Brass Band Music
This song has its genesis in a verse by Irish poet Louis MacNeice. His semi-nonsense Bagpipe Music carried a pointed subtext about urbanisation and the loss of traditional life in Scotland's Highlands and Islands in the 1930s. According to MacNeice, the rhythms of the stanzas are supposed to invoke the sound of bagpipes, hence its name.
Leon adapted it in the 1960s, changing the "bagpipes" for "brass" (money) and shifting the lyric into a comment on the way everything in modern life seems to be valued purely in financial terms. The debt to MacNeice is clear when we compare Leon's lines with the original, where we find verses such as "John MacDonald found a corpse / put it under the sofa / Waited till it came to life / and hit it with a poker / Sold its eyes for souvenirs / sold its blood for whiskey / Kept its bones for dumb-bells / to use when he was fifty."
Leon adapted it in the 1960s, changing the "bagpipes" for "brass" (money) and shifting the lyric into a comment on the way everything in modern life seems to be valued purely in financial terms. The debt to MacNeice is clear when we compare Leon's lines with the original, where we find verses such as "John MacDonald found a corpse / put it under the sofa / Waited till it came to life / and hit it with a poker / Sold its eyes for souvenirs / sold its blood for whiskey / Kept its bones for dumb-bells / to use when he was fifty."
"Anyone who has read Louis MacNeice's Bagpipe Music may notice affinities with that poem. The brass in the title refers, of course, to money." - LR (Look Here (songbook), 1968)
"Louis MacNeice's poem 'Bagpipe Music' was obviously the model for this song, written very early in my songwriting 'career' when the words flowed more easily and technical control was less in evidence. Rachel Carson's book The Silent Spring had not long been published and environmental concerns were starting to emerge." - LR (Turning Silence Into Song (sleevenotes), 2004)
“I think this song was sparked off when I caught a glimpse of this headline in the London ‘Evening Standard’: ‘Spring in the City’. I remember thinking, so that’s where it went.” - LR (sleevenotes to The World Turned Upside Down (CD box set), p15)
"Louis MacNeice's poem 'Bagpipe Music' was obviously the model for this song, written very early in my songwriting 'career' when the words flowed more easily and technical control was less in evidence. Rachel Carson's book The Silent Spring had not long been published and environmental concerns were starting to emerge." - LR (Turning Silence Into Song (sleevenotes), 2004)
“I think this song was sparked off when I caught a glimpse of this headline in the London ‘Evening Standard’: ‘Spring in the City’. I remember thinking, so that’s where it went.” - LR (sleevenotes to The World Turned Upside Down (CD box set), p15)
Recordings
Version 1 (1966)
Version 2 (1970)
Version 3 (1975)
Version 4 (2004) With Martin Carthy
Version 2 (1970)
Version 3 (1975)
Version 4 (2004) With Martin Carthy