Artist of the Week: Eric Bogle, a man of many trades, master of song
July 04, 2024
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Colin Randall writes: The Artist(s) of the Week feature at the Salut! Live Facebook group, easy to join and growing, has proved a resounding success.
While the group has only 346 members as I write, we have spread the word elsewhere on Facebook and generated enormous interest as a result. Andrew Curry's choice of The Dubliners the week before last attracted a staggering 5,000+ views and we also hit four figures with Bill Taylor's appreciation of the Chieftains last week.
That is perhaps understandable. Both are popular bands and have been around for decades.
But other nominations, and the Salut! Live articles to which they link. have also been widely viewed. Let us see what happens this week, with the Scottish-born Australian singer-songwriter Eric Bogle
Bogle at the Festival Interceltique de Lorient in 2016. By XIIIfromTOKYO
Bogle is a master, possibly the master, of songs about war. His No Man's Land and And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda are two of the finest such pieces written, each commemorating an aspect of the First World War. The first has Bogle walking around a war cemetery in the Somme and imagining the life of one (fictitious) young squaddie. The second is told as the story of an Australian soldier crippled at Gallipoli.
By the far the classic version of No Man's Land was recorded by June Tabor and discussed here. But it has also been covered by many other performers, notably the Fureys who renamed it Green Fields of France and took it into the Irish charts. Bogle has said he is comfortable with some knowing his song by that name.
Incidentally, he gave the fallen soldier the Irish name Willie McBride to counter anti-Irish feeling prevalent when he wrote the song in the 1975s, a time of frequent IRA bombongs and shootings.
For the purposes of this piece I shall overlook covers and present to readers how the writer interpreted his own work.
And I'll avoid And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda for my second item. But in choosing Now I’m Easy I am conscious that the people who covered other songs of his - like Tabor and the Dubliners - also had a go at this.
It's a song sung as if by one of small-time farmers of New Youth Wales who struggled to eke out a living from dusty dry land. It’s another song of which Eric Bogle, such an engaging performer whenever I’ve seen him, can be proud.
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