Bibliographie
BUTLER David and KAVANAGH Dennis (eds.), The British General Election of 1997, London: Macmillan Press, 1997.
CLARKE Martin, Radiohead: Hysterical and Useless [1999], London: Plexus Publishing Limited, 2010.
CLEMENT Guillaume, “Activism and Environmentalism in British Rock: the Case of Radiohead”, Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique, vol. XXII, n° 3, 2017, <http://rfcb.revues.org/1499>, accessed on July 25, 2017.
DOHERTY James, Radiohead: The Stories Behind Every Song [2002], London: Carlton Books, 2012.
FONS Jean-Philippe (ed.), Les Années John Major, 1990-1997, Toulon : Observatoire de la société britannique/Université de Toulon, 2009.
FOOTMAN Tim, Radiohead – Welcome to the Machine: OK Computer and the Death of the Classic Album, New Malden: Chrome Dreams, 2007.
GITHENS-MAZER Jonathan, “Locating agency in collective political behaviour: nationalism, social movements and individual mobilisation”, Politics, vol. 28, n° 1, 2008, 41-49.
GREENE Andy, “Radiohead’s Rhapsody in Gloom: ‘OK Computer’ 20 Years Later”, Rolling Stone, 31 May 2017, <http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/exclusive-thom-yorke-and-radiohead-on-ok-computer-w484570>, accessed on September 5, 2017.
GRIFFITHS Dai, OK Computer, London: Continuum Books, 2004.
GRIFFITHS Dai, “Public Schoolboy Music: Debating Radiohead”, in Joseph Tate (ed.), The Music and Art of Radiohead, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005, 159-167.
HARRIS John, The Last Party: Britpop, Blair, and the Demise of English Rock [2003], London: Harper Perennial, 2004.
IRVIN Jim. “Thom Yorke tells Jim Irvin how OK Computer was done”, Mojo, July 1997, <https://citizeninsane.eu/media/uk/mojo/03/pt_1997-07_mojo.htm>, accessed on August 20, 2017.
LAING Dave, “Resistance and Protest”, in John Shepherd, David Horn, Dave Laing, Paul Oliver and Peter Wicke (eds.), Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, London: Continuum, 2003, 345.
LEIGH David and VULLIAMY Ed (eds.), Sleaze: The Corruption of Parliament, London: Fourth Estate, 1997.
LYNSKEY Dorian, 33 Revolutions per Minute: A History of Protest Songs, London: Faber and Faber, 2010.
MacEWEN Malcolm, The Greening of a Red, London: Pluto Press, 1991.
McSMITH Andy, No Such Thing as Society: A History of Britain in the 1980s, London: Constable and Robinson, 2011.
McKAY George, Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance since the Sixties, London: Verso, 1996.
MOORE Allan F. and ANWAR Ibrahim, “‘Sounds Like Teen Spirit’: Identifying Radiohead’s Idiolect”, in Joseph Tate (ed.), The Music and Art of Radiohead, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005, 139-158.
OLDHAM James, “The rise and rise of the rom empire”, New Musical Express, 14 June 1997, 54.
PERRYMAN Mark (ed.), The Blair Agenda, London, Lawrence & Wishart, 1997.
PLOWS Alexandra, “Activist Networks in the UK: Mapping the Build-Up to the Anti-Globalization Movement”, in John Carter and David Morland (eds.), Anti-capitalist Britain, Cheltenham: New Clarion Press, 2004, 95-113.
POWERS SAYEED Richard, 1997: The Future that Never Happened, London: Zed Books, 2017.
RACHEL Daniel, Walls Come Tumbling Down: The Music and Politics of Rock Against Racism, 2 Tone and Red Wedge, London: Picador, 2016.
RED-GREEN STUDY GROUP, What On Earth Is To Be Done, Manchester: Red-Green Study Group, 1995.
RENTOUL John, Tony Blair: Prime Minister, London: Warner Books, 2001.
ROSE Phil, Radiohead and the Global Movement for Change: “Pragmatism not Idealism”, London: Fairleigh Press, 2016.
SELDON Anthony, Major: A Political Life [1997], London: Phoenix, 1998.
STREET John, Music and Politics, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012.
STREET John, “Rock, Pop and Politics”, in Simon Frith, Will Straw and John Street (eds.), Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock, Cambridge: CUP, 2001, 243-255.
SUTHERLAND Mark, “Return of the Mac”, Melody Maker, 31 May 1997, 47.
THOMPSON Helen, “Economic Policy under Thatcher and Major”, in Steve Ludlam and Martin J. Smith (eds.), Contemporary British Conservatism, London: Macmillan, 1996, 166-184.
TRANMER Jeremy, “Spouting Slogans for the Sandinistas? The Clash and International Solidarity”, in Samuel Cohen and James Peacock (eds.), The Clash Takes on the World: Transnational Perspectives on the Only Band that Matters, London: Bloomsbury, 2017, 147-164.
TRANMER Jeremy, “Popular Music and Left-Wing Scottishness”, Etudes Ecossaises, n° 18, 2016, 133-150.
TURNER Alwyn W., A Classless Society: Britain in the 1990s, London: Aurum Press, 2013.
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Notes
For an overall history of the decade, see Alwyn W. Turner, A Classless Society: Britain in the 1990s, London: Aurum Press, 2013. See also Jean-Philippe Fons (ed.), Les années John Major, 1990-1997, Toulon: Observatoire de la société britannique/Université de Toulon, 2009, and Richard Power Sayeed, 1997: The Year that Never Happened, London: Zed Books, 2017.
The main aim of the ERM was to limit variations in the exchange rates between European currencies with a view to the creation of a single currency.
See John Harris, The Last Party: Britpop, Blair, And The Demise of English Rock, London: Harper Perennial, 2004 [2003].
The close relationship between Britpop and Labour was not lost on the press. See for example Nicholas Barber, “What’s the story? Mourning Tories!”, Independent, 3 November 1996, <http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/whats-the-story-mourning-tories-1350545.html>, accessed on August 17, 2017. The headline of the article is a pun on the title of Oasis’s album (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?.
Guillaume Clément, “Activism and Environmentalism in British Rock: the Case of Radiohead”, Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique, XXII-3, 2017. <http://rfcb.revues.org/1499>, accessed on July 25, 2017.
Although the members of the band did admit to being pleased about the Conservatives’ defeat in the 1997 election. Mark Sutherland, “Return of the Mac”, Melody Maker, 31 May 1997, 47.
Dai Griffiths, OK Computer, London: Continuum Books, 2004, 59.
There is also an autobiographical element to these lines. During their American tour in 1996, members of the band had felt that they were charming people to promote their music in the same way that politicians deal with voters in order to “sell” the policies of their parties. Mark Sutherland, “Return of the Mac”, op. cit., 47.
David Cavanagh, “Communication Breakdown”, Uncut, February 2007, <https://citizeninsane.eu/media/uk/uncut/07/pt_2007-02_uncut.htm>, accessed on August 30, 2017.
David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh (eds.), The British General Election of 1997, London: Macmillan Press, 1997, 22.
It has been suggested that Yorke’s memories of the protests against Margaret Thatcher’s Poll Tax in 1990 influenced this line. Phil Rose, Radiohead and the Global Movement for Change: “Pragmatism not Idealism”, London: Fairleigh Press, 2016, 121.
Jim Irvin, “Thom Yorke tells Jim Irvin how OK Computer was done”, Mojo, July 1997, <https://citizeninsane.eu/media/uk/mojo/03/pt_1997-07_mojo.htm>, accessed on August 16, 2017.
Dorian Lynskey, 33 Revolutions per Minute: A History of Protest Songs, London: Faber and Faber, 2010, 634.
Tim Footman, Radiohead, Welcome to the Machine: OK Computer and the Death of the Classic Album, New Malden: Chrome Dreams, 2007, 145.
Songs such as “Give Peace a Chance” and “Power to the People” by John Lennon spring immediately to mind.
Guillaume Clément, “Activism and Environmentalism in British Rock: the Case of Radiohead”, op. cit.
Tim Footman, Radiohead, Welcome to the Machine: OK Computer and the Death of the Classic Album, op. cit., 94.
Dave Laing, “Resistance and protest” in John Shepherd, David Horn, Dave Laing, Paul Oliver and Peter Wicke (eds.), Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, London: Continuum, 2003, 345.
Idem.
Tim Footman, Radiohead, Welcome to the Machine: OK Computer and the Death of the Classic Album, op. cit., 145.
This is one of the main themes of Simon Frith, Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music, Oxford: OUP, 1996.
James Oldham, “The rise and rise of the rom empire”, New Musical Express, 14 June 1997, 54.
Although it could be argued that the IMF imposed a neo-liberal order, one of the main beneficiaries of which was multinational companies.
Looking back on this period, the band admitted hating Britpop, particularly as they thought it was musically backward-looking and too closely reminiscent of the music of the 1960s. Andy Greene, “Radiohead’s Rhapsody in Gloom: ‘OK Computer’ 20 Years Later”, Rolling Stone, 31 May 2017, <http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/exclusive-thom-yorke-and-radiohead-on-ok-computer-w484570>, accessed on September 5, 2017.
See for example Dorian Lynskey, 33 Revolutions per Minute: A History of Protest Songs, op. cit., 523. It has even been suggested by one historian that political music was in decline as early as the mid-1980s. Andy McSmith, No Such Thing as Society: A History of Britain in the 1980s, London: Constable and Robinson, 2011, 175.
The demise of Red Wedge appears to represent the end of a cycle in Daniel Rachel’s book of interviews with politically-minded musicians. Daniel Rachel, Walls Come Tumbling Down: The Music and Politics of Rock Against Racism, 2 Tone and Red Wedge, London: Picador, 2016.
John Harris, The Last Party: Britpop, Blair, And The Demise of English Rock, op. cit., 153.
This is one of the basic ideas of Harris’s The Last Party: Britpop, Blair, And The Demise of English Rock.
John Harris, The Last Party: Britpop, Blair, And The Demise of English Rock, op. cit., 273.
In fact, there was little need for musicians to criticise Major as the media were increasingly hostile to him and Labour had a substantial lead of over 20 points in opinion polls from December 1993 onwards. David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh (eds.), The British General Election of 1997, op. cit., 12. The political situation was thus markedly different to that of the 1980s. The song “John Major – Fuck You” by Oi Polloi is an exception to this rule.
Alwyn W. Turner, A Classless Society: Britain in the 1990s, op. cit., 30.
See Jeremy Tranmer, “Popular Music and Left-Wing Scottishness”, Etudes Ecossaises, n° 18, 2016, 133-150.
Cable Street Beat was the musical wing of Anti-Fascist Action, a militant grouping which sought to confront the extreme right politically, culturally, and physically.
It was only later that Yorke professed his support for the Green Party.
For example, Lynskey devotes only two pages to OK Computer in his account of political music. Dorian Lynskey, 33 Revolutions per Minute: A History of Protest Songs, op. cit., 633-635. Turner writes only one small paragraph about the album in a chapter about popular culture. Alwyn W. Turner, A Classless Society: Britain in the 1990s, op. cit., 140.
Turner also noted that Labour polled fewer votes than Major in 1992 and only marginally more than Harold Wilson when he lost the 1970 general election. Alwyn W. Turner, A Classless Society: Britain in the 1990s, op. cit., 284.
<http://www.poverty.org.uk/35/index.shtml>, accessed on August 16, 2017.
David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh (eds.), The British General Election of 1997, op. cit., 14.
For a detailed account of the emergence and development of these movements in the 1990s, see Alexandra Plows, “Activist Networks in the UK: Mapping the Build-Up to the Anti-Globalization Movement”, in John Carter and David Morland (eds.), Anti-capitalist Britain, Cheltenham: New Clarion Press, 2004, 95-113, and George McKay, Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance since the Sixties, London: Verso, 1996, 127-158.
In 2003, it merged with other small groups to create the Alliance for Green Socialism.
Red-Green Study Group, What On Earth Is To Be Done, Manchester: Red-Green Study Group, 1995.
Malcolm MacEwen, The Greening of a Red, London: Pluto Press, 1991.
Jonathan Githens-Mazer, “Locating agency in collective political behaviour: nationalism, social movements and individual mobilisation”, Politics, vol. 28, n° 1, 2008, 45.
Dorian Lynskey, 33 Revolutions per Minute: A History of Protest Songs, op. cit., 636.
John Street, Music and Politics, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012, 45.
John Street, “Rock, pop and politics”, in Simon Frith, Will Straw and John Street (eds.), Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock, Cambridge: CUP, 2001, 246.
Jeremy Tranmer, “Spouting Slogans for the Sandinistas? The Clash and International Solidarity”, in Samuel Cohen and James Peacock (eds.), The Clash Takes on the World: Transnational Perspectives on the Only Band that Matters, London: Bloomsbury, 2017, 147-164.
The Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) was a movement committed to social reforms which led a successful revolution in Nicaragua in 1979. It received support in left-wing circles throughout the world.
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