Billy Bragg – Between the Wars (Chords)

Billy Bragg – Between the Wars (Chords)

It was St George’s Day on Monday so I thought I’d do a song by the most English singer I can think of. And now Morriessey is persona non grata that’s Billy Bragg. His songs are a bit hit and miss for me. But when he hits the button he hits it hard. Between the Wars is a beautiful song and has had me in tears before.

I’m using a capo at the second fret (the equivalent of D-tuning). Bragg used a capo at the 7th fret so that makes the chord shapes the same for uke and guitar. It’s still easy to play without a capo where the chords C – Dm – F – G – Am will be D – Em – G – A – Bm respectively.

Suggested Strumming

You can use this short strum as the main pattern:

d – d u

The song has two slightly different verses divided between odd numbered verses and even numbered verses.

In the intro and the odd numbered verses: Main strum once for everything except:

– On the F chords in lines one and three do the main strum twice or the descending line shown in the twiddly bits.
– On the F and G in the last line do one down-strum each.

In the even numbered verses: Main strum once except:

– One long down-strum on the G in line 2.
– On the F chords in line three do the main strum twice or the descending line shown in the twiddly bits.
– On the F and G in the last line do one down-strum each.
– On the F in the last line do the main strum three times.

Here’s a go around of both those verse types:

Strum

Twiddly Bits

A post shared by @ukulelehunt on Apr 23, 2018 at 5:40am PDT

Here’s a picking pattern similar to that in the intro. You can also use elements of this in the main song. Particularly the run down from the F chord in the second half of bar 2.

Here’s an alternative way of playing the F – C move at the end of the even numbered verses. Which sounds like this:

Verse riff

Links

Buy it on iTunes
All You Fascists Bound to Lose (Chords)
More UK tabs and chords