Dropkick Murphys ‘Woke’? Time for Punk History 101

THE FXBG ADVANCE SUNDAY 8/9/26 AFTERNOON READ

By Drew Gallagher, ADVANCE COLUMNIST

Darkterp/Creative Commons

I was in a Nashville bar recently talking to a member of Pete Hegseth’s security detail about the Boston-based band the Dropkick Murphys. This was not as unusual as it might seem because, again, I was in Nashville and just a few hours earlier I was watching a packed bar sing the national anthem to a Statute of Liberty impersonator who was two Jello shots away from passing out under the weight of her torch of liberty along with her fellow bachelorette party attendees who were dressed as Betsy Ross, George Washington, a bald eagle, and someone who must have “forgotten” her costume at home.

The member of the Secretary of War’s detail was from Boston, so the presumption that he liked the Murphys seemed like an obvious ice breaker between the shots of Jameson he and his off-duty buddies were pounding. He conceded that he used to like the band, but said he felt that they had become “woke” and he no longer listened to them. I didn’t say anything in that moment mostly because he was a large man whose vocation was protecting a figurehead who measured job performance based on testosterone levels, but also because the music was loud, and discussing the fundamental purpose of punk rock seemed as though it would fall on deaf and ringing ears.

So now, from a distance far removed from what I assume would be a right cross that would render me unconscious, I’d like to point out that calling the Dropkick Murphys newly woke is moronic.

The Dropkick Murphys are that special blend of Irish traditional music and punk rock aesthetic that traverses cultural boundaries and age groups. The members of the group should never have to pay for another beer in Boston. They are popular and regional cultural icons, but they are not U-2, and if they wandered into a bar in Nashville they wouldn’t be recognized as the heirs of the Chieftains or The Clancy Brothers or look as though they were from central casting for Woke, The Musical. You might describe their look as nondescript, or working-class hero, which is exactly what you want in your Celtic punk rockers.

But getting back to the Murphys as woke. They have been critical of President Trump, and vocal and lyrical in their condemnation of a would-be monarch destroying democracy, but that only has them receiving the baton in a long relay of punk rock dissent. The Murphys, and the Sex Pistols, and the Ramones, were woke long before the term existed in a framework beyond casual usage like the Beatles’ “A Day in A Life”: Woke up, got out of bed.

There is some debate about when punk rock started, but if you dive into that debate under the flag of the Pistols or Ramones you will be allowed your moment of discourse. The Sex Pistols and Ramones are punk rock royalty, and, unlike the still vibrant Murphys, occupy a position of unassailable importance in the progression of punk rock to the mainstream. But what they built their music and reputation on was the music of dissent which fell on neither side of the political aisle. Punk rock was “Fuck Around and Find Out” before Pete Hegseth was even born.

One artist who celebrates the punk world in his music and song is British singer/songwriter Frank Turner.

“Punk has always been about individuality, resisting authority (whether political or social) and standing up for the underdog,” said Turner by email. “It’s there at the start and it’s there now; at the very least it’s an awkward fit to try and dress up the new American nationalism as having anything to do with punk.”

One does not have to look very far in the catalogues of the Ramones or Sex Pistols to find examples of punk’s historic resistance to authority.

“Bonzo Goes to Bitburg” is one of the Ramones’ most popular songs and displays a lyrical brilliance which is not often associated with the simplicity that is their usual modus operandi. The song was inspired by President Reagan’s controversial trip to Bitburg, Germany in 1985 where he placed a wreath in a German cemetery that held a number of dead SS agents. Many, including his wife Nancy and the author Elie Wiesel, begged Reagan not to go to a cemetery that was a reminder of the atrocities committed by the Nazis in their concentration camps. He went anyway.

Joey Ramone was among those who thought Reagan should have attempted a different place to visit as a gesture of reconciliation and wrote the song in response. The band did not hide their feelings:

See through you like cellophane

You watch the world complain

But you do it anyway

Who am I, am I to say?

Bonzo goes to Bitburg

Then goes out for a cup of tea

As I watched it on TV

Somehow it really bothered me

Drank in all the bars in town

To understand your foreign policy

Pick up the pieces

The Sex Pistols expressed similar disgust 10 years earlier when they wrote “God Save the Queen” at the dawning of Queen Elizabeth’s silver jubilee. The song, which memorably managed to rhyme the fact that the queen “ain’t no human being” with “fascist regime,”
was controversial in 1977, and was banned on most British airwaves which helped it become an anthem for a generation of youth who were disillusioned with the monarchy and its perceived indifference to their plight.

What made the Sex Pistols and Ramones both important to youth culture was that they wrote and sang about indifference and disconnect. Was Reagan being tone deaf in visiting the Bitburg cemetery? Was Queen Elizabeth being tone deaf to the pleas of a working class that felt there was no future for them? The Ramones and Sex Pistols thought so and shared it with the world. A world that listened.

So to describe any band with roots in punk rock as woke seems to not fully grasp the raw purpose of punk rock. The Dropkick Murphys were singing songs of dissent long before Trump rode down the golden escalator. They were singing songs of dissent from day one, but they were songs of Irish dissent, and railing against a British monarchy that seemed far from our shores and our Spotifys. But they have brought the fight to the present, and that has apparently angered some of their fans who believe that music should only be couched in blind patriotism. The kind of blind patriotism that will sing to a sloshed Statue of Liberty who’s about to puke all over Broadway.