Recently, in Dublin, Niall Stokes, editor of Ireland's music periodical Hot Press, recounted a story about a second-generation Irish musician. During the magazine's 1977 awards ceremony, the Sex Pistols' Johnny Rotten was approached by his uncle who lived locally. Studying his nephew, the most identifiable face of punk rock at the time, the visitor was heard exclaiming: ‘John boy, you've changed!’.Footnote ¹

The popular music of any country is shaped by external and internal forces. As Cloonan argues, ‘the location and regulatory strength of one's Nation-State will determine in large part the popular music environment one lives in’ (Reference Cloonan1999, p. 205). A predominantly English-speaking country with a small population relative to its major cultural producing neighbour, Ireland has a particular set of circumstances. Emigration patterns resulted in situations where second-generation Irish, like Johnny Rotten, transformed by their experiences, subsequently had a dramatic impact on both the parent and host cultures. Campbell's study forensically examines a small number of pivotal English-based musicians from Irish backgrounds to determine how they deal with the consequent ‘duality’ (p. 9) of their identities.

Irish Blood English Heart: Second Generation Irish Musicians in England presents three micro-histories combined with artefact and discourse analysis. This material is supplemented with substantial interviews with key protagonists. The book's case studies, Dexy's Midnight Runners, The Pogues and The Smiths, offer sufficient variety for Campbell's analysis to provide a diverse cross-section of strategies and career trajectories. While the book's focus on 1980s England necessarily results in sacrificing breadth for depth, this decision actually adds to the work's significance, placing it in an era of crucial relevance to the production of the Irish music industry. A comparison between U2 and The Smiths is meaningful, given that both bands debuted in the British Top Thirty singles chart in 1983. U2's status as Ireland's highest grossing rock export should be examined in the context of a specific set of contingent music industry circumstances domestically and globally. It seldom is. By opening the door on comparative national identity analysis of the guitar players from U2 and The Smiths, whose families relocated in opposite directions across the Irish Sea, Campbell isolates an area for fruitful future analysis.

The longest chapter in the book is devoted to Dexy's Midnight Runners. Campbell utilises his original interview material with the band's leader Kevin Rowland to provide new scholarship on the band. Although best remembered for ‘Come On Eileen’, with its lyrical and musical evocations of Ireland, the band's prior material was closer sonically to the brass-driven soul music of American labels like Stax Records. The band combined this sound with a polemical defence of Irish culture and found chart success in Britain, which in itself makes them worthy of attention. It is hard to disagree with Campbell's claim that they have been underrepresented in the academic and popular music literature. Thankfully this book redresses this imbalance. The emphasis on how ‘Rowland invoked and articulated Irish ethnicity’ (p. 11) allows Campbell to comprehensively analyse the career of the band in the context of this ethnicity.

While the Dexy's chapter benefits from interview material with the band's singer, the other chapters profit from material of similar quality with less exposed musicians in The Pogues and The Smiths. The perspective of female musician Cáit O'Riordan in the case of The Pogues adds considerably to the analysis of that group. The inclusion of insights from Dublin-born Pogues' member Philip Chevron also provides an extra dimension. Johnny Marr's perspective has generally been sublimated by the attention lavished on The Smiths' singer Morrissey in popular and scholarly literature. Here, his contribution is significant and insightful, and this is certainly one of the best ‘insider accounts’ this reader has encountered. Ironically (or perhaps not) the book cover features a photo of Morrissey not Marr, indicating that, like the music industry, book publishing values ‘star’ appeal. Despite the ‘celebrity’ interviews, Campbell avoids the trap of allowing musicians to represent their careers without qualification by meticulously weaving in comprehensive media discourse analysis.

The duality experienced by emigrants has received volumes of scholarly attention; Campbell's contribution is to locate this in the context of specific cultural production. The act of music-making for the artists covered here is a ‘complex cultural process that exceeds both Irish ethnicity and English assimilation’ (p. 2). This rigour is very helpful, particularly in light of the popular literature on Irish musicians which has frequently neglected social conditions and lived experience. The book examines how individual artists addressed their ‘in-betweenness’ in a variety of ways. Thus the assertion from Shane MacGowan of the Pogues: ‘you increase being Irish when you leave it’ (p. 62) and fellow Pogue Philip Chevron's statement: ‘[t]he only politics that counted in the London-Irish scene were the politics of being Irish in a place that was innately racist towards the Irish’ (p. 89) are contextualised by detailing the consequences of those identities. To cite just one example, music journalist Julie Burchill's statement ‘I hate the Irish, I think they're appalling’ (p. 25) contributed to some Irish musicians downplaying or denying their ethnic backgrounds.

Irish Blood English Heart contains a few surprises. It illustrates how a lack of solidarity was also experienced in Ireland for the second-generation musicians. ‘Plastic Paddy’ insults (p. 71) were frequently levelled against them. The book highlights vindictive attacks on The Pogues from the Irish media in particular. Unqualified solidarity did not exist among second-generation Irish musicians either. MacGowan is quoted here describing Dexy's Midnight Runners as ‘pathetic’, ‘fake’ (p. 38) and ‘bland’ (p. 41).

Having identified sources of hostility, Campbell expresses hope for a paradigm shift over time in attitudes towards the Irish in Britain (p. 156). If any characteristic is shared by the 1980s second-generation Irish musicians in his study it is defiance. Referring to the young London–Irish community Cáit O'Riordan explains ‘It's not just that you've got the same experience it's that you need some catharsis …’ (p. 72). Irish Blood English Heart makes a valuable contribution to understanding the nexus of that catharsis, artistic expression and the music industry. Given Campbell's citation of Frith's thesis that dominant forms of popular music emanate ‘at the social margins – among the poor, the migrant, the rootless’ (p. 1) these catharses from the margins deserve more well-grounded scholarly attention like this valuable book.