Sunday 11 November 2018

My Top Ten World War I Songs


100 years ago today.

Here's ten songs in tribute to all those soldiers - on all sides - who lost their lives in what tragically wasn't "The War To End All Wars".

With a special mention to Franz Ferdinand, who started it all...



10. Whistling Jack Smith - I Was Kaiser Bill's Batman

Rumoured to be based on a WWI marching song, the hit version was written by the two Rogers: British songwriters Cook & Greenaway. There was no Whistling Jack Smith, and some debate over who actually did the whistling. On the album version, someone shouts "Oi!" near the end, but this was "cleaned up" for the single release and changed to "Hey!" instead.

Those crazy 60s also brought us The Royal Guardsman - Snoopy Vs. The Red  about Baron von Richthofen, Germany's infamous Red Baron airman. Charlie Brown's cartoon pooch Snoopy often imagined himself fighting The Red Baron in the war.

9. Metallica - One

One of the more accessible Metallica songs, about a WWI soldier whose injuries are so terrible he's left praying for death.

8. The Zombies - Butchers Tale (Western Front 1914) 

Definitely the scariest song on this list... perhaps because (unlike Metallica's usual fare) it's a million miles away from the sunshiny pop of She's Not There.

And I have seen a friend of mine
Hang on the wire
Like some rag toy
Then in the heat the flies come down
And cover up the boy
And the flies come down in
Gommecourt, Thiepval,
Mametz Wood, and French Verdun
If the preacher he could see those flies
Wouldn't preach for the sound of guns

7. Siouxsie and the Banshees - Poppy Day

...In Flanders fields
The poppies grow
Between the crosses
Row on row
That mark out place
We are the dead...

Based on a 1919 poem by war poet John McCrae. See also 10,000 Maniacs take on Wilfred Owen... Anthem For Doomed Youth.

6. The Beautiful South - Poppy

Leave to Paul Heaton to mourn with bitterness and anger...

They dressed you up and took you off to World War One 
Armed you and surrounded you with wire 
Sat in stinking mud you sung your stupid songs 
And waited till they told you when to fire

Cause the rulers always laugh 
At a video bloodbath 
Nothing makes them laugh 
Like a video bloodbath

From the First World War to the Yom-Kippur 
It was Beadle's About 
The bayonets slice, the rockets roar 
And he jumps out

5. The Pogues - The Band Played Waltzing Matilda

Written by Scots-Aussie Eric Bogle (whose other big WWI tune was The Green Fields of France), but Shane and the boys did the definitive version for me...

When I was a young man I carried my pack
And I lived the free life of a rover
From the Murray's green basin to the dusty outback
I waltzed my Matilda all over
Then in nineteen fifteen my country said, "Son
It's time to stop rambling 'cause there's work to be done"
So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun
And they sent me away to the war
And the band played Waltzing Matilda
As we sailed away from the quay
And amidst all the tears and the shouts and the cheers
We sailed off to Gallipoli

4. Radiohead - Harry Patch (In Memory Of)

Written in tribute to "the last surviving Tommy", the oldest survivor of WWI who died at the age of 111 in 2009...

I am the only one that got through
The others died wherever they fell
It was an ambush
They came up from all sides
Give your leaders each a gun and then let them
Fight it out themselves

3. PJ Harvey - On Battleship Hill

Polly Jean mourns the 500,000 who died at Gallipoli...

On Battleship Hill I hear the wind,
Say "Cruel nature has won again."

2. Randy Newman - Going Home

Here's Randy's explanation of this song...

This is a World War I song.
World War I fascinates me because it was such a shock to the world.
Nothing before or since has come close.
It was a horrible, horrible event.
It was modern weaponry and cavalry and then tanks.
They fought for four years over a hundred yards, some ridiculously small amount of ground.
It's the stupidest event in history.
This is one of those songs that I just can't sing - it's right in one of the cracks in my range.
So we did it to approximate what a recording of that era would sound like.
I know Mitchell's going to get blamed in some review for using all these effects, but we did it because I simply can't sing the thing.

1. The Farm - Altogether Now

I was nineteen when this record came out and I had no idea what it was about. I guess I just didn't listen to the lyrics...

Remember boy that your forefather's died
Lost in millions for a country's pride
But they never mention the trenches of Belgium
When they stopped fighting and they were one

A spirit stronger than war was at work that night
December 1914 cold, clear and bright
Countries' borders were right out of sight
When they joined together and decided not to fight

All together now
All together now
All together now, in no man's land

The same old story again
All those tears shed in vain
Nothing learned and nothing gained
Only hope remains

All together now
All together now
All together now
In no man's land

The boys had their say they said no
Stop the slaughter let's go home, let's go, let's go

(See also Pipes of Peace by Sir Macca Thumbs Aloft... which I like more than I ought to... but then, I was only 11 when it came out.)




2 comments:

  1. Well done - There has been blanket coverage of all the events on telly today and of course I started to think of Harry Patch, the boys who sailed off to Gallipoli and so many more... Thanks for sharing all these lyrics, as like you at 19, I had obviously never listened to All Together Now properly before. Poignant stuff.

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  2. Well-thought-out addition to the WW1 anniversary. Thanks for bringing these to my attention.

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