2023 Charity Shop Purchases #34 - Eric Bogle - By Request
Eric Bogle is a Scottish folk singer and songwriter who emigrated to Australia in 1961
By Request is a compilation album from 2001 on the Greentrax label.He has recorded over 14 albums, most of the early ones are now deleted. This compilation contains songs from those early albums that have been requested by his audiences.15 of his most popular tunes and could be considered as his Greatest Hits.
There are a few novelty songs on the album alongside some more political ones.
Eric Bogle is responsible for writing two of the greatest anti war songs of all time which record the atrocities of the 1914 to 1918 war.
No Man's Land was written in 1976 and is also known as The Green Fields of France or Willie McBride. Bogle writes that it's a song that was written about the cemetries in Flanders and Northern France. In 1976 my wife and i went to three or four of these military cemeteries and saw all the young soldiers buried there.
Although there were a few soldiers called Willie McBride Bogle had no particular soldier in mind when writing this song. It is about the futility of war and the tragic waste of young lives - a musical accompaniment to Wilfred Owen's Anthem for Doomed Youth if you will.
It has been covered by dozens of artists but my favourite version is by The Men They Couldn't Hang which remains one of my favourite ever songs.
His secod great song is And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda which is particularly poignant to Australians gived the disasterous Gallipoli campaign. Again this song has been covered by countless artists with my favouite being the version by the Pogues.
Even if he never writes another song his place in history is assured
I'm with you CC, The Men They Couldn't Hang's version of The Green Fields Of France is phenomenal.
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