Am i the only person who sees that this song was at least partly inspired by John Ford’s ‘The Quiet Man’? I say INSPIRED BY, not that it’s a retelling or a copy or a ripoff or anything like that, and I certainly mean no disrespect to Shane MacGowan - on the contrary, I’m a fan and believed he was brilliant from the first time I heard his music, which wasn’t that long ago, since although I was old enough to have heard The Pogues, and I’d heard OF them, from rolling stone record reviews, I completely missed the Pogues when they were young & starting out in the 80s. But I digress…
An Irishman leaves Ireland for the United States; he happens to be a boxer; Pittsburgh is mentioned as one city he fought in, against “The Champ” in fact, and Sean Thornton (John Wayne’s character in The Quiet Man) is actually “from” Pittsburgh when he arrives back in Ireland, “Home”, as it were, where he’d been born, and likely where his “father lay”; Thornton tells his new friend the minister in TQM about his life back in the states, saying he grew up next to the “slag heaps” of a steel mill in Pittsburgh, and comparing the way he grew up to the steel being manufactured there, he was a hard man living a hard life, maybe even thought of himself as a “man of steel”, but he kills a man in the ring and it really messes with his head, which is the prologue to The Quiet Man, and Sean Thornton is running away from that as the story begins; In TBOAA Shane gives Big Jim Dwyer the compliment “man of wire”, a comparison of his character to metal. And finally, this one is more to do with literature, when the writer can’t name his main character by name, he chooses a name that fits him, and another way they hint at who they are writing about is by giving them a name with the same # of syllables as their inspiration: Sean Thorn-ton; Jim Dwy-er, 3 each.
Again, Shane created/wrote his own amazing & vivid story for the song. I just think he was inspired by The Quiet Man, and gave his story a few similar details as TQM. There’s really a big fascination or interest or whatever youd like to call it, with the relationship between Ireland & the USA, even The Pogues explored it elsewhere and from a whole different angle in ‘Thousands Are Sailing’. That’s another reason I find it likely that The Quiet Man kinda worked its way into the details of ‘The Body Of An American’.
RIP Shane, and thanks! By now I suppose you know what the other side is like; that thought will add another facet to my enjoyment of all your songs exploring death. There’s a couple of them 😂.
Am i the only person who sees that this song was at least partly inspired by John Ford’s ‘The Quiet Man’? I say INSPIRED BY, not that it’s a retelling or a copy or a ripoff or anything like that, and I certainly mean no disrespect to Shane MacGowan - on the contrary, I’m a fan and believed he was brilliant from the first time I heard his music, which wasn’t that long ago, since although I was old enough to have heard The Pogues, and I’d heard OF them, from rolling stone record reviews, I completely missed the Pogues when they were young & starting out in the 80s. But I digress…
An Irishman leaves Ireland for the United States; he happens to be a boxer; Pittsburgh is mentioned as one city he fought in, against “The Champ” in fact, and Sean Thornton (John Wayne’s character in The Quiet Man) is actually “from” Pittsburgh when he arrives back in Ireland, “Home”, as it were, where he’d been born, and likely where his “father lay”; Thornton tells his new friend the minister in TQM about his life back in the states, saying he grew up next to the “slag heaps” of a steel mill in Pittsburgh, and comparing the way he grew up to the steel being manufactured there, he was a hard man living a hard life, maybe even thought of himself as a “man of steel”, but he kills a man in the ring and it really messes with his head, which is the prologue to The Quiet Man, and Sean Thornton is running away from that as the story begins; In TBOAA Shane gives Big Jim Dwyer the compliment “man of wire”, a comparison of his character to metal. And finally, this one is more to do with literature, when the writer can’t name his main character by name, he chooses a name that fits him, and another way they hint at who they are writing about is by giving them a name with the same # of syllables as their inspiration: Sean Thorn-ton; Jim Dwy-er, 3 each.
Again, Shane created/wrote his own amazing & vivid story for the song. I just think he was inspired by The Quiet Man, and gave his story a few similar details as TQM. There’s really a big fascination or interest or whatever youd like to call it, with the relationship between Ireland & the USA, even The Pogues explored it elsewhere and from a whole different angle in ‘Thousands Are Sailing’. That’s another reason I find it likely that The Quiet Man kinda worked its way into the details of ‘The Body Of An American’.
RIP Shane, and thanks! By now I suppose you know what the other side is like; that thought will add another facet to my enjoyment of all your songs exploring death. There’s a couple of them 😂.