive […] death of a man, is purer
than sexual desire between the genders. The orgasmic “fierce love” of a
dying soldier penetrated by a bayonet is morally preferable to feminine
desire’ (Campbell 1997, p. 834). What Sassoon is doing is employing
hyperbole to make his point but it is still a disturbing concept.
In some ways it is not surprising that the work of the war poets is seen
as a ‘realistic’ portrayal of the War. Sassoon’s poetry in particular is writ-
ten in a colloquial, matter-of-fact style stripped of literary decoration. It is
therefore easier to confuse what is certainly a more realistic depiction of
war—mud and blood as opposed to high-flown heroic sentiment—for a
fully factual account and then conflate realism with anti-war sentiments.
Put another way, the ‘voice’ that one hears in poetry is not necessarily that
of the poet himself. Neither Owen, Sassoon, nor even the latter’s fellow
officer in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, Robert Graves in his somewhat exag-
gerated memoir Goodbye to All That, was trying to distort reality. They
would readily admit they changed things to more closely serve their liter-
ary purpose and that they were not trying to write history. What Sassoon
and Graves (as well as Vera Brittain and many others) did in their later
prose works is also typical of how memory works. In remembering the
past we, consciously or unconsciously, impose our views of the present
upon it. Janet Watson emphasises this point in her summation of the effect
Sassoon was seeking in both the Sherston trilogy and his own memoirs. It
also explains why the works still have such universal appeal:
Sassoon’s aim was never to reconstruct his specific lived experience of the
Great War, but to use his autobiographical details to create a more coherent
portrait of society before, during and especially after the years of conflict.
His work is popularly known through misinterpretation. He aimed for a
unified story of the universal, and has been credited instead with the specific
powerful tale of an individual. (Watson 2004, p. 239)
THE WAR POETS IN SONG

In adapting poetry to song, musicians can stick closely to the original, with
little musical embellishment. Equally they can adapt the words and/or
add significant musical structure which may significantly alter the original
meaning. Both Joe McDonald’s album of Robert Service’s poems War,
War, War and French-American Sergerémy Sacré’s War Poems – Siegfried
Sassoon (2011, self-published) stick to the first approach and could both be
criticised for not adding a great deal to the impact of the poetry or, even,
by adding music, distracting the listener from the words. Songs that bor-
row lines or imagery from poems are, however, numerous. Looking at all
types there are around 100 songs based on the work of 30 different poets,
21 of them British. The most referenced are Sassoon (18), Owen (13) and
Canadian John McCrae (9). We have already mentioned some including
Iron Maiden (Owen and Brooke) and Bolt Thrower (Binyon). One of
the more arresting updates of Owen’s poetry is ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’
by Scottish new wavers the Skids (from Days in Europa, 1979, Virgin).
Though only retaining the title line in its chorus the song works ‘against
Owen’s dramatisation (with the narrator warning his “friend” to not tell
“The old Lie”), the trax [sic] instead positions its narrator as “inside” the
war experience, while his addressee is not: a necessary condition for being
able to “confide” that “these visions bear no meaning”’ (Traxionary,
2014). The album’s themes include the Second World War and, especially
212 P. GRANT
in the standout track ‘Working for the Yankee Dollar’, Vietnam and US
imperialism. It caused some controversy due to its cover, an excellent pas-
tiche of a Nazi poster for the 1936 Olympics, which many, including John
Peel, failed to interpret as ironic. Siouxsie and the Banshees ‘shattered,
spectral reading’ of John McCrae’s ‘In Flanders Fields’, retitled ‘Poppy
Day’ (from Join Hands, 1979, Polydor) is less dramatic. Examples that
retain the words in more lavish musical settings include the gorgeous
‘Dust’, a Rupert Brooke adaptation by the 1972 incarnation of Fleetwood
Mac, with music by the underrated Danny Kirwan (from Bare Trees,
Reprise). Show of Hands’ excellent double album Centenary: Words and
Music of the Great War (2014, Universal) juxtaposes ‘straight’ versions of
poems by a range of war writers including two women, May Wedderburn
Cannan and Jessie Pope, with more complex folk-rock versions. And
Canadian alternative country band NQ Arbuckle’s ‘Part Of A Poem by
Alden Nowlan called Ypres 1915’ is exactly what the title suggests, a musi-
cal setting of Nowlan’s 1960s war poem (from Xok, 2008, Six Shooter).
Kipling is a favourite of neofolk and martial industrial musicians and his
most xenophobic verse ‘For All We Have and Are’ has been adapted by
the only openly fascist band to have recorded a song related to the War.
Sokyra Peruna (‘Perun’s Axe’, Perun being the Zeus of Slavic mythology)
have been dubbed ‘Ukraine’s premier white nationalist metal band’ (Lee
2015). They claim to be ‘proud of our glorious nation’s history’ which
includes its collaboration with their Nazi occupiers during the Second
World War. They have expressed support for neo-Nazi organisations such
as Combat 18 and Blood and Honour, a neo-Nazi music promotion net-
work and political organisation. The band also lent their music to a video
about convicted white separatist terrorist David Lane, who died in 2007 in
a US prison whilst serving a 190-year sentence for crimes including the
murder of a radio talk show host (Lee 2015). Lane also had connections
with Prussian Blue, describing the Gaede twins as his ‘fantasy sweethearts’
and saying, in James Quinn’s documentary film, that he viewed them like
daughters (Quinn 2007). Sokyra Peruna’s version of the Kipling poem
(the title track of their 2003 album) did not entail a great deal of creative
thought. It reproduces the poem exactly with the exception of amending
the line ‘the Hun is at the gate’ to ‘the Jew is at the gate’. Musically the
band were heavily influenced, especially in their earlier punk/Oi period,
by Skrewdriver, probably the best known neo-Nazi rock band and not
far distant politically from Sokyra Peruna is British white-power musician
and leader of the band Brutal Attack Ken McLellan. Active since the early
1980s McLellan’s solo album Ordinary Boy appeared in 2012 (Hatecore)

though adopts a more acoustic and restrained approach from the punk/Oi
of his main band. Listening to the album and the Owen-inspired ‘Devil’s
Hail (Anthem for Doomed Youth)’ with uncaring Generals ‘signing the
death warrants of a million men’ you can easily fail to grasp its singer’s
extreme political views. McLellan demonstrates that adopting War myths
is most certainly not an indicator of one’s political leanings.
Owen, a great music lover, expressed a wish to become a musician
and there are several notable versions of entire Wilfred Owen poems
(Leadbetter 2015). In 1982, ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’, which has
been called ‘possibly the paradigmatic witnessing text of the 1914–18
war’, was set to music by 10,000 Maniacs, appearing on their first EP
release Human Conflict Number Five and later on the compilation Hope
Chest (Chambers 2004, p. xi). The song is unique in the oeuvre of the
group as it is sung by guitarist John Lombardo, not lead singer Natalie
Merchant (who sings back-up vocals on the track). A reggae inflected
song, not unlike the work of The Specials, with a tune similar to Bob
Marley’s ‘No Woman, No Cry’, some have found it rather trite, or at least
diminishing the impact of the words, but it is certainly unusual and may
well have introduced the poet to a new audience. Also in 1982, Virginia
Astley set Owen’s poem ‘Futility’ to music she had composed. Originally
performed with her short-lived group The Ravishing Beauties, it became
their only release on the NME Mighty Reel cassette before appearing on
a Belgian compilation the following year (Promise Nothing, Why Fi). It
begins with a military-style drum roll but then is mainly a simple piano
accompaniment with woodwind. Astley’s light, almost adolescent, vocal
adds a touching naiveté to the words, clearly intended as being spoken
by a Wartime nurse or VAD and it makes a fascinating comparison to the
Benjamin Britten version.
The Libertines’ nostalgia for a ‘lost’ England is not dissimilar to that of
the Kinks. Dorian Lynskey suggests Pete Doherty and co-frontman Carl
Barât ‘dreamed up a version of England and built a band in its image’
(Lynskey 2015). An early potential name for the band was Albion and
Doherty, son of an army officer, entitled his 2007 book of thoughts and
poems Books of Albion. Doherty has said that for him England ‘was this
mythical place, but when we moved there [when he was 12], the England
that I thought existed – this England of Hancock, Porridge and Kipling –
was nowhere to be fucking seen’ (Lynskey 2015). It is somewhat surpris-
ing that neither Doherty nor Barât specifically referenced the First World
214 P. GRANT
War until Barât’s 2015 album with the Jackals, Let it Reign (Cooking
Vinyl). This contains both ‘Summer in the Trenches’, although only the
title seems to reference the War, and the ‘guttural, Clash-like homage to
first world war servicemen’ ‘Glory Days’ (Sullivan 2015). The Libertines’
reunion album later in the year went further, adapting Wilfred Owen
for its title Anthems for Doomed Youth (Virgin EMI). The opening track
‘Gunga Din’ references Kipling, ‘Heart of the Matter’ Graham Greene
and there is also ‘You’re My Waterloo’. The title track, though containing
lines such as ‘hanging on the old barbed wire’ and ‘they wished you luck
and handed you a gun’, is less about the War than the band’s fraught his-
tory and one reviewer remarked, astutely, that ‘this is the Libertines’ ode
to those who, like them, have made it through to the other side’ (Daly
2015). Despite the War’s presence being somewhat distant, Anthems for
Doomed Youth is an apt demonstration of how deeply the iconic poems of
Owen have penetrated British culture.
Isaac Rosenberg stands out from other British war poets for his origins
in the East End Jewish working class. Unlike Sassoon, Owen and Graves,
he was not an officer but a private soldier, and not a very good one, a ‘lia-
bility’ who did not make friends for reasons beyond his religion and, one
might say, even died ironically, on 1 April 1918 (Stephen 1996a, p. 135).
Yet in many ways, he is the most remarkable of all the war poets. Unlike
Owen and Sassoon, most of whose poetry was composed away from the
front, Rosenberg’s was written near the line. ‘He suffered no disillusion-
ment for he had few illusions to shed’ and ‘his purpose is not to inform
or to warn. Rather, [his] poems are an exploration of man’s situation as
revealed by war, of what war does to the sensibility of man’ (Noakes 2013,
pp. 55–6). Rosenberg does not fit the war poet myth and adaptations
of his works are fewer. There is one instrumental album by progressive
metal band Returning We Hear the Larks (Ypres, 2010, Murder on the
Dancefloor), who are named after one of his finest poems. A close rela-
tive of Rosenberg’s ‘droll rat’ from ‘Break of Day in the Trenches’ is Billy
Chyldish’s ‘Fritz the Trench Mouse’ who shares the cosmopolitan ten-
dency to move between the British and German lines (from Dung Beetle
Rolls Again, 2012, Damaged Goods). I would also suggest that though
bands such as Bolt Thrower and Sabaton, who depict the lives of soldiers
without emotion or embellishment, more usually reference Owen it is the
spirit of Rosenberg they are closest to. Rosenberg had suffered extreme
poverty and racism in his life, which continued into his army career, and yet
despite this he never wrote anti-war poetry or expressed anger, instead he

interpreted his ‘experiences through his own, remarkable vision’ (Noakes
2013, p. 58). Rosenberg’s ‘Dead Man’s Dump’ is a highlight of the Tiger
Lillies’ 2014 album A Dream Turns Sour which sets the words of ten
war poets to music, the unifying factor being that none of them survived
the War. Described as the ‘Godfathers of alternative cabaret’ this was the
Lillies’ 35th album since their formation in 1989 (Meads 2011). Led by
the often falsetto-voiced Martin Jacques, the trio’s main musical influ-
ence is Kurt Weill and their subject matter is often controversial including
topics such as bestiality (Farmyard Filth, 1997), prostitution (The Brothel
to the Cemetery, 1996) and blasphemy (Bad Blood and Blasphemy, 1999)
and their albums also include versions of Woyzeck (2011), Hamlet (2012)
and Lulu (2014). As well as the poems of Rosenberg, Owen, Sorley and
McCrae A Dream Turns Sour includes lesser known works such as Noel
Hodgson’s ‘Before Action’, Leslie Coulson’s ‘One Little Hour’ and,
especially effective, Arthur Graeme West’s ‘God, How I Hate You’ which
Jacques delivers with bitter relish.
Other songs, whilst not directly quoting the war poets, clearly take
inspiration from them. There are distinct similarities between ‘And the
Band Played Waltzing Matilda’ and Wilfred Owen’s ‘Disabled’ about a
legless young veteran. As in Bogle, the poem describes the protagonist’s
carefree pre-war life and lack of any patriotic motivation for enlisting,
though the Owen character’s freedom is depicted through football rather
than trekking across the Australian outback. ‘He was drafted out with
drums and cheers’, is reflected in Bogle’s band playing the Patterson song
and on his return, just as in Bogle’s song, the cheers are absent and the
women ignore him. He is left to ‘take whatever pity they may dole’ and
‘spend a few sick years in institutes’ (Owen 2004, p. 152). The Danish
death metal band Iniquity utilise the poets and their graphic depictions of
trench warfare to dramatic effect. Their ‘Poets of the Trench’ (from Grime,
2002, Mighty Music) is in two parts. The first is a more straightforward
reflection on those who fell, on both sides, in the Battle of the Somme,
sung in the usual death metal style growled to the point of unintelligibility
by vocalist Mads Haarlov. The second part, written by bass player Thomas
Fagerlind, is more unusual, taking the form of a diary entry or letter writ-
ten after the battle and spoken in clear English. The narrator has been
on a train talking with another survivor, probably going on leave, but is
now back in the trenches before another attack that he does not expect to
216 P. GRANT
survive. Its powerful language, inspired by death metal pioneers such as

controversial and often censored Cannibal Corpse, also recalls some of the
best wartime novels such as Le Feu, Storm of Steel or Frederic Manning’s
The Middle Parts of Fortune.
Canadians: Robert Service and John McCrae

American folk rocker Country Joe McDonald’s album War, War, War
(1971, Vanguard) came not long after the breakup of his seminal psyche-
delic rock band Country Joe and the Fish. McDonald (himself a US Navy
veteran) had been in the forefront of the anti-Vietnam War movement and
the band’s most notable anti-war songs were the Lyndon Johnson parody
‘Super Bird’ (on 1967s Electric Music for the Mind and Body) and, even
more famously, the anthemic ‘I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag’ (the
title track of their second album released later in the same year) which is
preceded by the ‘Fish Cheer’ and features prominently in McDonald’s per-
formance at the Woodstock Festival. Both songs are all the more powerful
because they are deeply ironic and full of humour. ‘Super Bird’ uses the
metaphor of comparing the President with both Superman and the B52
bombers which were, at the time, raining death on the North Vietnamese
and the ‘cheer’ is a fairground-style ‘calling on’ asking the audience to
‘give me an F….’ and so on, which on the record has to spell ‘F.I.S.H.’
but in live performance usually spelt ‘F.U.C.K.’ The Rag goes on to urge
Americans to ‘put down their books pick up a gun, we’re gonna have a
whole lot of fun’ and hopes their parents will ‘be the first one on their
block to have your boy come home in a box’. Dorian Lynskey suggests
that the song captured ‘the confusion and gallows humour of the average
soldier’s experience’ and Bradley and Werner that it ‘placed a veteran’s
perspective on Vietnam at the center of the Woodstock myth’ (Lynskey
2012, pp. 115 and 135; Bradley and Werner 2015, pp. 96–102). The ‘Rag’
proved a huge success in its twin aims of giving those protesting the war
something to sing and really annoying those who supported it. In compar-
ison War, War, War is much less confrontational. Featuring McDonald on
acoustic guitar (with occasional harmonica, tambourine and organ) it sets
nine of Robert Service’s war-related poems. Service was born in Preston,
Lancashire, but became known as ‘the bard of the Yukon’ after emigrating
to Canada. Though over 40 when war broke out he volunteered for the
Canadian Red Cross and in 1916 wrote Rhymes of a Red Cross Man whilst
convalescing in Paris. Service, like Isaac Rosenberg, does not fit the war
poet stereotype. He suggests that the War was justified and brings a sense
of humour to his work that is entirely lacking in Sassoon and Owen. He
also shows ‘the ordinary soldier as far more in control of himself and his
destiny’ and Featherstone suggests that Service had ‘an avowedly demo-
cratic outlook […] that contrasted markedly with the threatened impe-
rial ground of John McCrae’ (Stephen 1996b, pp. 146–7; Featherstone
2013, p. 178). Highlights of the album include ‘War Widow’, laden with
Service’s typical sarcasm, with the War being praised for ridding an over-
populated society of young men, a companion piece to Barbara’s ‘Veuve
de Guerre’. Another song that gets away from the usual War clichés is the
long ballad ‘Jean Desprez’ about a French peasant boy ordered to shoot a
captured Zouave by a callous German officer, who guns down the German
instead. The muted tones McDonald adopts and the sparse accompani-
ment certainly allow the poems ‘space to breathe’ and the words to take
precedence. Prevented by contractual problems from reissuing the album
McDonald re-recorded it live on 7 July 2007 at the 2nd annual ‘Our Way
Home Peace Event and Reunion’, honouring US Vietnam War resisters
and others in Castlegar, British Columbia.
John McCrae is another poet whose work is often misused or misin-
terpreted. He was responsible for the poem which is probably (in part at
least) the best known of the War ‘In Flanders Fields’. McCrae, a Canadian
Medical Officer, wrote it in May 1915 after presiding over the funeral of
friend and fellow officer, Alexis Helmer, who died in the Second Battle
of Ypres. McCrae himself died of pneumonia in January 1918 by which
time his poem was ‘well known throughout the allied world’ (turtlezen,
n.d.; Ward 2014, pp. 100–1). In 2015, a statue of McCrae was erected in
Ottawa, the poem appears on Canadian banknotes and coins and there are
even two children’s books about it (Holmes 2005, pp. 11–12). Nowadays
McCrae’s famous verses are interpreted by most as being anti-war. This is
because its last stanza, where the poet urges those left behind to avenge
the dead, is often omitted. Some critics have taken issue with the revenge-
ful theme of this stanza, and especially the way, in the middle stanza, that
McCrae enlists the dead in his cry. Jennifer Ward considers the poem
riddled by ‘colonialism, imperialism, war mongering, homophobia, and
falseness’ (Holmes 2005, p. 25). Tim Kendall, echoing Fussell, sees it
as overtly propagandist in calling for the War to be prolonged and pos-
its McCrae with Sassoon as being ‘two extremes of a spectrum of opin-
ion among the fighting men’ (Kendall 2010). Yet though McCrae and
Sassoon may differ in their poetry, they are not so far apart in their overall
218 P. GRANT
sentiments, and Sassoon’s war poems are every bit as propagandist though
from a different perspective. Fussell’s comments on ‘In Flanders Fields’
are especially illuminating of his overall approach to war poetry. Calling
the poem ‘vicious and stupid’ he suggests:
Things fall apart two-thirds of the way through as the vulgarities of ‘Stand
Up and Play the Game!’ begin to make inroads into the pastoral, and we
suddenly have a recruiting-poster rhetoric apparently applicable to any war.
(Fussell 2000, p. 249, my emphasis)
It is highly simplistic to accuse McCrae’s poem of being no better than a

recruiting poster and the comments betray ignorance of (or at least ignore)
McCrae’s other war poems such as ‘The Anxious Dead’ or ‘Disarmament’
which are far more equivocal. Fussell also ignores the historical context
in which the poem was written, a time when the outcome of the War was
entirely uncertain and exhortations to fight the invader were also being
expressed by both Owen and Sassoon. Most characteristically Fussell
sneers at the idea that the poem may be applicable to all wars rather than
specifically the First World War and this lies at the heart of the weak-
ness of his analysis. Fussell, and many others, believe that the ‘best’ war
poets were responding specifically and solely to the war of 1914–18 which
was uniquely awful as well as uniquely commanded by bloodthirsty half-
wits. Martin Stephen’s highly perceptive comment about why we make
assumptions like these in relation to McCrae’s poem notes that ‘the most
convenient image of Great War poetry is based on the shock-and-horror
category of writing. It symbolises what in our national guilt we feel we
ought to think about the First World War’ and consequently ‘to question
that image […] is regarded nowadays almost as sacrilege’ (Stephen 1993,
pp. 10 and 6, emphasis in original). Stephen’s comments might also be
considered in relation to popular music. Many, possibly most, of the songs
in this book do not challenge this implied guilt.
‘In Flanders Fields’ is also the war poem that has most often been set to
music. By as early as 1920 at least 55 composers including Arthur Foote,
Charles Ives and John Philip Sousa had produced their versions (Ward
2014, p. 96). More recently there have been choral versions by Canadians
Alexander Tilley (first recorded 2001) and Barry Taylor et al. (2003); by
Americans John Jacobson and Roger Emerson (1994); and a bagpipe/
choral version by the Bonfire Ensemble (also Canadian 2006), sold on a
CD to raise funds for the Canadian Legion. Eric Bogle set the poem to
music (on A Toss of the Coin, 2013, Greentrax) and there is a rather strange
pop version by Canadian Anthony Hutchcroft with an associated ballet
(2007). Coope, Boyes and Simpson’s 2014 double album is entitled In
Flanders Fields and the track ‘Spring 1919’ references the poem whereas
in Australian folk band Redgum’s song ‘Ted’ (on Virgin Ground, 1980,
Epic) the protagonist finds himself in ‘mud up to his crotch in Flanders
fields’. A rock version of the poem by Russian band Romislokus utilises
a modern response to McCrae’s original written by Canadian DJ Stan
Hilborn (on Trans Aviation Pilots, 2004, ti-ja). Sung in English it is of
interest for its mixing of the original in a multinational context. American
electronic band Silent Signals’ version, musically poised rather uneasily
between 1980s electronic pop and martial industrial, is entitled ‘Poppy
Grow (In Flanders Fields)’ and is on their 2007 split album with Martial
Canterel, View Beyond The City Wall. Finally, French doom metal band
Mourning Dawn have produced an interesting comment on this and
another of the War’s most famous poems which did not take a decisively
anti-war stance, Laurence Binyon’s ‘For the Fallen’ (first published in The
Times in September 1914) which is the album’s title track (2009, Total
Rust). Overall none of these really manage to convey the complexities and
contradictions of the original poem, most are too reverential and accepting
of the mythical status McCrae’s verse has achieved, especially in Canada.
Electrelane ‘The Valleys’

Though many of the songs directly adapted from the works of the war
poets are overly reverent, others, whilst acknowledging their mythologised
status, are more nuanced. The work of Owen and Sassoon, when exam-
ined in its entirety, is far more complex and ambiguous than their usual
portrayal as disillusioned pacifists allows. Neither Owen nor Sassoon saw
themselves as historians but as purveyors of artistic truth (Stephen 1996a,
p. 192). Their attitude towards all war—not just the one in which they
fought—is reflected in the more complex and ambiguous songs exam-
ined here. It is instructive that both Karl Willetts and Polly Harvey have
explicitly recognised their debt to Owen in particular but it is the spirit
of the poet they emulate rather than any slavish attempt to copy (Willetts
2014; Segal 2000). Another example is the most extraordinary adapta-
tion of First World War poetry in popular music. Sassoon wrote ‘A Letter
Home’ in May 1916 following the death of the man he loved, David
Thomas. The poem is one that somewhat dispels Sassoon’s caricature as a
220 P. GRANT
disillusioned didact as he indulges in the ‘Marvellian pastoral and seeks out

Miltonic “pastures new” for the dead’ (Kendall 2007, p. 213). In 2004
the all-female alternative rock band Electrelane (or to be more precise
their singer and keyboard player Verity Susman) adapted the poem under
the title ‘The Valleys’ for their second album The Power Out (Too Pure).
The band had formed in Brighton in 1998, taking inspiration from a wide
variety of artists including the German ‘krautrock’ pioneers Neu!, The
Velvet Underground and Jacques Brel and much of the album, recorded
in Chicago with engineer Steve Albini, is marked by Susman’s monotone
lyrics (in several languages) and a variety of keyboards. However ‘The
Valleys’ is significantly different musically from the rest of the album with
the band accompanied by the Chicago A Cappella choir. Susman explained
how the idea for the song arose:
I knew I wanted to write for a choir which I’d never done before… I had
the basic sketch for the song, the melody and keyboard part. I played that to
the rest of the band and we improvised around it, with the others adding the
guitar, bass and drums… Originally I thought that I’d sing it with the choir
coming in part way through but I got carried away working on the choral
score and so I thought why not have the choir singing all the way through.
(Susman 2015a)
She also had an idea for the theme of the song and the first lines of a lyric:
Someone I knew had died. He was young and was in an accident and he
was on my mind a lot. Those first few lines are about hearing somebody and
they’re gone and trying to reconcile that. But to capture everything I wanted
lyrically I was just hitting a brick wall. So I started looking around to see if
there was something else that would capture what I wanted. (Susman 2015a)
So her original intention had nothing to do with the War, ‘I always viewed
the song, at least from my perspective, as an expression of feelings about
loss and memory, not linked particularly to WW1 or indeed any other war’
(Susman 2015b). This is the major strength of her vision and matches the
emotions of the poem: ‘I wasn’t particularly looking at the First World War
poets but there’s an obvious link with how to reconcile people dying so
young and yet still being so very alive in your memory’ (Susman 2015a).
The song omits the first and last stanzas of the poem, re-orders some of
the material and prefaces it with the choir’s introduction ‘I heard it from
the valleys, I heard it ringing in the mountains’. As Susman explained:
I already had the few lines which are not from the poem. They formed the
melody line and the song seemed to grow from there. Then when I found
the poem with a reference to the valleys in there it made sense to keep
them in… I’d first come across Siegfried Sassoon studying the First World
War poets at school. He wasn’t the first poet I went to but when I found
that poem it was one of those eureka moments because it said everything I
wanted to say and said it much better than I could and there were some sur-
prising parallels with the person I was thinking about. It also scanned really
well so emotionally, thematically and practically it really worked. (Susman
2015a)
The two themes that are emphasised are love and remembrance which is
strengthened by the use of the choir so strongly reminiscent of liturgical
connections through hymns and requiems. Susman’s adaptation perfectly
fits the pastoral approach of Sassoon, whilst simultaneously transforming
poetry into song. It is a staggering artistic achievement by a group who
have received little recognition (Fig. 9.1).
Fig. 9.1 Electrelane at the time of ‘The Valleys’ (courtesy of Verity Susman,
photo by Louis Décamps)
222 P. GRANT
Earlier I have been critical of doyens of American rock criticism such as

Lester Bangs and Robert Christgau. One thing they got right was that if
popular music is to have credibility and impact it must have contemporary
relevance. So in tackling an historical subject it is not enough simply to
analyse it within its own time, as its importance for people today needs to
be addressed. The error that many artists make in doing this is to think that
ideas and attitudes are unchanged, that the men and women of 1914–18
were the same as us in every way. This is why so many myths revolve
around the innocent young men of Edwardian England being ‘duped’
into volunteering by callous imperialists. It fails to take into account the
way that our attitudes to war, patriotism and the Empire have changed
in 100 years. In 1914 it was quite usual to be a Socialist and a patriot, a
radical and a supporter of the Empire. In the same way our sympathies are
more easily engaged by individuals whose outlook seems most in tune with
ourselves. The sensitivities of a Siegfried Sassoon or a Wilfred Owen are
easier for us to understand than those of the dour, Scottish Presbyterian,
imperialist Douglas Haig. This would not have been so at the time, when
concepts such as duty and honour had yet to be sullied by the horrors of
two world wars, the Holocaust and other genocides. We therefore need to
examine exactly how modern songwriters approach the idea of empathy
when depicting characters from the War. Do they simply not consider this
issue at all? Do they endow them with ideas that would have been unlikely
at the time? Or do they understand that people’s perceptions and attitudes
change and take account of this in a more subtle conception? We have seen
quite a few of the second type, for example the majority of songs about the
Christmas Truce. The artists we will be considering in the next chapter are
ones that fall into the last group.
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CHAPTER 10
Bombazine Dolls and Orders from the Dead
In Chapter 2 I suggested that there are three possible approaches

popular musicians can take to myth: myth affirming; myth shaping and
myth reshaping. There are several clear examples of songs and artists that
fit the first category: Sting, Mike Harding and many of the songs about
the Christmas Truce. The largest number fall into the second group,
including those who endorse the transnational myths noted in Chapter 2.
There are some problems with these myths of universal trauma and vic-
timhood. One danger is that they suggest that everyone who fights in any
war will be traumatised and that this trauma must legitimate the events
that traumatised you—they become real even if they are not (Hodgkin
and Radstone 2006b, p. 97). There is also a danger in suggesting that
wars cause trauma in that, by ‘psychologising’ such a complex phenom-
enon, it also suggests a psychological ‘cure’ through reconciliation when
such a cure is likely to be simplistic and reconciliation hugely problem-
atic if not impossible (Hamilton 2006, p. 148). The same problem of
universality applies to the idea of the soldier victim. If all soldiers are
victims, how does this sit with ideas of culpability or war crimes? In 1985
US President Ronald Reagan encountered this problem on a visit to the
military cemetery of Bitburg in an attempted act of reconciliation with
West Germany. In his speech he suggested that the German soldiers bur-
ied there were ‘victims just as surely as the victims of the concentration
camps’ (Carr 2006, p. 57). The cemetery contained the bodies of several
members of the Waffen SS and thus, by extension, one could argue that

228 P. GRANT
everyone, even Hitler himself, was a ‘victim’. So the rejection of narrow,

sectarian national myths for more transnational ones may simply swop
one set of simplifications and prejudices for another.
Sherrill Grace says of Canadian War literature that it participates ‘in a
system of cultural retrieval, reconstruction, and rewriting of official his-
tory’ and reworks ‘ideas of nation, national identity, and national mem-
ory’ (Grace 2014, p. 78). The difficulty this raises, well demonstrated by
the examples in her book, is that by doing so they very often substitute
one myth for another and thereby fail to achieve the more universal psy-
chological truths they aim for. If a work of art is genuinely ‘to represent
not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance’ then
they need not to rework national myths but challenge and transform them
(Aristotle quoted in Durant 2005, p. 59). We have already encountered
a number of artists who have pushed the boundaries of interpretation of
War myths beyond that of the mainstream: Georges Brassens (and Flanders
and Swann) in their use of ironic humour; Al Stewart in his sophisticated
use of history; the Kinks in their songs that interrogate the decline of the
British Empire; and Bolt Thrower for their intellectual honesty in their
approach to war and soldiering. In this chapter I want to examine the
work of a small number who go further than this and attempt a reshaping
of War myths.
‘AFRICAN SOLDIERS WHO DIED FOR YOUR FREEDOM’:

BRAIN DAMAGE MEETS VIBRONICS
In the Introduction I noted the almost complete absence of songs by
black artists on the topic of the War. There is however a recent prominent
and outstanding exception. Empire Soldiers is a 2-CD release from 2013
with a live version recorded in 2015 (Yes High Tech/Jarring Effects).
It represents one of the widest transnational collaborations to date in
popular music about the War. The theme is that of the experience of
Anglo-Caribbean and Franco-African soldiers and labourers and the main
contributors are Vibronics from the UK and Brain Damage from France.
Reggae collective Vibroincs began in Leicester in 1995 as a collabora-
tion between Steve Vibronics (real name Steve Gibbs) and Richi Roots,
who died in 2011. Vibronics ‘thrives on collaborations across genres and
looks to Hip Hop, RnB and Electronica for influence whilst remaining
true to the legacy of Roots Music’ (Empire Soldiers press release, 2013).
BOMBAZINE DOLLS AND ORDERS FROM THE DEAD 229
Martin Nathan formed Brian Damage, one of the founders of the French
dub scene, in 1999. For the Empire Soldiers project Vibronics and Nathan
were joined by several lyricist/singers. Key contributors were African/
Caribbean historian and poet Madu Messenger; British-born musician
and DJ M. Parvez, who has Pakistani roots; Sir Jean who is Senegalese;
and French-Moroccan poet Mohammed el Amraoui. Their common lan-
guage is dub-reggae and the music also has some touches of modern elec-
tronica. Parvez explained his perhaps unusual choice of genre saying that
‘as an Asian living in a multi-cultural area of Leicester I had a variety of
influences as a youth. Reggae was the main music at that time. The big
basslines echoed off the walls day and night and just became part of my
life’ (Last FM, n.d.).
In the album’s excellent sleeve notes Messenger emphasises the historic
contribution made to the War by black colonials. Of the eight and half
million men who fought for Britain, nearly three million came from other
parts of the Empire; ranging from the one and a half million from India
(more than three times the number from Australia) to 15,000 from the
West Indies. France called on 170,000 colonial troops, of whom 30,000
were killed. In the British Army it was only a minority from so-called
‘martial races’ in India that were given front-line roles. The rest served
as part of the vast support and Labour Corps that often endured condi-
tions far worse than those experienced in a front line trench. Messenger
said the album was created to reveal this seldom told story and stands as
‘a testament to the Colonials of colour who served during the Great war
[sic] of 1914–18’ (Messenger 2013). In tackling such a wide subject there
is a tendency to simplify but the album undoubtedly achieves Messenger’s
objective. The production quality is exceptional and some of the playing,
especially Steve Cracknell’s trumpet, outstanding. The album commences
with the instrumental ‘Gallipoli’ with sounds of gunfire, rifles being cocked
and bayonets being unsheathed set to an insistent electronic reggae beat
before the first song with lyrics, Parvez’s ‘Sufferation’. It refers to Douglas
Haig’s famous order from 1918, ‘as Britain she stood with her back up
against the wall/The sons of old India came and they answered the call’,
and the description of Verdun as the ‘Mill on the Meuse’, ‘like a mill
grinding corn, many thousands now lost’. The album’s focus is not just
the War but also the ‘troubling parallels with some more contemporary
considerations on culture shocks, immigration, imperial powers and hor-
rors of war that still affects all of us today’ (Empire Soldiers press release,
2013). The song speaks of ‘this time of the Islamophobe’ suggesting that
230 P. GRANT
this story of which ‘little is written down in history’ needs reviving as

an antidote. Messenger’s ‘Kings Engine’ describes the labourers, ‘non-
fighting troops still we die’. He refers to Marcus Garvey’s support for the
Allied cause in order ‘to prove our worth and prove our equality’ only to
result in ‘the same bigotry’, which led, in some isolated cases, to mutiny.
Sir Jean’s ‘Do You Remember?’ ironically suggests the black contribu-
tion has been ‘whitewashed out of history’. Parvez’s ‘Youts to War’ is a
different take on the same ideas found in, for example, The Kinks ‘Some
Mother’s Son’, Owen’s ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ or ‘The Parable of
the Old Man and the Young’, a lament for the senselessness of war and
the loss of so many young men. Messenger’s ‘Letter Home’ is on a similar
theme but becomes more personal, reflecting the inhuman acts that war
drives ordinary people to commit. The two French contributions are el
Amraoui’s ‘Muchat’ which tells a more personal story of French-African
soldiers, and Sir Jean’s ‘Do U Remember?’ The latter, sung in English,
both memorialises the French-African troops and points an accusing fin-
ger at white-dominated history and mythology of the War which ‘never
mention those African soldiers who died for your freedom’ and were for-
gotten at the moment of victory. This is a song that really challenges myth-
making and how and what we remember but with the clear intention of
reclaiming a history rather than seeking retribution. It is the highlight of
a unique and important album that closes with further instrumental tracks
titled after key sites where black soldiers fought: ‘Neuve Chapelle’, ‘Siege
of Kut’ and ‘Flanders’. If one of the outcomes of the War’s centenary
is the recognition of the participation in it by non-white soldiers, which
recent opinion polls suggest is the case, then that will be hugely positive
and perhaps Empire Soldiers will have played a small but significant role
(Katwala 2015).
BLAZING AWAY: THE DECEMBERISTS

The track ‘The Soldiering Life’ by American Indie band the Decemberists
(from the album Her Majesty The Decemberists, 2003, Kill Rock Stars)
is another song of camaraderie in the War which shares its broad sub-
ject matter with Fabrizio de André’s ‘Andrea’. The band’s name comes
from the 1825 Russian revolutionary rising and their songs range from
upbeat pop to instrumentally lush ballads, ‘combining religious and
pagan themes shot through with violence and transformations’ (Hegarty
and Halliwell 2011, p. 249). They mix ‘traditional’ instruments such as
accordion, Wurlitzer organ, glockenspiel and string bass with regular and
odd electronic instruments, making the band difficult to classify musi-
cally, challenging ‘the audience’s expectation of what constitutes a stable
musical genre and what musical tradition might mean in the twenty-first
century’ (Hegarty and Halliwell 2011, p. 250). Their lyrics, which often
focus on historical incidents and wars, eschew the introspection common
to modern rock for a more narrative approach and ‘paint historical scenes
in faraway places, pluck literary references from dusty volumes and use
multisyllabic words you may need a dictionary to define’ (Powers 2003).
Other Decemberists songs that refer to conflicts include ‘Yankee Bayonet’
(American Civil War), ‘When the War Came’ (the Second World War)
and ‘Shankill Butchers’ (Northern Ireland). Writer and lead singer Colin
Meloy’s delivery often sounds ‘more West Country than Pacific Coast
in his timbre’ and the band are also well known for their eclectic live
shows in which audience participation is often a part, typically during
encores. (Hegarty and Halliwell 2011, p. 249). Meloy’s lyrics are often
oblique; it is difficult for example to pin down what connection ‘This is
Why We Fight’ (on The King is Dead, 2011, Capitol) has to any specific
war though ‘Sixteen Military Wives’ (from Picaresque, 2005, Kill Rock
Stars) is a more direct indictment of American involvement in, and media
acceptance of, the Iraq War. With ‘Soldiering Life’ the meaning is entirely
clear. Meloy has described it as a ‘homoerotic love song’ and in concert
in 2011 dedicated it to the Republican Party Presidential hopefuls (Meloy
2011). There is little doubt from the lyrics that the feelings of the singer
for his comrade go beyond mere friendship; he would rather lose his limbs
than ‘let you come to harm’ and suggests that ‘I never felt so much life
than tonight huddled in the trenches’. This is bold concept that some
would no doubt consider heretical, yet it tells of another hidden aspect
of the War. There were at least 230 British soldiers court-martialled and
sentenced to imprisonment for homosexual offences, which could only
have been the tip of the iceberg (Harvey 1999). The song has clear paral-
lels with some of the poems of Wilfred Owen and a direct one to ‘It Was
a Navy Boy’ whose description of the young man he meets on a train
is as homoerotic as Colin Meloy’s ‘bombazine doll’. Very few reviews
(professional or fan) say much about ‘Soldiering Life’ or appear to know
quite how to take it though one fan recognised that ‘the central theme
of this song is that war for all its horror and violence does have extremely
positive aspects’ (‘Aumchord’ 2012). There was far more agreement as
to the way Meloy’s lyrics operate with several critics commenting on his
232 P. GRANT
‘poetic’ approach (Tatone n.d.; Burns 2003). These observations stem

mainly from the sophisticated way Meloy utilises language, especially his
usage of old-fashioned words in a modern context. ‘Soldiering Life’ con-
tains some well-known archaisms such as ‘pantaloons’ but also obscure
ones including ‘bombazine’, a wool/silk fabric used in the early twentieth
century for mourning clothes. The easy-flowing pop sound of ‘Soldiering
Life’ and Meloy’s subtle lyrics rather conceal what is a ground-breaking
song that updates some of the themes of Owen’s poetry. It is about the
only popular song that has the temerity to suggest that, for some, the War
was actually fun, opening up new emotional experiences. As such it would
be anathema to those who depict the War as unremitting horror, but its
boldness makes it one of the few songs that do not simply confront the
myth of the War but propose alternative, more human and radical inter-
pretations (Fig. 10.1).
Fig. 10.1 The Decemberists (Courtesy of The Decemberists)

‘RADICAL TRADITIONALISTS’: BILLY CHYLDISH

AND MARTIN NEWELL
Billy Chyldish (the spelling he now prefers) was born Steven Hamper
in 1959, in Chatham, north Kent, where he still lives and works. He is
an artist, painter, author, poet, photographer and film maker as well as
a musician. Best known to the public as the former lover of Tracy Emin,
and for his subsequent artistic slanging matches with her, Chyldish is also
highly explicit in his work, detailing, for example, his love life and child-
hood sexual abuse. He is a consistent advocate for amateurism and free
emotional expression, which is very noticeable in his prodigious musical
output of over 100 albums and many more singles with a huge array of
bands. Chyldish’s music is ‘a passionate, raw expression, made using an
economy of technical means. A virtue is made of using old valve amps
and a minimum of modern technological assistance’ (Brown 2008, p. 30).
His musical influences are varied including The Kinks, 70s punk (notably
The Sex Pistols and The Clash), Bo Diddley and Delta blues, all of whom
share a ‘common touch’ and link with their roots. One notably absent
influence is any recent popular music. ‘I despise music’ Chyldish has said,
‘I really stopped listening to music after 1977 […] it’s so specifically a
commodity now’ (Higgs 2013). ‘Garage-punk’ probably best describes
his musical ‘style’ but is also too restrictive. It tends to be parodic, humor-
ous and self-deprecatory and has gained many famous admirers over the
years from Kurt Cobain and Michael Stipe to Graham Coxon and Polly
Harvey. Chyldish’s interest in history has been evident from his childhood
when was a member of the Upchurch Archaeological Group, formed the
Medway Military Research Group and ran The Walderslade Liberation
Army who dug an underground bunker in the woods where they kept a
sten gun they had excavated and a Lee Enfield rifle (King 2015). Today
his house sports a door knocker modelled on a Short Sunderland fly-
ing boat and he has guitars painted to resemble the ‘dazzle ships’ of the
War. Dazzle camouflage was developed by the British railway poster artist
Norman Wilkinson of whom Chyldish is a big fan (King 2015).
Chyldish has been artist in residence at the Historic Dockyard in
Chatham where, in its operational days, he was an apprentice stonemason
and is also a great respecter of tradition. ‘Tradition is form and structure’
he maintains, ‘it does not have to be worshipped or loved in itself, but it’s
a vehicle and can be used as a tool. I would say I’m a radical traditionalist’
(Wood 2012). This approach is extended to include Chyldish’s approach
234 P. GRANT
to myth and the War. Brown suggests that Chyldish’s ‘musical aesthetic
[…] includes that of a retrospective, tragicomic nationalism, with great
emphasis on English militarism’ within which the centrality of the First
World War in shaping the Britain we live in today is prominent (Brown
2008, p. 32). In relation to the War Chyldish thinks that ‘people have got
to go through these things. The only things that make us address our-
selves are the big knocks. They’re the only things big enough to make us
question what’s going on’ (Marshall 2002). He even suggests that ‘punk
rock was the great liberation of my life’ and that in 1977 he felt that ‘this
is frontline troops! This is the British Expeditionary Force 1914, this is the
real thing!’ (King 2015). Brown compares Chyldish to Kipling but he has
a closer connection to another poet of the period. One of his war-related
recordings is A Tribute to A.E. Housman (2013, Squoodge) which reis-
sued several versions of Housman’s poems Chyldish had recorded with
both Sexton Ming and the CTMF (which may stand for Chatham Forts
or, more scurrilously, Cunts, Tossers and Motherfuckers). Housman’s col-
lection of poems on doomed youth, A Shropshire Lad, was hugely popular
during the War and was set to music by George Butterworth, Ivor Gurney
and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Its nostalgic style and historical connections
clearly made the verses appeal strongly to Chyldish.
Another of his many collaborations with fellow Stuckist and Kent res-
ident Ming, Ypres 1917 Overture – Verdun Ossuary (1988, Hangman),
mixes renditions of wartime songs with relatively simple accompaniment
on piano and harmonium. It is a style very similar to that utilised by the
neofolk artists covered in Chapter 7 though with quite different, more
ironic, intent with, for example, ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’ given an
irreverent reggae beat derived from ‘Long Shot Kick de Bucket’. Chyldish
says the intention was ‘to reveal the terrible horror and suffering of mod-
ern war, and thereby expose the essential bestiality of man towards man’
(Discogs, 1988). The singles ‘Mons Quiff’ and ‘Merry Christmas Fritz’
(2003, Transcopic) were recorded as Wild Billy Chyldish and The Friends
of the Buff Medways Fanciers Association, named after the breed of
Kentish poultry. They are in more straightforward punk style, the former
an instrumental, the latter an ‘anthem’. ‘Merry Christmas’ is another song
with its roots in the 1914 Truce which contents itself with simply wishing
‘Fritz’ a happy Christmas and new year without elaborating narratively
or politically. Finally there is ‘Punk Rock at the British Legion Hall’ the
title track from the album of the same name (2007, Damaged Goods)
recorded as Wild Billy Chyldish and the Musicians of the British Empire.
This is the most interesting of his War-related songs, contrasting the set-
ting with the music played there. Lines like ‘I went through a war for you’
depict the generation gap that punk emphasised. The song ends with the
hall being demolished, an act that unites the original ‘Old Contemptibles’
with their punk grandchildren.
Inevitably with an artist whose output is so vast there are wide varia-
tions in quality and some might consider Chyldish’s work trite and repeti-
tive, but at its best it is raw, incisive and inspired. There is probably only
one other artist who shares a similar aesthetic. Martin Newell, known as
the ‘Wildman of Wivenhoe’ has been described as a ‘Performance Poet,
Author and Pop-Genius’ and there are many who would agree with the
label even though he is not widely known or appreciated (Dix 2015). He
is England’s most-published living poet, with a dozen books to his credit;
has written two social histories and an entertaining autobiography; and is
a regular newspaper columnist (Stone 2012). Newell is another artist from
a military family and spent crucial parts of his childhood in Singapore,
Malaya and Cyprus. Newell shares Billy Chyldish’s home recording tech-
niques and attachment to a specific place, in this case the Essex village on
the banks of the River Colne but his music is significantly different. Newell
favours a jangly guitar-based pop style influenced by The Kinks and The
Byrds, though he says that ‘The Small Faces and the Who were a bigger
influence’ and adds that his songs take place ‘in about three minutes’ with
‘no dicking around’ (‘Ian’ 2010; Barnard 2014). In 1980, together with
Lawrence ‘Lol’ Elliot, Newell formed The Cleaners from Venus, a band
that released most of their work on cassettes outside traditional music
distribution channels. Since then The Cleaners have had a floating line-
up with Newell as their only constant. They released a total of 13 albums
including Living with Victoria Grey (1986) where the title track is a cri-
tique of Margaret Thatcher’s government who ‘nearly ruined the land I
grew up in’ (Stone 2013). The character Victoria Grey can be interpreted
variously as personifying Britain, the Queen or the Prime Minister herself.
On the same album ‘Armistice Day’ is a good example of Newell’s nostal-
gic referencing of a ‘lost England’ in a condensed three-minutes of glori-
ous Rickenbacker guitar playing. Its references are to war in general and
its different effects upon men and women: men cause it and women suffer
the consequences of loss and grief. One review of the track claims that the
‘song is just utterly magical, evoking a world where the ghosts of Wilfred
Owen, Rupert Brooke and John McRae [sic] look back in anger, J’Accuse
style’ and goes on to suggest it ‘recalls Private George from Blackadder
236 P. GRANT
Goes Forth and his sepia-hued tales of the Leapfrogging Tiddlywinkers

from the Golden Summer of 1914. It’s a song about before and after
the First World War, how a generation who basked in the wonders of the
early twentieth century were sent off to mindless slaughter in a grotesque
class war situation’ (‘Gordon’ 2010). This is an excellent example of the
British War myth in action. The song is not specific to the First World War
and there is little hint of class distinctions, though this a theme of some
of Newell’s other work (a good example is ‘Home Counties Boy’). What
the review reveals is its author’s view of the War, not Newell’s, which is far
more nuanced and less steeped in myth.
REDEFINING THE VOICE AS A GUN: DIAMANDA GALÁS

An American of Anatolian and Greek extraction, Diamanda Galás is an
avant-garde composer, vocalist, pianist, organist, performance artist and
painter. She has worked with Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones, Erasure
and Iggy Pop and her work has featured in film soundtracks as various as
Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers, John Milius’ Conan the Barbarian,
Derek Jarman’s The Last of England and Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula.
Galás’s first album in 1982 was The Litanies of Satan based on Baudelaire’s
poems of the same name and written from the perspective of a homicidal
schizophrenic. With the Masque of the Red Death trilogy (1988) Galás
moved on to the topic of HIV/Aids, from which her brother died before
the work was completed. It condemns the ‘plague mentality of a moralis-
tic, homophobic culture’ using the laws of Leviticus to attack those who
believed the illness to be God’s punishment of sodomites (Turner 2008).
Galás’s support for the campaign denouncing the demonisation of AIDS
led her to joining demonstrations and even being arrested.
Galás has been described as ‘capable of the most unnerving vocal
terror’, with her three and a half octave vocal range. Anohni (formerly
Antony Hegarty) described the initial impact Galás’s voice had on her
as ‘feeling like she had ripped my guts out and driven knives through
my body’ and being ‘left quaking. I had never experienced the voice so
physically’ (Turner 2008). Galás says that she trained herself to use her
voice like a gun and that: ‘During performance, I endeavour to move
elastically through many different “states of severe concentration” or
“trance states” [and] simultaneously attend to the temporal demands of
the macrostructure of the piece’ in order to achieve a ‘redefinition of a
most accurate sonic representation of thought via the most accessible,
direct, and sophisticated music making apparatus’ (Eileraas 1997, p. 127;

Galás 1981, p. 60, emphasis in original). In performance Galás uses her
body in provocative ways that challenge accepted notions of female sexual-
ity, enacting ‘her pieces upon her own body [in] extraordinary simulations
of feminine rage’ (McClary 1991, p. 110). Though expressed very differ-
ently this is a self-reflexive knowledge she shares with Polly Harvey but
with Galás ‘there is a promiscuous overlay of musical conventions which
connote sex, love, madness and death’ (Epstein 2001, p. 58; Gardner
2015, p. 37). Galás embodies and confronts horror and attending one of
her live performances can be unnerving (Chare 2007, p. 58). When she
performed Masque of the Red Death at the Cathedral of St John the Divine
in New York she stripped to the waist and covered herself in ceremonial
blood. Needless to say this approach brings controversy, especially from
conservative critics, and after a performance of Plague Mass in Florence
‘moral opprobrium reached its climax’ with local politicians demanding
her banning from the country (Turner 2008).
Defixiones, Will and Testament: Orders from the Dead (2003, Mute)
is in essence a concept album about the Armenian and Greek genocides.
Though the former is relatively well known, the massacres of Greeks
between 1914 and 1923 has received less recognition (Jones 2006; Gaunt
2006; Schaller and Zimmerer 2008). Galás has expressed her strong views
on the genocide and its connection to more recent history, even though
she distinguishes between the Turkish people and their government. ‘I
don’t hate the Turks’ she has said, ‘I hate their government. I hate mass
poverty. I hate mass murder. I hate the fact that […] their government has
not apologized for the genocide they committed’ (Fisher 2012). As part
of her research for the piece Galás spent time at Princeton on a fellowship
but this has not prevented her from denouncing some US Academics who
have sided with the Turkish government, including Princeton professors
Heath W. Lowry and Bernard Lewis, who she compares with David Irving
and other ‘Holocaust deniers’ (Galás 2009).
‘Defixiones’ were warnings engraved on lead that relatives placed on
graves in Greece and Asia Minor and the work, composed for voice, piano
and tape, is an angry meditation on genocide and those who seek to
deny it. The poems and texts are multinational and she sings in Greek,
Armenian, Spanish, French, and Hebrew. Her eclectic sources include:
‘The Dance’ by Armenian poet Siamanto (Atom Yarjanian), who died
in the genocide; ‘The Desert’ by Syrian/Lebanese poet Adonis (Ali
Ahmad Said); ‘Epistle to the Transients’ by Peruvian poet César Vallejo;
238 P. GRANT
‘Todesfuge’ a harrowing depiction of horror and death in a concentration

camp by Romanian-Jewish poet Paul Celan (a Nazi labour camp survi-
vor whose works have also been set as songs by Michael Nyman); Greek
writer Dido Soteriou, who wrote about the deportations of the Greeks
from Asia Minor; and the eccentric French romantic Gérard de Nerval.
They are unified by the ‘anger, sorrow, and despair’ their authors went
through and the music, which is equally diverse, drawing from Greek
Orthodox, Armenian, and Jewish sources, forms ‘a hypnotic ceremonial’
(Couture, n.d.). The album’s centrepiece is ‘Orders from the Dead’ an
eleven-minute ‘sound-poem’ of war, murder and anger composed by
Galás but based on Siamanto’s ‘The Dance’ which was also used in Atam
Egoyan’s film Ararat (2002) which starred Charles Aznavour. Written in
1910, the poem is a graphic depiction of a massacre of young Armenian
women forced to dance naked and then burned to death by Turkish sol-
diers. Galás goes further than the poem, describing a witness who wishes
to gouge out her own eyes so horrific is the event, who then demands
retribution. She declaims rather than sings the words which lie halfway
between poetry and political tract. The graphic depictions include rape,
beatings, people burned to death, a woman’s decapitated head paraded on
a stake, and the torture of Chrysostomos Kalafatis. Chrysostomos was the
Greek Orthodox metropolitan bishop of Smyrna who was killed in 1922
by the Turkish army and the song describes how his ‘eyes and tongue
were pulled out, teeth and fingers broken, one by one’. In 1992 he was
declared a martyr and a saint of the Eastern Orthodox Church. It is not
at all surprising or inappropriate that, in 2010, the track was covered by
Greek black metal band Rotting Christ (on the album Aealo, Season of
Mist) utilising Galás’s vocals. In comparison to her original this is actually
a milder version in a ‘tighter’, less dramatic musical setting, which empha-
sises how extreme Galás’s own performance style is—it goes well beyond
extreme metal (Fig. 10.2).
Despite its subject matter and its transnational source material Defixiones
by no means conforms to the transnational myth of victimhood and
trauma. The dead here are powerful, accusatory voices who suggest that
reconciliation is, at the very least, unlikely. Overall the work of Diamanda
Galás is ‘the antithesis of sanitized pop’ instead exploring ‘the acoustic
potentials we possess but culture represses, death sounds, pain sounds,
violent sounds, culturally disavowed vocalizations’ (Chare 2007, p. 62).
Her vocal style and approach to performance appear deliberately designed
to demythologise the subjects she tackles.
Fig. 10.2 Diamanda

Galás (Courtesy of
Diamanda Galás)
PJ HARVEY AND LET ENGLAND SHAKE

PJ Harvey’s album Let England Shake (Island) was written over a two and
a half year period, during which Harvey spent a considerable amount of
time researching the history of war, most notably the Gallipoli campaign,
as well as more recent first-hand accounts from Iraq and Afghanistan
(Bridport News, 2011). In many ways the album is a culmination both
of Harvey’s own career and of popular music’s dialogue with the First
World War.
Disruptive Sexuality
Adele Fournet in her study of women rock musicians identified three types
of strategies that women adopt in the light of their position as a minor-
ity. The first is a simple coping strategy, the second is to exploit their
novelty and the third is adopted by those women ‘who seek to trans-
form the rules of practice […] entirely’ (Fournet 2010, p. 27, emphasis
in original). These performers knowingly utilise female objectification but
‘transform the definition of what a sexy female is in relation to musical
240 P. GRANT
skill’ (Fournet 2010, pp. 27 and 40). Ever since her debut album ‘Dry’ in
1992 Polly Jean Harvey has been a transformational artist. In their book
Disruptive Divas Lori Burns and Mélisse Lafrance place Harvey in a group
of female artists they consider disruptive because: ‘They adopt marginal,
countercultural positions’ and their ‘music disquiet[s] and unsettle[s] the
listener’ (Burns and Lafrance 2002, p. 329). Harvey has achieved this sub-
version in a number of ways. One is the simultaneous adoption of a ‘gen-
derless presentation of the body’ and ‘the self-conscious appropriation
of the male rock star’s script of sexual aggression and rage’ (McCarthy
2006, pp. 76–7). Jennifer Rycenga has summarised Harvey’s subversive
approach saying:
In her public self-presentations, PJ Harvey adopts a gender-ambivalent

form of her name, repeatedly makes provocative comments about gender
in interviews, uses her sexuality as part of her artistry and defines it herself,
studiously and self-consciously fitting no one’s agenda. She sports a post-
modern edge with gender ambiguity and repositionings of sexual discourse.
(Rycenga, quoted by McCarthy 2006, p. 78)
More recently Abigail Gardner has suggested Harvey explores the myths
and archetypes of femininity and that her performances should be seen as
‘archival’ conversations with the past (Gardner 2015, pp. 38 and 15–16).
Unusually, Harvey’s songs can take the viewpoint of homosexual or
heterosexual people of both sexes. On the album Is This Desire?, for exam-
ple, there are songs from all four perspectives. It is tempting to partly
trace Harvey’s simultaneous presentation of herself as both androgy-
nous and ironically sexualised to her early life where she was brought up
among boys, played war games and resisted ‘looking like a girl and doing
girl things’ (Blandford 2004, pp. 8–9, 15 and 29–30; Raphael 2009).
However as her work has progressed this self-conscious disruption has
formed a coherent political standpoint, even if it is politics with a small
‘p’ and outside mainstream feminism, of which Harvey has declared her-
self less than enamoured (Raphael 2009). It is unsurprising that many
male critics have struggled to come to terms with Harvey’s work. Robert
Christgau has called her ‘sex obsessed’ even though the proportion of
sexual references in her work is considerably less than in much of male
rock music (Christgau, quoted by McCarthy 2006, p. 77). Harvey has
variously been described in the music press as ‘hung up and obsessed’,
‘self-pitying’, ‘a true nut-case’ and ‘an Ice Goddess utterly detached from
emotion’ who presents ‘deranged fantasies of feminine evil’ (quoted in

Burns and Lafrance 2002, pp. 177–8; Leonard 2007, pp. 74–6). What
these comments reveal is that their authors find Harvey’s representation
of sexuality disturbing because she ‘disrupts conventional forms of sex-
stereotyping’ in a way that women, in their view, should not do (Burns
and Lafrance 2002, p. 178).
Before Let England Shake Harvey’s work had contained few direct his-
torical references, though she had been characterised as having a ‘mythic,
epic quality’ of storytelling that set her apart from most other songwriters
(O’Dair quoted by Mazullo 2001, p. 431). Mazullo goes on to suggest
that Harvey is able to simultaneously provide ‘both the myth and the thing
itself’ which here refers to her approach to depictions of male and female
sexuality but also her gift for storytelling (Mazullo 2001, p. 433). Harvey
has often surprised her listeners with her musical eclecticism. Whilst fre-
quently being pigeon-holed as ‘post-punk’ or an imitator of Patti Smith,
she has included a wide array of styles on her albums. Excursions into art
music, notably ‘Man-Size Sextet’ on her second album Rid of Me (1993),
tended to be dismissed as ‘inauthentic’ or ‘pretentious’ but were instead
exploring future new directions in a more consistent oeuvre than most
critics realised (Mazullo 2001, p. 434; Peraino 1998, p. 58). Far from
being a strange experiment the two versions of ‘Man-Size’ provided an
‘interpretive connection of gender and genre’ in a dialectical conversation
that is rare in popular music (Peraino 1998, p. 58). Songs, such as ‘Man-
Size Sextet’ or ‘Rest Sextet’ (on Rob Ellis’s Soundtrack to Spleen, 1996)
are remarkably similar to some of the work of Diamanda Galás in both
content and sound. There are other similarities between the two artists in
that both Harvey and Galás are seen as ‘dangerous’ by many male music
writers. ‘Fearless’ would be closer to the mark as they challenge assump-
tions of how women should present themselves and what they should sing
about (Bonner 2016, p. 30). This is crucial to their depiction of war as
they elide sexual stereotypes and think their way into a representation that
is as much a critique of masculinity as it is of the folly of war.
Let England Shake: Reception and Sources

Though Let England Shake seemed to be something of a departure from
the intimate nature of much of her previous work, there are antecedents
in both its lyrical and musical content that enable it to be interpreted as a
mature artist moving on from the personal politics of her earlier albums
242 P. GRANT
to a more universal, socio-political approach (Gardner 2015, p. 13). One

parallel is on her 2009 album with John Parish, also her collaborator on
Let England Shake, A Woman A Man Walked By. ‘The Soldier’ refers to
‘the year when the troops entered the 39th parallel’ and ‘the year when
some poet said we must love, or accept the consequences’. The song is
deliberately obscure as to what war and what poet is being referenced (the
Korean War was fought across the 38th Parallel) but connection to the
Rupert Brooke poem is unmistakable.
Let England Shake marked a milestone in the history of popular music
in the way it was received as a serious commentary on both war and
England’s military past. Gardner calls it a work that questions ‘what it
is to be English [and] what hold history has over us in terms of national
identity’ and it was greeted with virtually unanimous acclaim in the music
press, named ‘album of the year’ by 16 publications, won the Uncut music
award and went on to win the prestigious Mercury Prize, making Harvey
the first person to have won the award twice (Gardner 2015, p. 13). This
acclaim extended to war veterans who included: ‘an old soldier […] who
served as an officer in Northern Ireland, [who] was deeply struck by how
vividly the album conveyed military experience, describing Harvey to me
as “the first rock-and-roll war artist”’ (McCormick 2011).
One of Harvey’s direct inspirations was Stephen Wyatt’s radio play
Memorials to the Missing about Fabian Ware, the founder of the Imperial
War Graves Commission. As she related to Dorian Lynskey:
What touched me the most is that [Ware] heard the voices of the dead talk-
ing to him and he couldn’t rest. I’d always be following the news and there’d
be so many firsthand accounts from soldiers and civilians in Afghanistan and
Iraq. That’s what I wanted to be heard – people who had been eyewitnesses
through all different periods in history. (Lynskey 2011)
Other influences were the work of Harold Pinter, the poetry of T.S. Eliot,
the paintings of Salvador Dali and Goya as well as music by The Doors,
Velvet Underground and the Pogues. Harvey also has a long-standing
admiration for Wilfred Owen (Segal 2000). Some of the references are
more obvious than others, for example Goya’s The Disasters of War, The
Doors track ‘The End’ and the Pogues version of ‘The Band Played
Waltzing Matilda’, whilst similarities in grammar and word use to Eliot’s
comes through in much of the writing for the album. Her main sources on
the Gallipoli campaign were Australian Les Carlyon’s Gallipoli and New
Zealander Maurice Shadbolt’s Voices of Gallipoli. She also watched the

1981 Peter Weir film but, other than praising Mel Gibson’s performance,
did not think it was ‘one of the greatest films of all time’ (Sellers 2011).
From Carlyon Harvey took some of the evocative descriptions of the bat-
tlefields today but though she recognises ‘the sheer scale of the misman-
agement of the campaign’ she refuses to apportion blame (Sellers 2011).
The Songs
The songs on the album deal with war, both directly and indirectly,
through its impact and memory. At least three allude to the First World
War whilst three others specifically reference the Gallipoli campaign. The
title track quotes ‘Pack up Your Troubles’; ‘The Glorious Land’ references
Britain’s military past; and the words of ‘Hanging in the Wire’ uses typi-
cal First World War imagery, even though the song mentioned in it, ‘The
White Cliffs of Dover’, is from the Second. ‘All and Everyone’ is one of
the album’s most explicit tracks describing in detail the horrors of Anzac
Cove and Bolton’s Ridge, its repeated references to dying driving home its
message and utilising repetition to invoke the image of the relentless sun
and its linkage to death.
‘The Words that Maketh Murder’ is one of several where there is ‘gen-
der ambiguity’ with a woman singing from a male perspective. This form
of ambiguity is common in Harvey’s work, ‘Man Size’ is an early example,
and she has said that ‘I certainly don’t think in terms of gender when I’m
writing songs’ (Blandford 2004, p. 167). Sung in the first person the nar-
rator has seen things ‘I want to forget’. Whether these are simply the ‘hor-
rors of war’ or whether the narrator him/herself was a party to them is not
clarified: ‘We are never made aware explicitly whether Harvey is in power,
therefore a creator of atrocity, or whether she is in fact a puppet, submis-
sive to a power that forces her to witness and take part in the atrocities’
(Azevedo et al. 2015, p. 193). This moral ambiguity carries forward into
the interpretation of what ‘The Words that Maketh Murder’ might be:
Do they refer to decisions which lead to war and treat humans statistically?
Do they refer to official or legal judgements which determine what is going
to be considered murder, and treat humans as examples or test cases? Or
do they refer to the passions in human nature, considered to be sinful since
archaic times: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, pride? (Azevedo et al.
2015, p. 186)
244 P. GRANT
As the group who analysed the song in depth go on to suggest its subject
is not just ‘a specific murder, but rather all murder’ and the link with Psalm
23 of the King James Bible, ‘he maketh me to lie down in green pastures’,
reinforces ‘the song’s air of nostalgic timelessness’ (Azevedo et al. 2015,
p. 188). It is never made clear if the war is still going on or not and
the final lines, which borrow the words and tune from Eddie Cochran’s
‘Summertime Blues’ and say that ‘I’m gonna take my problem to the
United Nations’ suggests that it is ‘unlikely that such an appeal will even
be carried out, or that it will be successful if delivered’ (Azevedo et al.
2015, p. 190).
The album’s closing number, ‘The Colour of the Earth’, is less
ambiguous and is sung by John Parish standing in for an actual Anzac
survivor. Though some of the imagery of the other songs derives from
the books Harvey consulted ‘The Colour of the Earth’ is much more
directly based on actual events. It is taken from the testimony of Vic
Nicholson a survivor of the Wellington Infantry Battalion’s attack on
Chunuk Bair in August 1915, the most famous military event in New
Zealand history. The New Zealanders achieved a remarkable success in
capturing the heights of Chunuk Bair, almost the only real success of the
Gallipoli campaign, but through a combination of factors beyond their
control were driven off the peak by the Turks’ determined counterattack
organised by Mustapha Kemal. Out of the 760 men of the battalion who
reached the summit, 711 became casualties including their much revered
commander, Lt Col William George Malone, who was killed. The song
takes the form of a simple ‘poem’, looking back after 20 years, and illus-
trates the guilt the narrator feels at his survival when his best friend is
dead. Many of the song’s words are taken directly from Nicholson’s
testimony to Maurice Shadbolt, which was recorded in 1983. His best
friend Teddy Charles, renamed Louis in the song, rushed forward and
was killed and Harvey follows some of Nicholson’s reminiscences word
for word as when he recalled that: ‘Later, in the dark, I thought I heard
Teddy’s voice calling for his mother, then for me’ (Shadbolt 1988,
p. 93). Nicholson’s words also provide the title of the song when he said:
‘If I was asked to give a description of the colour of the earth on Chunuk
Bair on the 8th or 9th of August, I would say it was a dull or browny red.
And that was blood. Just blood.’ (Shadbolt 1988, p. 94). However it is
significant what Harvey changes and what she leaves out. Nicholson is
one of the more bitter veterans in Shadbolt’s book saying he’d waited 70
years for the truth about Gallipoli to be told and that if it was ‘perhaps I
will die less angry’ (Shadbolt 1988, p. 96). Harvey entirely omits the ele-
ment of anger from the song, which contents itself with recounting the
events but adds a ‘framing device’ unrelated to Nicholson’s story. The
date the song is set is the mid-1930s, not the 1980s, when Nicholson
told his tale. This was after the first rush of war books and ‘disillusion-
ment’ but before the Second World War made the First appear morally
less justifiable. This corroborates John Parish’s suggestion that Harvey’s
songs are not protest or folk music but ‘more a commentary’ on events
(Bonner 2016, p. 36).
There are very few examples of songs that describe the emotions of a
‘battlefield tourist’ of today so ‘On Battleship Hill’ is perhaps the most
unusual track on the album. In A la recherche du temps perdu Marcel
Proust uses the taste of madeleines to contrast involuntary with volun-
tary memory and J.B. Priestley has suggested that songs can often invoke
the same response (quoted in Pickering and Keightley 2015, p. 31).
What Harvey does in this song is combine the two author’s ideas. In a
Proustian image, she links the scent of wild thyme with the recognition
that even the destruction wrought by the First World War is being eradi-
cated by nature. Yet it is a ‘cruel’ nature with ‘jagged mountains jutting
out/Cracked like teeth in a rotten mouth’. Harvey told the Sun about
this song:
Throughout the songs on the album, nature plays a great role. I’d chosen
to look at a lot of ancient folk songs from all over the world. Songs from
hundreds of years ago passed down the line in Cambodia, Ireland, Vietnam,
Russia. And a theme which comes through in all these countries’ music is
your relationship to the land. The lyric: ‘I hear the wind say, cruel nature
has won again,’ captures that feeling. No matter what happens to us, nature
will always be there. Which is comforting but also quite brutal. (quoted by
Songfacts, n.d.)
Here Harvey is exploring similar themes to those that obsessed the war-
time painter Paul Nash in his depictions of the desolation of the battle-
fields in such works as ‘We Are Making a New World’ (1918) and ‘The
Menin Road’ (1919), but also the way that nature could reclaim them,
as in Nash’s ‘Spring in the Trenches, Ridge Wood, 1917’ (1918) and
his post-war landscapes executed on the Romney Marsh in Kent and
Sussex, in which one almost expects the War to be just out of frame.
The song links time and remembrance in a complex relationship: should
246 P. GRANT
we remember or make a conscious decision to forget? Because it directly

reflects the experience of today’s tourists it also has a powerful reso-
nance as it challenges the motives of such ‘pilgrimages’. Do we visit the
sites of former conflicts for positive or negative reasons? Does battlefield
tourism help keep alive important historical lessons for the future or has
it simply become an aspect of a bland heritage experience? (Ashplant
et al. 2000, pp. 70–71). This is a topic that has become a key part
of ‘memory studies’ in recent years with ‘dark tourism’ or ‘thanatour-
ism’, dealing with the association between tourism and death, becom-
ing a topic for scholarly debate (Winter 2011). There can be two sides
to such tourism. On the one hand ‘is “victim tourism” in which the
visitor identifies with the victims, which can become “grudge” or even
“revenge tourism” when an identified perpetrator is blamed’ (Ashworth
2008, p. 234). Then there ‘is where the tourist’s experience is essen-
tially composed of “dark” emotions’ which, though not usually associ-
ated with the pleasures of a holiday trip can reduce traumatic events to
the same level of entertainment. So visiting a war cemetery or extermi-
nation camp can evoke both positive and negative emotions (Ashworth
2008, p. 234). Though one might question whether a four-minute song
has the ability to explore these complexities ‘On Battlefield Hill’ cap-
tures their essence in the same way that Danish composer Carl Nielsen
described the theme of his great Symphony No. 4 (The Inextinguishable),
written during the War: ‘if the whole world were destroyed and dead,
even then Nature would resume growing more life’ (quoted by Schmidt
2014, p. 132).
The Films
The songs are accompanied by a remarkable set of films, which are far from
conventional pop videos, made by Irish photojournalist Seamus Murphy.
Murphy has worked as a photojournalist all over the world and has won six
World Press Awards. Having seen Murphy’s exhibition A Darkness Visible
in London in 2008 Harvey contacted him as she ‘wanted to speak to him
more about his experiences in Afghanistan’ (Bridport News, 2011). The
exhibition (also published as a book in 2007) was a retrospective of his
work in that country since 1994. Harvey first engaged him to take some
promotional photographs but then asked him to make films of each of the
songs. Murphy said he decided to shoot the films in England because ‘for
me as an Irish person it’s a very English record, the sound, the lyrics, the
subject matter’ (PU 2011). All the films are pure documentary (with the
exception of a Punch and Judy show that was staged). He had originally
intended to use still photographs with just a few sequences of video but
the concept changed during shooting. Though he had used video before
in Afghanistan this was otherwise Murphy’s first moving film project.
Harvey gave Murphy total freedom, her only instruction was ‘just avoid
the bleeding obvious’ and very few changes were made after she had seen
the first cut (PU 2011). Murphy has said that, in most cases, the images
follow the rhythm and melody of the song, as the latter are so powerful
and ‘heavy’ (PU 2011). Each song is introduced by a person reciting a few
lines from the lyrics as if they were poems (Gardner 2015, pp. 147 and
159). The films are indeed far removed from ‘the bleeding obvious’ and
achieve Murphy’s ultimate aim which was to capture:
The enigma of England, its island mentality and complicated relationship

with its past. Contemporary England springs from a history of colonial
adventures, military ambitions, industrial prowess and a rigid hierarchy.
Now it is also defined by its waning power and role in modern geopolitics.
And it can be a gratifyingly odd place. (Murphy 2010)
Murphy’s films are among the few music videos that can stand alone
without the music and together with the album’s allusions to Australian/
New Zealand mythology, his Irish perspective acts as a counterpoint to
the ‘Englishness’ of Harvey’s songs. Harvey has continued her collabora-
tion with Murphy through their visits to Kosovo, Afghanistan and the
USA which resulted in the book, The Hollow of the Hand, two remarkable
multi-media events at London’s Festival Hall and her latest album.
Harvey and ‘Englishness’
Robert Burns has noted that the ‘absence of a contemporary English
identity distinct from right-wing political elements has reinforced nega-
tive and apathetic perceptions of English folk culture and tradition
among the populist media’ (Burns 2012, p. 45). The same is not true of
the other countries that make up the United Kingdom where music is
often used as a means of demonstrating national identity (Burns 2012,
p. 60). Instead Englishness is often regarded negatively ‘connected to
what folk singer Billy Bragg refers to as “football hooligans, the skin-
heads and narrow-minded xenophobic people”’ (Burns 2012, p. 53).
248 P. GRANT
Burns contends that in England popular music has helped forge a ‘cul-
tural identity that is distinct from negative social and political connota-
tions’ (Burns 2012, p. 45). Even though ‘English ethnicity may be a
construct’, as we saw when discussing Ray Davies in Chapter 6, it is
possible to ‘reclaim’ Englishness in a positive way so that: ‘Mythical con-
structions of Englishness do have resonance, and can become self-ful-
filling in a positive as well as a negative fashion’ (Moy 2007, pp. 58 and
57). Let England Shake contributes greatly to such a reclamation even
though this has not prevented some on the extreme right attempting to
appropriate the album for their own ends (Gardner 2015, pp. 143–4).
Throughout, Harvey interweaves the theme of war with that of what
England means for her and how the country’s present is inextricably
bound to its past. She quite explicitly excludes the other British nations,
situating England at the heart of a former empire and all the historical
‘baggage’ that entails, including the distinction between her as a white
woman and those of different ethnic backgrounds. Four tracks make
explicit reference to this theme: ‘The Last Living Rose’, ‘The Glorious
Land’, ‘England’ and the title track that opens the album. Harvey’s emo-
tions range from ironic xenophobia in ‘The Last Living Rose’, where she
denounces ‘Goddamn Europeans’ and asks to be taken back to England
‘and the grey, damp filthiness of ages and battered books and fog roll-
ing down behind the mountains’, to critical reflection on the violence
that made England ‘great’ in ‘The Glorious Land’ which is ‘ploughed
by tanks and feet, feet marching’. The latter song links the history of the
British Empire through war and, by implication, slavery to that of twen-
tieth century America, giving the song, and entire album, a universal
message about imperialist expansion. However, Harvey’s voice is always
multi-faceted. As well as condemning the worst excesses on which the
history of England rests, she also expresses deep personal attachment to
England, its landscape and its people. This is most evident in the song
‘England’ which begins with lines that describe her deep feelings for
her country but suggests these thoughts also lead her to recall negative
aspects of England’s past. Though she cannot repair the damage caused
neither can she escape their impact. Even so the song concludes positively
with the line ‘undaunted, never failing love for you England’. Similar
complex and contradictory feelings about England are also apparent in
the work of other artists, for example novelists, most notably George
Orwell, and in classical musicians including Elgar and Vaughan Williams
(Clarke 2006). There are many other examples of popular musicians

who have been identified as expressing ‘Englishness’, from the Beatles
through Blur and Billy Bragg to Tricky, many of them emerging in the
1980s era of Britpop and its aftermath when ‘the less strident nationalism
of Majorism gave cultural space to expressions of Englishness which were
denied under Thatcherism’ (Cloonan 1997, p. 53). However Harvey
and her album do not comfortably fit any of the five types of Englishness
Cloonan describes. She is not preoccupied with Englishness in her over-
all musical output, though it is certainly present in, for example, the con-
trasts explored in Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea (2000, Island).
Neither does she exhibit a nostalgic longing for the past. Instead her his-
torical eye is firmly critical. Perhaps this is, as Cloonan’s paper suggests,
due to being a woman for ‘one noticeable feature of those artists whom
media critics describe as examples of pop Englishness is that they are
overwhelmingly male. Women are greatly underplayed, both in talking
about and representing England in pop’ (Cloonan 1997, p. 60). Neither
is Harvey’s critique rooted in anti-Americanism as were those of Blur or
much of English punk. She can be critical of the USA but this is not a
‘stance’. In the end, Harvey’s Englishness is one of historical meditation
or critique rather than any of those adopted by her male counterparts.
A final, possibly ironic, coda to Harvey’s engagement in constructing an
ambiguous ‘nationalism’ on Let England Shake is that in 2013 she was
made a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.
Music and Image
Let England Shake is a good example of how problematic genre is in rela-
tion to rock or popular music. To what genre or category does it belong?
Is it ‘rock’ music at all? Some critics suggested it was closer to folk, and
there are certainly elements present, especially her use of the autoharp,
or chorded zither, which is a very uncommon instrument in rock but
was especially popular among US folk musicians in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries (Bridport News, 2011; Azevado et al. 2015,
p. 176). There are also many points of contact with certain ‘post-rock’
musicians such as Rachel Grimes and Labradford. However, the album
was not entirely a clean break with her past work, but rather an evolu-
tion from it. As early as 1995 Harvey had stated how she would ‘like to
move further away from the standard rock band’ in her search to ‘create
250 P. GRANT
atmospheres and emotionally charged music’ (Blandford 2004, p. 96).

She had introduced the autoharp on her previous album White Chalk
(2007), and the track ‘The Dancer’ (from To Bring You My Love, 1996)
bears a strong resemblance to much of Let England Shake. Perhaps Burns
and Lafrance are right in their analysis of Harvey’s music when they sug-
gest that it is, in the words of Richard Middleton, ‘undercoded’, in that
it does not draw on musical conventions with which listeners would be
familiar (Burns and Lafrance 2002, p. 188). In the title track, to quote
one fan, ‘she’s playing an autoharp with a dead bird on her head and steal-
ing a melody from a 1929 swing tune’ (tbrennan73, 2012). ‘Written on
the Forehead’ samples reggae artist Niney the Observer’s 1970 apocalyp-
tic ‘Blood and Fire’; there’s a ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ style bugle
call throughout ‘The Glorious Land’, Arabic ululations on ‘England’ and
‘The Words That Maketh Murder’ quotes lyrically and musically from
Eddie Cochran’s rock-and-roll staple ‘Summertime Blues’.
There is also the use that Harvey makes of her voice. Throughout
her career she has employed a wide range of voices suiting them to the
musical meaning of the song rather than, like the majority of rock sing-
ers, trying to achieve a unique vocal style listeners immediately recog-
nise (Burns and Lafrance 2002, pp. 187–8). On Let England Shake her
main style is a high soprano, previously employed on albums includ-
ing Is This Desire? and, more extensively, White Chalk. It helps to iden-
tify the songs as being both about the past but also timeless, a similar
effect to other composers’ use of male counter tenors including Philip
Glass in Akhnaten and Thomas Ades in The Tempest. Harvey also used
a counter-tenor voice, provided by Rob Ellis, on the title track of Rid
of Me and when English composer Edmund Joliffe recently set four of
Ivor Gurney’s war poems he too wrote them for counter-tenor. Harvey
explained that ‘if I used too much of a breadth in my voice, then it made
the songs too self-important, too dogmatic straight away. So it was a
very delicate balance to sing them in a way that was purely playing the
role of a narrator and not trying to inflect the words with any particular
bias’ (Sellers 2011).
Harvey reinvented her stage image for the album, something she has
done several times during her career. By 1996 she had ‘metamorphosed
from a shy English tomboy dressed in basic black to a powerful strutter
and poser decked out in false eyelashes, long glittering nails and beauty-
queen outfits’ (Strauss 1995). In 2003, for the Stories from the City, Stories
from the Sea tour, she ‘showcased a new selection of jaw-droppingly

revealing outfits, comprising thigh-length PVC boots, leather hotpants
and a flimsy bustier that would make even Madonna blush’ which one
(male) reviewer suggested made her look ‘something like an extra in an
Eighties biker porn movie’ (Blandford 2004, pp. 150–1). For Let England
Shake this had become a ‘a black-clad angel of death look’ in perfect keep-
ing with the subject matter of the album (Hunter-Tilney 2011). None of
this was accidental or done on whim but was a calculated aspect of the
content of her musical work. This sets her apart from one of her obvious
comparators, David Bowie, which appears not to have been recognised by
those who have made the parallel (Strauss 1995; Hunter-Tilney 2011).
Bowie’s personas, such as Ziggy Stardust or the Thin White Duke, were
as much inspirations for the music as the music was for them whereas
Harvey’s changing personas are very much a function of the music she
makes (Figs. 10.3 and 10.4).
Fig. 10.3 PJ Harvey in performance, Rock on Scene Festival 2003 (Photograph

by Jean Baptiste Lacroix © Getty Images)
252 P. GRANT
Fig. 10.4 PJ Harvey in performance at the Royal Albert Hall 2011 (Photograph
by Annabel Staff © Getty Images)
CONCLUSIONS
Overall Let England Shake is one of the few examples of rock music that
is able to mirror the complexity of war. Its stance is undoubtedly anti-war
even though its author declared that ‘I don’t feel qualified to sing from a
political standpoint’ (Harvey 2010). This did not prevent her, in October
2011, from challenging Prime Minister David Cameron about cuts to arts
funding on Andrew Marr’s television programme and Harvey also caused
political controversy with her guest editorship of BBC Radio 4’s flagship
current affairs programme Today on 2 January 2014. With items describ-
ing how the UK sells arms to repressive regimes and pieces by radical jour-
nalist John Pilger and Julian Assange it was denounced by Colin Bloom,
executive director of the Conservative Christian Fellowship, as ‘incompre-
hensible liberal drivel’ and by the Daily Mail’s columnist Stephen Glover
as ‘silly, frivolous and unpatriotic’ (Halliday and Weaver 2014).
Gardner has suggested that Let England Shake ‘can be positioned as
part of an established literary tradition of (mainly First World) war chroni-
clers from Owen and Sassoon to Pat Barker and Carol Ann Duffy’ but
she is only partly right (Gardner 2015, p. 148). Duffy and Barker are
firmly within the mainstream of the British war myth whereas Harvey,
like Wilfred Owen, understands that things are much more complex and
nuanced. In relation to Let England Shake she has stated that:
I didn’t want dogmatism, I didn’t want fingerpointing, I didn’t want
self-righteousness or any of that… in the writing I knew there had to be a
balance of light and shade. There had to be hope amongst disaster. And I
think of myself as somebody that continues to carry hope. (Hewitt 2011)
Let England Shake memorably links the motivations behind and
emotions within British conflicts of the last 100 years, yet also evokes
a positive picture of England (and by association Australia and New
Zealand) and a lingering pride in the country’s military achievements
whilst questioning the role of memory and remembrance. It was little
wonder that when Harvey premiered the work on The Andrew Marr
Show in 2010 fellow guest Prime Minister Gordon Brown looked totally
baffled (Marr 2010).
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CHAPTER 11
Conclusion: Music and the Centenary
NATIONAL MYTH AND THE CENTENARY

The extent to which countries decided to commemorate the centenary of
the War has been influenced by many factors: the strength of their ‘myth
of the War’, especially whether it is seen as having contributed to the
‘building of the nation’; whether there are still divisions attributable to it;
whether other events have superseded it in popular memory; and even the
effects of the global economic crisis on the country (Van der Auwera and
Schramme 2014). Certain events dominate in particular countries with
others played down; for example in joining Turkish commemorations of
Gallipoli other countries have been criticised for ignoring the Armenian
genocide (Fisk 2015). It was inevitable that the centenary would result in
some exaggerated demonstrations both of renewed nationalism and trans-
national reconciliation. Some critics rejected any form of commemoration
as jingoistic which, in Britain, led to criticism of the events from several
quarters. Sir Simon Jenkins considered that ‘Britain’s commemoration of
the Great War has lost all sense of proportion. It has become a media
theme park, an indigestible cross between Downton Abbey and a horror
movie’ and asked: ‘Can we really not do history without war?’ (Jenkins
2014a, b). Military historian Stephen Badsey criticised the BBC’s cen-
tenary output as ranging from ‘the mediocre to the outright bad’ and

260 P. GRANT
art critic Jonathan Jones railed against Paul Cummins and Tom Piper’s
installation Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, utilising 888,246 ceramic
poppies which progressively filled the Tower of London’s moat between
July and November 2014, calling it a ‘deeply aestheticised, prettified and
toothless war memorial’ (Badsey 2015; Jones 2014). Jones went on to
suggest that a more ‘meaningful mass memorial to this horror would not
be dignified or pretty. It would be gory, vile and terrible to see. The moat
of the Tower should be filled with barbed wire and bones.’ (Jones 2014).
All of these critics make some relevant points but are guilty of viewing the
centenary through a very narrow lens.
There is no doubt that some events have been in dubious taste or sim-
ply crass. Kids playing football or switching off the lights (in tribute to
Sir Edward Grey’s supposed comments) commemorate myths more than
actual events; but then any decision to emphasise one event over another
will draw criticism. The treatment of Armenians was the greatest crime
against humanity of the entire War, and yet to refuse to participate in
the Gallipoli commemoration would have been unthinkable for countries
who took no part in that genocide and who still, quite legitimately, trace
their ‘coming of age’ to the Gallipoli campaign. Any commemoration that
attempts to achieve mass recognition and participation is inevitably going
to be criticised as ‘simplistic’. It is impossible to depict historical events
in anything like their full complexity through public commemoration or
television programmes and to expect otherwise is unrealistic. My assess-
ment is that most programmes in Britain at least attempted to be thought-
ful and avoided both excessive nationalism and wholesale swallowing of
established myths. Going to the other extreme and removing war from
national commemoration is potentially dangerous, especially when the
popular memory supports an anti-war mythology. As we have seen, many
people in Britain view the First World War as both avoidable and a warn-
ing of war’s ultimate futility. Even if this is simply a myth it is surely bet-
ter than trying to ignore it? Simon Jenkins gets close to the Basil Fawlty
School of history in wanting not to mention the war in case it upsets the
Germans. Jones’ attack on the Tower of London poppies gets us closer to
our subject as this was an artistic response to the centenary. However for
an art critic Jones’ polemic was remarkably naive. The installation was not
an attempt to depict the War; it was a depiction of its popular or public
memory. Jones wanted something like the prints of Otto Dix instead but
this is to confuse the intentions of the artists. Dix’s intention was to show
the horror of war; Cummins and Piper’s was not, instead they were seek-
CONCLUSION: MUSIC AND THE CENTENARY 261
ing to invoke our contemporary response to our national memory of the

conflict and, in this, they succeeded spectacularly. The fact that Jones was
repelled by this response is not the fault of the artists; rather it lies at the
heart of the myth.
We also have to be careful to disentangle the actual public response to
the centenary to the way in which the media depict it. A public opinion
survey in October 2014 indicated that two-thirds of the British public
were happy with the way in which the centenary had been handled, half
said that it had brought the people of Britain closer together, and a quar-
ter that they had been inspired to find out more about their family history
(Gadher 2014). Yet the media often depicts a country of divided opinions.
This can be in the form of veterans’ supposed ‘outrage’ at non-national-
istic events or depictions. For example the Mail on Sunday claimed that
a proposed BBC series which would give ‘equal prominence to British
and German soldiers in the trenches’ had ‘infuriated veterans’ (Constable
2013). Reading the article revealed that these ‘veterans’ numbered one,
a Tory MP. Public funding has supported commemorations of all kinds,
including the actions of conscientious objectors and peace campaign-
ers, and these sat alongside those fronted by military organisations with
both groups debating important questions with great dignity and respect.
Similar debates over the nationalist nature of the commemorations have
taken place in Canada and Australia and resulted in similar attacks upon
those who have questioned the celebratory aspects of the commemora-
tions but have also noted a certain ‘commemoration fatigue’ setting in
(Mccann 2015; Barber 2015; Talbot 2015; Matthews 2015).
Historian Margaret MacMillan summed up the ‘nationalisation’ of
the centenary when she said ‘I wish we could see understanding the First
World War as a European issue, or even a global one, and not a nationalist
one’ (Cochrane 2015). Whilst this is a very laudable ambition, it simpli-
fies the way that nations remember events like the First World War. Even
though the rise to prominence of the war ‘victim’ and trauma transcends
national boundaries there are also positive reasons for retaining national
myths. Despite their simplification, myths can provide ‘a visible map of a
nation’s history’ and ‘serve as a guide to its future’. The alternative is ‘con-
fusion leading to disintegration, or the allure of [more] dangerous myths’
as Eric Hobsbawm presciently warned in the aftermath of the downfall
of the Soviet Union (Hellmann 1997, p. 178; Hobsbawm 1993). These
dangers of overemphasising national war myths can be seen at present in
the Ukraine and were also spelled out in an important article by Umberto
262 P. GRANT
Eco (Eco 1995). Eco described what he termed ‘Ur-Fascism’ or ‘Eternal

Fascism’ which is a more subtle and insidious variant on the 1930s version
and, in one form or another, can spring to prominence even in democratic
countries. Some of its characteristics are a rejection of modernism; fear of
difference; suggestions that the country is being ‘besieged’ – for example
by a ‘tide of migrants’; a disdain for women or homosexuals; and selec-
tive populism which conceives that there is a ‘silent majority’ opposed to
reform or protest. To avoid this it is important to have critics like Simon
Jenkins, Jonathan Jones or Margaret MacMillan as well as artists who take
a wide variety of stances on both the historical events and their popular
depiction.
MUSIC AND THE CENTENARY
Inevitably music has played a significant role in centenary commemora-
tions around the world. Many existing works have been performed; there
have never been as many performances of Britten’s War Requiem and there
have been seven new recordings since 2010. In Britain there have been
two major musical events. Firstly the government- and Lottery-backed
‘Last Post’ Project, organised by arts charity Superact, aimed at ‘bringing
communities across the UK together to play the Last Post on a variety of
different instruments at commemorative musical events’ (Superact, 2015).
In its first year ‘over 250 communities hosted events that saw the Last Post
played on guitars, pianos, harmonicas and more’ (Superact, 2015). Then
there has been the BBC’s main response, The Ballads of the Great War, ‘a
series of hard-hitting but lyrical accounts of life and death on the Western
Front’ (BBC 2014). Neither of these initiatives was exactly inspired. At
least the ‘Last Post’ project was a way of getting communities involved,
but why not get them to make some new music? The BBC’s ‘Ballads’ has
produced some excellent new songs but it was desperately unimaginative
to focus solely on the Western Front and only commission folk artists. As
we have seen there are songwriters working in every genre and to exclude,
for example, metal and rap was at best short-sighted, and at worst elitist
and racist.
Nevertheless there has been some interesting music composed as part
of the centenary. One example is the atmospheric Ypres from Nottingham
indie rock band Tindersticks (P & C Lucky Dog), though the music itself
is very different from their early songs. It was written to form background
music for the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ieper by core member Stuart
Staples following visits to the nearby battlefields and war cemeteries, nota-
bly the melancholic German cemetery at Vladso which is vastly different
to the ‘country garden’ style of the British war cemeteries. The music
(there are no lyrics) is in the vein of the ambient works of Brian Eno or the
soundtrack work of Nick Cave, though others have suggested compari-
son with Pärt, Sibelius, Gorecki and Nyman (Falcone 2014). As another
review suggested assessing ‘these compositions outside the environment
they were specifically created for can be frustrating’ and the music is
deliberately one-dimensional and mournful which is entirely suited to the
museum but somewhat formless or intangible away from it and, as its
sleeve notes suggest, ‘it is music without a beginning, middle or end’ (Mac
2014; Tindersticks 2014).
As well as new popular songs written for the centenary, there were
many from classical composers too. Kevin Puts’ first opera Silent Night,
with a libretto by Mark Campbell, is based on the Christian Carion film
of the Christmas Truce Joyeux Noel. The film is a highly mythologised
version of the events in which both sides appear to live in very nice, clean,
wide trenches and, other than perhaps the batman Ponchel, there are no
working-class characters. Being middle class, the soldiers are also nice and
clean and never swear. They are less convincing as soldiers than Sergeant
Bilko’s platoon. The truce is initiated by a German Private, an opera singer
before the War, and his Danish soprano girlfriend. In its aftermath a sym-
pathetic Scottish Priest is sent home and his regiment disbanded. The
Germans, led by a Jewish officer, are despatched to the Eastern Front.
Puts’ operatic version played a sold-out premiere run in 2011 at the
Minnesota Opera and went on to win the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for music.
Each nationality sings in their own language and overall it is similar in style
to some of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s work, though with nods to neoclas-
sicism and even Philip Glass. There are also touches of Benjamin Britten,
especially the ‘war’ interludes that are evocative of Peter Grimes. Despite
some clichéd elements, ‘Mickey-Mousing’ of machine guns on cow bells
for example, it is an impressive piece of music and the melodramatic plot
works better as opera than it did on film.
Less successful is the collaboration between Flemish composer Nicholas
Lens and Australian alternative rock musician, and former collaborator of
PJ Harvey, Nick Cave. Their Shell Shock: A Requiem of War debuted at the
La Monnaie opera house in Brussels in October 2014. Based on 12 ‘can-
tos’ or poems written by Cave it is sung by 12 different characters, from
soldiers and nurses to a child and even the Angel of Death. Extensively
264 P. GRANT
(one could say over-) choreographed by the Belgian Eastman company, it

is an uneasy mixture of artistic forms and genres. As Cave himself said ‘Nick
Cave singing “assholes” seems right, but an opera choir?’ (Cave 2014).
The overall result is, at best, rigidly formalist, at worst self-parodic. The
use of a high-range counter-tenor and the Angel of Death (soprano) sing-
ing ‘fuck, fuck, fuck’ might well draw guffaws from the wrong audience.
Other key works include Patrick Hawes’ Great War Symphony, whose third
movement ‘focuses on the disaster of the Somme’; another symphony
from New Zealander Michael Williams Letters from the Front, inspired by
his great grandfather who was killed at Passchendaele; Jonathan Dove’s
For an Unknown Soldier; and, most recently, Iain Bell’s opera based on
David Jones’ epic poem In Parenthesis (Hewett 2015; Cardy 2015). With
the exception of the last, based on a work of huge complexity and which
Fussell criticised for rationalising and validating the War, these works are
each in the thrall of their countries’ national myths (Fussell 2000, p. 147).
MUSIC AND MYTH REVISITED

The First World War was one of the most complex, multifaceted periods of
world history. Its participants encountered a huge variety of experiences,
some appalling, some euphoric and every shade in between, often within
the same individual. Any thoughtful discussion of the War therefore needs
to recognise this complexity and songs that resort to mere polemic will
have little impact. In contrast those that are, in Lynskey’s words, ‘rich
and rewarding’ interpret this complexity into ambiguities that allow the
listener to take an active part in forming a view of their subject (Lynskey
2012, p. 465). However if a song is too ambiguous, there is a danger that
nobody will get the point, which would defeat the purpose of choosing a
historical subject in the first place. Despite what some of its critics, such
as Roger Scruton, think popular music is a highly relevant form in which
to represent as mythologised a subject as the First World War. If anything,
it is getting more relevant or, at least, is offering a wider range of possible
approaches due to the ever-expanding genre options available. Though
you are not going to hear martial industrial music on major TV or radio,
‘pop itself plays a central part in the cultural landscape’ and will continue
to do so (Lynskey 2012, p. 682).
In this book I explored at some length the myths that have become
established about the War and pose the following question: if popular
music is so good at representing the War why do the songs not challenge
these myths more frequently? There are a number of reasons. Firstly there
is the simple fact of length. Challenging a deeply rooted myth is not an
easy task, and unless you are going to produce a long musical piece or an
entire album of songs, as perhaps PJ Harvey or Bolt Thrower have done,
it is not at all straightforward to challenge myths in four or five minutes.
Barker and Taylor suggest that single songs ‘can’t tell us the whole truth
[nor] be truly profound’ but can only be a ‘signpost […] or reminder of
something more profound’ (Barker and Taylor 2007, p. 196). If one is
to produce a work of art that gives both a personal and a more strategic
picture of war, then books, especially non-fiction, or film are much better
suited to the purpose. Challenging myth is also not the primary purpose
of any work of art; it would be very dull if it was. Instead, as Bicknell
suggests, a successful musical composition about war is one that evokes a
moral response (Bicknell 2009, p. 134). The successful songs studied here
do precisely that, whatever their stance vis-à-vis the various War myths.
Ultimately, in order to challenge a myth one needs to move away from
a focus on the personal. For any single participant in war, especially a lowly
private, the whole thing is utter confusion. At that level, it is impossible for
someone in a battle to discern any coherent strategy. This is true for any
war and is remarkably similar in first-hand accounts whether the battles
are Naseby, Waterloo, the Somme, Normandy or Mount Tumbledown.
For this reason texts that reinforce the futility myth avoid the ‘bigger pic-
ture’. In everything from films to novels, the higher command is either
never shown at all or is depicted in caricature. If Haig, for instance, was
allowed to explain his thinking in Oh, What a Lovely War! beyond hoping
that victory would be achieved ‘before the Americans arrive’, this would
not be in keeping with either the artistic or political intention of the work.
Instead, works that support the idea of futility concentrate on individu-
als or small groups who have no control over events— private soldiers
or junior officers. Compare this approach in films. In the 1920s Britain
produced a number of films that attempted to set the experience of the
individual within the wider context of the strategy of the War and ‘oper-
ated as a kind of intellectual bridge between private recollections and pub-
lic history’ (Napper 2011, pp. 115 and 113). The Somme (directed by
M.A. Wetherell) was described by the Bioscope as ‘a spectacular and digni-
fied presentment of a great achievement’ which shows that, even in 1927,
the battle was still seen as a victory (Dixon and Porter 2011, p. 179). After
the Second World War, with the hegemony of the ‘futility’ trope, such an
approach was entirely absent from films about the First World War, but
266 P. GRANT
not in the many films about the Second. In works as diverse as The Battle
of Britain, The Longest Day or even A Bridge Too Far about the failed
Arnhem airborne attack, events are carefully placed in their context and
senior commanders are prominent. When Hollywood came to depict the
Vietnam War the concept of futility was back and the vast majority of films
focused again on personal stories (The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now or
Platoon). Even the pro-war Green Berets does not bother with overall strat-
egy, concentrating instead on a simple story of ‘good guys’ versus ‘bad’.
In relation to progressive rock music Hegarty and Halliwell noted
Walter Benjamin’s ideas on myth when ‘he describes the storyteller as
overburdened by modernity but whose bardic calling is to force the past
into the present in order to better engage readers and listeners’ (Hegarty
and Halliwell 2011, p. 87). They go on to suggest that:
If we read progressive music through Benjamin, then we can see that the
linguistic-musical continuum often reaches out to the past […] setting off
historical and contemporary resonances, but it also establishes an alternative
world through an act of translation: what Benjamin described as a ‘removal
from one language into another through a continuum of transformations’.
(Hegarty and Halliwell 2011, p. 87)
This principle need not be limited to the genre of progressive rock. The
concept gives both a raison d’être for popular music engaging with an his-
torical subject and a way in which, through ‘transformation’, it is able to
reinterpret historical myths. Put another way ‘popular music is the prod-
uct of an ongoing historical conversation in which no one has the first
or last word’ (Lipsitz 2001, p. 99). Therefore, popular artists can either
utilise myths, or elements of them, to add new ideas, which many of the
songs here do, or even come at them from an unexpected direction; The
Decemberists’ ‘The Soldiering Life’ would be a good example.
THE SILENT DEAD

We can now return to the quote from ‘Let England Shake’ in which PJ
Harvey suggests that England itself is ‘weighted down with silent dead’.
In one respect she is talking about the ‘weight of history’ influencing
the present—for example in Tony Blair’s decision to go to war in Iraq.
But there is also a secondary meaning. Here the artist who looks to the
First World War for inspiration will feel themselves weighted down by
the dead of the War. They, or anyone who comments on it, is expected
by the public and much of the media to ‘toe the party line’ of the myth
of the War. When they do not they are prone to be vilified. Many artists
simply succumb to the pressure and really do become, in the words with
which W. B. Yeats criticised Wilfred Owen, ‘sucked sugar stick’—perhaps
Paul McCartney and Sting are guilty here (Yeats 1940). Others, whilst not
refuting the myth, are able to manipulate it in ways that go beyond sim-
plistic depictions to reveal deeper artistic truths. A few are prepared to ‘put
their heads above the parapet’ and construct their own original insights
into the complexities of the War.
Ross Chambers has suggested that ‘works that represent war […] will
either silence the ghosts who haunt us’ or ‘will allow the ghosts to speak
from within a landscape of memory’ taking ‘centre stage for the witness-
ing experience’ (paraphrased by Grace 2014, p. 79). War is a difficult topic
for artists and no war is as fraught with problems as the First World War.
Those silent dead make demands upon us that it is sometimes difficult to
reconcile. In his essay Spectres of Marx (1993) Jacques Derrida delineated
this spectral no-man’s land, an ‘indeterminate space between the dead and
the living, but also a distance or difference within time itself […] carrying
a past and anticipating a future’ (Ruin 2015, p. 61). In discussing Stanley
Spencer’s painting The Resurrection of the Soldiers, one of the greatest
works of art to emerge from the War, Sue Malvern has written:
There is no one universal truth, no absolute idea, no closure on meaning

and meaning-making as though meaning in art and culture is given once
and for all time. In effect, there may be no definitive conclusion to draw
about the First World War and culture, just as the contemplation and use of
works of art is never simply disinterested. (Malvern 2004, p. 174)
Derrida’s analysis went on to suggest that: ‘What the dead demand from
us, what we owe them […] often border[s] on the question of justice, not
just of doing justice to them, but of being just’ and as Amy Sargeant has
recognised when speaking of film, ‘the crucial question, then and now, is
how to honour the memory of those who die in war without celebrating
war itself’ (Ruin 2015, pp. 63–4; Sargeant 2011, p. 80, emphasis in origi-
nal). The best of the songs studied here are at least able to hint at these
complexities and successfully negotiate Derrida and Sargeant’s dilemma.
Ultimately songs can be viewed as ‘a site of memory in which the local, the
national and the transnational [are] inherently intertwined’ (Beyen 2015,
268 P. GRANT
p. 2). They recognise, in Eric Bogle’s words, that ‘we need as many myths,
legends and heroes as we can get’ but they also utilise these as ‘shorthand’
to develop further, in inventive new ways (Bogle 2015).
In 1986 Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel suggested in relation to
the Holocaust of which he was a survivor that ‘any survivor has more to
say than all the historians combined’ (Cargas 1986, p. 5). With respect I
would disagree. The testimony of a survivor may well be poorly remem-
bered or deliberately biased, and the survivor may only have a partial expe-
rience. If we only relied on witnesses then events like the Holocaust or
the First World War would remain ‘frozen in time’ as individual human
tragedies, without the ability for us to draw lessons about how or why they
happened and thus how to prevent them in future (Wood 2014, p. 119).
Wiesel was far closer to the mark in saying that survivors have ‘no right to
deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory.
To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead
would be akin to killing them a second time’ (Wiesel 1985, p. xv). Now
that they are all dead we cannot possibly know exactly how participants in
the First World War actually felt and we should avoid ‘co-opting their suf-
fering for our own purposes’ by pretending we can (Wood 2014, p. 113).
Presenting any experience like this in an artistic work is an extraordinarily
difficult tightrope to negotiate, which is why so few fully succeed in their
depiction of these traumatic historical events. Jeffrey Wood has also wres-
tled with Wiesel’s comments in relation to classical music pieces about the
War and concludes that: ‘The best of them are not designed to make us
feel better about ourselves, nor are they designed to lay blame. They avoid
the pitfalls of excessive patriotic display, overbearing self-righteous con-
demnation or of elegiac sentimentalization’ (Wood 2014, p. 120). Songs
such as ‘La Guerre de 14–18’, ‘The Soldiering Life’, ‘Orders from the
Dead’ or those of Bolt Thrower or PJ Harvey reconcile these points. They
do not patronise or pretend to ‘understand’ how the dead felt, but instead
give the dead a voice.
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INDEX1
NUMBERS Adorno, Theodor, 5, 92

10,000 Maniacs, 213 Afghanistan, 23, 135, 239, 242,
‘1914’ (Kmaa Kendell), 198 246, 247
‘1914’ (Owen), 27 Ahnfeldt-Mollerup, Hanne and
‘1914’ (The Jar Family), 193 Nina, 198
‘1916’ (Motörhead), 159 Airs and Graces (June Tabor), 104
Akhnaten (Glass), 250
À la recherche du temps perdu
A (Proust), 245
‘The Accrington Pals’ (Mike Harding), ‘Al Bowlly’s in Heaven’ (Richard
77, 188 Thompson), 139
The Accrington Pals (play, Albert, Marv, 125, 127
Whelan), 110 Albini, Steve, 220
Across the Rubicon, 151, 152 Albion Band, 111
Adagio for Strings (Barber), Alden, Robert, 90
54, 129 Alexander, C. Edward, 130
Adams, Bryan, 77, 83–85 Algerian War. See French-Algerian War
Adams, John, 111 ‘All and Everyone’ (PJ Harvey), 243
Adam-Smith, Patsy, 33 All is One (Orphaned Land), 197
Ades, Thomas, 250 ‘All of No Man’s Land is Ours’
Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said), 237 (Einstürzende Neubauten), 68
1
Titles of songs, poems and paintings are in inverted commas with the artist/writer in
brackets. Titles of albums, books, films and plays are in italics. For songs and albums the full
name of the artist/performer is given, for other art works just their last name.

Popular Music, DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-60139-1
278 INDEX
‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ Anzac Day, 33, 34, 103, 104
(Elton John), 126 Apocalypse Now (Coppola), 24
All Quiet on the Western Front Aqaba (June Tabor), 108
(Milestone film), 37 Aragon, Louis, 92
‘All Together Now’ (The Farm), 77, Ararat (Egoyan), 238
187, 190, 191 Archard, David, 13, 16–18
‘All Together Now’ (The Peace ‘Argonne Wood’ (Vienna Circle), 131
Collective), 191 Armenian Genocide, 7, 174, 175, 259
Allen, Anton, 161 Armistice 1918 (Bill Carothers), 3, 141
Almond, Marc, 91 ‘Armistice Day’, 114, 185. See also
Alpert, Herb and the Tijuana Brass, 121 Remembrance Day
Alternative für Deutschland, 32 ‘Armistice Day’ (The Cleaners From
Amazing Blondel, 107 Venus), 235
‘Amazing Grace’, 54 Armstrong, Stu, 60
American Civil War, 102, 231 Arras, Battle of, 37, 38, 127
Amos, Matthew, 173 Art Abscon(s), 3, 108
Amraoui, Mohammed el, 229 ‘Artifacts of War’ (God Dethroned), 168
Amused to Death (Roger Waters), 127 Arthur (or the Decline and Fall of the
‘And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda’ British Empire) (The Kinks), 123
(Eric Bogle), 77, 84, 85, 103, 104, Arthur, Davey, 105
110, 114, 139, 173, 215 The Art of War (Sabaton), 168, 169
Anderson, Ben, 53 ‘The Art of War’ (Sun Tzu), 168, 169
Anderson, Benedict, 13 Asquith, Arthur, 79
Anderson, Ian, 137 Asquith, H.H., 78
And Justice for All (Metallica), 159, 173 Assange, Julian, 252
‘Andrea’ (Fabrizio De André), 95, 96 Assmann, Jan, 50, 51
Andrew, Sonja 252 Astley, Virginia, 213
Angel of Mons, 59, 195 Astor, Pete, 6, 205
‘Angels Calling’ (Sabaton), 168 At the Drop of a Hat (Flanders and
‘Annachie Gordon’ (The Swann), 95–6
Unthanks), 114 ‘At First Light’ (Bolt Thrower), 165
Anohni (Antony Hegarty), 236 At the Going Down of the Sun (Imperial
‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ (10,000 Vengeance), 130
Maniacs), 213 Atkins, Chet, 153
‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ (Owen), Atomic Kitten, 191
203, 213, 230 Attenborough, Richard, 20, 24
Anthems for Doomed Youth (The Attila the Stockbroker, 106
Libertines), 214 Australia, 13, 19, 20, 26, 33–7, 69,
Anthems in Eden (Shirley Collins), 107 81, 83–5, 124, 253, 261
Antidote, 56 Australian and New Zealand Army
Antoniou, Laura, 185 Corps (Anzac), 33–5, 103, 104,
‘The Anxious Dead’ (McCrae), 218 243, 244
Anzac Cove, 33, 243 Austria (and Austria-Hungary), 13
INDEX 279
‘L’Avenir est un long passé’ ‘The Battle of the Somme’ (Albion

(Manau), 101 Band), 111
Aznavour, Charles, 99, 238 ‘The Battle of the Somme’ (Fairport
Azziard, 100, 161 Convention), 55, 111, 115, 194
‘The Battle of the Somme’ (Peter
Rubsam Group), 111
B ‘The Battle of the Somme’ (The
‘Babylon is Falling’ (The Home Dubliners with Luke Kelly), 111
Service), 88 Baudelaire, Charles 92, 236
Bach, J.S., 150 Baxter-Moore, Nick, 125
Baez, Joan, 89 BBC, 61, 62, 79, 107, 252, 259,
Bakhtin, Mikhail, 4, 15 261, 262
‘The Ballad of Bill Hubbard’ (Roger A Beach Full of Shells (Al Stewart), 78
Waters), 127 The Beatles (White Album), 121
‘The Ballad of Denshaw Mill’ (Barclay Beatles, The, 121, 123, 131, 249
James Harvest), 7, 194, 196 ‘Beaumont’s Light Horse’, 132
‘Ballad of the Green Berets’ (Barry Beck, Jeff, 21, 127
Sadler), 81 Beersheba, Battle of, 81
‘Ballad for the Rich’ (Flanders and ‘Beeswing’ (Richard Thompson), 138
Swann), 95 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 140
‘The Ballad of Richard Howard’ (Sam Beggars Banquet (The Rolling
Sweeny), 61 Stones), 121
‘Ballad of a Spycatcher’ (Leon Bell, Duncan, 31, 50, 132
Rosselson), 56 ‘Belleau Wood’ (Garth Brooks), 193
The Ballads of the Great War, 262 Ben Bop, 67
‘The Band Played Waltzing Matilda’ Bench, Jo, 69, 163, 167
(The Pogues), 104, 242 Benjamin, Walter, 18, 208, 213,
Bangs, Lester, 130, 136, 157, 222 263, 266
Barão Vermelho, 122 Berkeley, Busby, 130
Barât, Carl, 213, 214 Bevel, Eugene, 98
Barbara, 9, 96, 97, 101, 217 Beyond the Fringe, 95
Barber, Samuel, 54, 129, 261 Biafra, 56
Barbusse, Henri, 140 Bicheno, James, 185
Barclay James Harvest, 7, 194, 195 Bicknell, Jeanette, 6, 265
Bargeld, Blixa, 153 Biddle, Ian, 14, 15
Barker, Pat, 28, 252 The Big Parade (Vidor), 37
Baron Rojo, 122 bin Laden, Osama, 174–5
‘Baron Rojo’ (Baron Rojo), 122 Binički, Stanislav, 153
Barthes, Roland, 17, 56 Binyon, Laurence, 130, 219
Bataille, Georges, 151 Birdsong (Faulks), 28
Battering Ram (Saxon), 163 Birgisson, Jón ‘Jónsi’, 129
‘The Battle of the Somme’, (pipe Blackadder (Goes Forth), 28, 235–6
tune), 110 Black Boned Angel, 161
280 INDEX
Blackfield, 197 Bragg, Billy, 247, 249

black metal, 77, 78, 81, 82, 100, 130, Brain Damage meets Vibronics, 77,
147–9, 156–9, 161, 175, 176, 228–30
238. See also extreme metal Brassens, Georges, 9, 57, 78, 89,
Black Sabbath, 155, 157, 172 91–6, 228
‘The Blacksmith’, 107 Bread and Roses, 193
Blair, Tony, 58, 105, 174, 266 Breivik, Anders, 160
Blonde on Blonde (Bob Dylan), 121 Brel, Jacques, 9, 88–92, 112, 136,
Blood Axis, 147, 149 220
‘Blood and Fire’ (Niney the Brian, Havergal, 7
Observer), 250 Briedis, Frı̄drihs, 162
Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Brief Encounter (Lean), 78
Red, 260 Brik, Addie, 100
Blunstone, Colin, 123 Britain. See Great Britain
Blur, 249 British Legion, 55, 106, 129, 234
Bogle, Eric, 7, 9, 77, 84, 85, 92, 102, British National Party (BNP), 23
103, 108, 112, 152, 173, 218, Brittan, Vera, 97
268 Brittany, 101
Bohlman, Philip V., 14 Britten, Benjamin, 208, 213, 263
‘Bold as Brass’ (Gary Miller), 59 Broden, Joakim, 169, 170
Bolt Thrower, 61, 69, 77, 152, Brooke, Rupert, 78, 79, 203, 212,
157, 158, 161–7, 171, 235, 242
173, 176, 211, 214, 228, Brooks, Garth, 193
265, 268 Brown, Gordon, 253
‘Bonegrinder 1916’ (Cryptic Brown, Malcolm, 186–8, 194
Wintermoon), 81 Brown, Neil, 233, 234
Boney M, 3 Bryers, Gavin, 129
Bonfire Ensemble, 218 Bryson, Bethany, 155
Bongiorno, Frank, 34 Buff Medways, The, 234
‘Bonsoir M’Amour’, 98 Bulgaria, 54, 196
‘BOOM!’ (System of a Down), 174 Burns, Lori, 5, 240, 241, 250
Boorman, John, 107 Burns, Robert, 121, 247
Bostanci, Anne, 28, 29 Burr, Henry, 152
Boulez, Pierre, 123 Bush, George W., 80, 174
Les Bourgeois (Jacques Brel), 90 Bush, Kate, 6, 137
Bower, David, 163 ‘The Butcher Boy’, 81
Bowie, David, 91, 251 ‘Butchers Tale (Western Front 1914)’
‘The Bowmen’ (Pale Roses), 150 (The Zombies), 77, 123
‘Boxing Day 1914’ (Bread and ‘La butte rouge’ (Dominique
Roses), 193 Grange), 98
‘The Boys Who Won’t Come Home’ Butterworth, George, 234
(Henry Burr), 152 Byrds, The, 235
INDEX 281
C Celtic Thunder, 194

Cable Street, Battle of, 56 Cenotaph, 56, 57, 166, 190
Caddick, Bill, 108, 109 ‘Cenotaph’ (Bolt Thrower), 166
Cage, John, 133 Centenary: Words and Music (Show of
Cale, John, 133 Hands), 212
‘Call to Arms’ (Saxon), 56, 57, 162 ‘C’est pas ma faute si j’ai pas fait
Call to Arms (Saxon), 163 Verdun’ (Michel Fugain), 100
Cambrai, 84 C’était la guerre des tranchées
Cameron, David, 18, 56, 252 (Tardi), 98
Campbell, Alastair, 89 Chambers, Ross, 213, 267
Campbell, James S., 210 Chanson, 2, 3, 9, 10, 71, 73, 87–94,
Campbell, Mark, 263 96–9, 101, 102, 157, 205
Camus, Albert, 149 ‘La Chanson de Craonne’, 98
Canada, 13, 19, 26, 35–7, 69, 83–5, ‘La Chanson de Craonne’ (Dominique
216, 219, 261 Grange), 98
Çanakkale, 34, 54, 196. See also ‘La Chanson de Craonne’ (Tichot), 98
Gallipoli The Charge of the Light Brigade
Cannan, May Wedderburn, 212 (Richardson), 125
Cannibal Corpse, 158, 216 ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’
Canon in D Major (Pachelbel), 191 (Tennyson), 173
‘Can’t Win’ (Richard Thompson), 138 Charles, Ray, 91
The Cantos (Pound), 150 Charles, Teddy, 244
canzone d’autore, 96 Charrière, Henri, 193
Canzoni (Fabrizio De André), 96 Chatham, 233, 234
Carcass, 100, 158, 163 Chielens, Piet, 57
Carion, Christian, 185, 198, 204, 263 ‘Child in Time’ (Deep Purple), 61
Carlyon, Les, 33, 242 Childish, Billy. See Chyldish, Billy
Carolus Rex (Sabaton), 169 ‘Children’s Crusade’ (Sting), 128, 190
Carrothers, Bill, 3, 141 Christgau, Robert, 83, 136, 155,
Carrothers, Peg, 141 222, 240
Carter, Helena Bonham, 78 The Christhunt (God Dethroned), 77,
Carter, Violet Bonham, 78, 79 122, 161, 168, 170–2
Cash, Johnny, 193 ‘Christmas 1914’ (Mike Harding),
Casimir, Jon, 103–5 109, 187, 189
Catalonia, 24 ‘Christmas in the Trenches’ (Jerry
Caught in the Light (Barclay James Lynch), 191, 194
Harvest), 194–5 Christmas Truce (1914), 2, 3, 184,
‘Cavatina’ (Myers), 54 188, 198
Cave, Nick, 263, 264 ‘The Christmas Truce’ (Duffy), 184
Cavell, Edith, 68 Chukovskaya, Lydia, 112
Celan, Paul, 238 Chumbawamba, 56
Celine, 152 Chunuk Bair, 244
282 INDEX
Church of Anthrax (Terry Riley and Coppola, Francis Ford, 24, 236
John Cale), 133 Cordier, Adeline, 88, 89, 93, 94
Churchill, Winston, 78 ‘Corne d’Aurochs’ (Georges
Chyldish, Billy, 125, 233–5. See also Brassens), 93
Buff Medways and Wild Billy Costello, Elvis, 10, 127, 139
Chyldish Coulson, Leslie, 215
Cimino, Michael, 24 Country Joe and the Fish, 216
Clark, Alan, 58, 107, 185 Coxon, Graham, 233
Clark, Christopher, 32 Cracknell, Steve, 229
Clash, The, 77, 135, 136, 191, 233 Cranberries, The, 10
Cleaners From Venus, The, 235 ‘Crazy Man Michael’ (Richard
Clemens non Papa, 154 Thompson), 138
Cleveland, Les, 8 Credo, 130
‘Cliffs of Gallipoli’ (Sabaton), 168, 169 Creedence Clearwater Revival, 121
Clint Eastwood and General Saint, 68 Creve Tambour, 135
Cloonan, Martin, 160, 249 ‘Crimson Rider’ (Masterplan), 122
Cobain, Kurt, 233 Crisis (band), 149
Cobham, Billy, 68, 122 ‘Crucifix Corner’ (Fish), 132
Cochran, Eddie, 244, 250 ‘Cruel Sister’, 61
Cohen, Leonard, 91, 96, 113, 204 Cryptic Wintermoon, 77, 78, 81–3, 161
Cold War, 102 CTMF, 234
Collins, Dolly, 107 Cummins, Paul and Piper, Tom, 260
Collins, Judy, 89 Current 93, 150
Collins, Shirley, 107, 148 Currie, John, 104
‘La Colombe’ (Jacques Brel), 89, 90 Curthoys, Ann, 33, 34
Colombia, 100 Cuvelier, Marcel, 96
‘The Colour of the Earth’ (PJ Czechs, 13
Harvey), 244
Colquhoun, Ian, 192
‘Common Ground’ (IQ), 130 D
Communist Party, 115, 126, 175 Dali, Salvador, 242
Comus (band), 148 ‘The Dance’ (Siamanto), 237, 238, 250
Conan the Barbarian (Milius), 236 Dance of Death (Iron Maiden), 173
Conlee, Jenny, 69 ‘The Dancer’ (PJ Harvey), 250
Connell, John, 15 ‘Dancing at Whitsun’ (Shirley
‘Conquered Air’ (Vienna Circle), 131 Collins), 108
‘Cooksferry Queen’ (Richard ‘Dancing at Whitsun’ (Tim Hart), 108
Thompson), 138 dark ambient (music), 147, 151, 161
Coope, Boyes and Simpson, 57, 219 A Darkness Visible (Murphy), 246
Cope, Andrew, 4, 155–7, 161, Das, Santanu, 3, 27
163, 172 Davies, Peter Maxwell, 129
Copland, Aaron, 167 Davies, Ray, 123, 124, 126, 248
INDEX 283
Davis, Jack, 130 Diana, Princess, 7, 55

Davis, Miles, 114 Dickinson, Bruce, 122, 163, 172, 203
Dawn (techno band), 100 Diddley, Bo, 233
‘A Day in the Life’ (The Beatles), 10 Different Trains (Reich), 112–13
Day-Lewis, Cecil, 115 Diksmuide, 153, 154
Daysh, William, 185 The Dimming of the Day (Jerry
De André, Fabrizio, 95–6 Lynch), 194
‘Dead End Street’ (The Kinks), 124 Dimmu Borgir, 167
‘Dead Man’s Dump’ (Rosenberg), 215 Dire Straits, 55
‘Dead Man’s Pennies’ (Robb Dirty Cannibal Peasants, 100
Johnson), 166 ‘Disabled’ (Owen), 210, 215
death metal, 77, 100, 156, 157, 160, ‘Disarmament’ (McCrae), 218
161, 163, 166, 170, 171, 215. The Disasters of War (Goya), 242
See also extreme metal Disorder, 22, 56, 161
‘Death or Glory’ (Iron Maiden), 122 Distant Past, 100
de Banville, Théodore, 89 Diver, Mike, 127
Decemberists, The, 69, 77, 96, 112, Dix, Otto, 154, 260
193, 230–2, 266 ‘Do U Remember?’ (Brain Damage
Deep Purple, 61 meets Vibronics), 77, 230
The Deer Hunter (Cimino), 24, 54, 266 Doherty, Pete, 193, 213
Defixiones, Will and Testament: Donarski, Christoph, 151
Orders from the Dead ‘Don’t Sit on My Jimmy Shands’
(Diamanda Galás), 237 (Richard Thompson), 138
De Gaulle, Charles, 91 Doors, The, 121, 242
Delahaye, Isaac, 170 Douaumont, 100
Demon, 60 Dove, Jonathan, 264
Denmark, 198 ‘Down Below’ (Cryptic
Denselow, Robin, 99, 107, 114 Wintermoon), 81
Depardieu, Guillaume, 98 Dracula (Coppola), 236
Derrida, Jacques, 267 ‘Dragging the River’ (Richard
Des Lendemains Qui Saignent Thompson), 138
(Dominique Grange), 98 Drake, Nick, 79, 134
The Deserted House (Chuckovskaya), 112 ‘Dreadnought’ (Cryptic
‘Le déserteur’ (Boris Vian), 98 Wintermoon), 81
‘Le déserteur’ (Dominique Grange), 98 A Dream Turns Sour (The Tiger
Destination (Creve Tambour), 135 Lillies), 215
Les deux Oncles (Georges Brassens), 93 Dropkick Murphys, 106
The Devils (Russell), 107 Dry (PJ Harvey), 240
‘Devil’s Hail (Anthem for Doomed Dubai, 54, 196
Youth)’ (Ken McClellan), 213 Dubber, John, 28, 29
‘Devonside’ (Richard Thompson), 138 Dubin, Al, 8
de Zoete, Matthew, 83 Dubliners, The, 111
284 INDEX
Duffy, Carol Ann, 184, 252 ‘The End’ (The Doors), 242
Dukes of Stratosphear, The. See XTC ‘Enfant Soldat’ (Ben Bop), 67
‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ (Owen), 129, England, 1, 10, 14, 69, 77, 78, 80,
209, 211 82, 95, 104, 107, 108, 113,
‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ (The 124–6, 131, 135, 136, 161, 188,
Skids), 211 195, 205, 213, 222, 235, 236,
Duo Noir, 149 239, 241, 242, 247–53, 266
‘Durham Light Infantry’ (The Whisky ‘England’ (PJ Harvey), 1, 239–52, 266
Priests), 113 English Civil War, 88
‘Dust’ (Brooke), 212 ‘An English Heaven’ (Robb
‘Dust’ (Fleetwood Mac), 212 Johnson), 58
Dylan, Bob, 9, 96, 102, 110 Enniskillen, 30, 60
Eno, Brian, 151, 263
‘Epistle to the Transients’ (Vallejo), 237
E ‘Epitaphs of the War’ (Kipling), 195
Eagles, The, 174 Erasure, 236
Eagles, Jordan, 157 Esler, Gavin, 133
Eco, Umberto, 261–2 Estonia, 151, 162
Edelson, Wendy, 185 Europe, James Reese, 68
Egoyan, Atam, 238 European Union, 22, 31, 38
Egypt, 28, 156 Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), 13
Einhaus, Ann-Marie, 28 Evans, Ellis. See Hedd Wyn
Einstürzende Neubauten, 68, 140, ‘Eve of Destruction’ (Barrie
152–4 McGuire), 121
Electrelane, 5, 10, 69, 219–22 Everybody’s Children, 111
Electric Ladyland (Jimi Hendrix), 121 ‘Everything I Do, I Do it For You’
Eleven (Sol Invictus), 149 (Bryan Adams), 83
Elgar, Edward, 248 Ex, The, 56
Eliot, Susan, 59 extreme metal, 5, 32, 81, 100, 148,
Eliot, T.S., 151, 242 155–75, 238. See also black and
Elizabeth II, Queen, 30 death metal
Elizabeth R, 107
Ellis, Rob, 241, 250
Emerson, Keith, 136 F
Emerson, Lake and Palmer, 130 Facey, Albert, 192
Emerson, Roger, 218 Fagerlind, Thomas, 215
Emin, Tracy, 157, 233 Fairport Convention, 55, 111, 115, 194
Empire Soldiers (Brain Damage meets Falklands War, 10, 126, 162
Vibronics), 68, 102, 228–30 ‘Fallen Empires’ (God Dethroned), 171
‘En cet hivers de 1915, il vous aimait très The Fall of the Gods (von Jackhelln), 160
fort’ (François Hadji-Lazaro), 98 ‘The False Bride’, 108
‘The End’ (Cryptic Wintermoon), Farage, Nigel, 18, 38
77, 82 Farm, The, 73, 77, 187, 190, 191
INDEX 285
fascism (and neo-Nazism), 56, 148, For an Unknown Soldier (Dove), 264
149, 162, 262 ‘For the Fallen’ (Binyon), 130
Faulks, Sebastian, 28 ‘For the Fallen’ (Mourning Dawn), 219
Faupel, Alison, 68 For the Fallen (Rootham), 55
Fauré, Gabriel, 62 For Victory (Bolt Thrower), 164, 165
Fear (Cryptic Wintermoon), 78 ‘… For Victory’ (Bolt Thrower), 77
A Feast of Consequences (Fish), 131 Forster, E.M., 207
‘Feel So Good’ (Richard A Fortunate Life (Facey), 192, 193
Thompson), 138 ‘Fortunes of War’ (Fish), 131
Felder, Don, 174 Foster, Stephen, 167
Felstead, Bertie, 187, 188 Foulds, John, 55, 61
Ferdinand, Archduke Franz, 171 Fournet, Adele, 68, 239, 240
Ferré, Léo, 88–92 France, 5, 9, 19, 26, 28, 31, 32,
Le Feu (Under Fire) (Barbusse), 140, 216 36–8, 68, 69, 80, 88, 89, 93,
‘Fields of France’ (Al Stewart), 103, 98–101, 103, 106, 108, 109,
106, 109, 112 112, 133, 161, 188, 190, 205,
‘The Final Countdown’ (Europe), 54 206, 228, 229
The Final Cut (Pink Floyd), 126, 127 Fredericks, Carole. See Goldman,
Finland, 19 Jean-Jacques
Fischer, Fritz, 32 Fredericks, Goldman, Jones, 101
Fish, 77, 78, 131–3, 163, 216 French-Algerian War, 97
Fisher, John ‘Jackie’, 112 Frevert, Ute, 22, 32
The Five Acts of Harry Patch (Maxwell Frith, Simon, 4, 5, 15, 88, 130, 155,
Davies), 129 204
‘Flanders’ (Brain Damage meets ‘Fritz the Trench Mouse’ (Billy
Vibronics), 228–30 Chyldish), 214
Flanders, Michael and Swann, Donald, Fugain, Michel, 100
77, 95 Für Alina (Pärt), 151
Fleet Foxes, 137 Furey Brothers, 105
Fleetwood Mac, 212 Furthi, Kobi, 197
‘Flowers of the Forest’, 54, 105, 108, Fussell, Paul, 33, 107, 141, 194, 206
114, 196 ‘Futility’ (Owen), 83, 213
‘Flowers of the Town’ (The ‘Futility’ (Virginia Astley), 213
Unthanks), 114
Fogg, Ally, 190
folk (music), 2, 3, 9, 10, 14, 56, 61, G
78, 81, 87, 88, 109, 115, 193 Gaede, Lamb and Lynx, 106
Foot, Michael, 190 Galás, Diamanda, 69, 77, 99, 172,
Foote, Arthur, 218 236–9, 241
‘For All We Have and Are’ Gallipoli, 19, 20, 24, 30, 33, 34, 36,
(Kipling), 212 84, 85, 100, 103, 105, 112, 168,
‘For All We Have and Are’ (Sokyra 169, 192, 196, 229, 239, 242–4,
Peruna), 212 259, 260
286 INDEX
‘Gallipoli’ (Brain Damage meets ‘Glory Days’ (Carl Barât), 214

Vibronics), 228–30 ‘Glory of Women’ (Sassoon), 210
Gallipoli (Carlyon), 33, 242, 243 Glover, Stephen, 252
Gallipoli (Weir), 24, 34 God Dethroned, 77, 122, 161, 168,
Galway, H.L., 33 170–2
Gammage, Bill, 21, 33 God is an Astronaut, 54
Les Garçons Bouchers, 98 ‘God Save the King’, 154
Garratt, John, 127 ‘God With Us’ (Cryptic
Garton, Stephen, 33 Wintermoon), 81
Garvey, Marcus, 230 Godard, Jean-Luc, 157
‘The Gathering’ (Fish), 132 Goffman, Erving, 51
Gaye, Marvin, 9 Gold Diggers of 1933 (Berkeley), 8
Geffen, Aviv, 197 Goldman, Jean-Jacques, 101
‘The General’ (Sassoon), 207, 210 Golgatha, 151
Genesis, 133 Gommecourt, 123
Gentle Men (Robb Johnson), 58, 184 Gonsales, Ryan, 105
George VI, King, 33 GoodBooks, 192
Georgia, 54, 196 Goodbye to All That (Graves), 210
Germany, 13, 23, 25, 26, 28, 30–2, Gorecki, Henryk, 62, 263
69, 71, 97, 101, 131, 139, 152, ‘Le Gorille’ (Georges Brassens), 93
161, 183, 188, 206, 207, 227 The Gospel of Inhumanity (Blood Axis),
Gershwin (George and Ira), 8 149, 150
Gesualdo, Carlo, 157 ‘Göttingen’ (Barbara), 97, 101
‘Gethsemane’ (Duo Noir), 149 Goya, Francisco, 161, 242
‘The Ghost of Geordie Jones’ (Whisky Grace, Sherrill, 228
Priests), 113 The Grand Grimoire (God
‘The Ghost of Georges Brassens’ Dethroned), 170
(Leon Rosselson), 57 ‘Grandpa Mill’ (Gary Miller), 59
Gibson, Mel, 243 Grange, Dominique, 98
‘The Gift of Years’ (Eric Bogle), 105 Graves, Robert, 27, 207, 210
Gilbert and George, 157 Great Britain, 13, 25, 115
Gildart, Keith, 123, 125, 126 The Great War and Modern Memory
Gilmour, David, 127, 137 (Fussell), 19, 33, 141, 206
Ginner, Charles, 59 Great War Symphony (Hawes), 264
‘Girl from the North Country’ (Bob Greece, 13, 19, 237
Dylan), 9, 96, 102, 110 ‘The Green Fields of France’ (Prussian
‘The Girl I Left Behind Me’, 88 Blue), 106
‘Give Peace a Chance’ (John ‘The Green Fields of France’ (Eric
Lennon), 190 Bogle ‘No Man’s Land’), 103
Glass, Philip, 87, 114, 167, 250, 263 Greene, Graham, 214
‘The Glorious Land’ (PJ Harvey), Greenwood, Jonny, 129
243, 248, 250 ‘Gresford Disaster’, 132
INDEX 287
Gress, Drew, 141 Hart, Tim, 108

Grimes, Rachel, 249 Harvey, Jonathan, 62
Grimes, Steve, 190 Harvey, PJ (Polly Jean), 1, 10, 59, 68,
Gryphon, 107 69, 77, 105, 125, 141, 205, 219,
‘Guernica’ (Shuttah), 189 239, 240, 251, 252, 263, 265,
‘La Guerra di Piero’ (Fabrizio De 266, 268
André), 96 ‘Hats Off to (Roy) Harper’ (Led
‘La Guerre de 14-18’ (Georges Zeppelin), 136
Brassens), 9, 52, 91, 93, 102, 268 Hawes, Patrick, 264
‘Gunga Din’ (The Libertines), 214 Hawkins, Peter, 88, 90, 97, 205
‘The Gunners Dream’ (Pink Floyd), 126 Haydn, Joseph, 140
Guns N’ Roses, 60 ‘He Aint Heavy, He’s My Brother’
Gurney, Ivor, 154, 234, 250 (Justice Collective), 54
Guthrie, Woody, 103, 193 ‘Heart of Oak’, 88
GuvNor, 60 ‘Heart of the Matter’ (The
Libertines), 214
Heartfield, John, 175
H heavy metal. See metal
Haarlov, Mats, 215 Hebdige, Dick, 155, 156
Hadji-Lazaro, François, 98 Hedd Wyn (Ellis Evans), 25
Haig, Douglas, 26, 222, 229 Hedd Wyn (Turner), 25
Halbwachs, Maurice, 49 Hegarty, Antony. See Anohni
‘Half Past France’ (John Cale), 133 Hegarty, Paul, 130, 230, 231, 266
Hall, Stuart, 16, 166 Hemingway, Ernest, 97
Hall, Tim, 132 Hendrix, Jimi, 92, 140
Halliwell, Martin, 130, 150, 230, Hendrix, John, 185
231, 266 Hennessey, Mike, 139, 140
Hallyday, Johnny, 101 Hennion, Antoine, 17
Hammet, Kirk, 159, 174 ‘Her Green Eyes Blew Goodbye’
‘Hanging in the Wire’ (PJ Harvey), 243 (Vienna Circle), 131
Hanna, Emma, 5, 20, 49, 61, 204 Her Majesty the Decemberists (The
‘Happy Christmas (War is Over)’ Decemberists), 230
(John Lennon), 190, 234 Here’s the Tender Coming (The
‘A Hard Rains A-Gonna Fall’ (Bob Unthanks), 114
Dylan), 9, 96, 102, 110 ‘The Hero’ (Sassoon), 140, 166, 210
Harding, Mike, 55, 77, 109–111, 126, Hess, Rudolf, 106
133, 188, 227 Hetfield, James, 173
Harlem Hellfighters, 68, 154 Higgins, Frank, 114
Harper, Roy, 136 High Wood (Bois des Fourcaux),
Harper, Stephen, 36 131–133
‘Harry Patch (In Memory Of)’ ‘High Wood’ (Fish), 77
(Radiohead), 129 Hill, Dave, 60
288 INDEX
Hillsborough disaster, 54, 111 ‘Hundert Mann und ein Befehl’

‘Hindsight’ (Robb Johnson), 58, (Freddy Quinn), 81
61, 103 Hunters and Collectors, 192
hip-hop, 3, 100, 101 Hussein, Saddam, 174
Historial de la Grande Guerre, 98 Hutchcroft, Anthony, 219
Hitler, Adolf, 106, 206 Huxley, Aldous, 166
The Hobbit (Tolkien), 107 ‘Hymnen’ (Einstürzende
Hobsbawm, Eric, 261 Neubauten), 154
Hodgson, Noel, 215
Hoffman, Heinrich, 154
Hogwood, Christopher, 107 I
Holden, Stephen, 133, 134 Iced Earth, 122
Hölderlin, Friedrich, 150 ‘I-Feel-Like-I’m Fixin-To-Die Rag’
Hollande, François, 38 (Country Joe and the Fish), 216
Hollis, Mark, 134 ‘Il testimento di Tito’ (Fabrizio De
The Hollow of the Hand (Harvey), André), 95, 96
205, 247 ‘Ils sont tombés’ (Charles
Holocaust, 22, 23, 26, 82, 98, 102, Aznavour), 99
106, 171, 222, 237, 268 The Image Maker Vol 1 and 2
Holt, Fabian, 4 (Shuttah), 189
‘Holy Mountains’ (System of a Imperial Vengeance, 130
Down), 175 Impey, Martin, 185
‘Home by Christmas’ (Robb In Flanders Fields (Coope, Boyes and
Johnson), 58, 184 Simpson), 57, 219
‘Home Counties Boy’ (The Cleaners ‘In Flanders Fields’ (McCrae), 36,
From Venus), 236 212, 219
Home Service, The, 88, 109 ‘In Flanders Fields’ (Romislokus), 219
‘Hooray!’ (Mike Westbrook), 139 In Stahlgewittern (Storm of Steel)
Hooton, Peter, 190 (Jünger), 140
Hope Chest (10,000 Maniacs), 213 In the Nursery, 152
The Hope Six Demolition Project (PJ India, 28, 29, 229
Harvey), 205 industrial (music), 147–154, 212, 264.
‘Hotel California’ (The Eagles), 174 See also martial industrial
Housman, A.E., 234 Iniquity, 215
Howard, Richard, 61 Innocence is No Excuse (Saxon), 162
Howard, Trevor, 78 IQ, 130
Hozier, Clementine, 78 Iran, 156, 196
Hulett, Alistair, 115 Iraq War, 174, 231
Humiliation (band), 161 Ireland, 6, 10, 19, 24, 29, 30, 54, 60,
Humperdinck, Englebert, 191 69, 101, 162, 231, 242, 245
‘Hundert Mann und ein Befehl’ Irish Republican Army (IRA), 13,
(Cryptic Wintermoon), 81 30, 127
INDEX 289
Iron Maiden, 77, 78, 122, 131, 172, Johnson, Celia, 78

173, 203, 211 Johnson, Holly, 191
Iron Mask, 122 Johnson, Martha, 54, 83
Irving, David, 237 Johnson, Robb, 57–59, 163, 166, 184
Irwin, Colin, 61 Johnston, John H., 208
Is This Desire? (PJ Harvey), 240, 250 Joliffe, Edmund, 250
Israel, 54, 174, 196, 197 Jones, David, 264
‘It Could Happen Again’ (Colin Jones, John Paul, 236
Raye), 193 Jones, Jonathan, 260, 262
‘It Was a Navy Boy’ (Owen), 231 Jones, Michael. See Goldman,
Italy, 69, 71, 128, 148 Jean-Jacques
‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’, 81, Jones, Mick, 191
141, 148, 234 Jones, Tom, 91
‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’ (Billy Joplin, Janis, 68, 89
Chyldish), 141, 148, 234 Joyet, Bernard, 100
‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’ (John Joyeux Noel (Carion), 185, 198, 263
McCormack), 81 Juliette (Noureddine), 97
‘It’s Cloudy Now’ (Blackfield), 197 Jump Up (Elton John), 126
Ives, Charles, 218 Jünger, Ernst, 140, 150, 172
Justice Collective, 54
J
Jackson, Jermain, 191 K
Jacobson, John, 218 Kahn-Harris, Keith, 4, 163, 176
Jacques, Martin, 215 Kalafatis, Chrysostomos, 238
Jar Family, The, 193 ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’ (John
Jarman, Derek, 236 McCormack), 141, 148, 152
‘Jaures’ (Jacques Brel), 90 ‘The Keeper’ (Steve Knightley), 109
Jaures, Jean, 90, 112 Keightley, Emily, 53
jazz, 2, 3, 70, 71, 73, 91, 100, 121, Kelly, Luke, 111
122, 136, 139–142, 170 Kemal, Mustapha, 169, 244
‘Jean Desprez’ (Country Joe Kendall, Tim, 217
McDonald), 217 Kerry, Bob, 104
Jenkins, Simon, 259, 260, 262 Khvatov, Dennis, 218
Jesus and the Gurus, 100 Kieślowski, Krzysztof, 130
Jewell, Derek, 140 Killarney, 30
John, Elton, 126 ‘The Killing is Faceless’ (God
‘John Condon’ (Fairport Dethroned), 172
Convention), 194 Kilmister, Lemmy, 159
‘John Condon’ (Jerry Lynch), 194 King and Country (Losey), 24
Johnny Got His Gun (Trumbo), King Crimson, 114
159, 173 King, Andrew, 149
290 INDEX
‘Kingdom of the Cross’ (Saxon), The Lark Ascending (Vaughan

163, 184 Williams), 54
‘Kings Engine’ (Brain Damage meets ‘The Last Living Rose’ (PJ Harvey), 248
Vibronics), 230 The Last of England (Jarman), 236
The Kinks are the Village Green ‘The Last Post’, 105, 262
Preservation Society, 124 The ‘Last Post’ project, 105, 262
Kinks, The, 77, 123–125, 135, Last, James, 153
189, 213, 228, 230, Latvia, 162
233, 235 Latviešu strēlnieki (Latvian Riflemen)
Kipling, Rudyard, 106 (Skyforger), 162
Kirby, Robert, 108 Laurie, William, 110
Kirk, James, 161 Lawrence of Arabia (Lean), 109,
Kirwan, Danny, 212 113, 151
Kitchener, Horatio, 59, 110, 162 Lawrence, T.E., 108, 113, 151
Kivel, Matt, 123 ‘A League of Notions’ (Al Stewart),
Kmaa Kendell, 198 80, 112, 113
Kneale, Campbell, 161 Lean, David, 151
Knightley, Steve, 109 ‘The Leaving’ (Fish), 132
Knights, Vanessa, 14, 15 Lebanon, 54, 196
Knopfler, Mark, 55 Lebrun, Barbara, 88, 93, 99
‘Kriegsmaschinerie’ (Einstürzende Led Zeppelin, 136, 236
Neubauten), 153 Ledward, Gilbert, 164
Kristeva, Julia, 157, 158 Lee, Sam, 115
Kubrick, Stanley, 24, 206 Lee, Stuart, 209
Kurds, 13 Lees, John, 195
Leete, Alfred, 162
Leighton, Roland, 134
L Lennon, John, 10, 190, 205
Labour Party, 125, 190 Lens, Nicholas, 263
Labradford, 249 Leonard, Marion, 68, 241
‘Lady Smith’ (Shuttah), 189 Lester, Paul, 193
Lafrance, Mélisse, 5, 240, 241, 250 ‘Let England Shake’ (PJ Harvey),
Laibach, 152, 153 239–252
The Lair of the White Worm (God Let England Shake (PJ Harvey), 1, 10,
Dethroned), 170 239, 266
Lake, Marilyn, 34 ‘Let it Reign’ (Carl Barât), 214
Lament (Einstürzende Neubauten), ‘Let the Truce be Known’ (Orphaned
68, 153, 154 Land), 197
‘Lament 3: Pater Peccavi‘ ‘Letter Home’ (Brain Damage meets
(Einstürzende Neubauten), 154 Vibronics), 230
Lane, David, 212 ‘A Letter Home’ (Sassoon), 219
Lankford, Ronnie D., 80 ‘Une Lettre Oubliée’ (Juliette), 97
INDEX 291
Levi-Strauss, Claude, 17 M
Levy, Daniel, 22, 51 Macan, Edward, 130, 160, 161
Lewie, Jona, 73, 77, 78, 189, 191 MacConnell, Cormac, 193
Lewis, Bernard, 237 Machen, Arthur, 150
Lewis, Henry, 103 Machin, David, 4
Lewis, Luke, 129 MacMillan, Margaret, 261, 262
Libertines, The, 213, 214 Made in the Great War (Sam
‘A Life (1895-1915)’ (Mark Sweeny), 61
Hollis), 134 Mademoiselle Marseille (Moussu T et
‘Lillibullero’, 88 lei Jovents), 99
Lipsitz, George, 15, 16, 266 Maggot Breeder, 153
The Litanies of Satan (Diamanda Major, John, 14
Galás), 236 Malaysia, 156, 161
Lithuania, 162 Malone, William George, 244
Littlewood, Joan, 20, 57 Malvern, Sue, 267
Live After Death (Iron Mametz Wood, 123
Maiden), 172 Man of La Mancha, 90
Living With Victoria Grey (The ‘Man Size’ (PJ Harvey), 243
Cleaners From Venus), 235 ‘Man Size Sextet’ (PJ Harvey), 241
Loach, Ken, 125 Manau, 101, 102
Lombardo, John, 213 Manifesto Futurista (Sturmgeist), 160
London Calling (The Clash), 136 Mank, Tom and Smolen, Sera, 194
‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Manning, Frederic, 216
Carroll’ (Bob Dylan), 9 Manson, Charles, 157
Long, Paul, 21, 129, 130 ‘March 1911: Nadir’ (Golgatha), 151
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 150 Marching Song (Mike Westbrook),
Lords of Chaos (Moynihan), 149 139–41
Losey, Joseph, 24 Marcus, Greil, 10
‘A Love You Can’t Survive’ (Richard Marillion, 131
Thompson), 138 Marinetti, F.T., 160
Lovelace, Richard, 196 Marley, Bob, 213
‘Lowlands Away’, 107 ‘Mars on River Drina’ (Laibach), 153
Lowry, Heath W., 237 Les Marquises (Jacques Brel), 90
Lucas, George, 130 Marsh, Dave, 136
‘Lucky Gilchrist’ (The Marshall, Austin John, 108
Unthanks), 114 martial industrial (music), 147–152,
Lupton, Hugh, 61 154, 264
Luxemburg, Rosa, 149 Marwick, Arthur, 19
Lynch, Jerry, 193, 197 Masque of the Red Death (Diamanda
Lynskey, Dorian, 88, 213, 216, Galás), 236, 237
242, 264 Master of Persia, 54
Lyons, Joseph, 33 Masterplan, 122
292 INDEX
May, Chris, 141 Milestone, Lewis, 37

Mazullo, Mark, 241 Miliband, Ed, 18
McAleese, Mary, 30 Milius, John, 236
McCartney, Helen, 22, 23 Miller, Gary, 59, 113
McCartney, Paul, 3, 187, 190, 267 Milošević, Slobodan, 13, 18, 152
McClellan, Ken, 106 Minenwerfer, 159
McCormack, John, 81, 152 Ming, Sexton, 234
McCrae, John, 36, 211, 212, 215–219 Ministry of Terror, The, 170
McCutcheon, John, 191 Miossec, 100
McDonald, Country Joe, 216 Misanthrope, 161
MacGowan, Shane, 104 Missa in tempore belli (Haydn), 140
McIvor, Tom, 81 Missa Solemnis (Beethoven), 140
McKenna, Mark, 33, 34 Mitchell, Joni, 68
McKlintock, Harold, 195 Mitchell, Julian, 124
McLean, Don, 9 Mojo, 137
McLean, John, 115 ‘Mon Général’ (Léo Ferré), 91
McNally, Adrian, 114 Monbiot, George, 28
Meat Loaf, 89 Mons, 59, 150, 195
Meckel, Markus, 38 ‘Mons Quiff’ (Billy Chyldish), 234
Meloy, Colin, 112, 231 Mons, Angel of. See Angel of Mons
‘Memorial’ (Mike Westbrook), 139 Moore, Alan, 6, 104, 125, 209
‘The Menin Road’ (Nash), 245 Moore, Michael, 174
‘Mensforth Hill’ (The Clash), 135 Moorhead, Alan, 33
Merchant, Natalie, 213 Morgan, Alex, 100
Meredith, Steve, 60 Morpurgo, Michael, 58, 185
Merkel, Angela, 38 Morse, Neil, 131
‘Merry Christmas Fritz’ (Billy Motion, Andrew, 129, 130
Chyldish), 234 Motörhead, 5, 159
Mesen. See Messines ‘Mount the Air’ (The Unthanks), 114
Messenger, Madu, 229 Mourning Dawn, 161, 219
Messines (Mesen), 30 Moussu T et lei Jovents, 99
Messines, Battle of, 206 Moy, Ron, 6, 68, 205, 248
metal (heavy), 3, 6, 10, 60, 77, 106, Moynihan, Michael, 149
122, 130, 147, 155–175, 197 ‘Mr Churchill Says’ (The Kinks), 124
Metallica, 77, 92, 159, 167, ‘Mrs Barbour’s Army’ (Alistair
172–175, 196 Hulett), 115
Metsatöll, 162 ‘Muchat’ (Brain Damage meets
Meuse-Argonne offensive, 131 Vibronics), 230
The Middle Parts of Fortune Mullen, John, 8, 27
(Manning), 216 Munrow, David, 107
Middleton, Richard, 6, 72, 73, 250 Murphy, Jim, 188
Mignon, Patrick, 15 Murphy, Seamus, 247
INDEX 293
Murrison, Andrew, 188 NG (Nerve Gas), 100

Musée de la Grande Guerre, 98 Nicholas, Pierre, 93
‘The Music from Between the Wars’ Nicholson, Vic, 244
(Robb Johnson), 58 Nico, 148
Mutatis Mutandis (Juliette), 97 Nielsen, Carl, 246
Myers, Stanley, 54 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 150, 159
Myiasis (Maggot Breeder), 153 Niney the Observer, 250
Nivelle, Robert, 98
‘No Man’s Land’ (Eric Bogle), 7
N ‘No Man’s Land’ (Joss Stone), 106
Napalm Death, 163 ‘No Woman No Cry’ (Bob Marley), 213
Napoleonic Wars, 93 ‘Nobody’s Enemy’ (Robb Johnson), 58
Nash, Paul, 140, 154, 169, 245 Nora, Pierre, 21, 37, 51
National Front, 149, 150 North Korea, 153
National Socialist Black Metal, 148 Northern Ireland, 6, 24, 29, 30, 54,
National Vanguard, 106 60, 101, 162, 231, 242
NATO (Laibach), 152 ‘Nous n’irons plus au bois’, 89
Natural Born Killers (Stone), 236 ‘November Rain’ (Guns N’ Roses), 60
Nazism. See fascism Now I’m Easy (Eric Bogle), 104
‘Né En 17 à Leidenstadt‘ (Fredericks, NQ Arbuckle, 212
Goldman, Jones), 101 ‘Nuclear Crisis’ (Clint Eastwood and
Negus, Keith, 6, 15, 204, 205 General Saint), 68
Neofolk, 54, 147–152, 212, 234 Nyman, Michael, 54, 111, 114,
Neon Rain, 151 238, 263
Nerval, Gerard de, 238
Netherlands, 69, 71, 100, 148, 152,
161 O
Neu!, 220 Obtest, 162
Neurosis Inc, 100 O’Casey, Sean, 204
‘Neuve Chapelle’ (Brain Damage O’Connell, John, 7, 194
meets Vibronics), 230 O’Halloran, James, 185
Neuve Chapelle, Battle of, 206 Odessey and Oracle (The Zombies),
Nevinson, C.R.W. (Richard), 140 189
New Musical Express (NME), 129, Of Shadows … And the Dark Things
134, 213 You Fear (Cryptic Wintermoon),
new wave, 121, 135–139 81
New Wave of British Heavy Metal Oh! What a Lovely War (Attenborough
(NWBHM), 60, 162–168 film), 141
New Zealand, 69, 100, 161, 244, 247, Oh, What a Lovely War! (Littlewood
253 play), 57, 107
Newell, Martin, 233–236 ‘Ohio’ (Neil Young), 9
Newsom, Joanna, 137 ‘Old Admirals’ (Al Stewart), 112
294 INDEX
‘On Battleship Hill’ (PJ Harvey), Paris 1919 (John Cale), 133, 134
105, 141 Paris Violence, 135
‘On Patrol in No Mans Land‘ Parish, John, 242, 244, 245
(Einstürzende Neubauten), 68 Parry, Hubert, 191
On the Transmigration of Souls ‘Part of a Poem by Alden Nowlan
(Adams), 111 Called Ypres 1915’ (NQ
‘One’ (Metallica), 77, 92, 159, 173 Arbuckle), 212
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich Pärt, Arvo, 62, 87, 151
(Solzhenitsyn), 112 Parvez, M., 229
‘Onward Christian Soldiers’, 59 ‘Paschendale’ (Iron Maiden), 77
‘Orders from the Dead’ (Diamanda Passchendaele (Gross film), 25
Galás), 77, 236–239 Passchendaele (Third Battle of Ypres),
‘Orders from the Dead’ (Rotting 26, 31, 57, 80, 100, 153, 169,
Christ), 238 192, 264
Ordinary Boy (Ken McClellan), Passchendaele Peace Concerts, 57
212–213 Passionara, La, 56
Ordonez, Reuel, 153 Passiondale (God Dethroned), 77,
Organisation de l’armée secrète 171, 172
(OAS), 91 Past, Present and Future (Al Stewart), 9
Orphaned Land, 54, 196, 197 Patch, Harry, 129, 130, 164
Orwell, George, 125, 126, 166, 248 Paths of Glory (Kubrick), 24, 206
Ottoman Empire. See Turkey Paton, Sarena, 83
Owen, Wilfred, 1, 24, 27, 79, 89, 129, Patterson, Andrew Barton ‘Banjo’,
165, 195, 203, 207–209, 103
213–215, 222, 231, 242, 253, 267 ‘Paul, Émile et Henri’ (Moussu T et
lei Jovents), 99
Peace Collective, The, 191
P Pearls Before Swine, 151
‘P.L.U.C.K.’ (System of a Down), 7, Pearse, Alfred, 59
175 Pedelty, Mark, 122, 136
Pabst, G.W., 140 Pederson, Sanna, 72
Pachelbel, Johann, 191 Peel, John, 212
‘Pack Up Your Troubles’, 243 Pennell, Catriona, 28
Page, Patti, 153 Perry, Lee Scratch, 135
Palao, Alec, 123 Pet Sounds (Beach Boys), 121
Pale Roses, 150, 151 Peter Grimes (Britten), 263
Palmer, Andrew, 123–125 Peter Rubsam Group, 111
Panique Celtique (Manau), 101 Petridis, Alexis, 1, 137, 154
‘Panzer Battalion’ (Sabaton), 169 Phillipov, Michelle, 155–160, 176
Papillon (Charrière), 193 Picasso, Pablo, 157
‘The Parable of the Old Man and the Pickering, Michael, 53, 245
Young’ (Owen), 195, 230 Pieslak, Jonathan, 8, 174
INDEX 295
Pigalle (band), 98 Private Peaceful (Morpurgo), 58

Pilditch, Major, 206 Proclaimers, The, 191
Pilger, John, 252 progressive rock, 4, 10, 60, 73, 77,
Pink Floyd, 126, 127, 131, 137, 100, 127, 130, 132, 136, 150,
152–153 155, 161, 172, 173, 194, 266
Pink Floyd—The Wall, 126 Prokofiev, Sergei, 150
Pink Moon (Nick Drake), 134 Prolongations (Bernard Joyet), 100
Pinter, Harold, 242 Proof through the Night (Watkins),
Piper, Tom. See Cummins, Paul 8, 208
‘Pipes of Peace’ (Paul McCartney), 3, Prost, Philippe, 38
187, 190 Proust, Marcel, 245
Plague Mass (Diamanda Galás), 237 Prussian Blue, 106, 212
Plater, Alan, 125 punk, 3, 4, 10, 60, 71, 77, 88, 98,
Platoon (Stone), 24 100, 121, 135, 150, 163, 212,
Poètes d’aujourd’hui (Seghers), 205 213, 233–5, 249
‘Poets of the Trench’ (Iniquity), 215 ‘Punk Rock at the British Legion Hall’
Pogues, The, 104, 193, 242 (Billy Chyldish), 234
‘Poison Fog’ (God Dethroned), 171 Puri, Samir, 162, 174, 176
Poland, 19, 26, 101, 151 Putain de guerre (Dominique
Pollock, Jackson, 157 Grange), 98
pop (music), 92 Puts, Kevin, 185, 204, 263
Pop, Iggy, 236
Pope, Bill, 173
Pope, Jessie, 212 Q
poppy (poppies), 56, 128 Queen, 7
‘Poppy Day’ (Siouxsie and the Quesada, Vinicius, 157
Banshees), 135, 212 Quinn, Freddy, 81
‘Poppy Grow (In Flanders Fields)’ Quinn, James, 212
(Silent Signals), 219
Portis, Larry, 88, 91
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder R
(PTSD), 22, 24 Radiohead, 129
Pound, Ezra, 149, 150 Raegele, Steve, 100
The Power Out (Electrelane), 220 rap, 3, 10, 88, 102, 135, 136, 155,
‘The Price of a Mile’ (Sabaton), 262
168, 169 Rapp, Tom, 151
‘The Pride of Australia (21 Guns)’ ‘Rasputin’ (Boney M), 3
(Dave Reynolds), 81 Rattigan, Terrence, 109
‘The Pride of Australia (21 Guns)’ Raud-Ants, 162
(Tom McIvor), 81 Ravishing Beauties, The, 213
Pride of Wolves, The, 152 Raye, Collin, 193
Priestley, J.B., 125, 245 Razzell, Alfred ‘Raz’, 127
296 INDEX
Reagan, Ronald, 227 Requiem for a Soldier (Jerry Lynch), 194

‘The Reaper’ (June Tabor), 109 Resnais, Alain, 157
‘Recessional’ (Duo Noir), 149 ‘Rest Sextet’ (PJ Harvey), 241
‘Red Baron’ (Billy Cobham), 68 ‘Resurrection of the Soldiers’
The Red Baron (Manfred von (Spencer), 267
Richthofen), 122 Retours Des Tranchées (Storm of
‘Red Baron/Blue Max’ (Iced Capricorn), 151
Earth), 122 Returning We Hear the Larks
Red Clydeside (Alistair Hulett), 115 (band), 214
Redgum, 219 ‘Returning We Hear the Larks’
Reed, Lou, 133 (Rosenberg), 214
Reflections on War (Gary Miller), 59 Reynolds, Dave, 81
Regeneration (Barker), 28 Reynolds, David, 26, 31, 33, 36
reggae, 68, 77, 136, 213, 228, 229, Reynolds, Henry, 34
234, 250 Rhombus, 54
‘Rehab’ (Amy Winehouse), 209 Rhymes of a Red Cross Man (Service),
Reich, Steve, 112–114, 167 216
‘Remember My Forgotten Man’ Richards, Frank, 188
(Dubin), 8 Richardson, Marc, 129
Remembrance Day (commemoration). Richardson, Tony, 125
See Armistice Day Rid of Me (PJ Harvey), 241
‘Remembrance Day’ (Antidote), 56 Riley, Terry, 133
‘Remembrance Day’ (Bryan Adams), Rimbaud, Arthur, 92
77, 83–85 Ring of Remembrance, 38
‘Remembrance Day’ (Demon), 60 Rising Waters, 83
‘Remembrance Day’ (Disorder), 56 ‘Roads to Moscow’ (Al Stewart), 9,
‘Remembrance Day’ (God is an 112, 113
Astronaut), 54 Roberts, David, 185
‘Remembrance Day’ (GuvNor), 60 Robinson, Hilary, 185
‘Remembrance Day’ (Leon Rochdale, 110
Rosselson), 55, 56 rock, 1–4, 9, 10, 54, 60, 68, 70, 71,
‘Remembrance Day’ (Mark 73, 77, 80, 82, 83, 88, 92, 98,
Knopfler), 55 100, 102, 103, 108, 121–124,
‘Remembrance Day’ (Martha 126, 127, 129–136, 138, 150,
Johnson), 54, 83 153, 155, 157, 161, 162, 172,
‘Remembrance Day’ (Midge Ure), 173, 175, 189, 192, 194, 203,
6, 54 216, 219, 222, 231, 234, 239,
‘Remembrance Day’ (Rhombus), 54 240, 249–252, 262, 263, 266
‘Remembrance Day’ (Ric Sanders), 55 Röhm, Ernst, 112
‘Remembrance Day’ (Rising Waters), 83 ‘Roll Over Vaughan Williams’ (Richard
‘Remembrance Day’ (Sarena Paton), 83 Thompson), 138
‘Repton’ (Parry), 191 Rolling Stone, 3, 68, 83, 121, 133,
Requiem (Fauré), 62 136, 137
INDEX 297
Rolling Stones, The, 3, 121 Satie, Erik, 133

‘Romance in Durango’ (Bob Sattler, Henri, 170–172
Dylan), 96 Savage, Jon, 123, 124
Romislokus, 219 Saxon, 52, 162–168, 184, 187
Rootham, Cyril, 55 Scates, Bruce, 33
Roots, Richi, 228 Scatterbrain, 100
Rosenberg, Isaac, 214–216 Schlick, Moritz, 131
‘Roses of Picardy’ (Art Abscon(s)), Schmutz, Vaughn, 68
3, 108 Schöpflin, George, 19, 31
‘Roses of Picardy’ (June Tabor), 108 Schröder, Gerhard, 97
‘Roses of Picardy’ (Weatherly and Scotland, 24, 25, 69, 188
Wood), 108 Scott-Heron, Gil, 205
Ross (Rattigan), 109 Scruton, Roger, 5, 264
Rosselson, Leon, 55–57 Seal, Graham, 34
Rotting Christ, 238 Seaton, Shirley, 186–188, 194
Royal British Legion. See British Second World War, 9, 23, 26, 30, 33, 59,
Legion 84, 89, 93, 94, 98, 102, 105, 124,
Royal Field Artillery, 59 126, 127, 139, 149, 151, 162, 184,
Royal Guardsmen, The, 122, 191 188, 189, 211, 212, 231, 245, 265
Ruhlmann, William, 102 Seghers, Pierre, 205
Russell, Bertrand, 207 ‘Sequences’ (Twelfth Night), 130
Russell, Ken, 107 Serbia, 13
Russia, 13, 26, 28, 245 ‘Sergeant Oliver’ (Tom Mank and Sera
Rycenga, Jennifer, 240 Smolen), 194
Serrano, Andres, 157
Serre, 110
S Service, Robert, 211, 216–219
S & M (Metallica), 174 Seven Pillars (Golgatha), 151
Sabaton, 162, 168–173, 214 S.F. Sorrow (The Pretty Things), 124
Sacré, Sergerémy, 211 Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band
Saddleworth, 195 (The Beatles), 123
Sadler, Barry, 81 Shadbolt, Maurice, 103, 243–245
Salomon, Michael, 173 ‘Shadow of the Red Baron’ (Iron
Sanders, Ric, 55 Mask), 122
Sandinista! (The Clash), 135, 136 Shadows, The, 153
Sangoi, Benoit, 150 ‘Shankill Butchers’ (The
Sarajevo, 171 Decemberists), 231
Sarcasm (band), 100 Shekhovtsov, Anton, 148, 149, 152
Sardou, Michel, 100 Shell Shock: A Requiem of War (Lens/
Sargeant, Amy, 267 Cave), 263
Sassoon, Siegfried, 27, 79, 83, 165, Shepard, Aron, 185
166, 204, 207, 210, 211, 214, ‘Shipbuilding’ (Elvis Costello), 10,
217–219, 221, 222, 252 127, 139
298 INDEX
‘Short and Sweet’ (Roy Harper), 137 Sokyra Peruna, 7, 159, 212
Shostakovich, Dimitri, 140 Sol Invictus, 147, 149
Show of Hands, 212 ‘The Soldier’ (Brooke), 203
A Shropshire Lad (Housman), 234 ‘The Soldier’ (John Parish and PJ
Shuttah, 189 Harvey), 242
Siamanto (Atom Yarjanian), 237, 238 ‘The Soldiering Life’ (The
Sibelius, Jean, 263 Decemberists), 77, 96, 230, 266
‘Siege of Kut’ (Brain Damage meets ‘Soldiers of the Lord’ (Gary Miller), 59
Vibronics), 230 Solzhenitsyn, Alexandr, 112
Siegfried’s Journey (Sassoon), 207 ‘Some Mother’s Son’ (The Kinks),
Sigur Ros, 129 77, 230
Silent Night (Puts), 204, 263 ‘Something about England’ (The
‘Silent Night: Christmas 1915’ (Celtic Clash), 77, 135, 136
Thunder), 194 ‘Something in the Air’ (Thunderclap
‘Silent Night: Christmas 1915’ (Jerry Newman), 121–122
Lynch), 193 ‘Somewhere at the Front, Somewhere’
Silent Signals, 219 (Gary Miller), 59
Sillitoe, Alan, 125 ‘Somewhere in England 1915’ (Al
The Silver Tassie (O'Casey), 204 Stewart), 77, 78, 82
The Silver Tassie (Turnage), 204 The Somme (Wetherell film), 265
Simon, Paul, 79, 111, 137 Somme, Battle of the, 29, 100, 105,
Sinatra, Frank, 91, 160 109, 123, 131, 133, 215
Sintra (Duo Noir), 149 ‘A Song of Patriotic Prejudice’
Siouxsie and the Banshees, 135, 212 (Flanders and Swann), 95
Sir Jean, 77, 229, 230 ‘A Song Story’ (Shirley Collins),
‘Sixteen Military Wives’ (The 107, 108
Decemberists), 231 Sorley, Charles, 215
Skids, The, 211 Soteriou, Dido, 238
Skrewdriver, 212 The Sound of Music, 121
Skyforger, 162 Sousa, John Philip, 218
Slash, 60, 174 South Africa, 101
Sloboda, John, 53 Spanish Civil War, 56, 189
Slovenia, 152 Spanish-American War, 102
Smith, Adrian, 16, 18, 33, 173 Specials, The, 213
Smith, Patti, 68, 204, 241 Spectres of Marx (Derrida), 267
Smolen, Sera. See Mank, Tom Spencer, Stanley, 267
Smyrna, 238 Spiegel im Spiegel (Pärt), 151
‘Snoopy vs the Red Baron’ (The Royal Spirogyra, 151
Guardsmen), 122 Spitz, Arnaud, 150
‘Snoopy’s Christmas’ (The Royal ‘Spring 1919’ (Coope, Boyes and
Guardsmen), 191 Simpson), 219
Socialist Workers Party, 149 ‘Spring in the Trenches, Ridge Wood,
Soderlind, Didrik. See Moynihan, Michael 1917’ (Nash), 245
INDEX 299
‘Staines Morris’, 108 ‘Summertime Blues’ (Eddie Cochran),

‘Stairway to Heaven’ (Led 244, 250
Zeppelin), 61 Sun Tzu, 168
‘Standing in Line’ (Coope, Boyes and Sundström, Par, 168, 169
Simpson), 57 Sunn O))), 161
Staples, Stuart, 262–263 ‘Super Bird’ (Country Joe and the
‘The Star Spangled Banner’ (Jimi Fish), 216
Hendrix), 140 Susman, Verity, 220–221
‘Starless’ (The Unthanks), 114 Suvla Bay, 30, 103
Starr, Edwin, 153 Swann, Donald. See Flanders, Michael
‘La Statue’ (Jacques Brel), 90 Swarbrick, Dave, 115
Stephen, Martin, 1, 205, 207–210, Sweden, 197
214, 217–219 Sweeney, Sam, 61
Stevenson, Randall, 27 Sweeney, Regina, 8, 87, 98
Stewart, Al, 9, 77, 78, 82, 111–113, Switzerland, 99
115, 127, 228 Symonds, Hugh, 190
Stewart, Bill, 141 ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ (The Rolling
‘Stille Nacht’, 57, 184, 191 Stones), 3
Sting, 126, 128, 190, 227, 267 Symphony No. 4 (Nielsen), 246
Stipe, Michael, 233 Symphony No. 7 (Leningrad)
Stone, Joss, 106 (Shostakovich), 140
Stone, Oliver, 24, 236 Syria, 25, 80
‘Stop the Cavalry’ (Jona Lewie), 73, System of a Down, 175
77, 189 System of a Down (SOAD), 7, 99,
Stories from the City, Stories from the 172–175
Sea (PJ Harvey), 249–251 Sznaider, Natan, 22
Storm of Capricorn, 151, 152
‘Strange Meeting’ (Owen), 169
‘The Stranger’ (Kipling), 106 T
Street, John, 6, 7, 88 Tabor, June, 104, 107–109
‘The Streets of Laredo’, 105 Tagg, Philip, 87
Strike Up the Band (Gershwin), 8–9 Taking the World by Storm (Demon), 6
Strummer, Joe, 136 Talk Talk, 134
Strydwolf, 152 Tankian, Serge, 175
Sturgeon, Nicola, 18 Tardi, Jacques, 98
Sturmgeist, 159, 160 Taupin, Bernie, 126
‘Sturmgeist89’, 160 Taverner, John, 62
‘Sufferation’ (Brain Damage meets Taylor, A.J.P., 20
Vibronics), 229 Taylor, Barry, 218
Suggs, 191 Taylor, Gray, 134
Suhr, Maria Hjuler, 198 Taylor, Laura Wiebe, 156, 163, 166
Summer Solstice (Tim Hart and Maddy ‘Ted’ (Redgum), 219
Prior), 108 The Tempest (Ades), 250
300 INDEX
Tennyson, Alfred, 173 The Torn Fields (Turnage), 204

Tepperman, Barry, 140 ‘Los Toros’ (Jacques Brel), 90
Test Dept, 148 Toxicity (System of a Down), 174
‘The Testimony of Patience Kershaw’ ‘Trains’ (Al Stewart), 112
(The Unthanks), 114 Tregear, Peter, 53, 111
Thatcher, Margaret, 235 Trenet, Charles, 88
‘There’s a Long, Long Trail a A Tribute to A.E. Housman (Billy
Winding’, 141 Chyldish), 234
Theroux, Louis, 106 Tribute to the Dead Soldiers, 149
Thirty Years War, 88 Tricky, 249
‘This is Why We Fight’ (The ‘The Trooper’ (Iron Maiden), 173
Decemberists), 231 Truce: The day the soldier’s stopped
Thomas, David, 219 fighting (Murphy), 188
Thompson, Richard, 113, 136, 137 Trumbo, Dalton, 159, 173
Those Once Loyal (Bolt Thrower), Tsipras, Alex, 13
164–166 ‘Tu n’en reviendras pas’
Throbbing Gristle, 147 (Barbara), 97
‘Through Byzantine Hemispheres’ ‘Tu n’en reviendras pas’ (Dominique
(God Dethroned), 172 Grange), 98
Tichot, 98 ‘Tu n’en reviendras pas’ (Léo Ferré),
Tiger Lillies, The, 215 91–92
The Tigers (Brian), 7 Tunney, Tom, 24
Tilley, Alexander, 218 Turkey, 7, 19, 20, 26, 28, 54, 69, 105,
A Time and Place (The Unthanks and 113, 156, 196, 197
Sam Lee), 115 Turnage, Mark-Anthony, 204, 263
‘The Time is Now’ (Everybodys Turner, Paul, 25
Children), 111 Turning Silence into Song (Leon
‘The Times They Are-A Changin’ Rosselson), 56
(Bob Dylan), 102 ‘Twa Recruiting Sergeants’, 59
Times, The, 147, 183 ‘Twa Scots Soldiers’ (Gary Miller), 59
‘Tin Soldier Man’ (The Kinks), 124 Twelfth Night, 80, 130
Tindersticks, 262 ‘Twenty Tons of TNT’ (Flanders and
Tinker, Chris, 89–94, 157 Swann), 95
‘To Althea from Prison’ ‘Two Songs’ (Day-Lewis), 115
(Lovelace), 196 Twomey, Christina, 34
Todesfuge (Celan), 238 ‘Tyne Cot at Night’ (Coope, Boyes
Todman, Dan, 21, 49, 52, 62 and Simpson), 57
Tolkien, J.R.R., 107
Tommy (The Who), 124
‘La Tondue’ (Georges U
Brassens), 93 Ukraine, 212, 261
‘Too Late … to Say Goodbye’ Ulrich, Lars, 173
(Credo), 130 Ulster Volunteer Force, 29
INDEX 301
Under the Sign of the Iron Cross (God ‘Veuve de Guerre’ (Barbara), 217
Dethroned), 122 Vexations (Satie), 133
‘The Unfortunate Rake’, 105 Vian, Boris, 98
United Kingdom Independence Party Vibronics (Steve). See Brain Damage
(UKIP), 25 Victoria, Queen, 55
United States of America (USA), 9, Vidor, King, 37
13, 36–37, 69, 74, 87, 88, 102, Une Vie D’Bonhomme (Tichot), 98
104, 121–123, 125, 133, 149, Vienna Circle, 131
160, 161, 173, 191, 192, 247, Vietnam War, 84, 89, 104
249 Viking metal, 176
The United (band), 100 Village Voice, 136
The Unknown Soldier (Roy Villers-Bretonneux, 33
Harper), 137 Vimy, 19, 36, 85, 206
Unthanks, The, 114, 115 Vimy Ridge, Battle of, 206
Ure, Midge, 6 Vince, Peter, 123
Usson, Serge, 151 Vlaams Belang, 23
Vladso, 263
Voices of Gallipoli (Shadbolt), 243
V von Jackhelln, Cornelius, 159
Vallejo, César, 237 von Richthofen, Manfred. See Red
‘The Valleys’ (Electrelane), 10, Baron
219–222 Vozick-Levinson, Simon, 129
La Valse a Mille Temps (Jacques
Brel), 90
van der Linden, Bob, 62 W
Van Der Plicht, Michiel, 172 Waits, Tom, 113
van der Velde, Marco, 171 Wakefield, Alan, 189
van Dijck, José, 50 Wakeford, Tony, 149–151
Vance, Jonathan, 35, 36, 207 Wales, 24, 25, 60
Vaughan Williams, Ralph, 234 Walker, Scott, 91, 148
Velvet Underground, 133, 148, Wallace, William, 25
220, 242 Wallis, James, 58
‘Verdun’ (Azziard), 100, 161 Walser, Robert, 4, 158, 167, 173
‘Verdun’ (Bernard Joyet), 100 Walsh, Joe, 174
Verdun (Black Boned Angel), 161 ‘Waltzing Matilda’ (Patterson), 84,
‘Verdun’ (Michel Sardou), 100 103, 114, 215
‘Verdun’ (Sturmgeist), 160 ‘The War of 14–18’ (Flanders and
Verdun, Battle of, 31, 100, 172 Swann), 77, 78, 95
‘Le Verger en Lorraine’ (Barbara), 97 War Poems–Siegfried Sassoon
Verlaine, Paul, 92 (Sergerémy Sacré), 211
Verney, Jean-Pierre, 98 War Requiem (Britten),
Versailles, Treaty of, 32 208–209, 262
302 INDEX
‘War Widow’ (Country Joe Whipped Cream and other Delights

McDonald), 217 (Herb Alpert), 121
War, War, War (Country Joe Whisky Priests, The, 59, 113
McDonald), 216 White Chalk (PJ Harvey), 250
Ward, Jennifer, 217, 218 ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’, 243
Ware, Fabian, 242 White Clouds (Vienna Circle), 131
Warren, Harry, 8 White Noise, 148
‘Washington Blues’ (The Clash), 135 White, Chris, 123
Watchtower, 161 Whiteley, Sheila, 157
Waterloo, Battle of, 131, 265 Who, The, 137, 235
Waters, Roger, 126 The Wickerman (Hardy), 150
Watkins, Glenn, 8, 9, 208–209 Wiesel, Elie, 268
Watson, Janet, 211 Wild Billy Chyldish and the Musicians
Watts, Steve, 60 of the British Empire, 234
‘We Are Making a New World’ Wilde, Susie, 208
(Nash), 245 Wilkinson, Mark, 131
‘We Are the Champions’ (Queen), 7 Wilkinson, Norman, 233
Weatherly, Frederick and Wood, ‘Will Ye Go to Flanders’?, 109, 113
Hayden, 108 Willetts, Karl, 158, 163–168, 219
Webb, Peter, 148–150 Williams, Ernie, 187
Webber, Nick, 21, 129, 130 Williams, Michael, 264
‘The Week before Easter’, 108 ‘Willie McBride’. See No Man’s Land
Weglarz, Kristine, 122, 136 ‘The Willy-Nicky Telegrams‘
Weinstein, Deena, 155, 157–159, 161 (Einstürzende Neubauten),
Weintraub, Stanley, 185–187, 192 154
Weir, Peter, 24, 34, 243 Wilson, Ross, 1, 9, 16, 18, 20, 21, 23,
‘A Well Respected Man’ (The 27, 29
Kinks), 124 Wilson, Steven, 197
Wells, H.G., 166 Wilson, Woodrow, 13
West, Arthur Graeme, 215 Winehouse, Amy, 209
West, Patrick, 55 Winter, Jay, 22, 50, 53, 58, 97, 185,
Westbrook, Mike, 139 207
Westfront 1918 (Vier von der Infantrie) ‘With God on Our Side’ (Bob Dylan),
(Pabst), 140 10, 52, 102, 110, 123
Wetherell, M.A., 265 Wivenhoe, 235
Wexford, 30 Wobble, Jah, 191
‘What’s a Few Men?’ (Hunters and A Woman a Man Walked By (John
Collectors), 192 Parish and PJ Harvey), 242
What’s Going On (Marvin Gaye), 9 Wood, Hayden. See Weatherly,
Whelan, Peter, 110 Frederick
‘When the War Came’ (The Wood, Jeffrey, 268
Decemberists), 231 ‘The Woods of Darney’ (Richard
‘Where Are They Now’ (Saxon), 52 Thompson), 138
INDEX 303
‘The Words That Maketh Murder’ (PJ Yorke, Thom, 129

Harvey), 77, 243 ‘You’ (Roy Harper), 137
‘Working for the Yankee Dollar’ (The Young, Le Monte, 133
Skids), 212 Young, Neil, 9, 137
World Requiem (Foulds), 55, 61–2 Young, Rob, 108, 135
World War Two. See Second World ‘You’re a Good Man Albert Brown
War (Curse You Red Barrel)’ (XTC),
‘The Wrestlers’ (Owen), 208 125–126
Wright, Peter, 56 ‘Youts to War’ (Brain Damage meets
Wrigley, Thomas, 195 Vibronics), 230
‘Written on the Forehead’ (PJ Ypres, 9, 36, 58, 59, 109, 153, 170,
Harvey), 250 203, 206, 212, 214
Wyatt, Stephen, 242 Ypres (Tindersticks), 262
Ypres 1917 Overture–Verdun Ossuary
(Billy Chyldish), 234
X Ypres, Second Battle of, 36, 217
XTC, 125 Ypres, Third Battle of. See
Passchendaele
Y
‘Yankee Bayonet’ (The Decemberists), Z
231 Zardoz (Boorman), 107
Yeats, W.B., 24, 267 Ziino, Bart, 18, 34
‘Yellow Bird’ (Gary Miller), 59 Zizek, Slavoj, 153
‘Yes Sir, No Sir’ (The Kinks), 124 ‘Zombie’ (The Cranberries), 10
yé-yé, 92 Zombies, The, 77, 123

National Myth and The First World War in Modern Popular Music2017

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More information about this series at

National Myth and

Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016958212

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

Cover image Courtesy of Kirsty Garland

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

2 National Myth and the First World War 13

3 Remembrance, Memory and Popular Music 49

5 The Voice of the People 87

6 Butcher’s Tales and Gunner’s Dreams 121

7 Shrill Demented Choirs 147

8 Football in No Man’s Land 183

9 The Gospel According to St Wilfred 203

10 Bombazine Dolls and Orders from the Dead 227

11 Conclusion: Music and the Centenary 259

Fig. 2.1 The ‘Ring of Remembrance’, Notre Dame de Lorette,

Fig. 10.3 PJ Harvey in performance, Rock on Scene Festival 2003

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 1

MUSIC, LYRICS AND MEANING

texts that make their theories understandable for a wider readership.

POPULAR MUSIC AND WAR

the latter course in honouring history’s victims in the hope of preventing

1. Propagandist—urging people to ‘support the cause’.

THE FIRST WORLD WAR IN POPULAR MUSIC BETWEEN

1. To comment on the event itself and tell an interesting or arresting

2. To use the event to draw comparisons and make a point about

A small number of songs operate at more than one of these levels at

Marcus, G. (2010). Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus: Writings 1968–2010. Philadelphia:

National Myth and the First World War

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 13

of Scottish nationalism or even John Major’s idea of England as the ‘coun-

NATIONALISM, HISTORY AND MUSIC

is a ‘colonising’ approach where cultural ideas from the dominant culture

the words of Stuart Hall, ‘work transformations’ (Lipsitz 2001, p. 108).

THE NATURE OF MYTH

connection to the conflict in Vietnam and potential nuclear Armageddon

We encounter examples of all three in this study.

THE FIRST WORLD WAR AND MYTH

• Myths of territory, claiming there is a particular place where the

• Myths of kinship and shared descent, which is an aspect of the bonds

We should be careful though not to think that these national myths

and better at meeting contemporary needs. However its adoption had to

TRANSNATIONAL MYTH AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR

‘undergoing radical restructuring by the process of globalization’ (Ashplant

NATIONAL MYTHS OF THE WAR

are inextricably bound up with those relating to Unionism, Irish national-

website or newspaper articles such as those of the Guardian’s George

The UK survey confirmed some of the supposed British myths of the

p. 125). War memorials, especially in the Republic, remained a target for

government agreed to spend $140 million on the centenary (£74 m or

who expressed a view said that the US had a responsibility to fight in it

express purely national remembrance, than the ‘Ring of Remembrance’

Ray, L. (2006). Mourning, Melancholia and violence. In D. Bell (Ed.), Memory,

Remembrance, Memory and Popular Music

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 49

similarities with myth, especially in the formation of national identity,

of cultural memory, the distinction between myth and history vanishes’

framing people’s experience and that they continuously project these

in their work—their own memory, that of their nation, an oppositional

‘REMEMBRANCE DAYS’ AND REMEMBRANCE SONGS