Biography
Dominic Behan, also known as Doiminic Ó Beacháin and the younger sibling of poet-playwright Brendan Behan, worked as an author, social and political activist, and vocalist who gained wide notice in England and at one point disputed portions of Bob Dylan’s songwriting. Born in Dublin to a household of exceptional accomplishments, his father Stephen Behan abandoned studies for the priesthood, enlisted in the Irish Republican Army, fought in the War of Independence, and belonged to the Squad (the “Twelve Apostles”) that Michael Collins assembled in 1919 and that carried out the assassinations of several British officers. His mother Kathleen Behan was a scholar and archivist of traditional songs and stories, while his maternal uncle Peadar Kearney wrote “A Soldier’s Song,” the source of the Irish national anthem. Behan fused his father’s activist political temperament with his mother’s literary and musical passions.
He entered the IRA’s youth wing and, in the early 1950s, was detained for directing demonstrations against economic policies he judged harmful to working families. Through IRA outlets he issued his earliest poems and articles. With his wife, the former Josephine Quinn, he joined the Communist Party in the 1950s, championed numerous leftist causes, and later moved to England, where he wrote radio scripts for the BBC. His play Posterity Be Damned, produced in Dublin in 1959, examined republican activity after the Civil War. The autobiographical novel Teems of Times (1961) earned substantial critical regard and was dramatized for television in 1977.
His songwriting included the notable works “Come Out Ye Black and Tans” and “The Patriot Game.” The latter borrowed its melody from a seventeenth-century Irish traditional source and offered a forceful, bitter chronicle of the War of Independence, its aftermath, and the enduring conflict in the north; the Clancy Brothers with Tommy Makem and several prominent American performers, among them Judy Collins, carried it around the world. The song supplied both the tune and the poetic framework for Bob Dylan’s “With God on Our Side,” an extended anti-war piece that transposed Behan’s outlook into the nuclear era. Behan viewed Dylan’s adaptation with displeasure and took steps to question its integrity and originality. His activist outlook also led him to criticize the Clancy Brothers and others for omitting the song’s most strident topical verses when they performed it.
Behan recorded sporadically from the late 1950s onward; one of his most notable releases was the collaborative album The Singing Streets: Childhood Memories of Ireland and Scotland, made with Ewan MacColl and issued on Folkways Records. Long-standing rumors have maintained that he appeared under pseudonyms on the 1963 English Decca LP Irish Rebel Songs, credited to Diarmuid O'Neill and Patrick O'Malley alongside Enoch Kent.
The 1972 television play The Folk Singer, which addressed the conflict in Northern Ireland, was later adapted for the stage and mounted at the Lyric Theater in Belfast during renewed hostilities. Yet despite his activism and his efforts in topical theater and television, Behan achieved his greatest success and recognition as a composer, producing more than 450 songs that include “McAlpine’s Fusiliers,” “Avondale,” “The Merry Ploughboy,” “Famine Song,” and “Liverpool Lou.” Dave Cousins of the Strawbs honored him with the song “Josephine, For Better or for Worse,” written for Dominic and Josephine Behan, and John Lennon offered praise in an early-1970s interview. Behan died of cancer at his home in Glasgow, Scotland, at the age of 60.
He entered the IRA’s youth wing and, in the early 1950s, was detained for directing demonstrations against economic policies he judged harmful to working families. Through IRA outlets he issued his earliest poems and articles. With his wife, the former Josephine Quinn, he joined the Communist Party in the 1950s, championed numerous leftist causes, and later moved to England, where he wrote radio scripts for the BBC. His play Posterity Be Damned, produced in Dublin in 1959, examined republican activity after the Civil War. The autobiographical novel Teems of Times (1961) earned substantial critical regard and was dramatized for television in 1977.
His songwriting included the notable works “Come Out Ye Black and Tans” and “The Patriot Game.” The latter borrowed its melody from a seventeenth-century Irish traditional source and offered a forceful, bitter chronicle of the War of Independence, its aftermath, and the enduring conflict in the north; the Clancy Brothers with Tommy Makem and several prominent American performers, among them Judy Collins, carried it around the world. The song supplied both the tune and the poetic framework for Bob Dylan’s “With God on Our Side,” an extended anti-war piece that transposed Behan’s outlook into the nuclear era. Behan viewed Dylan’s adaptation with displeasure and took steps to question its integrity and originality. His activist outlook also led him to criticize the Clancy Brothers and others for omitting the song’s most strident topical verses when they performed it.
Behan recorded sporadically from the late 1950s onward; one of his most notable releases was the collaborative album The Singing Streets: Childhood Memories of Ireland and Scotland, made with Ewan MacColl and issued on Folkways Records. Long-standing rumors have maintained that he appeared under pseudonyms on the 1963 English Decca LP Irish Rebel Songs, credited to Diarmuid O'Neill and Patrick O'Malley alongside Enoch Kent.
The 1972 television play The Folk Singer, which addressed the conflict in Northern Ireland, was later adapted for the stage and mounted at the Lyric Theater in Belfast during renewed hostilities. Yet despite his activism and his efforts in topical theater and television, Behan achieved his greatest success and recognition as a composer, producing more than 450 songs that include “McAlpine’s Fusiliers,” “Avondale,” “The Merry Ploughboy,” “Famine Song,” and “Liverpool Lou.” Dave Cousins of the Strawbs honored him with the song “Josephine, For Better or for Worse,” written for Dominic and Josephine Behan, and John Lennon offered praise in an early-1970s interview. Behan died of cancer at his home in Glasgow, Scotland, at the age of 60.
Albums
