Irish Blood, English Heart - by Sean Campbell (Paperback)

About the Book

The book draws on extensive archival research of print and audio-visual media as well as original interviews with the key figures, including Shane MacGowan, Johnny Marr, Kevin Rowland and C? ORiordan. Combining its assiduous research with fresh critical insights, the book offers new analyses of the musicians, as well as previously undocumented accounts of their lives and work. The book highlights the diversity and complexity of second-generation Irish identities and experience and details the diverse ways in which this generation has shaped popular music in England. Accessible and original, Irish Blood, English Heart will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of popular music, media/cultural studies, and ethnic/migration studies. It will also appeal to a wider audience of those interested in the musicians with whom it deals.

Book Synopsis

The book draws on extensive archival research of print and audio-visual media as well as original interviews with the key figures, including Shane MacGowan, Johnny Marr, Kevin Rowland and Cait O'Riordan. Combining its assiduous research with fresh critical insights, the book offers new analyses of the musicians, as well as previously undocumented accounts of their lives and work. The book highlights the diversity and complexity of second-generation Irish identities and experience and details the diverse ways in which this generation has shaped popular music in England. Accessible and original, Irish Blood, English Heart will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of popular music, media/cultural studies, and ethnic/migration studies. It will also appeal to a wider audience of those interested in the musicians with whom it deals.

Review Quotes

The role of the second-generation Irish in shaping British pop has, until now, been all but overlooked. Sean Campbell looks deeply and thought-provokingly at the second-generation Irish in-betweenness of Kevin Rowland, Shane MacGowan and, perhaps, most surprisingly, Morrissey and Johnny Marr of The Smiths, that seemingly most English of pop groups. He sheds new light on their songs and on the strategies of protest, resistance and assimilation articulated therein. Irish Blood English Heart is a constantly intriguing and often provocative book about the complex process and peculiar freedom of not being wholly belonging to one culture or another. --Sean O Hagan"

"We long ago embraced Wilde, Shaw and Sheridan, all Irish playwrights living in England, as integral to a lively British theatre culture. Until now, we have heard less about Morrissey, MacGowan, Rowland and the rest of the second-generation Irish in British popular music. Sean Campbell's enthralling study, with its direct access to these musicians, incisively opens the discussion and sets an exceptionally high standard against which all other interrogations of post-colonialism in pop culture are likely to be weighed."--Philip Chevron, The Pogues "Mojo "

This is not just a subtle and sophisticated scholarly contribution to popular music and Irish studies. It is also a fine and exciting account of how music can be used to make sense of the complexity, anxiety and exhilaration of contemporary cultural identities. --Simon Frith, Tovey Professor of Music"

""Irish Blood, English Heart" is a constantly intriguing and often provocative book about the complex process and peculiar freedom of not wholly belonging to one culture or the other."

"[The author Sean] Campbell pays close attention to lyrics and instrumentation, noting Irish influence where many maight not have otherwise seen or heard it...."Irish Blood, English Heart" provides a wonderful addition to the academic examination of both English and Irish music. It is certainly one of the more perspective-shifting pieces of writing to come along in ages."