# Songs About Historic Events



## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

What are some of your favorites? The subject can be a minor or major historical happening or event. A few of mine are:

The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down by The Band
John Wilkes Booth by Tony Rice, written by Mary Chapin Carpenter 
More Trouble Every Day by The Mothers


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## Xenophiliu (Jan 2, 2022)

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

We were all wounded at Wounded Knee by Redbone
Goodnight Saigon by Billy Joel

and of course

Rasputin by Boney M


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Ohio by Neil Young


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

Insurrection Song (January 6th) - Grant Peeples


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## Jay (Jul 21, 2014)

"High Water Everywhere" - Charley Patton
"Ballad of John and Yoko" - Beatles
"Mississippi Goddam" - Nina Simone


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

_For What It's Worth - _Buffalo Springfield.
_Gimme Shelter_ - The Rolling Stones.
_Boston Tea Party_ - The Sensational Alex Harvey Band.

Keith Richards has occasionally downplayed the civil unrest/Vietnam War angle to _Gimme Shelter_ - OK, the group were hardly likely to get behind the barricades themselves, but it certainly seems like a commentary on those turbulent times to me.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

The Battle of Epping Forest by Genesis
Through the Barricades by Spandau Ballet
Biko by Peter Gabriel


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

1812 Overture
Wellington's Victory
Victory At Sea


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## progmatist (Apr 3, 2021)

That way overplayed Smoke on the Water. Recounting the story of Deep Purple having to record an album in a vacant hotel.


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## Xenophiliu (Jan 2, 2022)

Sunday Bloody Sunday by U2


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

Beethoven/trad: The Massacre of Glencoe WoO 156: 10
Loewe: Prinz Eugen, der edle Ritter (actually about the composition of a folk song that is about the battle of Beograd 1717)
Schumann: Die (beiden) Grenadiere (defeat of the Grande Armée in Russia)
Farina: Birmingham Sunday (Klan bombing a church in Birmingham, Alabama, Sep. 15th 1963)


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Haydn - The Battle of the Nile


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## Shaughnessy (Dec 31, 2020)

Acadian Driftwood - The Band - about the expulsion of the Acadians during the rivalry between the French and the British over what is now Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and most of Maine.


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## progmatist (Apr 3, 2021)

The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia by Vicki Lawrence

Many of Shostakovich's Symphonies are about events in Russian history. As is Khachaturian's Second.


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

Neanderthal Man by Hotlegs


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Antarctica - Al Stewart


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## Jay (Jul 21, 2014)

Alice's Restaurant - Arlo Guthrie
Cortez the Killer - Neil Young
Desolation Row - Zimmerman


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## VoiceFromTheEther (Aug 6, 2021)




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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee - Gila


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

progmatist said:


> That way overplayed Smoke on the Water. Recounting the story of Deep Purple having to record an album in a vacant hotel.


I thought it was about a fire at The Edgewater Hotel here in Seattle? Or am I mixing it up with "The Mudshark"?


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

According to legend it was Montreux and Lake Geneva, not Seattle and Lake Washington (or Union). But I have the impression that that fire was made (somewhat) famous by the song, not a song about a famous fire


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

30 Seconds Over Tokyo - Pere Ubu.
Black Day In July - Gordon Lightfoot
Both springs to mind


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

Please, Hello (along with most (all?) of the score of _Pacific Overtures - _Sondheim (Someone in a Tree from that show is about history.)
The score of _Assassins_ - Sondheim
Also the scores of _Hamilton _and _1776._


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

The song, "Common Ground" by neo-prog band, IQ from their 1986 album, "Nomzamo" is about the infamous, WWI, *Battle of the Somme*. One of the bloodiest battles in all of history.

Coincidently, it started on July1st, 1916.

Great, emotional and tasteful guitar solo at about 4:30.


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

In 1991, after a bit of a hiatus, prog band, Camel released an excellent album, "Dust and Dreams", based on the "Grapes of Wrath", and the Great Depression, the dust bowl, move westward to California, etc.


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

Simon Moon said:


> One of the bloodiest battles in all of history.


Ah, "The War To End All Wars." The savagery and misery WWI engendered made further war impossible to consider.

For about twenty years.


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

*Hiroshima - Utopia*


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## Shaughnessy (Dec 31, 2020)

Whatever the merits that this tune may or may not have, it certainly does lyrically define a specific time, place, event, and the personalities that they were intertwined with - 

Billy Joel - We Didn't Start the Fire

Joseph Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser and Prokofiev
Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc
Roy Cohn, Juan Peron, Toscanini, Dacron
Dien Bien Phu falls, "Rock Around the Clock"

Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn's got a winning team
Davy Crockett, Peter Pan, Elvis Presley, Disneyland
Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Krushchev
Princess Grace, Peyton Place, Trouble in the Suez


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

jegreenwood said:


> Please, Hello (along with most (all?) of the score of _*Pacific Overtures* - _Sondheim (Someone in a Tree from that show is about history.)
> The score of _*Assassins*_ - Sondheim
> Also the scores of _*Hamilton* _and _*1776*._


Rather excellent examples of Musical Theatre works based on history, with *Assassins, Hamilton*, and *1776* being just *American History*. 

So, just off the top of my head, there's 

*Rags* (a fictional story loosely based around the events that transpired around the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, in which more that a hundred women died, as result of them being locked in the factory).

*Fiorello!*, based around the very popular New York City mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia (who founded the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in 1936).

*Newsies* is the tale of child newspaper sellers who went on strike in 1899 for better pay. Although the conditions and components of the story were real, a lot of the musical exaggerated much of the actual events.

But you mentioned *Pacific Overtures* (which I got to see, presented by the East West Players in Los Angeles). 

So . . . There's 

*The Sound Of Music, 
Evita, 
The King and I
Six *(yeah, the 6 Wives of Henry VIII)
*Allegiance* (inspired by George Takei's true-life experiences, including being interred in a POW camp as a child during WWII)

I'm pretty sure there are dozens more . . .


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Another good song inspired by WWI - _Butcher's Tale (Western Front 1914)_ by The Zombies. Rod Argent's use of a wheezing harmonium gives the impression of a soldier's laboured breathing (possibly through a gas mask, although I might be on the wrong track here as poison gas wasn't used until 1915).


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Zappa - Dickie's Such An [email protected]


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

"Wreck of the Old 97" - Vernon Dalhart, and hundreds of others.


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## Jay (Jul 21, 2014)

A Day In The Life - Beatles
New Speedway Boogie - the Dead


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Truckin' by the Grateful Dead


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## progmatist (Apr 3, 2021)

Bastille Day by Rush


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## Nate Miller (Oct 24, 2016)

there's an old Appalachian fiddle tune called "the Eighth of January"

it commemorates Andrew Jackson beating the living daylights out of the British at New Orleans


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

The Beatles - _Taxman. _

In the mid-1960s the chancellor of the Labour government Denis Healey became the businessman's bogeyman by hiking the upper income tax limit up to 95%. Even Leftie Lennon had voted Conservative in the 1966 election in protest. 

_"And my advice to those who die - declare the pennies on your eyes."_


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## Shaughnessy (Dec 31, 2020)

Rolling Stones - Sympathy for the Devil 

_Stuck around St. Petersburg
When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed Tsar and his ministers
Anastasia screamed in vain

I rode a tank
Held a general's rank
When the blitzkrieg raged
And the bodies stank_


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