Eric Bogle ranks among Australia's leading singer-songwriters, delivering his singular perspective as a Scotsman transplanted to the southern continent since the late 1970s. Compositions such as "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda," "Leaving Nancy," "Nobody's Moggy Now," and "Little Gomez" have found interpreters across an expanding roster of performers that includes June Tabor, the Pogues, Mary Black, Donovan, Billy Bragg, and the Dubliners. The Fureys' version of "No Man's Land (Green Fields of France)" remained on the Irish music charts for 26 weeks, ten of them in the number-one slot. Born to a father who played bagpipes, Bogle began composing poetry by age eight. Shaped by the sounds of Elvis Presley and Lonnie Donegan, he acquired guitar skills on his own and played in successive rock and skiffle groups. Yet a professional path in music never figured in his plans. After departing school at sixteen, he took up assorted occupations that ranged from manual laborer to export clerk and bartender. Relocating to Australia in 1969 for work as an accountant, Bogle soon discovered a folk club in Canberra and became deeply involved in the nation's acoustic music community. His initial composition to reach a global audience, "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda," drew inspiration from an ANZAC march witnessed in Canberra and originally extended to fifteen minutes. Written following a visit to a military cemetery in northern France, "No Man's Land (Green Fields of France)" underscored Bogle's ongoing interest in World War I. Living outside the southern Australian city of Adelaide, Bogle appears with a quartet that includes drummer Jon Jones, multi-instrumentalist David O'Neill on fiddle, guitar, and mandolin, and Ian Blake, the former Pyewackett member who handles bass, keyboards, and saxophone.
