Lyr Req: My Daddy Is a Left-Wing Intellectual

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: My Daddy Is a Left-Wing Intellectual
From: Charley Noble
Date: 01 Jul 10 - 08:16 PM

Here's a glass for Alex!

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: My Daddy Is a Left-Wing Intellectual
From: Joe_F
Date: 01 Jul 10 - 04:06 PM

My father is a member
Of the bourgeoisie,
And I will fight for freedom
While he's supporting me.

    He's a bourgeois slob,
    But I don't have a job.

      -- The Bosses' Song Book

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: My Daddy Is a Left-Wing Intellectual
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Jul 10 - 04:00 PM

My father is a member
Of the bourgeoisie,
And I will fight for freedom
While he's supporting me.

    He's a bourgeois slob,
    But I don't have a job.

-- The Bosses' Song Book

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: My Daddy Is a Left-Wing Intellectual
From: GUEST,guest R
Date: 01 Jul 10 - 01:34 PM

we used to sing this as children with my dad and mum - he having been a good trotskyist in South Africa in the days when Trotsky was still alive - and then pursuing his university career

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: My Daddy Is a Left-Wing Intellectual
From: GUEST,Crell
Date: 26 May 10 - 04:05 PM

I've just listened to the track. The line is 'and now he's just a pragmatist, au fait', meaning 'by the way', or 'as a matter of fact'.
His songs are bang up to date with New Labour having lost in the UK parliamentary elections. Our new local tory MP sports a cloth cap. I think I'll start the revolution by singing 'as soon as this pub closes' down at my local.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: My Daddy Is a Left-Wing Intellectual
From: DMcG
Date: 26 Feb 09 - 09:36 AM

I think the line is "pragmatist au lait" i.e. milky, implying not even determinedly pragmatic.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: My Daddy Is a Left-Wing Intellectual
From: GUEST,Kathleen Duffy
Date: 26 Feb 09 - 09:17 AM

I remember seeing Alex Glasgow performing at many left-wing benefits in the late 1960s/70s. He was very clever and had a beautiful voice. I don't think he got paid - we just had a whip round. He could see right through the hypocrisy of some people... I've never forgotten him - he struck me as being completely open. Although they are quite different in many way, he reminded me of Jake Thakery, another really special singer and musician from the north.

Subject: Lyr Add: MY DADDY IS A LEFT-WING INTELLECTUAL
From: Piers
Date: 19 Dec 04 - 12:42 PM

He certainly wrote some very funny, very moving and rousing songs. Some of them are a bit macho though.

Piers

MY DADDY IS A LEFT-WING INTELLECTUAL
(Alex Glasgow)

O, My Daddy is a left-wing intellectual
You can see it from the funny clothes he wears
In his greasy leather jacket or his suit of corduroy
Or that woollen shirt that's full of stains and tears

O, My Daddy is a left-wing intellectual
He used to be a Stalinist they say
For a while he was a Trotskyist until he saw what he had risked
Now he's just a pragmatist-o-fake

O, My Daddy is a left-wing intellectual
But he really thought the Beatles were a gas
Mind, he didn't like their music or their haircuts and the rest
He liked them 'cause they were from the working class

O, My Daddy is a left-wing intellectual
Supports the co-op movement do-or-die
We must nationalise he cries, down with private enterprise
But his divvy comes from shares in ICI

O, My Daddy is a left-wing intellectual
Believes in full equality for men
But you should have heard the fuss when I failed the 11-plus
He packed me off to Eton there and then

And that Eton education proved effectual
And my Daddy is so very proud of me
I've at last achieved some fame, I've become a houshold name
As a right-wing homosexual on TV

Subject: RE: Lyric reqd My Daddy is a left wing intel
From: alanabit
Date: 19 Dec 04 - 07:16 AM

I believe he died three or four years ago. I seem to recall a thread here. He wrote some very funny songs, among them, "As soon as this pub closes (The revolution starts)". Other members here know far more about him. I read his obituary and he sounded like an interesting bloke.

Subject: Lyric reqd My Daddy is a left wing intel
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 19 Dec 04 - 06:15 AM

Recent threads about music that blew me away somehow jogged my mind to a time in the 1960's when I came across a radio show on the old Third Programme called The Northern Drift. It featured the the playwright Henry Livings and there were a few songs by Alex Glasgow - in particular a song entitled My Daddy is a Left Wing Intellectual. It was brief and pithy - but it really struck home for me.


At the time there were so many brilliant writers from the North of England - novelists Alan Sillitoe, David Storey,; the first solo comedy work from Alan Bennet: and the stunning TV plays of David Mercer - Morgan, Birth of a Private Man, Let's Murder Vivaldi. (not even sure were David Mercer was from) - not mention the Beatles soundtrack that we all living to. It seemed to me that they were a really potent and artistically successful movement - their work mulled over in the Sundays and debated In Encounter magazine.

Then came this little ubane mordant riposte from Alex Glasgow. Almost saying - so what - so you joined the establishment.

I'm sure somebody will have the lyrics to this, but does somebody have any background information about this chap. I know he wrote the music to when the Boat comes in, but that's all I know.