David Clare

In his landmark study Irish Blood, English Heart (2011), scholar Sean Campbell notes that a remarkably large proportion of England’s greatest musical artists from the mid-twentieth century onwards have been of Irish descent. In his prologue, Campbell gives the following examples: Lonnie Donegan, Paul McCartney and John Lennon of The Beatles, Dusty Springfield, John Lydon (Johnny Rotten from The Sex Pistols), Kate Bush, Elvis Costello, Shane MacGowan of The Pogues, Kevin Rowland of Dexys Midnight Runners, Boy George of Culture Club, Morrissey and Johnny Marr from The Smiths, and Noel and Liam Gallagher of Oasis.¹ In a 2016 article in the Irish Times, rock journalist Johnny Rogan makes a similar contention, and discusses the Irish roots of several of the figures namechecked by Campbell.² One of the people highlighted by both Campbell and Rogan – Elvis Costello, who was born Declan Patrick MacManus in London and raised between there and Liverpool – had already made a case for the overwhelming contribution made by English artists of Irish descent to ‘British music’ several years previously, in a 2001 interview in the Independent.³ Costello listed a couple of examples not cited by Campbell and Rogan: Henry Purcell and a third Beatle (George Harrison), while humbly omitting his own name. And Costello jokingly added that, as regards ‘the brothers Gallagher’, ‘You can keep ‘em.’⁴

By his own admission, Campbell’s book is primarily focused on one specific time period – the 1980s (p. 1) – and his in-depth case studies are confined to assessing Ireland’s influence on the life and work of members of three particular groups: Dexys Midnight Runners, The Pogues, and The Smiths. Similarly, Rogan just briefly traces the Irish background and/or obviously ‘Irish’ works by a relatively small selection of artists; specifically, Lennon and McCartney, John Lydon, Kevin Rowland, Morrissey, Shane MacGowan, Oasis, and Kate Bush. And, during the aforementioned interview, Costello did not go into detail regarding what he finds Irish about the artists he listed. As such, there is still much work to be done in exploring this topic, especially as regards tracing key lyrical and musical (and, by extension, socio- political) preoccupations common to the work of English musical artists of Irish descent as a group, across musical styles and cultural contexts. On a related note, with regards to extended, in-depth study, it remains necessary to look closely at artists working prior to or after Campbell’s primary period of consideration, the 1980s. In the analysis that follows, I will examine the work of English musicians who, like several (but not all) of the ones listed by Campbell, Rogan, and Costello, are of Irish extraction and have chosen to explicitly engage with Ireland and Irishness in their music. My focus will extend from the 1960s through today and focus on musicians broadly defined as ‘rock’ artists. In other words, I will not hark back to a 1950s skiffle artist like Lonnie Donegan or to figures from the ‘art music’ world, such as the aforementioned seventeenth-century composer Purcell or the world-famous nineteenth-century composer Sir Arthur Sullivan. It is worth further noting that I will be covering additional rock artists not mentioned by Campbell, Rogan, or Costello, including (most notably) Sting of The Police and Liverpool-Irish singer-songwriter and playwright Lizzie Nunnery.

In the body of this essay, I will discuss five preoccupations that run through the work of many or most of the artists named above. As is shown below, English artists of Irish descent who have an abiding preoccupation with their Irish backgrounds have a tendency to: 1) criticise the British monarchy, 2) plug into and/or challenge the Irish folk music tradition, 3) reflect on the Irish diaspora, 4) make anti-colonial and anti-(neo-)imperial statements, and 5) wrestle with their Catholic upbringing or ancestry (interestingly, even artists raised Protestant or non-denominationally but of partial-Catholic descent, such as John Lennon and Paul McCartney of The Beatles, have been – at times – fixated on Roman Catholicism).

Anti-monarchy streak

English-born people of Irish descent often have a fraught relationship with the British monarchy and favour republican forms of government, presumably due to their ancestral homeland’s centuries-long struggle to free itself from domination by the English – later British – crown. In wider British culture, one thinks of Great Britain-born comedians of Irish descent, such as Steve Coogan, Catherine Tate, and Frankie Boyle, making their dislike of monarchy vividly clear in their material and in interviews. Coogan has even explicitly stated to a reporter that his anti-monarchy stance is specifically due to the fact he hails from an ‘Irish, Catholic, and socialist’ family.⁵ Of course, such views are not held by all Irish diasporic Britons. Edinburgh-Irish actor Sir Sean Connery, for example, was happy to be knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2000 even though he supported Scottish independence. When the London- Irish scriptwriting brothers Martin and John Michael McDonagh were noisily disrupting a toast to the Queen at an awards ceremony at London’s Savoy Hotel in late 1996, Connery ‘came over and told [them] to shut up’. Martin, incidentally, in keeping with his firm anti-royalist principles, told Connery to ‘f**k off’.⁶

In the world of popular music, the most famous expression of anti-royalism from an England-born member of the Irish diaspora is the Sex Pistols song ‘God Save the Queen’ (from 1977), whose lyrics were written by the band’s singer Johnny Rotten (born John Lydon in London to a father from Tuam, Co. Galway and a mother from Ballincollig, Co. Cork). On that track, Rotten sneers, ‘God save the Queen / She ain’t no human being / There is no future / in England’s dreaming,’ and he even insists the Britain’s ‘fascist regime’ made the queen ‘a moron’.⁷ Famously, on 7 June 1977 – the holiday called to celebrate the queen’s jubilee – The Sex Pistols played the song from a boat named the Queen Elizabeth, as it sailed up the Thames past the Palace of Westminster. A young Shane MacGowan, later founder of The Pogues, said he was inspired by seeing fellow London-Irishman Rotten spitting out these anti-royalist statements, while clearly – to MacGowan’s mind – projecting the image of an ‘obnoxious London-Irish c**t’.⁸ MacGowan saw ‘God Save the Queen’ as an Irish rebel song, and it attracted him to the emerging punk music genre, and he soon became a ‘face’ on the punk scene under his chosen, ‘rebelly’ (if ‘Oirish’) pseudonym Shane O’Hooligan. (As Campbell notes (p. 15), Lydon’s Irishness was also part of his appeal for Kevin Rowland of Dexys Midnight Runners.) Of course, Johnny Rotten, as he has gotten older, has gotten very conservative politically: he has voted for Trump three times and even occasionally wears a MAGA hat, so it’s little surprise that he has also softened a bit on the monarchy, paying tribute to Queen Elizabeth II both in the year before and just after her death. That said, he still insists that the monarchy should not be supported by taxpayers’ money.⁹

Liverpool-Irishman John Lennon, who had Irish ancestry on both sides of his family tree that can be traced back to Co. Down, Co. Tyrone, Dublin, and Co. Wexford, was also famously anti-monarchy. There are several memorable moments associated with Lennon’s dislike for royalty. Early in his career, it manifested itself during The Beatles’ Royal Variety performance on 4 November 1963. Before the band’s set-closer ‘Twist and Shout’, Lennon leaned into the microphone and said, ‘For our last number, I’d like to ask your help. The people in the cheaper seats, clap your hands … And the rest of you’ – meaning the assembled royals and ‘toffs’ in the boxes and Dress Circle – ‘if you’d just rattle your jewellery.’¹⁰

Though uneasy about it, Lennon accepted an MBE presented to him by Queen Elizabeth II in 1965 (though he also noted that he had smoked a joint in the Buckingham Palace loos just before the ceremony). Then, on 25 November 1969, he sent his MBE back to the queen, complete with a letter typed on ‘notepaper headed “Bag Productions” – Lennon and [wife] Yoko’s new company’.¹¹ He wrote:

Your Majesty,

I am returning my MBE as a protest against Britain’s involvement in the Nigeria–Biafra thing, against our support of America in Vietnam and against ‘Cold Turkey’ [Lennon’s recent solo single] slipping down the charts.

With love. John Lennon of Bag¹²

Lennon’s disrespect for monarchy also expressed itself in lyrics around this time. One thinks of ‘Mean Mister Mustard’, the titular character from a song on The Beatles’s 1969 album Abbey Road. Mustard’s sister Pam ‘takes him out to look at the queen / the only place that he’s ever been,’ but we are told that, on these occasions, ‘he always shouts out something obscene.’¹³

Lennon’s songwriting partner Paul McCartney also reflects on monarchy on the Abbey Road album. McCartney, who is also of Irish descent on both sides of his family and whose mother was partially raised in Co. Monaghan, may not have returned his MBE, but he does demonstrate more cheeky familiarity (and romantic possessiveness) towards the queen in his song ‘Her Majesty’ than one would find in the work of more thoroughly monarchist English musicians.

In 1995, Elvis Costello refused to shake Prince Charles’ hand when he had the chance to at a benefit at St James’s Palace organised by Paul McCartney. When asked why, he explained that, since the Troubles broke out in Northern Ireland, Charles has had the opportunity to condemn and discourage the violence committed by Loyalist paramilitary groups, by unequivocally stating ‘That is not an expression of loyalism,’ but had refused to.¹⁴ Costello (unlike Lydon) has remained left wing as he has gotten older, but he has also softened on the monarchy since the Good Friday Agreement of 1998: indeed, in early 2020, he was presented with an OBE by the very royal whose hand he had once refused to shake.

Mancunian-Irish singer-songwriter Morrissey of The Smiths (the child of two Dublin parents) has regularly articulated anti-royalist views – views he shares with his bandmate Johnny Marr (née Maher and whose parents were from Athy, Co. Kildare). As Cambell reports, Marr says that the band’s anti-monarchy anthem – and title track to one of their best albums – ‘The Queen Is Dead’ is ‘probably’ his ‘favourite’ Smiths track, from a ‘lyrical’ point of view (p. 140). Another famous anti-royalist moment involving The Smiths occurs during their 1985 single, ‘Nowhere Fast’, when Morrissey memorably sings, ‘I’d like to drop my trousers to the queen / Every sensible child knows what this means.’¹⁵ An ‘anti-monarchy streak’ indeed!

Irish traditional music

Many England-born, Irish diasporic rock musicians have connected with their Hibernian roots by engaging with Irish traditional music: both its instrumental jigs, reels, hornpipes, slow airs, etc. and its ballads. Most famously, Kent-born Shane MacGowan and his compatriots in The Pogues (which included some English-raised members of the Irish diaspora, such as bassist Cáit O’Riordan and drummer Andrew Ranken; some Ireland-born members, like guitarist Phil Chevron and multi-instrumentalist Terry Woods, and some members with no Irish connections at all, such as tin whistle player ‘Spider’ Stacy, banjo player Jem Finer, and accordion player James Fearnley) managed to infuse Irish trad with punk energy. Their irreverent take has divided opinion: legendary Co. Clare concertina player Noel Hill once called their music (and that of similar groups) ‘an abortion’ on RTÉ radio,¹⁶ while Christy Moore and other important Irish ballad singers have lovingly covered Pogues songs. What is clear is that The Pogues became a force to be reckoned with in Irish traditional music, whether in Ireland itself or among the diaspora, and many commentators, including The Edge of U2, believe that they have contributed songs to the Irish ballad canon that will last centuries.¹⁷

Another England-born member of the Irish diaspora who has regularly engaged with Irish trad is Kent-born Kate Bush, whose father was English but whose mother, Hannah Daly, was a nurse and ‘prize-winning’ Irish dancer from outside Dungarvan, Co. Waterford.¹⁸ In 1996, Bush lovingly covered ‘Mná na Éireann’ in the wake of her mother’s passing, and (as the track’s producer Dónal Lunny confirms) she worked hard to get the Irish pronunciations as correct as she possibly could, both out of respect for the language and in tribute to her An Déise mother.¹⁹ Bush stated after its release, ‘It was fun and very challenging […] I will eagerly await comments from all Irish-speaking listeners in particular. I’m sure ma gave me a helping hand!’²⁰ Bush also recorded a version of ‘My Lagan Love’, with some new lyrics by her brother John, during the sessions for her 1985 album Hounds of Love (it was one of the B-sides to her hit single ‘Cloudbursting’), and that was just one of several tracks from those same sessions that connect to Irish traditional music. With arrangement help provided by Riverdance composer Bill Whelan, the tracks ‘And Dream of Sleep’, ‘Jig of Life’, and ‘Hello Earth’ feature bouzouki and bodhrán from Lunny, uileann pipes from Lunny’s Planxty bandmate Liam O’Flynn, whistles and fiddles from John Sheahan of The Dubliners, and fiddle from Paddy Glackin of The Bothy Band. O’Flynn and Lunny – plus fiddler Seán Keane – also appear on the Irish trad outro to the title track from 1982’s The Dreaming. The 1980 single ‘Army Dreamers’ also features bodhrán (on that occasion, played by English drummer Stuart Elliott). And any discussion of Bush’s engagement with trad must mention her successful collaborations with uileann piper Davy Spillane, who makes such great, Irish trad-flavoured contributions to her musical adaptation of Molly Bloom’s speech from James Joyce’s 1922 novel Ulysses – that is, the title track to Bush’s 1989 album, The Sensual World – as well as her covers of Elton John’s ‘Rocket Man’ and Marvin Gaye’s ‘Sexual Healing’ (both recorded in 1992).²¹

Lunny and Spillane did not just contribute to the work of Bush: they have also appeared on multiple Irish trad-flavoured tracks by Elvis Costello, alongside other luminaries of the trad and ‘Celtic’ music worlds – including the aforementioned Christy Moore, The Chieftains, Nollaig Casey, Frankie Gavin of De Dannan, Steve Wickham of The Waterboys, and Fionnuala Sherry (later of a pop group that includes some trad elements in their work, Secret Garden). One of Costello’s collaborations with Lunny was a cover of the gallows ballad ‘The Night Before Larry Was Stretched’ (part of Lunny’s 1996 Common Ground project). Two others were tracks on Costello’s 1989 album Spike. The trad sound on ‘Tramp the Dirt Down’ turned that vitriolic anti-Thatcher track into an Irish rebel song, and the trad flavour on ‘Any King’s Shilling’ added poignance to a song about Costello’s grandfather choosing to leave his native Tyrone by ‘taking the king’s shilling’ and joining the British Army. One of Costello’s Chieftains collaborations, ‘St Stephen’s Day Murders’ (from 1991), speaks to the way that Irish culture is carried over into the diaspora: note how Costello does not refer to the day after Christmas as Boxing Day in the song, and how he is perfectly familiar with the tensions that often surface within Irish families (in Ireland and abroad) on that day, having now been in each other’s constant company for a little too long over the holiday period.²²

Several other English artists who are members of the Irish diaspora have covered old Irish ballads or featured trad musical touches on their releases. Dusty Springfield (born Mary O’Brien in London) covered ‘My Lagan Love’ beautifully in 1967 on her BBC TV series, even accompanying herself on Irish harp. Culture Club singer and southeast Londoner Boy George (born George O’Dowd in Bexleyheath to a Dublin mother and an English father of Irish descent) has sung ‘Kevin Barry’, in tribute to the IRA rebel who was executed by the British in Mountjoy Prison in 1920 and who was close comrades with one of George’s Irish Republican ancestors. Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr has said that the trad he grew up listening to definitely influenced the music he wrote for the band, adding that ‘Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want’ was initially entitled ‘The Irish Waltz’.²³ As Cambell discusses in detail, Marr claims that, in his music for The Smiths, he was often trying to capture the ‘melancholy’ and the ‘mood’ of his favourite Irish traditional ballads, such as ‘The Black Velvet Band’, and notes that his attraction to 3/4 and 6/8 time signatures ‘definitely comes from my [Irish] background’ (pp. 108, 129–131). And the Newcastle-born Sting (whose maternal Irish Catholic heritage can be traced back to a Monaghan workhouse) has covered ‘Mo Ghile Mear’ with The Chieftains, in a mix of Irish and English.²⁴ Another collaboration between Sting and The Chieftains was their Irish trad cover of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Sisters of Mercy’.

Even before the emergence of The Pogues, Kevin Rowland, who was born in Wolverhampton to Irish parents and raised between there, Crossmolina (Co. Mayo), and Harrow, challenged Irish traditional music via his Birmingham- based band Dexys Midnight Runners, most famously on the single ‘Come On, Eileen’ from the trad-flavoured album Too-Rye-Ay (1982). The album even features two extracts from ‘the traditional Irish ballad [with lyrics by Thomas Moore], “Believe Me If Those Endearing Young Charms”, a favourite of Rowland’s mother’.²⁵ Specifically, the album closer – the aforementioned ‘Come On, Eileen’ – opens with a snippet from the song’s melody, played on fiddle by Helen O’Hara, and (to quote Campbell) is followed by Rowland singing a few lines of the song ‘a capella [as ] the album’s untitled coda’ (p. 43). With Dexys, Rowland has also covered ‘Carrickfergus’, ‘The Curragh of Kildare’, and an instrumental version of ‘Mná na hÉireann’ (a.k.a. ‘Women of Ireland’).

Members of The Beatles also interacted with the folk music of their Hibernian ancestors. Famously, there is the use of trad instruments and Irish ballad tropes on two solo songs from Beatles members: John Lennon’s ‘Luck of the Irish’ and Paul McCartney’s ‘Give Ireland Back to the Irish’ (the B-side instrumental version of which even features Paul’s attempts to play ‘Celtic’ riffs on the penny whistle). As regards actual Beatles recordings, Lennon can be heard singing a snippet of ‘Danny Boy’ at the end of ‘The One After 909’ on 1970’s Let It Be album, and some have argued (not 100% convincingly to my mind) that the Liverpool folk song they cover on that same album – ‘Maggie Mae’ – has Irish origins. Finally, in their early days, the band used to cover ‘Beautiful Dreamer’, which was composed by Ulster- American songwriting legend Stephen Foster in the early 1860s but which has long been popular with Irish trad balladeers.

For all of these English artists of Irish descent, engagement with Irish folk music has been a way to both assert their Irishness, but also to put their own spin on it, reflective of their own (often difficult) experiences growing up Irish in England. For songs that combine Irish trad and English experience – and that avoid the sentimentality of which the Irish diaspora is often accused – just consider songs like the defiant ‘The Celtic Soul Brothers’ (1982) by Dexys Midnight Runners or the grim ‘The Old Main Drag’ (1985) by The Pogues.

The Irish diaspora

The Pogues – made up of so many England-raised or Ireland-born but England-resident musicians – perhaps unsurprisingly wrote several songs that reflect on the global Irish diaspora. Some of these are ‘set’ in Ireland and tell the story of someone about to emigrate or returning to the land of their ancestors – for example, ‘Sally MacLennane’ (1985), ‘The Body of an American’ (1986), and ‘Streets of Sorrow’ (1988). Some are set in London or New York City, and powerfully capture the pain and travails associated with emigration for many Irish folks: for example, there are London-set songs such as the aforementioned ‘The Old Main Drag’ and ‘Rainy Night in Soho’

(1986), and New York-set songs like ‘Fairytale of New York’ (1987) and ‘Thousands Are Sailing’ (1988). Some Pogues compositions even feature presumably Irish narrators in farther-flung parts of the world: think of tracks such as ‘Fiesta’ (1988) and ‘Summer in Siam’ (1990).

The Pogues, however, were not the only English artists of Irish descent to reflect on the diaspora of which they were a part. Dexys Midnight Runners’ 1979 single ‘Dance Stance’ confronts – and fights back against – the anti- Irish prejudice faced by Irish people in Britain during The Troubles. Another Dexys song, ‘Knowledge of Beauty’ (1985), reflects on what Irish emigrants give up when they leave behind their ‘roots’, their ‘beautiful heritage’, and the ‘wisdom and warmth of [their] past generations’.²⁶ As Campbell insightfully discusses (pp. 51, 55–57), Rowland’s struggle to understand his relationship to the Ireland he loves and the England he distrusts is reflected in ‘The Waltz’ (1985), a Dexys song originally entitled ‘Elizabeth Wimpole and Kathleen Ní Houlihan’ (named for fictional sisters who represent – as the monikers bestowed on them suggest – England and Ireland). Morrissey’s 2004 solo single ‘Irish Blood, English Heart’ (the song that inspired the title to Campbell’s book) speaks to the strength one derives from having both Irish ancestry that has given one grit and forbearance, but also an English upbringing which imbues one with a strong sense of self-confidence and impregnable pride – maybe too much confidence and pride in Morrissey’s case, given his xenophobic and racist remarks over recent years regarding people of colour.

Irish trad – particularly fiddle tunes – feature memorably in Sting’s 2014 Newcastle shipyard musical, The Last Ship, which is reflective of his understanding of the great contribution that Irish workers made to Geordie shipyard life. The musical’s female lead is also given the name Margaret (Meg) White, with the first name coming from his maternal grandmother Margaret Hill, who was part-Irish,²⁷ and the surname coming from his Newcastle-raised, thoroughly Irish Catholic maternal grandmother, Agnes White – a formidable presence in his childhood.²⁸ The musical also features a central, Irish priest character, Fr James O’Brien. (Sting was raised Roman Catholic.) As regards Kate Bush, it is noteworthy that her breakthrough single and one of her most famous songs – 1978’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ – was ‘inspired’, as Rogan notes, by ‘another second-generation Irish writer, Emily Brontë’ that the singer-songwriter could presumably relate to.²⁹

Elvis Costello has written two powerful, if relatively little-known, songs about the Irish diaspora. In ‘Mischievous Ghost’, written specially for Bringing It All Back Home, the 1990 RTÉ/BBC television series about the spread of Irish music worldwide, he sings of the pressure in the diaspora to conform to Irish stereotypes, and powerfully finishes with a bit of the self-hatred that members of the Irish diaspora can sometimes feel about the cruder form that ‘Irishness’ has sometimes taken in the diaspora: ‘With the green beer and the shamrock tattoos / Singing his songs of the battles we lose / And “Will you come home again”’ (which, is, of course, a reference to the American ‘Oirish’ song, ‘I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen’).³⁰

Costello implies that people in Ireland encourage and benefit from such ‘Oirish’ stereotypes, because it results in income from tourists. Thus, the last line that I quoted runs (in full) ‘Will you come home again / So we can murder you’ (a Troubles reference), and then Costello wonders ‘What would you do if they took his [that is, the singer’s] word / With forty-eight million to join in the toast?’³¹ In other words, what would Ireland do if everyone of Irish descent abroad (which, at the time, stood at an estimated 48 million people worldwide) suddenly moved back to the island of Ireland, in response to all of the songs that feature narrators longing for ‘the Old Sod’ and vowing to return to the land of their ancestors or birth?

There is a much less fraught and prouder picture of the diaspora in Costello’s ‘Long Journey Home’, written for the 1998 PBS television documentary series The Irish in America: Long Journey Home. The track, another one of his collaborations with The Chieftains and which Costello co- wrote with that group’s Paddy Moloney, celebrates the fortitude of those who left Ireland in search of a new life, but advises them not to forget their roots:

But as you ascend the ladder

Look out below where you tread

For the colours bled as they overflowed

Red, white, and blue

Green, white, and gold³²

It is noteworthy that the ‘red, white, and blue’ flag in the chorus could be the American flag pictured by the Irish-Americans who made the PBS documentary (and implied by the references to the wide ocean and railroads), but it could also be the Union Jack associated with the country that Elvis was raised in, thanks to his MacManus and Costello ancestors settling in Liverpool.

In Ireland, between the 1950s and 1970s, groups called ‘Showbands’ were extremely popular in dancehalls across the country. These groups consisted of a rhythm section, a horn section, and multiple singers, and played a combination of rock, country, Irish ballads/céilí music, and even Dixieland and Latin jazz. Some groups also performed comedy sketches and dance routines. Important Irish rock artists such as Van Morrison and Rory Gallagher got their starts in Showbands. What is often overlooked by commentators is the popularity of these groups in the Irish diaspora, but particularly in England, where similar musical outfits soon emerged. For example, Elvis Costello’s father, Ross MacManus, together with Ireland- born singer Rose Brennan, helped transform the famous English big band the Joe Loss Orchestra into something much closer to an Irish Showband. And it is an Irish Showband singer not unlike Ross MacManus that Paul McCartney is impersonating when he ‘becomes’ Denis O’Bell during the lounge music/‘Latin’ section of the 1970 Beatles B-Side ‘You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)’.³³

Anti-colonial and anti-(neo)imperial

As the letter from John Lennon to Queen Elizabeth II quoted above indicates, the Beatle was very opposed to imperial or neo-imperial aggression overseas by British and American forces. Kate Bush laments the destruction of aboriginal land and culture in Australia in her aforementioned song ‘The Dreaming’. And Lizzie Nunnery has lamented the way that English working- class men have long been exploited and used to oppress various peoples overseas, including ‘the Kru and the Paddy’, in the 2010 song ‘England Loves a Poor Boy’ (the entire chorus is ‘England loves a poor boy with a gun’).³⁴

The sentiments in Nunnery’s song echo similar ones in Costello’s songs ‘Shipbuilding’ (from 1982 and written in response to the Falklands War) and ‘Oliver’s Army’ (from 1979 and written in response to the Troubles in Northern Ireland). While these are both great songs, ‘Oliver’s Army’ is especially relevant to my discussion here. As with Nunnery’s song, it laments the way that working-class English men have historically been used to oppress peoples across the world, with Palestine, Hong Kong, and South Africa indicated specifically and Northern Ireland implicitly. In calling the British Army ‘Oliver’s Army’, Costello shows that he subscribes to Ireland’s highly negative view of Oliver Cromwell, the Butcher of Drogheda, as opposed to the often-laudatory views of him held by English commentators.

(Along similar lines, one of Morrissey’s anti-monarchy tirades appears in the aforementioned ‘Irish Blood, English Heart’ and similarly features a negative view of Cromwell; he sings: ‘I’ve been dreaming of a time when / The English […] spit upon the name Oliver Cromwell / And denounce this royal line that still salutes him and will salute him forever.’)³⁵

Elvis Costello is not alone among England-born rock artists from the Irish Diaspora in being disturbed by the British Army’s role in the Northern Ireland conflict, which included much collaboration with loyalist paramilitary groups. John Lennon’s ‘Luck of the Irish’ but also his ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ (1972), Paul McCartney’s ‘Give Ireland Back to the Irish’, Kate Bush’s ‘Army Dreamers’ (which she sings with a slight Irish accent, and which, as previously noted, features bodhrán), The Police’s Sting- penned track ‘Invisible Sun’ (1981), and The Pogues’s ‘Streets of Sorrow/ Birmingham Six’ medley (1988) were all inspired by the conflict, and implicitly or, in some cases, explicitly critique the UK’s treatment of Northern Ireland’s Catholic nationalist population. This fits in with the anti-colonial, anti-imperial, and anti-neo-imperial stances taken by these artists in relation to Britain’s colonial past and its ‘special relationship with America’ present. A common sentiment in this last regard which is shared by many of these musicians is pithily articulated by Morrissey in his 2004 track ‘America Is Not the World’, in which he tells America: ‘I love you / I just wish you’d stay where you belong.’³⁶ One might also mention Sting’s 2003 track ‘This War’ (counselling against the imminent US/UK invasion of Iraq), and Elvis Costello’s decision to, along with Attractions bandmate Steve Nieve, perform ‘(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding?’ at the 2003 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, in protest after the Iraq.

Roman Catholicism

Although there has obviously been significant Irish Protestant emigration to English cities such as Liverpool and London (to say nothing of Scottish cities such as Glasgow), the Irish diasporic community in ‘Old Blighty’ is often strongly associated with Roman Catholicism. One key reason for this is that Catholic faith is often a point of difference that distinguishes Irish families in England from the vast majority of their English neighbours. Most of the musicians discussed in this article were raised Catholic and educated at strongly Catholic schools, and this had lasting impact on their work.

One of convent-educated Kate Bush’s most famous songs – ‘Running Up That Hill’ (1985) – is, of course, about ‘a deal with God’, and there is the inquisition/confession scene (complete with church Latin) on her track ‘Waking the Witch’ (1985).³⁷ Likewise, the trappings of the Catholic faith can be found in several Pogues songs – think of ‘the calling of the rosary’ in ‘The Body of an American’ or the character in ‘The Sick Bed of Cuchulain’ (1985) who went to Midnight Mass, ‘dropped a button in the plate and spewed up in the church’.³⁸ And, in the video to 2004 single ‘I Have Forgiven Jesus’, Morrissey, dressed as a priest, forgives Jesus for having made him feel bad about his queer sexuality during his formative years.

Elvis Costello once said that, with all of the guilt and neuroses present in his song lyrics, one could easily guess that the writer of them has to be either Jewish or Catholic.³⁹ Costello wrestles with questions of faith in songs such as ‘God’s Comic’ (1989), ‘Distorted Angel’ (1996), and ‘God, Give My Strength’ (1996), and he gave a 1980 collection of B-sides and outtakes the provocatively Catholic (if blasphemous) title Ten Bloody Marys & Ten How’s Your Fathers.

Sting has often spoken of the lasting effects that his Catholic upbringing had upon him. He wrestles with spiritual belief and doubt in Police and solo songs such as ‘Secret Journey’ (1981), ‘O My God’ (1983), and ‘If I Ever Lose My Faith’ (1993). In terms of specifically Catholic imagery, the lyrics for ‘All This Time’ (1991) and ‘This Cowboy Song’ (1994) both involve conversations with priests and specifically discuss Jesus. And (as critic Evyatar Marienberg has perceptively discussed), numerous songs featured in Sting’s The Last Ship – both the musical and the album – are concerned with Roman Catholicism and/or engage with ‘specifically Catholic notions’.⁴⁰ What’s more, in 1987, when Sting was offered the chance to contribute a song to the A Very Special Christmas album (a benefit for the Special Olympics), he chose ‘Gabriel’s Message’ – a hymn based on a Basque folk carol that is full of adoration for the Virgin Mary.

The story recounted in ‘Gabriel’s Message’ is the biblical account of the angel telling the Virgin Mary that she would be giving birth to the Messiah. Her response, as rendered in the Revised Standard Edition popular among English-speaking Catholics and Anglicans during the mid-to-late twentieth century is: ‘Let it be to me according to your word.’⁴¹ This, of course, inspired the chorus of The Beatles song ‘Let It Be’ (1970), written by Paul McCartney, who was baptised Catholic, raised non-denominationally (as a compromise because his Anglican father and Catholic mother), and who has identified as Anglican as an adult.⁴² The ‘mother Mary’ who comes to Paul in the song and gives him consolation is his Roman Catholic mother, née Mary Patricia Mohan (sometimes spelled Mohin), who sadly died from breast cancer when Paul was only fourteen. However, the ambiguity of the lyric, the biblical story that it is based upon, and Billy Preston’s churchy organ on the track, all suggest to the casual listener that it is or may be the Virgin Mary. It is an interesting choice from Paul, and it speaks to him not only paying tribute to his mother’s faith but also, being Liverpool-Irish, having a certain comfort with being associated with Roman Catholicism that might not be as widely shared by English Protestants more generally. Paul’s comfort with Catholicism and Catholic imagery is also evident on another song that celebrates mothers, the 1968 Beatles single ‘Lady Madonna’.

When working on the lyrics to ‘Eleanor Rigby’ (1966), John Lennon suggested to Paul that the priest in the song should be called Fr McCartney (an implicit acknowledgement that many of Paul’s father’s people were not just Anglican – whether Church of Ireland or Church of England – but also Catholic). The priest was called by that name in the early drafts of the lyric before Paul changed it to Fr McKenzie, perhaps because it all felt too personal or perhaps in acknowledgement that his father was – after all – Anglican (and, by all accounts, an agnostic one at that).

The inclusion of the priest in ‘Eleanor Rigby’ is not the only example of Catholic clergy in a Beatles song. Lennon rather suggestively avers that ‘Mother Superior jumped the gun’ in ‘Happiness is a Warm Gun’ from The Beatles’s ‘White Album’ (released in 1968 and actually officially called The Beatles).⁴³ His dislike for nuns as a younger man also manifested itself in him urinating on a group of them from a balcony in Hamburg when drunk. This is of a piece with his highly negative views regarding the Catholic Church during the late 1950s and early-to-mid 1960s. For example, in his 1965 book A Spaniard in the Works, he suggests that any sermon he gave would depict Jesus as a ‘fascist […] catholic Spaniard’.⁴⁴ By the end of the 1960s and then into the 1970s, a more spiritual outlook on life and exposure to the work of radical priests such as Fr Daniel Berrigan⁴⁵ made Lennon soften his views on Catholicism, even as he remained agnostic and continued to have issues with the institutional Church. Indeed, Lennon, who had a granduncle who was a Catholic priest, even gave money to Roman Catholic priests who fought for civil rights in Northern Ireland during the early part of the Troubles.

As regards the one Beatle baptised and raised unequivocally Catholic –George Harrison (who regularly visited his mother’s relations in Wexford and Drumcondra right up to his death in 2001) – his spiritual songs with The Beatles and as a solo artist, such as ‘Within You, Without You’ (1967), ‘The Inner Light’ (1968), ‘My Sweet Lord’ (1970), and ‘Awaiting on You All’ (1970), show an interesting syncretic blend of the Catholic faith in which he was raised and the Indian and Chinese spiritual traditions that mainly preoccupied him in adult life.

Conclusion

It is not easy being an England-born member of the Irish diaspora. One has the accent of ‘the old enemy’ and has to deal with being ‘othered’ – or even bullied – by both one’s English neighbours and people from Ireland (including one’s own relations), who dismiss you as being ‘not really Irish’. There is also the issue of having one’s cultural positioning constantly misunderstood by those in the wider world. One example that has always stood out to me was when The Beatles got off the plane at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City on their first trip to the US in 1964. As footage of the arrival shows, one of the people among the throngs gathered to greet them is holding a sign that clearly says, ‘England Get Out of Ireland.’ Presumably, this proud Irish-American protester figured that they would make a stand against this new ‘British Invasion’, showing these young Englishman that they were ready to face the old Saxon foe. Somehow, the protester did not stop to think about the fact that the band hailed from Liverpool (often proudly called by Scousers – including Lennon, McCartney, and Starr on occasion – ‘the capital of Ireland’)⁴⁶ or that the group’s two main songwriters had the Irish surnames, Lennon and McCartney. (The culprit can be forgiven for not knowing about Harrison’s maternal ties to the Whelan and French families of Wexford or Ringo Starr’s probable Irish ancestry through his great-grandmother Mary Kate Conroy.)

Speaking of names, the historic difficulty of being Irish in Britain can be seen in the ways that many of the artists discussed in this essay either hid or hyper-emphasised their Irishness when embarking on their careers – undoubtedly in response to potential hostile reactions. Mary O’Brien became Dusty Springfield. John Lydon became Johnny Rotten. George O’Dowd became Boy George. Johnny Maher of The Smiths anglicised the spelling of his surname, to make it easier for English folks to pronounce – and, it should be noted, to distinguish himself from Mancunian-Irish Buzzcocks drummer, John Maher, whose parents were also from Athy. Declan MacManus saw the benefits of Irishness when presenting oneself as a rebellious punk and therefore became Elvis Costello. Similarly, Shane MacGowan, during his time as a ‘face’ on the London punk scene, temporarily became Shane O’Hooligan. John Winston Lennon often appeared as Sir Winston O’Boogie on friends’ albums (arguably emphasising both his Englishness via the ‘Sir’ and ‘Winston’ and Irishness via the ‘O’ surname); he also refers to himself as ‘Seán Ó Leannáin’ on at least one audio recording,⁴⁷ and – of course – he named his son with Yoko ‘Sean’. Steven Patrick Morrissey became simply Morrissey, emphasising the Irish surname even more.⁴⁸

But I hope that, despite the doubts cast on the Irishness of the musicians covered in this essay by some commentators (and despite any anxieties that these artists may have felt in terms of acceptance of their Irishness by Ireland-born people), it will be clear that these performers have more than demonstrated their Irish bona fides through how they have engaged with their Hibernian ancestry, in both their lives and their work.

Dr David Clare lectures in Drama and English at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick. His books include the monographs Bernard Shaw’s Irish Outlook (2016), Irish Anglican Literature and Drama (2021), and Ireland in the Life and Work of C. S. Lewis (2025) and the edited collections The Gate Theatre, Dublin: Inspiration and Craft (2018), The Golden Thread: Irish Women Playwrights, 1716–2016 (2021), and Across Borders and Time: Jonathan Swift (2022).

A Spotify playlist featuring most of the songs in this essay may be accessed with this QR code:

Notes

1. Sean Campbell, Irish Blood, English Heart: Second Generation Irish Musicians in England (Cork University Press, 2011), p. 1. Subsequent references from Irish Blood, English Heart will appear in in-text citations.
2. Johnny Rogan, ‘Rebel Yell: How the Irish Dominated British Rock Music’, Irish Times, 25 November 2016.
3. ‘Answer the Questions – Elvis Costello: King David and the Cup Treble’, Independent, 17 June 2001.
4. ‘Answer the Questions’. In many interviews, including this one, Costello has expressed his admiration for The Beatles and Dusty Springfield. However, it should be further noted that he produced classic recordings by The Pogues and seriously considered getting Kate Bush to produce one of his early Elvis Costello & The Attractions records. Also, while Costello admired The Smiths when they first emerged, he has more recently expressed the view that Morrissey stagnated musically after the band broke up and turned into a bit of a caricature. See Arun Starkey, ‘Exploring the Reason Why Elvis Costello Doesn’t Like Morrissey’, Far Out Magazine, 15 August 2022. Available at: https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/exploring-the-reason-why-elvis-costello-doesnt-like-morrissey/
5. As quoted in Tara Brady, ‘Steve Coogan: “I’ve Always Wanted to Tell an Irish Story, to Make a Film about a Nice Priest”’, Irish Times, 9 October 2022.
6. Fintan O’Toole, ‘A Mind in Connemara’, NewYorker, 26 February 2006.
7. Sex Pistols, ‘God Save the Queen’, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols [LP] (Virgin Records, 1977).
8. As quoted in Victoria Mary Clarke and Shane MacGowan, A Drink with Shane Mac Gowan(Pan Books, 2001), p. 192. MacGowan later decided that this ‘pose’ was modelled on Johnny’s older brother, Jimmy Lydon, who went on to make Irish trad-inflected rock music of his own with groups such as 4be2. (Clarke and MacGowan, A Drink with Shane Mac Gowan, pp. 192–193; see also Campbell, Irish Blood, English Heart, pp. 62–63, 66, 71.)
9. Daniel Kreps, ‘John Lydon, Singer on Sex Pistols’ Anti-Royalty Anthem “God Save the Queen,” Pays Tribute to Elizabeth II’, Rolling Stone, 9 September 2022.
10. As quoted in Jennifer Laing and Warwick Frost, Royal Events: Rituals, Innovations, Meanings [non- paginated, eBook edition] (Routledge, 2017).
11. Anon., ‘The True Story of Why John Lennon Returned His MBE’, Radio X Magazine, 10 March 2024.
12. Anon., ‘The True Story of Why John Lennon Returned His MBE’.
13. The Beatles, ‘Mean Mr. Mustard’, Abbey Road[LP] (Apple Records, 1969).
14. Tony Clayton-Lea, Elvis Costello: A Biography(Andre Deutsch, 1999), p. 187.
15. The Smiths, ‘Nowhere Fast’, Meat Is Murder[LP] (Sire Records, 1985).
16. ‘The Pogues on BP Fallon Orchestra (1985)’, The Fanning Sessions Archives (website), https:// fanningsessions.wordpress.com/2014/05/04/the-pogues-on-bp-fallon-orchestra-1985/
17. See The Edge’s contribution to Dave Heffernan, producer and director, From a Whisper to a Scream: The Living History of Irish Rock [DVD] (WinStar Home Entertainment, 2001).
18. Rogan, ‘Rebel Yell’.
19. Dónal Lunny on the Ryan Tubridy Show, https://www.rte.ie/culture/2020/0903/1161765- kate-bush-sings-as-gaeilge-donal-lunny-on-working-with-a-legend/. See also Seán Twomey. ‘“A Wonderful Woman” – Kate Records Mná na hÉireann’, Kate Bush News (website), www. katebushnews.com/special-features/mna-na-heireann/
20. As quoted in Twome, ‘“A Wonderful Woman” – Kate Records Mná na hÉireann’.
21. It should be noted that the Gaye cover was not released until 2005, when it was a B-side on the ‘King of the Mountain’ single.
22. It should be noted that Costello, in an example of Irish-English ‘code switching’, does refer to ‘Boxing Day’ on the track ‘TKO (Boxing Day)’ from the Punch the Clock (1983) album.
23. Anon., ‘The Irishness of British Pop Music’, EPIC: The Irish Emigration Museum (website), https:// epicchq.com/story/the-irishness-of-british-pop-music/. See also Campbell, Irish Blood, English Heart, p. 112.
24. Seán Dunne, ‘Sting Traces Irish Roots to Monaghan Workhouse’, Irish Times, 5 December 2017.
25. Rogan, ‘Rebel Yell’.
26. Dexys Midnight Runners, ‘Knowledge of Beauty’, Don’t Stand Me Down [LP] (Mercury Records, 1985). For more on this song’s Irishness – and about the implications of its original title (‘My National Pride’) – see Campbell, Irish Blood, English Heart, pp. 51–56.
27. Her Irish roots came via her Ireland-born grandmother Fanny Thompson.
28. Sting, Broken Music :A Memoir (Dial Press), p. 21. It should be noted that, after writing the musical, Sting found out, through participation in the US genealogy television programme, Finding Your Roots, that her maiden name was actually Wright, not White.
29. Rogan, ‘Rebel Yell’.
30. Elvis Costello, ‘Mischievous Ghost’, Bringing It All Back Home[CD] (Hummingbird Records, 2000). (Originally released on LP by BBC Records in 1991.)
31. Costello, ‘Mischievous Ghost’.
32. The Chieftains featuring Elvis Costello and Anúna, ‘The Long Journey Home’, The Long Journey Home Soundtrack [CD] (BMG, 1998).
33. The name Denis O’Bell is clearly a tweak of the name Denis O’Dell. O’Dell was an English film producer of Irish descent who worked closely wit