Hypocrisy at its best :-/

I intended to comment on McCartney’s ‘Give Ireland Back to the Irish’ but your page on that one is blank as yet, so I came here. I hope you don’t mind. It is relevant.

It’s a mystery to me why ‘Give Ireland Back..’, released the previous February and only a few weeks after Bloody Sunday, attracts derision, often from the same people who will fall over themselves to excuse Lennon for The Luck of the Irish. I don’t include you in that remark, of course; but I think to call The Luck of the Irish ‘a little simplistic’ is quite kind of you 😉 – even neglecting Ono’s risible contributions!

As James says, it starts ok, but then we get a bunch of bathetic folk-song clichés, an adolescent level of political awareness and a train wreck of rhyme and meter: Ireland is a ‘land full of beauty and wonder’ , it is ‘raped by the British brigANDS!’ (ouch) who – of course – ‘ kill with God on their side’, whilst Irish history is ‘death and glory’ (yeah, yeah) celebrated by ‘the poets of auld Eireland’ (oh puhlease!). Oh, and the British ‘commit genocide-aye-ide’. What??? I mean come on, if you’re going to make such a crackingly bizarre assertion then at least do it with dignity, if not real commitment! On top of this the tune is totally uninspired – bog-standard pub-folk boiler-plate recycled from a hundred similar plodding ditties and delivered in an enervated, dreary performance that (let’s call it like it is) was frankly embarrassing to watch (and I’m still excluding Ono).

Then there’s McCartney’s ‘Give Ireland Back to the Irish’. Well, it’s a rush-job put together on the hoof, a throwaway, a bit of a scramble recorded in an afternoon. Yeats or Behan it ain’t! But by god it’s got more balls and fire and real-world point than Lennon’s insipid shanty that took him 3 weeks to record!

Tell me how would you like it
If on your way to work
You were stopped by Irish soldiers?
Would you lie down, do nothing?
Would you give in, or go berserk?

Great Britain and all her people
Say all people must be free;
And meanwhile back in Ireland
There’s a man who looks like me;
And he dreams of god and country
And he’s feeling really bad;
And he’s sitting in a prison.
Should he lie down? do nothing?
Should he give in? or go mad?

Give Ireland back to the Irish
Don’t make them have to take it away!
Give Ireland back to the Irish
Make Ireland Irish today!

And Macca managed at least a half-decent tune to go with it. Doggett described it as ‘inappropriately chirpy’. I’d describe it as having zest and bite without a trace of mawkishness or self-consciousness.

Was it just luck and commercial timing that meant that this song was a top-20 UK hit (in spite of zero airplay because of being banned), number 1 in Ireland and in Spain, and almost made the Billboard top 20 in the US, while Lennon’s made little impact anywhere despite multiple TV and public demo performances in America and release on the pretty dire ‘Sometime in NYC’ LP? I don’t think so .

Thanks for a great site.
Martin

Tom Doyle, thank you so much for sharing that memory, wherever you are! If you see this, I’d love to hear more about your experience, I mean, I’ve got a thousand questions! i suppose you played with David Peel’s band? Great work at that concert, man, it’s one of my favorites, and I think those songs are much maligned. The definitive versions of “Luck of the Irish” and “John Sinclair” were the ones you played on, so thanks, man, seriously. What a concert.