Abstract
This chapter looks at the relationship between popular songs about the War and the work of the war poets. It notes their huge influence on, especially, Anglo-Saxon culture and interpretations of the War but also the way in which the poets, Sassoon and Owen in particular, have also become mythologised. Paul Fussell’s ideas in The Great War and Modern Memory are critiqued before considering some of the musicians who have directly interpreted war poetry, including Fleetwood Mac, the Libertines, Joe McDonald, Danish black metal band Iniquity and Ukrainian Fascists Sokyra Peruna. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the most interesting version of a First World War poem from all-female band Electrelane.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Bibliography
Bradley, D., & Werner, C. (2015). We gotta get out of this place: The soundtrack of the Vietnam War. Amherst/Boston: University of Massachusetts Press.
Campbell, J. S. (1997). “For you may touch them not”: Misogyny, homosexuality, and the ethics of passivity in First World War poetry. ELH, 64(3), 823–842.
Chambers, R. (2004). Untimely interventions: AIDS writing, testimonial, and the rhetoric of haunting. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Cole, S. (2013). Siegfried Sassoon. In S. Das (Ed.), The Cambridge companion to the poetry of the First World War (pp. 94–104). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Daly, R. (2015, September 3). The Libertines Anthems for Doomed Youth, NME. http://www.nme.com/reviews/the-libertines/16236. Accessed 5 Sept 2015.
Egremont, M. (2006). Siegfried Sassoon: A biography. London: Picador.
Featherstone, S. (2013). Colonial poetry of the First World War. In S. Das (Ed.), The Cambridge companion to the poetry of the First World War (pp. 173–184). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Frith, S. (1996). Performing rights: On the value of popular music. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
Fussell, P. (2000). The Great War and modern memory, 25th Anniversary edition. New York: Oxford University Press.
Grant, P., & Hanna, E. (2015). Music and remembrance: Britain and the First World War. In B. Ziino (Ed.), Remembering the First World War. Abingdon/New York: Routledge.
Gregory, A. (1994). The silence of memory: Armistice Day, 1919–1946. Oxford: Berg.
Gregory, A. (2008). The last Great War: British society and the First World War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Harvey, PJ & Murphy, S. (2015). The Hollow of the Hand. London: Bloomsbury.
Hawkins, P. (2000). Chanson: The French singer-Songwriter from Aristide Bruant to the present day. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Hibberd, D. (1986). Who were the war poets, anyway? In M. Roucoux (Ed.), English literature of the Great War revisited: Proceedings of the symposium on the British literature of the First World War (pp. 108–120). Amiens: Presses de l’UFR Clerc, Université Picardie.
Holmes, N. (2005). “In Flanders fields” – Canada’s official poem: Breaking faith. Studies in Canadian Literature/Etudes en literature Canadienne, 30(1), 11–33.
Iron Maiden. (2007). Death on the Road DVD. London: EMI Records.
Johnston, J. H. (1964). English poetry of the First World War: A study in the evolution of lyric and narrative form. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kendall, T. (2007). The Oxford handbook of British and Irish war poetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kendall, T. (2010, November 7). John McCrae “In Flanders fields”, War Poetry Blog. http://war-poets.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/john-mccrae-in-flanders-fields.html. Accessed 24 Aug 2015.
Leadbetter, R. (2015, March 21). The story of the Wilfred Owen Violin, The Herald. http://www.heraldscotland.com/arts_ents/13206630.The_story_of_the_Wilfred_Owen_violin/. Accessed 21 Sept 2015.
Lee, P. (2015, March 13). Fascist formations in Ukraine, CounterPunch. http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/13/fascist-formations-in-ukraine/. Accessed 20 Aug 2015.
Lynskey, D. (2012). 33 revolutions per minute: A history of protest songs. London: Faber and Faber.
Lynskey, D. (2015, August 27). The Libertines: “It was a row that took 10 years to get over. Also, I stopped taking heroin all day, every day”. The Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/aug/27/the-libertines-it-was-a-row-that-took-10-years-to-get-over-also-i-stopped-taking-heroin-all-day-every-day. Accessed 5 Sept 2015.
Meads, G. (2011). Tiger Lillies play Queer contact, whatsonstage website. http://www.whatsonstage.com/blackpool-theatre/news/12-2011/tiger-lillies-play-queer-contact_5887.html. Accessed 8 May 2016.
Moore, A. (2012). Song means: Analysing and interpreting recorded popular song. Farnham: Ashgate.
Moy, R. (2015). Authorship roles in popular music: Issues and debates. New York/London: Routledge.
Negus, K., & Astor, P. (2015). Songwriters and song lyrics: Architecture, ambiguity and repetition. Popular Music, 34(2), 226–244.
Noakes, V. (2013, May 28). “Not consciously a war poet”. Jewish Quarterly, 53(3), 55–58.
Owen, W. (1918). The British Library, ADD 43720: Poems of Wilfred Owen f.1, WOBL20F1A.JPG. http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/collections/item/4547?CISOBOX=1&REC=1. Accessed 11 Nov 2014.
Owen, W. (2004). In J. Stallworthy (Ed.), The poems of Wilfred Owen. London: Chatto and Windus.
Poetry Foundation. (n.d.). Wilfred Owen 1893–1918. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/wilfred-owen. Accessed 27 Aug 2015.
Prior, R., & Wilson, T. (1994). Paul Fussell at war. War in History, 1(1), 63–80.
Pruszewicz, M. (2015, January 30). How deadly was the poison gas of WW1?. BBC Magazine. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-31042472. Accessed 27 Aug 2015.
Quinn, J. (2007). Nazi Pop Twins (documentary film) (IMG Media).
Rolston, B. (2001). “This is not a Rebel Song”: The Irish conflict and popular music. Race and Class, 42(3), 49–67.
Sassoon, S. (1945). Siegfried’s journey 1916–1920. London: Faber and Faber.
Sawyer, M. (2011, February 10). Miranda Sawyer meets PJ Harvey. The Culture Show, BBC 2. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00f15p8. Accessed 26 Nov 2015.
Schmidt, S. (2014). Music of the Great War: Observations on a neglected repertoire. New Sound, 44(II), 121–132.
Segal, V. (2000, October 21). PJ Harvey: A lover not a fighter. NME. http://www.pjharvey.net/reviews/review_00-2110-1.html. Accessed 5 Sept 2015.
Stephen, M. (1993). Never such innocence: Poems of the First World War. London: Everyman.
Stephen, M. (1996a). Poetry and myths of the Great War: How poets altered our perceptions of history. Barnsley: Pen and Sword.
Stephen, M. (1996b). The price of Pity: Poetry, history and myth in the Great War. London: Leo Cooper.
Sullivan, C. (2015, February 12). Carl Barât and the Jackals: Let It R eign review – Brief and snarling. The Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/feb/12/carl-barat-jackals-let-it-reign-review. Accessed 5 Sept 2015.
Susman, V (2015a, November 16). Interview with the author.
Susman, V. (2015b, November 19). Correspondence with the author.
Traxionary website. (2014). “Dulce Et Decorum Est (Pro Patria Mori)” (The Skids). http://traxionary.com/review/dulce-et-decorum-est-pro-patria-mori-skids. Accessed 24 Aug 2015.
turtlezen website. (n.d.). In Flanders Fields. http://www.turtlezen.com/flandersfields.html. Accessed 20 Aug 2015.
Vance, J. F. (1997). Death so noble: Memory, meaning and the First World War. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.
Ward, J. A. (2014). American musical settings of “In Flanders Fields” and the Great War. Journal of Musicological Research, 33(1-3), 96–129.
Watkins, G. (2003). Proof through the night: Music and the Great War. Berkeley/London: University of California Press.
Watson, J. S. K. (2004). Fighting different wars: Experience, memory and the First World War in Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wilde, S. (2009, July 24). goodreads.com, The Great War and Modern Memory. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/154472.The_Great_War_and_Modern_Memory. Accessed 19 August 2015.
Willetts, K. (2014). Interview with the author recorded on 29 June.
Winter, J. (2013). Beyond glory: First World War poetry and cultural memory. In S. Das (Ed.), The Cambridge companion to the poetry of the First World War (pp. 242–256). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wood, J. (2014). The Great War and the challenge of memory. New Sound: International Journal of Music, 44(II), 109–120.
Woodard, R. (2007). Lyrics poetry?. The Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2007/dec/19/lyricspoetry. Accessed 26 Nov 2015.
Young, L. (2011, April 8). Book of a lifetime: The Great War and Modern Memory, by Paul Fussell, The Independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/book-of-a-lifetime-the-great-war-and-modern-memory-by-paul-fussell-2264683.html. Accessed 19 Aug 2015.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Grant, P. (2017). The Gospel According to St Wilfred. In: National Myth and the First World War in Modern Popular Music. Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-60139-1_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-60139-1_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-60138-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-60139-1
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)