The Waterboys - Old England

"Old England is dying. His clothes are a dirty shade of blue and his ancient shoes worn through."

 
Album: This is the Sea [3rd album]
Genre: Rock, Indie Rock, Jangle Pop, Big Music
Album Release: September 16th 1985
Length: 5.32
Producer: Mike Scott & Mick Glossop
Vocalist: Mike Scott [age 27]
Label: Chrysalis Records

Audio


Live from Glastonbury 1986 (Audio Only)

Charts, Streams & Sales

Dutch (albums): #4
New Zealand (albums): #6
UK (albums): #37
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Credits

Bass, harmonium, percussion, saxophone

Details

• Singer Mike Scott has said that, as they were made before the band had even played a gig, the first two Waterboys records were essentially solo efforts. So in effect, this album, is the first from 'The Waterboys' as a collective.
  
• Guitarist Karl Wallinger's last album with the band. He would leave to front World Party.
• U2's Bono lists the album as one of his 10 favourite.
• The song title 'Old England' is taken from a passage by James Joyce in Ulysses (1922).
• The Clash released a similar song, 'This Is England' two weeks later. 
• This record is the last of The Waterboys 'big music' albums. Mike Scott described it as "the record on which I achieved all my youthful musical ambitions. The final, fully realised expression of the early Waterboys sound.
  
  
• The song is intended as a condemnation of Britain's so-called resurgence under Thatcher rule. It features the grumblings of a man disaffected by social change after the end of empire. He alludes to passages by famous poets and pontificates. He is dismayed by the current state of affairs and doesn't know what to do about it. He can't see a bright future for England and all around him the music howls, gradually rising to a furious crescendo as Scott decries that it's the poor, "the children with heroin eyes" who suffer while the new England is born, or as the old England dies.
  
  The song is a retort to the neoliberal economic policies of the 1980s Conservative government. They transferred money to the wealthiest parts of society hoping they would invest and create jobs for the poor in a process known as trickle down economics.

Artwork