How powerfully songs can hit you in the heart and make the impact that politicians struggle to achieve with their leaden delivery and faux sincerity. Thus Margaret Thatcher and her protégé young master Blair spring to mind.
Songs, however, can almost leap from the radio such are their intensity.
Elvis Costello achieved this with ‘Oliver’s army’ – the best song to have emerged from Ireland’s modern troubles – and his heartbreaking response to the Falklands War, ‘Shipbuilding’.
Both these songs, though, had been foreshadowed by Kate Bush’s ‘Army dreamers’ and when I first heard this song on Radio 1 in 1980 (I later bought it) I was transfixed.
Transfixed, not only by her lyrics but by how her words were punctuated by the sound of rifle bolts being pulled back ready to fire:
What could he do? Should have been a rock star
But he didn’t have the money for a guitar
What could he do? Should have been a politician
But he never had a proper education
What could he do? Should have been a father
But he never even made it to his twenties
What a waste
Army dreamers
Ooh, what a waste of
Army dreamers
This is a most beautiful song set seductively in waltz time and whenever there’s a news report of coffins arriving at Wootton Bassett, I am reminded of this verse:
Tears o’er a tin box
Oh, Jesus Christ, he wasn’t to know
Like a chicken with a fox
He couldn’t win the war with ego
On the day of Thatcher’s funeral there was a musical event held in the Star Anise Café here in Stroud – one replicated all over the country I hope.
Anyway, a couple of musicians and 50 or 60 people gathered to sing and affirm that there is such a thing as society and there are many alternatives to a regime of unfettered competitive individualism.
There was no evident triumphalism at her death and her name was hardly mentioned. Instead, a spread of songs, ranging from that hymn of the American Depression ‘Buddy can you spare a dime’ (lyrics by Yip Harburg who also wrote ‘Ding dong the witch is dead’) to The Jam’s ‘Going underground’, via Bob Marley’s ‘Get up, stand up’, and The Specials’ ‘Rat race’, were sung with undeniable emotion.
Lamentably there were no songs written by women that I recall. We sang ‘Shipbuilding’ of course and Leon Rosselson’s ‘Diggers song’ but passed on ‘Ding dong the witch is dead’.
I’m sorry ‘Army Dreamers’ was missing, and it remains an undersung song I think. When it was released it created a bit of a stir – which combatively continues yet on the net – as to its meaning: an attack on the military, a hymn to the common soldier, a lament for military mothers, a thinly-veiled call to pacifism?
Take your pick, but whatever meaning you choose Kate Bush’s beautiful creation is a fount of love, compassion and no little anger:
Mourning in the aerodrome,
The weather warmer, he is colder.
Four men in uniform
To carry home my little soldier.
‘BFPO’
Army dreamers
‘Mammy’s hero’
‘BFPO’
‘Mammy’s hero’
Our little army boy
Is coming home from BFPO
We’ve a bunch of purple flowers
To decorate a mammy’s hero
Mourning in the aerodrome
The weather warmer, he is colder
Four men in uniform
To carry home my little soldier
(What could he do? Should have been a rock star)
But he didn’t have the money for a guitar
(What could he do? Should have been a politician)
But he never had a proper education
(What could he do? Should have been a father)
But he never even made it to his twenties
What a waste
Army dreamers
Ooh, what a waste of
Army dreamers
Give the kid the pick of pips
And give him all your stripes and ribbons
Now he’s sitting in his hole
He might as well have buttons and bows
Ooh, what a waste of all that
Army dreamers
Army dreamers
Army dreamers, oh