| "Give Ireland Back to the Irish" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Single byWings | ||||
| B-side | "Give Ireland Back to the Irish (Version)" | |||
| Released | 18 February 1972 (UK)28 February 1972 (USA) | |||
| Genre | Rock,protest song[1] | |||
| Length | 3:42 | |||
| Label | Apple | |||
| Songwriters | Paul McCartney,Linda McCartney | |||
| Producer | Paul McCartney | |||
| Wings singles chronology | ||||
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"Give Ireland Back to the Irish" is the debut single by the British–American rock bandWings that was released in February 1972. It was written byPaul McCartney and his wifeLinda in response to the events ofBloody Sunday, on 30 January that year, when British troops inNorthern Ireland shot dead thirteencivil rights protestors. Keen to voice their outrage at the killings, Wings recorded the track two days later atEMI Studios in London. It was the band's first song to include Northern Irish guitaristHenry McCullough.
"Give Ireland Back to the Irish" was banned from broadcast in the UK by theBBC and other organisations, and was overlooked by the majority of radio programmers in the United States. The single peaked at number 16 on theUK Singles Chart and number 21 on the USBillboard Hot 100, but topped theIrish Singles Chart for one week in March 1972.[2] Having never released an overtly political song before, McCartney was condemned by the British media for his seemingly pro-IRA stance on Northern Ireland.[3] As with Wings' then-recent album,Wild Life, the song was also maligned by many music critics.[4][5] These writers found McCartney's lyrics overly simplistic and viewed the single as an attempt by him to gain credibility for his new band on the back of a pressing political issue.
Wings performed "Give Ireland Back to the Irish" throughout their February 1972tour of English and Welsh universities. The track first appeared on an album in 1993, when it was included as a bonus track on the CD reissue ofWild Life.
Following the release of his bandWings' debut album,Wild Life, in December 1971,Paul McCartney spent Christmas and New Year in New York visiting the family of his wife and bandmateLinda. The visit also allowed McCartney to begin rebuilding his relationship withJohn Lennon, his former writing partner inthe Beatles,[6] after the pair had spent the year attacking each other through the music press and in their respective musical releases.[7][8] The McCartneys then returned to the UK, intent on preparing to launch Wings as a live act. In January 1972, Wings began rehearsing in London with a new fifth member, Northern IrishmanHenry McCullough, on lead guitar,[9] who joined on the recommendation of the band's guitarist and occasional singer,Denny Laine.[10][11]
On 29 January, McCartney returned to New York,[12] where, during another meeting with Lennon, they agreed to end their public feud.[13] The following day, McCartney wrote the song "Give Ireland Back to the Irish" in response to the news that British troops inDerry inNorthern Ireland had just shot dead thirteencivil rights marchers, who represented the Catholic minority, and wounded many others during a protest march.[14][15] With strong familial connections to Ireland on his late mother's side, McCartney was appalled at Britain's role in what became known asBloody Sunday,[16][17] and penned his protest song the very next day. McCartney later recalled: "I wasn't really intoprotest songs – John had done that – but this time I felt that I had to write something, to use my art to protest."[18]
Two days after Bloody Sunday, McCartney arranged a session with Wings to rush-record "Give Ireland Back to the Irish", turning up at EMI Studios unannounced.[19] The band agreed to release the song as a single, although authorHoward Sounes suggests that McCullough, as anUlster Protestant, may have had his misgivings.[16] The track was recorded on 1 February atEMI'sAbbey Road Studios with engineer Tony Clark. On February 3, the band then moved to Island Studios, where final overdubs were added and the song was mixed.[19] The track was mastered at Apple Studios. This marked the first time that McCartney had worked in the Beatles' Apple Studios sincethe group's break-up in April 1970.[20][nb 1]
TheB-side of the single, "Give Ireland Back to the Irish (Version)", is an instrumental version of the song.[24][25] McCartney used this rather than another song since, anticipating problems over the political content, he thought that if disc jockeys decided to favour the B-side to avoid the lyrics being heard, they would still have to mention the track's title.[24] McCartney took therhythm section parts from the A-side[20] and overdubbed lead guitar lines (played by himself and McCullough) and an Irishpenny whistle.[24] Seeking to emulate the low-fidelity quality of Jamaicanreggae singles, where instrumental dubs were commonly used as B-sides,[24] McCartney gave the track a muddy-sounding mix, with barely any high-end sound.[20]
In the United Kingdom, the song wasbanned by the BBC, and subsequently byRadio Luxembourg and theIndependent Television Authority (ITA).[26][27]BBC Radio 1 DJJohn Peel was the only member of those organisations who spoke out in support of McCartney, saying: "The act of banning it is a much stronger political act than the contents of the record itself. It's just one man's opinion."[28]
McCartney later said of the song in the context ofthe Troubles in Northern Ireland:
From our point of view, it was the first time people questioned what we were doing in Ireland. It was so shocking. I wrote "Give Ireland Back to the Irish", we recorded it and I was promptly 'phoned by the Chairman of EMI,Sir Joseph Lockwood, explaining that they wouldn't release it. He thought it was too inflammatory. I told him that I felt strongly about it and they had to release it. He said, "Well it'll be banned", and of course it was. I knew "Give Ireland Back to the Irish" wasn't an easy route, but it just seemed to me to be the time [to say something].[29]
Wings played "Give Ireland Back to the Irish" throughout their first concert tour, which consisted of aseries of unannounced shows at universities in England and Wales over 9–23 February.[30][31] The BBC banned the song while Wings were in York,[32] where they played atGoodricke College on 10 February.[33] In its issue dated 19 February,Melody Maker reported McCartney's response to the ban: "Up them! I think the BBC should be highly praised, preventing the youth from hearing my opinions."[34]
Writing about the tour for theNME, Geoff Liptrot said the band's performances were generally good, but the song "grated a little with its harsh, sing-song chorus immediately conjuring up visions of a drunk rolling along a street bellowing at the top of his voice".[35] When asked by a reporter fromThe Guardian whether the shows were fundraisers for theProvisional Irish Republican Army, McCartney declined to comment, beyond saying: "We're simply playing for the people."[32][nb 2] Guitarist Henry McCullough's involvement with the song led to his brother Samuel being beaten up in an Irish pub,[36] inKilburn, an area of north-west London that was popular amongIrish expatriates.[37]
The "Give Ireland Back to the Irish" single was released byApple Records on 15 February 1972[19] in the United Kingdom (as Apple R 5936) and 28 February in the United States (as Apple 1847).[38][39] It was Wings' debut single release, after the cancellation of their scheduled single fromWild Life, a reggae-style cover of "Love Is Strange".[40] Further to McCartney's refusal to include the Apple logo on the LP face labels forWild Life,[41] five green Irishshamrocks appeared on the single's customised labels.[42][nb 3] In the US, the song lyrics were reproduced on the yellow paper sleeve enclosing the disc.[24]
On 7 March, Wings were filmed rehearsing "Give Ireland Back to the Irish" at the McCartneys'St John's Wood home in London for a segment onABC News in the United States.[44][nb 4] McCartney told the ABC reporter that he did not plan to focus on politics in his work, but that "on this one occasion I think the British government overstepped the mark and showed themselves to be more of a sort of oppressive regime than I ever believed them to be."[16][37] A 30-second television advertisement for the single was produced by Apple but never broadcast by the ITA, who cited the stipulation regarding "political controversy" in theTelevision Act, by which the organisation was legally bound.[38]
"Give Ireland Back to the Irish" peaked at number 16 on theUK Singles Chart,[45] and number 21 on theBillboardHot 100 in the United States.[46] According to authorBruce Spizer, listeners there felt alienated by McCartney's political stance and "Airplay was so marginal that the song, for all practical purposes, was also banned by American radio."[47] On the other US singles charts, published byCash Box andRecord World, the single peaked at number 38 and number 36, respectively.[47][48][nb 5]
The single reached number 1 in Ireland and in Spain. McCartney attributed the song's success in Spain to its popularity amongBasque nationalists.[51] The A-side was included as a bonus track on the 1993Paul McCartney Collection CD reissue ofWild Life.[52] In 2018, footage of rehearsals for the song, at the McCartneys' home and at theInstitute of Contemporary Arts in London before the 1972 university tour, was included on the DVD in the remastered deluxe edition ofWild Life.[53][54]
The song and its instrumental version were also included onThe 7" Singles Box in 2022.[55]
As a political statement, "Give Ireland Back to the Irish" was out of character for McCartney[56][57] and attracted suspicion from contemporary reviewers. Some writers accused him of attempting to project a less wholesome image by aligning himself with Britishcountercultural thinking,[58] as a means of gaining credibility for his faltering career after the Beatles.[51] Another widely held suspicion was that McCartney was attempting to impress John Lennon, who had been vocal in his support forIrish republicanism.[59][60] In a review of Lennon's 1972 albumSome Time in New York City, which included two political songs about Ireland,Richard Williams ofMelody Maker wrote: "how sad that the only thing in years on which he and Paul have agreed should have drawn from both their very worst work. Neither 'The Luck of the Irish' nor 'Give Ireland Back to the Irish' can do anything but increase the bigotry of the already ignorant."[61] Writing forRough Guides in 2003, music critic Chris Ingham said of the Wings single: "The record managed to irritate everyone, not least for its naive, simplistic attitude to a complex situation … but also for its musical mediocrity. The BBC banned the record, granting it a notoriety disproportionate to its importance."[62] On the other hand, upon the single releaseCash Box called it "a socially and pop-conscious tune which will hardly need anyone's luck to get to the top."[63]
NME criticBob Woffinden described "Give Ireland Back to the Irish" as "self-conscious, awkward" in the mould of "Lennon's least successful diatribes". He added that, although Lennon would soon "do far worse", McCartney's song "gave the appearance of being an exploitation single every bit as much as 'tribute' singles that are rushed out in the wake of the death of a star name".[59] Writing inRecord Collector in 2001,Peter Doggett said that McCartney's and Lennon's "ill-fated" musical statements on Irish politics, following on from the pair's public sparring in the music press throughout 1971, "combined to tarnish" the four ex-Beatles' standing among music critics in the UK and so contributed to an unjustly harsh critical reception there forGeorge Harrison's 1973 albumLiving in the Material World.[64]
Authors Chip Madinger and Mark Easter describe the song's lyrics as "clumsy (yet well-intentioned)" and comment that McCartney fully exploited the "'hip' cachet" resulting from the radio ban in his print advertising for the release. They view the song as an unwise choice for Wings' first single, given the relative failure ofWild Life.[20] When compiling theWingspan greatest hits album in 2001, McCartney had intended to include "Give Ireland Back to the Irish". Following a terrorist incident in London that year, however, he acceded to EMI's request to omit the song, recognising that its inclusion might be viewed as a gesture of support for the IRA.[18]
"Give Ireland Back to the Irish" and McCartney's political stance formed one of the Beatles-related parodies included onNational Lampoon magazine's 1972 albumRadio Dinner. In the sketch, an Irishman attempts to sing the song in a pub but is soon silenced by a blaze of gunfire.[65]
SingerMorrissey, an Englishman of Irish descent like McCartney, commented, "He also once sang 'Give Ireland back to the Irish,' which was directed at theQueen. Well, she refused, and she still refuses, yet Sir Paul gives her the thumbs up!"[66]
| Chart (1972) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| AustralianGo-Set National Top 40[67] | 18 |
| CanadianRPM Top 100[68] | 46 |
| Irish Singles Chart[69] | 1 |
| JapaneseOricon Singles Chart | 31 |
| Spanish Singles Chart[70] | 1 |
| UK Singles Chart[71] | 16 |
| USBillboardHot 100[72] | 21 |
| USCash Box Top 100[48] | 38 |
| USRecord World Singles Chart[48] | 36 |
