‘Crippled with nerves’: popular music and polio, with particular reference to Ian Dury

McKay, GA

Abstract

This article looks at a remarkable cluster of popular musicians who contracted and survived poliomyelitis (‘infantile paralysis’) epidemics through the twentieth century, and ways in which they managed and, to varying extents, explored their polio-related impairments and experiences in their music. Drawing on medical history and disability studies, it focuses largely on the pop
and rock generation of polio survivors – the children and young people from the 1940s and 1950s who were among the last to contract the disease prior to the successful introduction of mass vaccination programmes (in the West). These include Neil Young, Steve Harley, Joni
Mitchell, and Israel Vibration. The article then looks in detail at the work of Ian Dury, who was for a while the highest profile visibly physically disabled pop artist in Britain, and who produced a compelling body of works exploring the experiences of disability.

Citation

McKay, G. (2009). ‘Crippled with nerves’: popular music and polio, with particular reference to Ian Dury. Popular Music, 28(3), 341-365. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143009990109

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Oct 1, 2009
• Deposit Date: Nov 6, 2009
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 6, 2009
• Journal: Popular Music
• Print ISSN: 0261-1430
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 28
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 341-365
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143009990109
• Publisher URL: http://journals.cambridge.org/repo_A637p9R8