They Never Came Home chords by Christy Moore

Chords with lyrics

Foreword:
In my opinion this is one of the key songs of Christy Moore's career epitomizing his pursuit
of social justice and courage to speak out about issues of the day. This tells the story
of the Star Dust nightclub tragedy of 14/2/1981 and the subsequent injustice and questionable
impartiality of the legal system, the sham enquiry that without evidence exonerated the owners
from wrongdoing by blaming probable cause as arson (yes it was found to be probably the
victims fault for burning themselves alive), and saving the insurer a vast fortune on
compensating the 48 deaths and 215 seriously injured; and the owners untested for negligence in the
safe storage of chemicals, the chaining of fire exits and the boarding up windows with steel plates
This song was played non stop in 1985 for 10 weeks (wearing out cassette tapes and CDs)
in protest of a new niteclub being built on the same site with the insurance payout,
while the victims were thrown to the gutter and 3 decades later justice had not been served.
The Government of the day, the supposed representatives of the people sued Christy Moore for libel
and forced his Ordinary Man album to be recalled, making the few copies out there quite rare.
Many younger people in Ireland are not aware of this song due to it being banned
from the airwaves in the republic.

Time Signature 3/4
This is just my version and is not an attempt to be an exact copy of Christy's work

Chords (use these if there is any conflict with the automated diagrams)
C majorC x32010
G+G 320033
FF xx3211

picking pattern is base note then 2 plucks of 3 strings as tabbed below.
then at the end of the sentences a single strum for 2 bars (the extra bar on every 2nd line)

G+G   C majorC   FF
xxxxxx xxxxxx xx1x1x
xx3x3x xx1x1x xx2x2x
xx0x0x xx0x0x xx3x3x
xx0x0x xx2x2x 0xxxxx
xxxxxx 3xxxxx xxxxxx
3xxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx

or just by string numbers if you dont understand tab yet
G+G
6, 432, 432
C majorC
5, 432, 432
FF
4, 321, 321


VERSES
C majorC C G+G C majorC
C C majorC FF G+G G MajorG
C majorC C FF C majorC
C C majorC G+G C majorC C

FF F C majorC C
C majorC C FF G+G G MajorG
C majorC C FF C majorC
C C majorC G+G C majorC C

CHORUS
FF F C majorC C
C majorC C FF G+G G MajorG
C majorC C FF C majorC
C C majorC G+G C majorC C

most notable memory aids are:
2nd half of verse and chorus are same chords,
2nd third and 4th lines of each section the same

VERSE 1
   C majorC       C majorC      G+G      C majorC
St. Val-en-tine's day comes a-round once a year,
  C majorC        C majorC      FF      G+G   G+G
our thought turn to love as the day it draws near,
   C majorC        C majorC      FF       C majorC
When sweet-hearts and dar-lings, hus-bands and wives,
    C majorC      C majorC        G+G       C majorC   C majorC
Pledge love and de-vo-tion for.the rest of their lives
  FF      FF       C majorC        C majorC
As day turns to even-ing soon night-time does fall,
   C majorC      C majorC       FF       G+G   G+G
Young peo-ple get ready for the Val-en-tine's Ball,
    C majorC        C majorC       FF       C majorC
As the night rings with laugh-ter some peo-ple still mourn
  C majorC      C majorC       G+G      C majorC   C majorC
The for-ty eight chil-dren who ne-ver came home

CHORUS
FF      FF      C majorC       C majorC
Have we for-got-ten the suff-ering and pain
    C majorC      C majorC        FF     G+G   G+G
the sur-viv-ors and vic-tims of.the fire in Ar-tane,
  C majorC      C majorC      FF    C majorC
the moth-ers and fath-ers for-ever to mourn
  C majorC      C majorC       G+G      C majorC   C majorC
the for-ty eight chil-dren who ne-ver came home.


VERSE 2
   C majorC      C majorC        G+G       C majorC
it's down to the Star-dust they all made their way
  C majorC        C majorC      FF      G+G   G+G
The boun-cers looked on as they lined up to pay
  C majorC      C majorC         FF      C majorC
The rec-ords are spin-ning there's dan-cing as well
   C majorC      C majorC       G+G     C majorC   C majorC
Just how the fire start-ed sure no one can tell.
   FF     FF      C majorC      C majorC
In.a mat-ter of sec-onds con-fus-ion did reign
  C majorC      C majorC       FF      G+G   G+G
The room was in dark-ness fire ex-its were chained
   C majorC       C majorC     FF       C majorC
The fire-fight-ers wept for they could not hide,
   C majorC      C majorC     G+G       C majorC   C majorC
Their sorr-ow and an-ger for those left in-side.


CHORUS


VERSE 3
   C majorC     C majorC     G+G      C majorC
All a-round the city the bad news it spread
     C majorC      C majorC         FF      G+G   G+G
There's a fire in the Star-dust there's for-ty eight dead
C majorC      C majorC       FF      C majorC
Hun-dreds of chil-dren are in-jured and maimed
  C majorC      C majorC       G+G      C majorC    C majorC
And all just be-cause the fire ex-its were chained.
  FF       FF       C majorC        C majorC
Our lead-ers were shocked, grim state-ments were made
     C majorC      C majorC       FF      G+G   G+G
They shed tears by the graves as.the bo-dies were laid
   C majorC       C majorC     FF       C majorC
The vic-tims have wait-ed in vain for four years
  C majorC       C majorC       G+G      C majorC   C majorC
It seems like our lead-ers shed croc-o-dile tears.


CHORUS


VERSE 4
    C majorC      C majorC       G+G     C majorC
Half a mill-ion was spent on so-lic-itor's fees,
 C majorC        C majorC      FF     G+G   G+G
A augmentedA for-tune to.the ow-ner and his fa-mil-y
   C majorC     C majorC     FF     C majorC
It's hard to be-lieve not one pen-ny came
    C majorC       C majorC      G+G       C majorC   C majorC
To the work-ing class peo-ple who suff-ered the pain.
FF      FF     C majorC       C majorC
Days turn to weeks and weeks turn to years
     C majorC      C majorC    FF     G+G   G+G
Our laws fav-our the rich or so it app-ears
  C majorC      C majorC       FF      C majorC
A augmentedA wo-man still waits for her kids to come home
  C majorC        C majorC     G+G         C majorC   C majorC
In-jus-tice breeds an-ger and that's what's been done.