Give Ireland Back to the Irish

Following the release of his band Wings' debut album, Wild Life, in December 1971, Paul McCartney spent Christmas and New Year in New York visiting the family of his wife and bandmate Linda. The visit also allowed McCartney to begin rebuilding his relationship with John Lennon, his former writing partner in the Beatles,[4] after the pair had spent the year attacking each other through the music press and in their respective musical releases.[5][6] 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 Irishman Henry McCullough, on lead guitar,[7] who joined on the recommendation of the band's guitarist and occasional singer, Denny Laine.[8][9]

On 29 January, McCartney returned to New York,[10] where, during another meeting with Lennon, they agreed to end their public feud.[11] The following day, McCartney wrote the song "Give Ireland Back to the Irish" in response to the news that British troops in Derry in Northern Ireland had just shot dead thirteen Civil Rights Marchers and wounded many others, as their protest march turned into a riot because of the British Army's confrontational approach.[12][13] With strong familial connections to Ireland on his late mother's side, McCartney was appalled at Britain's role in what became known as Bloody Sunday.[14][15] According to his biographer Tom Doyle, McCartney was inspired also by being around Lennon and the vibrant and politically radical mood of Greenwich Village, where Lennon and Yoko Ono were living.[13] McCartney later recalled: "I wasn't really into protest songs – John had done that – but this time I felt that I had to write something, to use my art to protest."[16]

Before leaving New York for London, McCartney arranged a session with Wings to rush-record "Give Ireland Back to the Irish".[17] The band agreed to release the song as a single, although author Howard Sounes suggests that McCullough, as an Ulster Protestant, may have had his misgivings.[14] The track was recorded on 1 February at EMI's Abbey Road Studios with engineer Tony Clark. The band then moved to Apple Studios, where the song was mixed and possibly completed.[18] This marked the first time that McCartney had worked in the Beatles' Apple Studios since the group's break-up in April 1970.[19][nb 1]

The B-side of the single, "Give Ireland Back to the Irish (Version)", is an instrumental version of the song.[23][24] 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.[23] McCartney took the rhythm section parts from the A-side[19] and overdubbed lead guitar lines (played by himself and McCullough) and an Irish penny whistle.[23] Seeking to emulate the low-fidelity quality of Jamaican reggae singles, where instrumental dubs were commonly used as B-sides,[23] McCartney gave the track a muddy-sounding mix, with barely any high-end sound.[19]

In the United Kingdom, the song was banned by the BBC, and subsequently by Radio Luxembourg and the Independent Television Authority (ITA).[25] BBC Radio 1 DJ John 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."[26]

McCartney later said of the song in the context of the 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].[27]

Wings played "Give Ireland Back to the Irish" throughout their first concert tour, which consisted of a series of unannounced shows at universities in England and Wales over 9–23 February.[28][29] The BBC banned the song while Wings were in York,[30] where they played at Goodricke College on 10 February.[31] 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."[32]

Writing about the tour for the NME, 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".[33] When asked by a reporter from The Guardian whether the shows were fundraisers for the Irish Republican Army, McCartney declined to comment, beyond saying: "We're simply playing for the people."[30][nb 2] Guitarist Henry McCullough's involvement with the song led to his brother Samuel being beaten up in an Irish pub,[34] in Kilburn, an area of north-west London that was popular among Irish expatriates.[35]

The "Give Ireland Back to the Irish" single was released by Apple Records on 25 February 1972 in the United Kingdom (as Apple R 5936) and 28 February in the United States (as Apple 1847).[36][37] It was Wings' debut single release, after the cancellation of their scheduled single from Wild Life, a reggae-style cover of "Love Is Strange".[38] Further to McCartney's refusal to include the Apple logo on the LP face labels for Wild Life,[39] five green Irish shamrocks appeared on the single's customised labels.[40][nb 3] In the US, the song lyrics were reproduced on the yellow paper sleeve enclosing the disc.[23]

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 on ABC News in the United States.[42][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."[14][35] 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 the Television Act, by which the organisation was legally bound.[36]

"Give Ireland Back to the Irish" peaked at number 16 on the UK Singles Chart,[43] and number 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States.[44] According to author Bruce 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."[45] On the other US singles charts, published by Cash Box and Record World, the single peaked at number 38 and number 36, respectively.[45][46][nb 5]

The single reached number 1 in Ireland and in Spain. McCartney attributed the song's success in Spain to its popularity among Basque separatists.[49] The A-side was included as a bonus track on the 1993 Paul McCartney Collection CD reissue of Wild Life.[50] In 2018, footage of rehearsals for the song, at the McCartneys' home and at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London before the 1972 university tour, was included on the DVD in the remastered deluxe edition of Wild Life.

As a political statement, the song was out of character for McCartney[51][52] and attracted suspicion from contemporary reviewers. Some writers accused him of attempting to project a less wholesome image by aligning himself with British countercultural thinking,[53] as a means of gaining credibility for his faltering career after the Beatles.[49] Another widely held suspicion was that McCartney was attempting to impress John Lennon, who had been vocal in his support for Irish republicanism.[54][55] In a review of Lennon's 1972 album Some Time in New York City, which included two political songs about Ireland, Richard Williams of Melody 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."[56] Writing for Rough 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."[57]

NME critic Bob 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".[54] Writing in Record 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 for George Harrison's 1973 album Living in the Material World.[58]

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 of Wild Life.[19] When compiling the Wingspan 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's use of violence.[16] Kevin Rowland, a songwriter of Irish parentage, applauded the release in a 2020 interview: "In this club, they normally played soul music, which you had to learn how to dance to, if you wanted to dance with a girl. And suddenly ‘Give Ireland Back to the Irish’ comes on at the end of the night. I told my parents about it, because the room erupted. I realised everyone there was like me: second-generation Irish."[59]

• Paul McCartney – lead vocals, bass guitar
• Linda McCartney – backing vocals, RMI Electra Piano
• Denny Laine – backing vocals, electric guitars
• Henry McCullough – electric guitars
• Denny Seiwell – drums
• uncredited – handclaps[23]