Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Search podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is singer songwriter Paul Brady. Paul, last year,
Speaker 1: you put out an autobiography, Crazy Dreams. What inspired you
Speaker 1: to lay down your story at this point?
Speaker 2: Well, I suppose it was to try and remember what
Speaker 2: happened to me. It's so easy to forget what goes on,
Speaker 2: and I spent you know, I used to take notes
Speaker 2: all the time, not a diary per se, but I
Speaker 2: would always sort of when anything exciting happened, I would
Speaker 2: sort of write it up. So I just wanted to
Speaker 2: keep a record and as much to try and understand
Speaker 2: myself as anything else.
Speaker 1: What did you learn about yourself writing the.
Speaker 2: Book That I'm a bit of a lone wolf. I
Speaker 2: guess that that that I sort of dabbled in and
Speaker 2: out of everything. I was kind of a multi lingual
Speaker 2: musically speaking, and you know, not everybody that I knew
Speaker 2: in the music business was like that. I mean, I
Speaker 2: came through three or four different types of music in
Speaker 2: my career. But all the time, I suppose I felt
Speaker 2: that I was a bit of a lone wolf. And
Speaker 2: for better.
Speaker 1: Or for worse, tell me more about being a lone wolf,
Speaker 1: not only in the music business, but in life.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, well, I suppose you're happy in your own company
Speaker 2: for a start, you're happier. I suppose listening and talking
Speaker 2: and a lot of what passes for the mainstream you
Speaker 2: tend to sort of worry about and see through, and
Speaker 2: you tend to want to be I'm sort of on
Speaker 2: the on the periphery of everything, you know, And that's
Speaker 2: the way I've always been. I've never I've been terminally
Speaker 2: non aligned in terms of politics, in terms of musical tastes,
Speaker 2: in terms of social morays. You know, I've just been
Speaker 2: someone who's you know, I've plowed my own furrow.
Speaker 1: I guess. Well, in the book, you're constantly calling on
Speaker 1: friends to play on the records, to go on the road.
Speaker 1: You know, you talk about being a lone wolf. Is
Speaker 1: that difficult for you to have social anxiety? Or it's
Speaker 1: just in your views and lifestyle that you're a lone wolf.
Speaker 2: I think it's just in my views and lifestyle. I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm a sociable animal, you know. I like a bit
Speaker 2: of crack like everybody else. And you know, I tour solo.
Speaker 2: I play solo quite a bit. But I also love
Speaker 2: playing with the band, and you know, I'll go through
Speaker 2: like a year playing solo and then I'll miss the
Speaker 2: camaraderie and and the kickoff the ass of the band,
Speaker 2: you know, and so I'll spend a year doing that.
Speaker 2: And I mean again, I'm fortunate in that that I
Speaker 2: found it easy to do both and saw the beauty
Speaker 2: in both. You know.
Speaker 1: Okay, there's a lot in the book about Ireland, in
Speaker 1: Northern Ireland, and I just read a book called The
Speaker 1: Beasting by Paul Murray, very highly reviewed, and you realize,
Speaker 1: as much as we think outside of Ireland we know
Speaker 1: what's going on, we really don't. So explain to my
Speaker 1: audience the difference between Northern Ireland and the Republic of
Speaker 1: Ireland where you sit on that.
Speaker 2: Oh, dear, dear, dear, well, Well, Northern Ireland is part
Speaker 2: of the United Kingdom, and a lot of people think
Speaker 2: that's a good thing, and a lot of people think
Speaker 2: it's not. And that has sort of been at the
Speaker 2: route of a lot of antagonism and over the last
Speaker 2: one hundred couple of years. But you know, in the
Speaker 2: last couple of decades things have quite done quite a bit.
Speaker 2: People are much more accepting of each other. And whereas
Speaker 2: it's not like walk in the park, the relationship between
Speaker 2: the two parts of the country. You know, things are
Speaker 2: a lot better than they wear. I mean, it's as
Speaker 2: much connected with the United Kingdom the problems as anything
Speaker 2: else than I mean, and the United Kingdom is having
Speaker 2: their own problems at the moment. A lot of people
Speaker 2: in Northern Ireland think that England doesn't really care about
Speaker 2: them and just to soon see them go. And but
Speaker 2: that's that's this is a very long one. You know,
Speaker 2: you might as well try and talk to me about
Speaker 2: the Middle East diabob because it's that complicated.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're talking to a American. We're ignorant. Let's
Speaker 1: start a little bit back. Tell me about the Irish
Speaker 1: War of Independence.
Speaker 2: Oh, dear, well, the Irish War of Independence was the
Speaker 2: next in a whole many series of revolutions, failed revolutions
Speaker 2: since the arrival of Britain. And you know, in the
Speaker 2: fifteen hundred and sixteen hundreds, and of course, you know,
Speaker 2: it never really left the public imagination, the notion that
Speaker 2: we wanted to be Ireland, to be for the Irish.
Speaker 2: And you know, the nineteen sixteen Revolution was just the
Speaker 2: most recent one of all those attempts, and you know,
Speaker 2: in one way failed it failed, but in another way
Speaker 2: it it heralded in independence of a sort up until
Speaker 2: the mid forties, when Ireland became a republic, or the
Speaker 2: south of Ireland became a republic.
Speaker 1: Okay, when did the division of Northern and Southern Ireland
Speaker 1: take place?
Speaker 2: Nineteen twenty two? I think yeah, round about you know,
Speaker 2: the revolution was in the nineteen sixteen, and then the
Speaker 2: War of Independence was it sort of grumbled along for
Speaker 2: a couple of years, but blew out right into the
Speaker 2: open in nineteen nineteen. It went on and on until
Speaker 2: twenty two, and that's as far as I can recall
Speaker 2: when on Northern Ireland the statelet was kind of invented.
Speaker 2: And then of course there was the Irish Civil War
Speaker 2: because that invention was on foot of a treaty that
Speaker 2: was signed and half the people in the Republic of
Speaker 2: Ireland agreed with the treaty and the other half didn't,
Speaker 2: and so that ushered in the Irish Civil War nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty two twenty three, and that was pretty gruesome. But
Speaker 2: you know, since then there haven't been any outright wars.
Speaker 2: But you know, it's only in the last decade or
Speaker 2: so that things have kind of settled down to, you know,
Speaker 2: a state were not everybody's terrified all the time.
Speaker 1: Okay, you grow up in Derry, which to my understanding
Speaker 1: is Northern Ireland. I grew up in Connecticut. You spend
Speaker 1: time in Norwalk, which is not far from where I
Speaker 1: grew up. But I'm not in Connecticut thinking about I
Speaker 1: was thinking about the Vietnam War, but I'm not thinking
Speaker 1: about whether Connecticut is part of the United States or something.
Speaker 1: You're growing up in Northern Ireland. To what degree is
Speaker 1: politics of presence in your mind and going around.
Speaker 2: Well, it's I mean, it's it's there all the time,
Speaker 2: because you know, politics dictates the social fabric and.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: But the other upside of it was that, you know,
Speaker 2: I lived on the border. I lived in Straban actually,
Speaker 2: which was a few miles south of Derry. I went
Speaker 2: to school in Derry. But one of the upsides was
Speaker 2: that that you had two cultures you could share, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, living right on the border, I was able
Speaker 2: to share in the culture of Ireland and the Republic,
Speaker 2: and also in the culture of Britain and the BBC
Speaker 2: and pop radio from England and all that, and so
Speaker 2: you know it wasn't all a black and white thing.
Speaker 2: There were ups and downs.
Speaker 1: And tell me what the friction is between the Protestants
Speaker 1: and the Catholics.
Speaker 2: Well, it's, oh, well, it's about different, it's about it's tribal,
Speaker 2: simple as that. You know, it's simply tribal. It's a
Speaker 2: different tribe. You see, when Britain conquered Ireland in the
Speaker 2: seventeenth century, they ushered in hundreds of thousands of people
Speaker 2: from from across the water and took the land of
Speaker 2: the Irish people and and in what was called the plantations,
Speaker 2: the plantations of Ulster. So basically that was a whole
Speaker 2: tribe coming in and throwing another tribe on the scrap heap.
Speaker 2: And you know, as we all know when we look
Speaker 2: around the world, even in the contemporary scene, you know,
Speaker 2: tribalism is still very much alive.
Speaker 1: Okay. So we know that subsequent to World War two,
Speaker 1: things were in black and white in the UK and
Speaker 1: there were you know, lack of certain things, etc. What
Speaker 1: does the average American know about Ireland? There was a
Speaker 1: potato famine in the eighteen hundreds, and then you read
Speaker 1: books about our houses in the twentieth century. What was
Speaker 1: the standard of life when you were growing up.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, my parents were school teachers, uh primary
Speaker 2: school teachers, and so they both had had a kind
Speaker 2: of an annual salary. So like whereas we weren't sort
Speaker 2: of rich or anything, you know, we didn't want, we
Speaker 2: were comfortable enough. We could take take a vacation, you know,
Speaker 2: a couple of times a year, and you know, but
Speaker 2: but people were a lot poorer than that than they
Speaker 2: are now. There wasn't as much opportunity to to make money,
Speaker 2: and it was a lot more primitive times. You know,
Speaker 2: Ireland was just a new state, you know, only a
Speaker 2: couple of decades by that stage, and we were it
Speaker 2: was a very poor country and so people didn't have
Speaker 2: a lot to throw around and it was a struggle.
Speaker 2: But you know, I was one of the fortunate generations
Speaker 2: because in the late forties Britain decreed that anybody that
Speaker 2: was had got a certain degree of privss in school exams,
Speaker 2: got a free got a free education, college scholarship to university.
Speaker 2: So that gave a whole generation me included of the
Speaker 2: forty somethings, the fifty somethings, the chance to go to
Speaker 2: third level education which utterly changed the social and educational
Speaker 2: and political map of Northern Ireland. And so I always
Speaker 2: feel grateful for that.
Speaker 1: Okay, I don't want to harp on this issue, but
Speaker 1: you're going to elementary school, primary school. To all the
Speaker 1: kids you're going to school with, do they all have
Speaker 1: indoor plumbing?
Speaker 2: Well yeah, yeah, you know, there might have been a
Speaker 2: couple of toilets out the back, you know, But but
Speaker 2: people had electricity and running water of course, yeah, and
Speaker 2: you know, and food and heat. You know, it's you know,
Speaker 2: it's just it wasn't a rich society. I was unique
Speaker 2: in a way. Most education, even to this day, both
Speaker 2: in Northern Ireland and the Republic, is segregated into first
Speaker 2: first of all gender segregation and secondly religious Catholic schools
Speaker 2: Protestant schools. You know, that was the way it was
Speaker 2: all the time. But I went to a school which
Speaker 2: was mixed religion and mixed gender. And because it was
Speaker 2: a school set up by Quakers in the nineteenth century
Speaker 2: who owned a linen mill in the in the village
Speaker 2: of Sian Mills, which was three miles south of where
Speaker 2: I lived in Straban, and my mother was one of
Speaker 2: the teachers there. So I went to school with girls
Speaker 2: and boys, elementary school with girls and boys, and with
Speaker 2: all religions, and of course, like all children, you think
Speaker 2: that's the way everybody is. And it was only until
Speaker 2: I got a lot older that I realized that that
Speaker 2: was a very unusual thing to happen. And I again,
Speaker 2: I'm extremely grateful for that, because I grew up not
Speaker 2: thinking that the other tribe had two heads.
Speaker 1: You know, Okay, you're growing up. How much television is
Speaker 1: there and how much radio is there?
Speaker 2: Well, there's a lot of We didn't get a television
Speaker 2: until nineteen fifty eight, I think it was I was
Speaker 2: just going to boarding school, and the whole thing at
Speaker 2: the time was, oh, television will distract the kids from
Speaker 2: their education, and it's you know, it's a big intrusion
Speaker 2: into into the life. So but but I said, when
Speaker 2: I came home from for Christmas holidays that that year,
Speaker 2: my first year in boarding school, there was a television
Speaker 2: in the house, a black and white television which had
Speaker 2: Irish Television one or two stations, and also had the BBC,
Speaker 2: so we were able to see all the all the
Speaker 2: music that came from the BBC in the sixties, you know,
Speaker 2: the fifties, sixties, Top of the Pops, you know, all
Speaker 2: the big you know, when the when the British pop
Speaker 2: music booms started in the late fifties earliest sixties. We
Speaker 2: were able to see all that on television in Northern Ireland,
Speaker 2: whereas in the Republic they didn't get to see that
Speaker 2: because they didn't get the BBC there. So we you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, there was a broad multicultural feel growing up
Speaker 2: where I grew up.
Speaker 1: Just so I understand is Northern Ireland is controlled by
Speaker 1: the UK. They didn't get BBC. They did get BBC
Speaker 1: Northern Ireland. Oh, the Republic of Ireland didn't, right right,
Speaker 1: I want to make sure that I had that clear, Okay.
Speaker 1: So throughout your book there's a long discussion and emphasis
Speaker 1: of traditional Irish music. In America, we don't really have that.
Speaker 1: Maybe country in Western but you're listening to the radio
Speaker 1: growing up, what are you listening to?
Speaker 2: Well, I would dispute that you don't have it in America.
Speaker 2: In every single hamlet in America, in every single town
Speaker 2: and city amid the Irish community, there is a hugely
Speaker 2: healthy Irish music scene and there are festivals all over
Speaker 2: the States all summer long, large festivals that deal with
Speaker 2: Irish music. But that said, I mean, Irish music was
Speaker 2: just a part of the music that I heard when
Speaker 2: I was growing up. I mean, like I said, it
Speaker 2: was British and American pop music. You know. We used
Speaker 2: to listen to Radio Luxembourg, which was originally a European
Speaker 2: station which then started to broadcast out of London. And
Speaker 2: what happened was that a lot of the American soldiers
Speaker 2: who were stationed in Germany would have all these records
Speaker 2: that were coming out in the States in the late fifties,
Speaker 2: you know, Elvis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochrane, Jean Vincent,
Speaker 2: all that kind of stuff was was coming into Germany
Speaker 2: with an American serviceman and that ended up on Radio Luxembourg,
Speaker 2: and so we heard I heard all this kind of
Speaker 2: stuff well, you know, in the late fifties, and so
Speaker 2: I was totally I was like a blotting paper. I
Speaker 2: just soaked, soaked it all in and all kinds of
Speaker 2: music I listened to, you know, I mean, I didn't
Speaker 2: sort of differentiate between genres of music. It didn't make
Speaker 2: any sense to me to do that it was just
Speaker 2: is it good or is it bad? Is it fun
Speaker 2: or is it awful to listen to? I just took
Speaker 2: it all on board and found, like as I said earlier,
Speaker 2: that I was multi lingual. I was I was able
Speaker 2: easy to be fluent and a vast and a big,
Speaker 2: big variety of music.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I'm a little younger than you. I was.
Speaker 1: Certainly I'm a little late for Elvis, but I remember
Speaker 1: the Beach Boys in the Four Seasons. But when the
Speaker 1: Beatles hit, it was literally a revolution in America. What
Speaker 1: was the bug that got you going on popular music
Speaker 1: that you said, Wow, this is something I have to
Speaker 1: dedicate all my time to.
Speaker 2: Well, it was just totally visceral. I mean, I mean
Speaker 2: the first time you hear little Richard singing long, tall
Speaker 2: sally like, I mean, you're going what you know, I
Speaker 2: have never heard anything like this before, and by god,
Speaker 2: is it exciting. And it was just hugely exciting and inspiring.
Speaker 2: And you know, I felt, hey, I want a bit
Speaker 2: of that. I want to I want to open my
Speaker 2: mouth and let I yell out and see what comes out.
Speaker 2: And so I started singing, and you know, just for fun,
Speaker 2: and I got a guitar from the eleventh birthday, and
Speaker 2: I taught myself because there were no other guitar players
Speaker 2: near me, and the only lesson you could get was
Speaker 2: classical music, and that's not really what I was into.
Speaker 2: So I kind of taught myself three or four cards,
Speaker 2: and I just kept learning through my teens and and
Speaker 2: playing at parties and you know, and it wasn't really
Speaker 2: until I went to college in nineteen sixty four that
Speaker 2: I you know, Harbard sort of seditious thoughts about being
Speaker 2: a musician rather than a teacher.
Speaker 1: So you say your parents were teachers, how did they
Speaker 1: afford for you to go to boarding school? And what
Speaker 1: was your experience at boarding school?
Speaker 2: Well, the education at boarding school was free. They had
Speaker 2: to pay for the accommodation, and you know, they just
Speaker 2: made that sacrifice because it was an opportunity that they
Speaker 2: didn't have, and so I'm grateful to them for that.
Speaker 2: But I hated boarding school for a start. As I
Speaker 2: said earlier, I'd come from an elementary school of mixed
Speaker 2: religions and mixed gender. This boarding school was was a
Speaker 2: Catholic boarding school, and it was all boys, and I saw,
Speaker 2: I mean, it was just immediately to me how stupid
Speaker 2: this is. You know, where's the other half of that
Speaker 2: of humanity?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: And I just I didn't like being in a school.
Speaker 2: It was all just one one sex and one religion.
Speaker 2: And you know, there wasn't an awful lot of interest
Speaker 2: in the arts in this school. It was it had
Speaker 2: a good reputation for academia for you know, mathematics, in English, poetry,
Speaker 2: all the sort of the basic things, but they didn't
Speaker 2: really value music. And I just felt that, you know,
Speaker 2: I wasn't even allowed to bring a guitar to boarding school,
Speaker 2: you know, because guitar means rock and roll music, which
Speaker 2: is bad, you know. So I mean that was ridiculous,
Speaker 2: and so I just basically didn't like boarding school. I
Speaker 2: couldn't wait to get out of it.
Speaker 1: Okay. In the book, you talk about going for summer
Speaker 1: vacation with your parents at the beach and they're being
Speaker 1: show bands and then ultimately playing with the showbands. What
Speaker 1: exactly is a show band.
Speaker 2: Show band is a bunch of musicians, you know, maybe
Speaker 2: an eight piece band. You might have a drums, bass, keyboard,
Speaker 2: tenor sacks, trumpet, trombone, a couple of guitars, and a
Speaker 2: singer and well maybe three or four singers maybe the
Speaker 2: other instrumentalists would would sing backups. And you know, they
Speaker 2: would do all the hits today, you know, they they
Speaker 2: would whatever was on top of the pops English television
Speaker 2: the week before, the show band would learn it, and
Speaker 2: the following weekend at the dances they'd be playing cover
Speaker 2: versions of the British and American hits and and some
Speaker 2: Irish hits too. I mean, people were starting to write
Speaker 2: songs in Ireland and so there wasn't much of an
Speaker 2: infrastructure for musicians to write their own songs at the time.
Speaker 2: And there was a huge dancing culture in Ireland. Every
Speaker 2: weekend and every town in Ireland there were dance halls
Speaker 2: where all the young people would go and meet, meet
Speaker 2: up and and that, and that's for the show bands play.
Speaker 2: And there were like hundreds of show bands in Ireland
Speaker 2: at the time, and you know, some of them were
Speaker 2: extremely good. In fact, a few of them went to
Speaker 2: Las Vegas and the Royal show Band played in I
Speaker 2: see a couple of seasons in Las Vegas, and you know,
Speaker 2: and the Tour of America. But they were essentially an
Speaker 2: Irish phenomenon.
Speaker 1: And how did you end up playing in a show band.
Speaker 2: I didn't play in a show band. I played in
Speaker 2: a hotel, just a sort of a little cabaret band
Speaker 2: in a hotel in nineteen sixty two sixty three, when
Speaker 2: I was like my early teens and I was too
Speaker 2: young to play in a show band. It was only like,
Speaker 2: as I said, when I went to Dublin later in
Speaker 2: the decade. I was seventeen years old, eighteen years old
Speaker 2: when I went to UCD in Dublin, and that's when
Speaker 2: I started to play in serio music outfits. But I
Speaker 2: know I didn't play in the show band, just a
Speaker 2: little cabarety band.
Speaker 1: Okay, how do you end up going to college in Dublin.
Speaker 2: Well, that's an interesting question. My sister, three years older
Speaker 2: than me, went to Queen's University in Belfast, which was
Speaker 2: I suppose where logically I should have gone if I
Speaker 2: got to if I passed my exams. But I did
Speaker 2: pass my exams, and the year I applied to go
Speaker 2: to Belfast to Queen's Universities in Belfast, there was a
Speaker 2: superfluity of people applying for the arts faculty. There were
Speaker 2: too many applicants for the number of places, so the
Speaker 2: college in hisst wisdom declared that people born after a
Speaker 2: certain date in the late forties would have to go
Speaker 2: back to high school, boarding school for a and repeat
Speaker 2: their final year again. And there was no way I
Speaker 2: was going to go back to boarding school to repeat
Speaker 2: my last year. So we started looking around and my
Speaker 2: parents said, well, let's try Dublin. Let's try UCD in Dublin.
Speaker 2: So I applied to UCD and I got in. So
Speaker 2: in October nineteen sixty four, I ended up in Dublin City,
Speaker 2: first time I had ever been in Dublin. I'd never
Speaker 2: been more than seventy miles from my home until then,
Speaker 2: and I was on my own in Dublin as a student.
Speaker 2: And that was, you know, intimidating, but also extremely exciting.
Speaker 2: And that's where I first started to listen to rhythm
Speaker 2: and blues bands, and because there was loads of them
Speaker 2: in Dublin, and that's how I started to play music
Speaker 2: in a band.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're going to school. Tell me about you
Speaker 1: start joining bands and playing out in venues. Tell me
Speaker 1: about that.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, like there's a small time, you know,
Speaker 2: we were semipro. I mean a lot of the people
Speaker 2: in the bands had daytime jobs. I mean, I was
Speaker 2: supposed to be a student. I wasn't doing and he's
Speaker 2: just studying, to be honest, because as soon as I
Speaker 2: got to university, I kind of went, what am I
Speaker 2: doing here? You know? I was doing an arts degree
Speaker 2: studying French Irish language and archaeology, and I wasn't more
Speaker 2: interested than that than well, I just wasn't interested, And
Speaker 2: so I started going to what was that question again?
Speaker 1: Well, you're in college, and to what degree are you
Speaker 1: playing out in clubs in other venues? And does that
Speaker 1: become your life and how does that happen?
Speaker 2: Well, yes, I I joined the band, and, like a
Speaker 2: lot of bands in those areas, you know, we lasted
Speaker 2: six months and then I went. Then we all imploded
Speaker 2: and became another band and called ourselves a different name.
Speaker 2: And after another six months, I joined another band. So
Speaker 2: I was in three or four bands over the space
Speaker 2: of two college years, and we were playing maybe twice
Speaker 2: three times a week. Sometimes. There was a real upsurge
Speaker 2: of venues for what were called beat groups at the time,
Speaker 2: as opposed to show bands, which were the professional guys
Speaker 2: with the snazzy suits and all that. We were the
Speaker 2: grubby beat groups, and we played we played soul music.
Speaker 2: We played Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Ray, Charles I, Cantina Turner,
Speaker 2: marvel Ettes, and of the British blues things, John Mayol,
Speaker 2: Spencer Davis. We did covers of of all that stuff.
Speaker 2: And so that's what a lot of the bands in
Speaker 2: Dublin were doing at the time, the younger bands who
Speaker 2: weren't professional. So there were tennis clubs, there were rugby clubs,
Speaker 2: there were a few, you know, maybe half a dozen
Speaker 2: beat music performing clubs, and there were all classes, you know, schools, stuff,
Speaker 2: you know, where people played. At the time, nobody took
Speaker 2: it very seriously. Nobody thought it was going anywhere. Nobody
Speaker 2: actually even thought about the future. It was just we're
Speaker 2: having fun playing the music we love, and that's that's
Speaker 2: what kept me going for two years until I was,
Speaker 2: you know, someoneed by the registrar of UCD to explain
Speaker 2: why I hadn't been at lectures for the previous year
Speaker 2: and a half. And my parents got word of this
Speaker 2: disgrace and there was an immediate hiatus in my time
Speaker 2: with the bands in Dublin, and there happened to be
Speaker 2: sort of about a six month period where I wasn't
Speaker 2: in the band, but I bought myself an acoustic guitar
Speaker 2: and I was back in Dublin in my final year
Speaker 2: at college and I was playing and what we're now
Speaker 2: just springing up all over the city, things called folk clubs.
Speaker 2: We're talking now sixty six, and of course it started
Speaker 2: earlier in the States. I think Dylan's first album was
Speaker 2: sixty two or something. But it just shows you how
Speaker 2: long it took things to travel in those days. Information
Speaker 2: musical information like that didn't happen overnight the way it
Speaker 2: did hear. So there were the folk scenes started in
Speaker 2: Ireland and there were folk groups that were suddenly at
Speaker 2: the top of the charts in Ireland. There was a
Speaker 2: whole two or three year period where it was just
Speaker 2: all Irish folk music in Ireland, and I was swept
Speaker 2: up in that, which was very exciting, and I fell
Speaker 2: in love with it and became a very strong arrow
Speaker 2: in my quiver of music from then on and still is.
Speaker 2: All of the seventies, basically, while the world was into
Speaker 2: glam rock, I was into hardcore Irish trad music until
Speaker 2: really the end of the seventies, when I decided I
Speaker 2: wanted to I'd had enough of that and I wanted
Speaker 2: to see if it could be a songwriter.
Speaker 1: So how did it end with you in college?
Speaker 2: Badly? I just I failed my fine exams and I
Speaker 2: didn't go back to repeat because at that stage I
Speaker 2: had already become a member of a top A chart
Speaker 2: topping Irish folk group. I'd been asked to join that,
Speaker 2: and suddenly I was making a decent living and I
Speaker 2: was on television and my parents sort of kind of
Speaker 2: saw some kind of logic in that amid their disappointment,
Speaker 2: because I mean, let's face that, they were teachers, you know,
Speaker 2: so they wanted me to have a degree to fall
Speaker 2: back on was the term, you know. But when you're
Speaker 2: that age, you don't want to you don't want to
Speaker 2: think about falling back on anything.
Speaker 1: So how do you end up in the Johnstons?
Speaker 2: Well, that was a series of accidents. I was in
Speaker 2: an apartment above one of the members of the band,
Speaker 2: and we used to play poker at night and he
Speaker 2: would keep me informed of the the personnel fractions that
Speaker 2: happened within the band, and one point one of the
Speaker 2: members left and I had already been opening for this
Speaker 2: band as a solo folk singer in some of the
Speaker 2: clubs in towns. So they were aware of my music,
Speaker 2: so they asked me to join the band, and this
Speaker 2: would have been summer of sixty seven and then from
Speaker 2: then on I was a professional musician. That's I've been
Speaker 2: a professional musician since then.
Speaker 1: Okay, what is the status of the Johnston's at that
Speaker 1: point and what.
Speaker 2: Is the goal? Well, the Johnson's had just had a
Speaker 2: number one hit in Ireland with the Ewan McCalls song
Speaker 2: called the Traveling People about the Trap, about the Gypsy
Speaker 2: community and the travelers as they're called here, and so
Speaker 2: that put them at the top of the charts in Ireland.
Speaker 2: They so we were playing all over the country, making
Speaker 2: big money and on radio and television all the time.
Speaker 2: And then we were discovered by a British label called
Speaker 2: Transatlantic Records, owned by Not Joseph and this was a
Speaker 2: really progressive label in the UK at the time. It
Speaker 2: sort of had a lot of the the the upcoming
Speaker 2: British folk artists like Pentangle, like Bert Jansk, John Renbourn,
Speaker 2: Billy Connolly was was in the band with Jerry Rafferty
Speaker 2: called the Humble Bombs. They were on Transatlantic Records too,
Speaker 2: the Dubliners for a while, we're on Transatlantic Records and
Speaker 2: not Joseph heard about the Johnstons in Ireland and we'd
Speaker 2: done a couple of concerts in London. He came to
Speaker 2: see us in London, so he offered us a record deal.
Speaker 2: So we we had our first international record deal in
Speaker 2: nineteen late nineteen sixty seven early sixty eight with Transatlantic Records.
Speaker 2: So we went to England to make our first album,
Speaker 2: which was called the White Album because it was a
Speaker 2: white sleeve on us. And we made about five or
Speaker 2: six albums maybe even more for Transatlantic from nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: seven through nineteen seventy three seventy four, and then the
Speaker 2: band split up.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're a guy who hasn't been one hundred miles
Speaker 1: from home. You go to college at Dublin, you're kind
Speaker 1: of in and out of college. Suddenly you're on TV
Speaker 1: in America. That was a dream. What was it like
Speaker 1: to suddenly be on TV and to be on the radio.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, you know, as part of the beauty
Speaker 2: and madness of being that age, you know, you go,
Speaker 2: you take it for granted, you go, oh yeah, and
Speaker 2: I mean I always I always had confidence in my
Speaker 2: musical gift, and I call it the gifts because I
Speaker 2: really mean that, you know, it's something you're given, and
Speaker 2: but I never had confidence that it would get noticed.
Speaker 2: I suppose that's that's part of the lone wolf mentality too.
Speaker 2: So for the first time, the music that I felt
Speaker 2: was really good, that I that I was making got
Speaker 2: started to get noticed. So that was exciting, and I
Speaker 2: was I was touring a lot all over the continent
Speaker 2: with with with the Johnston Scandinavia, Germany, Holland, Belgium, France
Speaker 2: and uh, you know, we just took a nurse tride.
Speaker 2: I mean it was exciting. Of course it was siting,
Speaker 2: but but I didn't think it was undeserved.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're a young twenty something on the road. That's
Speaker 1: a legendary situation. Are you partiking of the substances in
Speaker 1: the offerings on the road.
Speaker 2: Well, to a Modica, I'd have to say, I'm you know,
Speaker 2: I'm an irishman, so I like my drink. And you know,
Speaker 2: there was really nothing much going around Ireland at the
Speaker 2: time except a bit of hash and grass, and the
Speaker 2: whole coke thing didn't happen until mid seventies, and fortunately
Speaker 2: I just was able to avoid that. I had no
Speaker 2: interest in COCD and coke at all. Just made your
Speaker 2: teeth tingle. You know, I totally uninterested in coke, So
Speaker 2: I escaped all that. It was lovely, but you know, no,
Speaker 2: I I was sort of, you know, modest in any
Speaker 2: of my obsessions. And I never really got hung up
Speaker 2: on Anathan, thankfully.
Speaker 1: How about the group Bees?
Speaker 2: You know an odd time sir, it's hard to resist.
Speaker 1: You want to you want to stay with that? It
Speaker 1: was hard to resist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure you're that age. Sure that's what you are,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: And when do you start writing songs?
Speaker 2: Well? I had the thing about the Johnston's was not
Speaker 2: Joseph wanted them to be a contemporary act like the Seekers, uh,
Speaker 2: whereas it was a very schizophrenic band. We were so schizophrenical.
Speaker 2: We actually put out two albums on the one day.
Speaker 2: One was a hardcore trad album Irish Trad, and the
Speaker 2: other was an album an orchestral the arranged album of
Speaker 2: cover songs of Jacques Brill, Gordon Lightfoot, Ian McCall, Leonard Cohen,
Speaker 2: Joni Mitchell. We had a hit single with Jonny Mitchell's
Speaker 2: both sides now and in Ireland, and it got up
Speaker 2: to the mid fifties in the States. And then suddenly
Speaker 2: Electra Records remembered that one of their acts, Judy Collins,
Speaker 2: happened to have a recording of the song on her album.
Speaker 2: I think it was called Wildflowers. So they threw that
Speaker 2: out and we tussled with her for about three or
Speaker 2: four weeks, and eventually Judy Collins's version became the hit
Speaker 2: in the States. So that was as close as we
Speaker 2: came to having a hit single in America. But I
Speaker 2: like to think that in some way I contributed, We
Speaker 2: contributed to her success in that her record company wouldn't
Speaker 2: even have remembered the song on her album if we
Speaker 2: hadn't been tickling the charts.
Speaker 1: So once again, when do you start writing songs?
Speaker 2: Well, I'd been listening to Jerry Rafferty and Al Stewart,
Speaker 2: people like that in London, and I tried to write
Speaker 2: a few songs on In fact, they had written some
Speaker 2: songs with the Johnson's in their last couple of albums.
Speaker 2: There were some songs of mine in the early early
Speaker 2: mid seventies. You know that one song in particularly called
Speaker 2: Continental Trailways Bus, which probably was one of the standout
Speaker 2: songs of my time writing there, but I never really
Speaker 2: took it seriously until one day I was driving along
Speaker 2: and I heard this song on the radio, which turned
Speaker 2: out to be Baker Street, and I just totally freaked
Speaker 2: pulled the car over the side of the road, stop
Speaker 2: the engine and listened to this and I said, what
Speaker 2: is this? And it was Shirry Raffany. I said, I
Speaker 2: know Jerry Rafferty. He's on the same label as me,
Speaker 2: and he's only a folks singer. How did he come
Speaker 2: up with this? And I was totally blown away by
Speaker 2: the song? And then I got his album City to City,
Speaker 2: which was just a stunning album, and I just said,
Speaker 2: you know, hey, bye bye traditional music. I want to
Speaker 2: see if I can write songs like this. So I
Speaker 2: started to write songs in late seventy eight early seventy nine,
Speaker 2: and by the end of seventy nine I had enough
Speaker 2: songs to put together a band in Dublin and start touring.
Speaker 2: And by the end of nineteen eighty I decided I
Speaker 2: got a record deal and I did an album and
Speaker 2: it came in early eighty one. The album is called
Speaker 2: hard station.
Speaker 1: Let's go back. You're in the Johnstons. All of a sudden,
Speaker 1: this Thingali enters the picture. You go to the US
Speaker 1: to get a record deal. You're living on nothing. Tell
Speaker 1: us about that period.
Speaker 2: Oh, that was a dark period in my life. You know, definitely,
Speaker 2: I was very impressionable. I was in my very early twenties,
Speaker 2: and you know, I kind of I suppose all the
Speaker 2: thing I discovered about myself was that, you know, I
Speaker 2: don't like change. I'd rather stick with something that's not
Speaker 2: entirely one hundred percent rather than look for something else
Speaker 2: in the dark. So that's why I probably stuck longer
Speaker 2: in the band the Johnson's than I that than I
Speaker 2: should have. So it was a very difficult time. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's complicated because of things I'm not sure I want
Speaker 2: to go into here, but uh, just it was the
Speaker 2: worst time to be trying to get a record deal
Speaker 2: in America because it was it was the time the
Speaker 2: first energy crisis hit hit the oil industry, and vinyl
Speaker 2: became prohibitively expensive, and a lot of the American labels
Speaker 2: were not only not signing new acts, but they were
Speaker 2: dropping their own acts wholesale because of the cost of vinyl,
Speaker 2: and so that was it was. We were on a
Speaker 2: heightened and often looking for a record deal at that time.
Speaker 2: Even though we did a private addition for Clive Davis
Speaker 2: in his office. We did an acoustic audition for Clive
Speaker 2: Davis and he said, I'll get back.
Speaker 1: To you classic, But you're living as kind of fly
Speaker 1: by night people in the US. You're running out on
Speaker 1: hotel bills. Rent tell me about that.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm not sure I want to go into that
Speaker 2: very deeply. I mean, it's not a period of my
Speaker 2: life I'm very proud of. And I know the statute
Speaker 2: of limitations has probably rung out. We'll probably leave it
Speaker 2: at that.
Speaker 1: Okay, But the guy who ends up being involved with
Speaker 1: the woman in the act, you're accepting it face value.
Speaker 1: At what point do you realize this guy's a liar
Speaker 1: and a crook?
Speaker 2: Well, I can't you. I cand of knew it. I
Speaker 2: never really felt that. I never really felt happy with
Speaker 2: him in the band, but at the time not Joseph,
Speaker 2: the record company boss, was very excited with him and
Speaker 2: wanted to see if he could turn this into songwriters
Speaker 2: and have hits and stuff like that. So, like I said,
Speaker 2: I just kind of went with the flow. And I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, I put up with a lot more than
Speaker 2: I should have, but you put up with an awful
Speaker 2: lot of that age. You know, it seems to be
Speaker 2: going okay, you know, and so let's not rock the boat.
Speaker 2: That was a mistake.
Speaker 1: During this window, you're back in Ireland and you meet
Speaker 1: the woman who becomes your wife. Not only do you
Speaker 1: meet her, she comes a couple of times to the US.
Speaker 1: How'd you meet her? And what did she say about
Speaker 1: your situation when she came to the US having an
Speaker 1: outside view?
Speaker 2: Well, we met at the funeral of a famous Irish
Speaker 2: traditional musician called Willie Clancy down in the west of Ireland,
Speaker 2: in County Claire, and I was back in Ireland for
Speaker 2: Christmas and he died in January. So I went down
Speaker 2: to the funeral with a lot of friends of mine
Speaker 2: and we were having some fun later on after the
Speaker 2: funeral in one of the local pubs when the Skill
Speaker 2: arrives in from Dublin with another friend of hers. They
Speaker 2: were also music fans and they had come down just
Speaker 2: to you know, join in the gathering. So that's where
Speaker 2: I first saw Mary, who went on to become my wife.
Speaker 2: And still is. And I went back to the States
Speaker 2: the end of January. She came over that summer. She
Speaker 2: was still doing her Masters in Trinity in Dublin and
Speaker 2: so she had to wait to finish her exams. And
Speaker 2: she came over and we were living at the time
Speaker 2: in Norwalk, Connecticut, and she immediately saw that this was
Speaker 2: this was a MADS situation, and you know, I knew
Speaker 2: it too, but she kind of really made my mind up.
Speaker 2: And from then on we basically worked steadily to getting
Speaker 2: an exit. It was difficult because I had nowhere to go.
Speaker 2: I had left the whole scene in Ireland. I had
Speaker 2: nothing to step into again if I if I left
Speaker 2: the Johnson's. To some extent, I was a little bit
Speaker 2: embarrassed by all that. Didn't want to go back home
Speaker 2: with nothing. But eventually I got asked to join another
Speaker 2: and which were big in Ireland at the time, called Planksty,
Speaker 2: and that was my ticket out of hell. And I
Speaker 2: found myself back in Ireland in nineteen seventy four again
Speaker 2: in one of the top bands in the country. I mean,
Speaker 2: how lucky? Is that?
Speaker 1: Very lucky? So tell me about your tenure with Planksty.
Speaker 2: Well, that was I mean that was part of a
Speaker 2: whole decade of involvement in Irish traditional music, which was
Speaker 2: you know, I put out an album with the colleague
Speaker 2: of mine, Andy Irvine, who was one of the members
Speaker 2: of Planksty. Planksy didn't last that long. Planksty Mark three
Speaker 2: I call it, which was what I joined, only lasted
Speaker 2: for about a year and a half. And then I
Speaker 2: kept playing with one of the members of that band
Speaker 2: and the Irvine. We made this album in the late
Speaker 2: seventies which went on to become a kind of a
Speaker 2: folk classic, which which was really the album that introduced
Speaker 2: my music to Dylan because he heard that album. He
Speaker 2: was friendly with Happy Troum, Happy and Artie Trum, with
Speaker 2: these brothers who were contemporaneous with Dylan in the village
Speaker 2: in the early sixties, and Dylan would call in Unhappy
Speaker 2: Troum on his way up to Woodstock every so often
Speaker 2: and say, what are you listening to now? And Happy
Speaker 2: had just got this album by Andy and me, so
Speaker 2: he gave it to Dylan, and so that's how I
Speaker 2: came to Bob Dylan's notice, and so that album became
Speaker 2: a classic, and then I did an album of my
Speaker 2: own in the late seventies, which sort of became a
Speaker 2: classic too, in the sense that it won the Melody
Speaker 2: Maker Folk Album of the Year nineteen seventy eight, and
Speaker 2: the melody Maker was probably with the New Musical Express,
Speaker 2: the two leading British music papers at the time, so
Speaker 2: that was a big coup. And so you know, that
Speaker 2: whole type of music interested me hugely, still does and
Speaker 2: kept being going through the seventies. But by seventy nine,
Speaker 2: as I said earlier, I kind of felt that I
Speaker 2: spent enough time doing that and I wanted to see
Speaker 2: what else I had going on inside me, and I
Speaker 2: wanted to become a songwriter.
Speaker 1: Okay, you meet an agent who's a turning point in
Speaker 1: your career, tell us about that.
Speaker 2: I mean a book an agent. Yeah, yeah, Well I
Speaker 2: met with Paul Charles, who at the time was I
Speaker 2: think he was at a festival. I met him and
Speaker 2: he was the agent for Lloyd and Wainwright at the time,
Speaker 2: and he caught me on stage and I was at
Speaker 2: the height of my fame in Ireland at the time,
Speaker 2: just crossing over from folk into rock, and so he
Speaker 2: made an offer to become my book an agent, and
Speaker 2: he was based in London, and I mean he was
Speaker 2: book an agent for lots of huge acts, you know,
Speaker 2: like Crosby, Stills and Nash, Tom Waits, a lot of
Speaker 2: the acts that came in from America. He was the
Speaker 2: agent for us. So look, it was a very prestigious
Speaker 2: agency to be with. And he started to book me
Speaker 2: in the UK and through Europe and I it lasted
Speaker 2: for I don't know, fifteen years, a very good relationship
Speaker 2: and I'm very grateful for him. He largely contributed to
Speaker 2: a lot of whatever success I garnered and still have
Speaker 2: it this day now.
Speaker 1: He wanted to be the manager too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean that didn't feel right to me
Speaker 2: because you know, as I say, it's the manager's job
Speaker 2: to beat up the agent, you know, and so there
Speaker 2: was a clear cut conflict of interests there. But you know,
Speaker 2: I mean he he stepped aside when when when another
Speaker 2: management option came to the fore, which was dire strates
Speaker 2: management company called Damage Management, and they they they took
Speaker 2: over the management and you know that worked fine, and
Speaker 2: I was with them for another five years.
Speaker 1: Okay, but Ed mcnell ran the agency. But you were
Speaker 1: with Paul Cummins, who was more of a tour manager
Speaker 1: for Dire Straits. Do I have it right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, at the time he became my manager, he
Speaker 2: was tour manager for Dire Straits. But he wanted he
Speaker 2: wanted something for He wanted an act for himself, you know,
Speaker 2: as well as Dire Straits. He wanted his own little thing,
Speaker 2: you know, so he he offered to manage me. And
Speaker 2: like he mean, obviously he liked my first album and
Speaker 2: he fell in love with a lot of the songs,
Speaker 2: and you know, we got on very well. And and
Speaker 2: so we we sat out on a road of artists
Speaker 2: and manager. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And what was the goal then, because at the time
Speaker 1: his biggest Dire Straits was in the US. People don't
Speaker 1: realize they were the biggest band in the world at
Speaker 1: that time. They were playing stadiums in the rest of
Speaker 1: the world when they were not that big yet in
Speaker 1: the US. But what was the play you know, would
Speaker 1: they say, we're going to turn you into the new
Speaker 1: Jerry Rafferty. What was the goal here?
Speaker 2: I mean the goal was vaguely get as successful as
Speaker 2: you can have hit records. You know, the record company
Speaker 2: wanted me to have hits. I was you know, I toured,
Speaker 2: I opened for Dire Straits and one of their biggest
Speaker 2: ever European tours. As a solo act acoustic guitar, I
Speaker 2: walked out on stage in front the twenty thousand people
Speaker 2: every night in nineteen eighty three, and so that kind
Speaker 2: of blooded me, so to speak. Nothing nothing phased me
Speaker 2: after that. Once you stood on the stage in Italy
Speaker 2: with an audience of twenty thousand people who, let's face it,
Speaker 2: are only there to look at themselves, you know, and
Speaker 2: you get away with it, and you get a few
Speaker 2: people going, hey, hey, hey, you know you're not afraid
Speaker 2: of anything.
Speaker 1: Opening you open for Dire Strait, You opened for Eric Clapton.
Speaker 1: Are you making fans or are you just getting paid?
Speaker 2: Well, I'm making fans, yes, I mean people came to
Speaker 2: my gigs, my own gigs ten years later who said
Speaker 2: to me, like, you know, the first time I ever
Speaker 2: saw you was when you open for Eric Clapton, you know,
Speaker 2: and so you're always reaching people, you know, And but
Speaker 2: you know, at the time, I never expected anything, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, I just wanted to write music and make
Speaker 2: records and sing and have fun with the band and
Speaker 2: make some money. Yeah, but I never really thought long
Speaker 2: and hard about global fame or success. Didn't really didn't
Speaker 2: really think of it was going to happen.
Speaker 1: Okay, going back a little bit in Ireland there are
Speaker 1: some successful acts. Van Morrison has them and then goes solo.
Speaker 1: There's Thin Lizzy. To what degree are you aware of
Speaker 1: that is a fraternity or is everybody separate? And you
Speaker 1: just have a worldview that's just another hit actor. He said, Oh,
Speaker 1: that's the Irish. They can do it.
Speaker 2: I can do it.
Speaker 1: That.
Speaker 2: It was a bit of both, you know. I mean
Speaker 2: we weren't you know, we weren't exactly buddies. Although I
Speaker 2: did get a nice postcard from Switzerland from Rory Gallaher
Speaker 2: saying how much he loved my first album, which was nice.
Speaker 2: Came out of the blue. You know. Yeah, I loved
Speaker 2: Van Morrison, I loved Rory Gallaher, loved Finn Lizzie, Phil Lennett,
Speaker 2: all those man's great players. And you know I was
Speaker 2: just doing my thing. They were doing theirs.
Speaker 1: Okay, now there's a breakthrough for you. When Ed from
Speaker 1: Damage Management meets with Tina Turner's new manager and suggests
Speaker 1: steel Claw, tell us that story.
Speaker 2: Well, I had to recall I had written a song
Speaker 2: called steel Claw about the underbelly of of of early
Speaker 2: eighties Dublin. Uh and uh it was on my album,
Speaker 2: my second album, and uh, I had well Ed McNall was,
Speaker 2: who was the supremo in in damage management my managed company,
Speaker 2: went to dinner one night with Roger Davies. Roger said,
Speaker 2: you know, he Roger had first got a song from
Speaker 2: Mark Knopfler called Private Dancer, which went on to become
Speaker 2: the title of of I Think our comeback album and
Speaker 2: certainly one of the biggest hits on it.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: And so Roger Davis said that Ed, you know, have
Speaker 2: you got any other acts that have songs? So Ed
Speaker 2: happened to like the song steel Claw on my album.
Speaker 2: He gave he gave a tape of it to Roger,
Speaker 2: and Roger played it for Tina, and Tina loved it.
Speaker 2: And they got back and said, look, yeah, Tina loves
Speaker 2: the song. It's really all right up the street. She'd
Speaker 2: like to change a word or two here, She'd like
Speaker 2: to make it about San Francisco instead of Dublin. Is
Speaker 2: that okay? And I say, you know yeah? And so
Speaker 2: she recorded the song and I got a copy of
Speaker 2: a tape of her recording, and I thought it was great,
Speaker 2: and I was a huge fan obviously, as I told
Speaker 2: you earlier, I'd been singing covers of I Can Tina
Speaker 2: Turner songs, you know, in my early teens in Dublin
Speaker 2: and the first band was and so I was a
Speaker 2: huge fan of Tina Turner's and it was a huge
Speaker 2: honor to get her singing your song. But then two
Speaker 2: weeks later I got a message from management saying, oh,
Speaker 2: Roger has decided to bin the whole album. He feels
Speaker 2: that stylistically the production is too dated, and he's just
Speaker 2: decided that he wants Tina to start again and record
Speaker 2: a whole new album. So that that was very disappointing
Speaker 2: for me, you know, and here was my big chance
Speaker 2: of getting the cut down a Steena Turner album, and
Speaker 2: it's wrestled out of my grasp. But then about six
Speaker 2: months later, to my surprise, I got another phone call saying,
Speaker 2: you know, Paul, Tina's just recorded a whole other album
Speaker 2: and she's been all the songs from the first album
Speaker 2: except one, and guess what that one is? Nice to
Speaker 2: tell me and he said it's steel Claw, your song,
Speaker 2: and I said wow. So that was lucky, very very
Speaker 2: lucky and the song landed up on Tina's Private Dancer album,
Speaker 2: which went on on to sell Squilliams and was my
Speaker 2: first a major hit as a songwriter, and that helps.
Speaker 2: Before that, like with Carlos Santana, had recorded a song
Speaker 2: of mine, you know, but this was like serious, a
Speaker 2: serious hit at a time when there was serious money
Speaker 2: to be made in publishing in the record business. So
Speaker 2: you know, somebody was looking after me at the time.
Speaker 1: Did you own the publishing.
Speaker 2: No, I know, I had a publishing deal where you know,
Speaker 2: the publisher had to split and I had a split,
Speaker 2: you know, But but I mean I the song was mine,
Speaker 2: and you know when the publishing deal was so the
Speaker 2: song was mine again, you know. So yeah, very fortunate.
Speaker 1: You mean, I remember Carter blowing smoke up my ass.
Speaker 1: So I got a new Tina Turner album. No one
Speaker 1: expected that album to be successful other than him. All
Speaker 1: of a sudden, what's it like when it becomes mega successful?
Speaker 1: It's your song. You can see the money waiting down.
Speaker 1: That must have been an amazing experience. It's not like
Speaker 1: you know, having you know, someone color record who's white hot.
Speaker 2: At that time, Yeah, it was like the biggest thing
Speaker 2: that ever happened to me career wise at the time,
Speaker 2: and it was only the beginning, because she recorded another
Speaker 2: song of my on her follow up album, Break Every Rule,
Speaker 2: this time produced by Mark Knopfler, who was very good
Speaker 2: to me. And so it went on from there, and
Speaker 2: suddenly I started to become known as a songwriter who
Speaker 2: wrote songs that you know, had a depth to them
Speaker 2: and had a chance also of commercial success. So a
Speaker 2: lot of people started the cover songs, and I suppose
Speaker 2: the last time I counted, I suppose I've had about
Speaker 2: one hundred and ten covers since I started writing songs,
Speaker 2: So that helped a lot.
Speaker 1: Before we move on the second song, Tina cuts his
Speaker 1: Paradise is Here. I love that song. How did you
Speaker 1: come up with that song?
Speaker 2: Well, I was written a mystic called Christiana Murdy at
Speaker 2: the time and a book called as far as I remember,
Speaker 2: Beyond Violence, and yeah, there was a there was a
Speaker 2: concept in it which appealed to me where he just
Speaker 2: he was discussing, you know, how people live in the
Speaker 2: future and then the present, and the idea was there's
Speaker 2: no such thing as the future. This moment right now
Speaker 2: is actually the first moment of the future, so therefore
Speaker 2: the present it's the only thing that matters, and if
Speaker 2: you have to live, you have to live right in
Speaker 2: the present. And that had a big impact on me,
Speaker 2: you know, psychically and spiritually at the time. And I
Speaker 2: was going through a lot of an age where I was,
Speaker 2: you know, trying to figure out a lot of stuff
Speaker 2: for myself about you know, what I was, what I felt,
Speaker 2: you know, and this made a lot of sense to me,
Speaker 2: you know, to not be living in the future all
Speaker 2: the time, and it just it made sense to try
Speaker 2: and dream up a situation or a relationship situation where
Speaker 2: one of the partners was living in the future all
Speaker 2: the time and the other wanted to, you know, get
Speaker 2: it together right now. And that's was the initial inspiration
Speaker 2: for the song, I suppose, I mean, I was expressing
Speaker 2: my feminine side at the time, because the song, really
Speaker 2: it's probably best as a woman's song, and Tina, you know,
Speaker 2: made that obvious when she sang it. I mean, because
Speaker 2: more often than not, it's the man who's living in
Speaker 2: the future and the woman who wants him to live
Speaker 2: in the present. So I must have been expressing my
Speaker 2: female side when I wrote that song.
Speaker 1: Okay, then you make a record with Gary Katz, who
Speaker 1: was famous, started with Jay and the Americans, was friends
Speaker 1: with them, The Maids, all these records with Steely Dan.
Speaker 1: How do you get hooked up with Gary Katz?
Speaker 2: One of my colleagues in the record company I was
Speaker 2: with at the time in the UK was very friendly
Speaker 2: with Gary Katz, and you know, they were buddies. And
Speaker 2: this guy from the company liked my album, the previous album,
Speaker 2: and he said, why don't you send some of your
Speaker 2: demos to Gary. So I had a whole bunch of
Speaker 2: songs written, which eventually became the album Trick or Treat,
Speaker 2: and I sent them off to Gary Katz and he
Speaker 2: loved them and he said, let's do a record. I'll
Speaker 2: come out here and do it, and let's do it
Speaker 2: in the LA. And so I suddenly found myself in
Speaker 2: LA making a record with Gary Katz's producer, and with
Speaker 2: Jeff Porcaro and drums, and David Pitch on keyboards, and
Speaker 2: Jimmy Johnson and Freddie Washington playing bass on different tracks,
Speaker 2: and Mike Landau playing guitar. You know, I'm going ahead,
Speaker 2: this happen, you know, And but they all love the songs,
Speaker 2: and you know me because I mean, at the time,
Speaker 2: I was writing in a whole variety of styles of songs.
Speaker 2: I was writing in pop style and blues style, and
Speaker 2: rock style and country style and funk style. I mean,
Speaker 2: I was I was sort of thrown everything at the wall,
Speaker 2: just just for the for fun to see, to see
Speaker 2: if it would stick. And all the guys in the
Speaker 2: band love loved the songs, and we had a great
Speaker 2: time making the record, and we eventually ended up in
Speaker 2: Bearsville over in New York, which stock and then finished
Speaker 2: the album in the Hits Factory in New York. This
Speaker 2: would have been nineteen nineteen eighty nine to ninety. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And so the album came out and it got a
Speaker 2: lot of notice, but you know, it didn't set the
Speaker 2: world alight, but got a lot of nice attention.
Speaker 1: So what was your experience, because there was a lot
Speaker 1: of money involved and it sounded very contemporary as opposed
Speaker 1: to some of your other projects, which were made with
Speaker 1: lower budgets and were more singular in terms of style.
Speaker 1: Did you feel like you'd lost control or you said, no,
Speaker 1: I'm riding this train, this is good.
Speaker 2: No, I love I loved, I mean, I mean, I
Speaker 2: thought stylistically very much at home in Trick or Treet.
Speaker 2: You know, there was nothing that was being voisted on
Speaker 2: me that I didn't love, you know, And in fact,
Speaker 2: I was probably golding them on, you know, and I
Speaker 2: loved it, you know, because I'm a huge tally Dan fan.
Speaker 2: I always was, and I loved that kind of music.
Speaker 2: And I was just felt so excited that that the songs,
Speaker 2: the vehicles that I gave them were inspiring enough to
Speaker 2: them to play the beautiful music they did, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean they played some beautiful music on that album,
Speaker 2: absolutely gorgeous music.
Speaker 1: There's a song on there called Can't Stop Wanting You?
Speaker 1: How words on a summer night, you and me having
Speaker 1: a fight one drink at all can't come out before
Speaker 1: I knew what we were fighting about. And then you
Speaker 1: talk about the guy. Tell me about the backstory of
Speaker 1: this song.
Speaker 2: I guess, just a row, you know, I mean you
Speaker 2: watch people, you know, it's a row you had with
Speaker 2: your missus, you know, at the time, and because you had,
Speaker 2: I suppose different points a view on certain subjects. Oh,
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't like to paraphrase songs on mine,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean? A song is a very
Speaker 2: subtle thing, and I think to explain it is kind
Speaker 2: of neutralizes it and takes the mystery out of it.
Speaker 2: So I'll let you guess what it's about.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you make this album, it's called Trick or Treat,
Speaker 1: you do a duet with Bonnie Ate, which it becomes
Speaker 1: the title song. Was that song already written and were
Speaker 1: you planning not to do it as a duet just yourself?
Speaker 2: Ah? Yeah, I had. I had that song written probably
Speaker 2: two years before, and and in fact, i'd sent it
Speaker 2: to Bunny because she's asked me how to any songs,
Speaker 2: and I sent it to her with a few to
Speaker 2: perhaps her cotting it, you know, But she came down
Speaker 2: to studio and it, you know, it just seemed natural.
Speaker 2: She just suggested singing ana verse and it worked out perfect.
Speaker 2: And I just love that Jewett. I just I think
Speaker 2: the song is perfect for the duet, and I just
Speaker 2: love the way she takes off and makes it her
Speaker 2: own in a song that I felt I pretty much
Speaker 2: made my own, you know too. So there were two
Speaker 2: very strong colors in that and that recording, and I
Speaker 2: always liked that.
Speaker 1: Okay, But how do you meet Balie reid.
Speaker 2: Well it was through her best player, hug Hutchinson, who
Speaker 2: was he liked to call himself hibern new Field, which
Speaker 2: is someone who likes things Irish from the Latin for Ireland, Hibernia.
Speaker 2: And he was always interested in Irish trad music. He
Speaker 2: was very much aware of what I was doing in
Speaker 2: the seventies as a trad act, and he loved he
Speaker 2: always loved Irish music. And a mutual friend of ours,
Speaker 2: Tomorrow O'Connell, an Irish singer who now lives in Nashville,
Speaker 2: told hutch that I was coming to la and hutch said,
Speaker 2: I'd love to meet him, So so I called him
Speaker 2: up and we met, and he invited me down to
Speaker 2: a concert that Bunnie was doing with Jackson Brown and
Speaker 2: the Santa Monic Pacific Auditorium. It was a benefit for
Speaker 2: something or Older, which a lot of Bonnie's concerts are,
Speaker 2: and he took me back stays afterwards, and that's where
Speaker 2: I met Bunnie. And at the same time, she was
Speaker 2: standing with Meryl streep So, I'm going here is Bunny
Speaker 2: rid him marriage streep Hey.
Speaker 1: So when you met her at the Santa Monica Civic,
Speaker 1: did she already know who you were, had you already
Speaker 1: sent the song?
Speaker 2: Well, she My memory is playing tricks on me here now. Ah.
Speaker 2: I can't quite recall whether she had heard not the
Speaker 2: only one before that or not, and whether this was
Speaker 2: just the first time we'd met. If I'd known you're
Speaker 2: going to ask me this question, I would probably thought
Speaker 2: harder about it. But I can't quite remember the sequence
Speaker 2: of events. Okay, as I say, said, you can't walk
Speaker 2: on to it.
Speaker 1: How did she end up coming to the studio.
Speaker 2: Well, you know that happened after the meeting at the
Speaker 2: backstage in the Civic auditorium. I asked her, when you
Speaker 2: come down and listen to stuff, you know? And she
Speaker 2: was very happy to come down and did it. And
Speaker 2: then she said, have you any songs yourself for me?
Speaker 2: And I had just written the night before a song
Speaker 2: called the Look of the Draw, and I still hadn't
Speaker 2: even done a tape of it myself. I just had
Speaker 2: it in my head. So I sang it for her
Speaker 2: on acoustic guitar in the studio and she just said, wow,
Speaker 2: that song that sounds like an album title. She said,
Speaker 2: Love of the Draw, And she took the song and
Speaker 2: record and call the album afterwards, and there you go
Speaker 2: another but a magic that happened to me.
Speaker 1: Okay, just to be clear, she was the one who
Speaker 1: suggested she sing on Trick or Treat.
Speaker 2: You didn't ask her, I can't recall, Okay.
Speaker 1: So then she puts out Look of the Draw which
Speaker 1: is even better than the breakthrough Nick of Time. You
Speaker 1: have those two songs on it not the only one
Speaker 1: in Luck of the Draw on it's the title song.
Speaker 1: How does that feel? And how do you feel any
Speaker 1: changes now that you have all this success as a songwriter.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm you know, I mean, obviously you know. I'm
Speaker 2: I'm a married man of two young children. I have
Speaker 2: a mortgage, and it's great to be making a living frankly,
Speaker 2: and I'm I'm enjoying playing live a lot. I'm not
Speaker 2: enjoying the record business, to have to say, I'm not
Speaker 2: enjoying the music business in terms of the records and
Speaker 2: radio and stuff like that. I'm finding a lot of
Speaker 2: pressure on me to change the kind of music and Megan,
Speaker 2: and I'm finding a lot of pressure on me to
Speaker 2: reach the status that I don't feel as me and
Speaker 2: I don't feel comfortable with. So I started to experience
Speaker 2: a lot of stress within the record business. But but
Speaker 2: I still was writing songs all the time and enjoying
Speaker 2: recording them and enjoying covers very much so, but I
Speaker 2: was definitely going off the record business.
Speaker 1: So were you pitching your songs or were people finding you?
Speaker 1: Or was your manager publisher pitching your song?
Speaker 2: Finally enough, most of the vast majority of my covers
Speaker 2: of the songs that I already recorded, came from people
Speaker 2: hearing my records. My my reputation as a songwriter spread
Speaker 2: among the musical fraternity in a way you know that
Speaker 2: was really organic and got me on a lot of
Speaker 2: interest and got a lot of covers for me. My
Speaker 2: publisher got a few covers, but frankly, not all that many,
Speaker 2: and most of it came from my own recordings.
Speaker 1: But you weren't the type who was sitting at home
Speaker 1: and saying, I have this song, this would be good
Speaker 1: for somebody. Let me feel how to connect to that guy.
Speaker 1: Let me send the song just hit to that person.
Speaker 2: No, I mean I I you know, I never promoted myself.
Speaker 2: I never pushed myself. I never.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I went to Nashville for a while in the early nineties,
Speaker 2: wrote about fifty songs there, and most of them are
Speaker 2: probably sitting in drawers ever since. You know, I just
Speaker 2: the whole songwriting factory thing just left, you know, it
Speaker 2: left me cold. I felt that I didn't want to
Speaker 2: write songs that way, and I just that it wasn't
Speaker 2: my thing. And I was, you know, I was quite comfortable.
Speaker 2: I was making a good living, and my reputation wasn't
Speaker 2: exactly hurting, all right. I wasn't world famous, and you know,
Speaker 2: my record company was thinking maybe they'd signed the wrong act,
Speaker 2: and you know, but I was, you know, I didn't
Speaker 2: feel natural trying to compete within the world of the
Speaker 2: the top top hundred, you know, and feel comfortable doing that.
Speaker 1: You talk about writing Luck of the draw the night
Speaker 1: before Bonnie hears it. Do you write your songs on
Speaker 1: inspiration or do you cobble them together over time?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, most of my most of my earlier
Speaker 2: songs are total inspiration. And then you go to a
Speaker 2: period where you're fed up going down the mine and
Speaker 2: you start to look around you at other people and
Speaker 2: see what they're doing with their lives, and that inspires
Speaker 2: you then to write about other people, but in a
Speaker 2: way that makes it feel like it's coming from you,
Speaker 2: and then later on I enjoyed the whole business of
Speaker 2: co writing, because you know, you get this stage sometimes
Speaker 2: where you know you're fed up traveling through the depths
Speaker 2: of the earth trying to come up with yet another
Speaker 2: original idea, when you could be having fun writing with
Speaker 2: someone else. Whose who whose ideas you see? I I
Speaker 2: as much fun making music as I do write in lyrics,
Speaker 2: and quite often I love somebody to send me a lyric.
Speaker 2: I mean, my latter records have been made up of
Speaker 2: a lot of co writes, which which I really enjoy.
Speaker 2: It shows a different side of myself musically, because when
Speaker 2: when you're writing all the song yourself, you kind of
Speaker 2: subconsciously limit yourself in some way. I can't explain it exactly,
Speaker 2: but when you're writing with someone else, there's no limits.
Speaker 2: And I wrote in styles with other people that I
Speaker 2: wouldn't let myself write and when I was writing a
Speaker 2: song on my own. I mean a perfect example of
Speaker 2: that will be The Long Goodbye, which I wrote with
Speaker 2: Roland Keating. I mean that as a classic pop song,
Speaker 2: and I wrote most of the music in that song,
Speaker 2: so I could make that kind of music, but I
Speaker 2: wouldn't let myself make that kind of music if I
Speaker 2: was writing a song on my own, because I would
Speaker 2: have felt, oh, that's to poppy, Paul, and they won't
Speaker 2: buy that, you know, from you. And so I always
Speaker 2: had these conflicts about how close I wanted to go
Speaker 2: to pop music, and you know, I ended up going
Speaker 2: I just want to write what I want to write myself.
Speaker 1: You know, Okay. In the book you go on and
Speaker 1: on that when a record comes to the end, to
Speaker 1: the mixing stage, you tend to become very anxious and
Speaker 1: have a hard time letting go. You've made a lot
Speaker 1: of records, tell us about that.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, it's not as bad now as it
Speaker 2: used to be because I have a lot more control.
Speaker 2: And when I make a record now, I make it myself,
Speaker 2: make it my own studio. I put it out when
Speaker 2: I want to put it out, you know, which, more
Speaker 2: often than that is probably the worst time to put
Speaker 2: it out. But I couldn't care anymore. I just want Nowadays,
Speaker 2: it's easier for me to make a record. But in
Speaker 2: the old days, yeah, in the old days, you'd you'd
Speaker 2: be in a studio for a limited amount of time,
Speaker 2: and you'd have these musicians. They are all expensive musicians,
Speaker 2: so you felt you had to, you know, you had
Speaker 2: to come up with something in a very short space
Speaker 2: of time. And quite often I found that very stressful.
Speaker 2: And those little pings kind of have just straight as
Speaker 2: those little pings kind of change my my. I forgot
Speaker 2: what we were talking about that.
Speaker 1: Well, as I say, you were talking about the records
Speaker 1: being mixed. Not happy, You want to react, you want
Speaker 1: to spend more time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Well, when you live, when you live with
Speaker 2: a record, you know, for as long as I would
Speaker 2: live with a record, you know, and when you know
Speaker 2: everything that's gone on in it, you know, you can
Speaker 2: hear the squeak on the bas drum pedal, you know,
Speaker 2: for God's sake, you've got all this stuff coming at
Speaker 2: you out of the speakers, and you know, it's very
Speaker 2: hard to finally just say all right, that mixes the one,
Speaker 2: you know. And I would always go definitely temporarily insane
Speaker 2: when I finished an album. And that's why, you know,
Speaker 2: I let other people mix my albums, because you know,
Speaker 2: you're too far inside something you can't really you can't
Speaker 2: really hear it anymore. And so it's a lot easier now,
Speaker 2: But in the old days, it was very hard, I
Speaker 2: have to say.
Speaker 1: So now you have your own studio, you're making the
Speaker 1: records yourself. Aid do you mix them yourself? And how
Speaker 1: do you decide when they're done today? When you have
Speaker 1: all the time.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't, you know, I don't mix them myself. No,
Speaker 2: And I think that's a very good thing. And if
Speaker 2: you you know, I work with the mixing engineer and
Speaker 2: we would mutually agree when it was finished at a
Speaker 2: pace that that is where there's total absence of pressure,
Speaker 2: you know, and you sleep on it, and you know,
Speaker 2: you sleep on the mix for a week and you
Speaker 2: listen to it again and you go, maybe just tweet
Speaker 2: tweak it out of EBITs, But other than that, you
Speaker 2: know you're happy with this? Then yeah, I mean I
Speaker 2: let things go an off a lot quicker.
Speaker 1: And now, okay, we live in the internet era where
Speaker 1: anybody can make a track, put it up on a
Speaker 1: streaming service. The biggest acts in music history, most of
Speaker 1: them don't make new music, and those to be who do,
Speaker 1: the album can disappear in a day. So does this
Speaker 1: affect your mindset? Does this affect your motivation? Not remotely? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: not remotely. The things that that affect me. Are what's
Speaker 1: happening with my family right now, you know? And how
Speaker 1: often am I going to see them? I have a
Speaker 1: son that lives in New Zealand with three children there
Speaker 1: three grandchildren. I have a daughter that lives in the
Speaker 1: UK with two grandchildren. You know, I'm at a stage
Speaker 1: where family for me.
Speaker 2: Is you know, I'm not I'm drawing back to some
Speaker 2: extent from the from making music, and to me, family
Speaker 2: is a very important thing at the moment, and I
Speaker 2: don't manage to see half enough of them. We go
Speaker 2: out to New Zealand once a year to see my
Speaker 2: son and but it's a long way away. And yeah,
Speaker 2: we're going back again in January for three weeks. That'll
Speaker 2: be nice.
Speaker 1: How often do you work live now? And what does
Speaker 1: it take to get you out.
Speaker 2: Well? I mean I the first half of this year
Speaker 2: I worked quite a bit. I actually did three nights
Speaker 2: in New York in a new building called the Irish
Speaker 2: Arts Center, which is a small theater up on the
Speaker 2: upper west side Tenth Avenue up there, and and I
Speaker 2: played a lot in Ireland this year. But then in
Speaker 2: July I had some knee surgery which has in a
Speaker 2: way kept me off the boards for a while, and
Speaker 2: I won't really be going back live until early next year.
Speaker 2: I'm getting together with my band, I'm doing a series
Speaker 2: of dates in Ireland, and you know, I have no
Speaker 2: great desire, Bob, to tour America anymore. It's very difficult
Speaker 2: for an artist at my level. The United States government
Speaker 2: doesn't make it easy for people coming in. They take
Speaker 2: a huge amount of of of your growth and tax
Speaker 2: and it's it's difficult to I mean, I would probably
Speaker 2: make more money in a night in Ireland or the
Speaker 2: UK than I would make touring the stage for two weeks,
Speaker 2: you know what kind of way. And it's uh, I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm I'm getting on. I'm in my seventies, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm I'm still having great time performing, but
Speaker 2: I've I'm not interested in world tours anymore.
Speaker 1: Not really, Are you going to die on stage or
Speaker 1: at one point you say I'm done.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'll keep going as long as I can keep going,
Speaker 2: you know. I mean, you know, I'm a singer and
Speaker 2: I throw ships. What else can I do? You know?
Speaker 2: I write songs. I keep going as long as my
Speaker 2: body stands up to it, you know. And I mean
Speaker 2: I'm not doing too bad. I'm in the mid seventies
Speaker 2: and I'm still, you know, having fun playing music.
Speaker 1: Are you scuba diving?
Speaker 2: Well, I haven't scuba dived since November of twenty two,
Speaker 2: and a lot that's largely between about COVID and stuff
Speaker 2: like that. But I swim three or four times a week,
Speaker 2: and I snorkel at the weekends, and I mean, and
Speaker 2: I'll be quite happy to go scuba diving again when
Speaker 2: we when when something turns up that seems attractive.
Speaker 1: And you referenced early you're about turning away from being
Speaker 1: an international rock star. And there's also in the book
Speaker 1: where you say you have an agent and the agent
Speaker 1: books you, and the promoter wants a restriction that you
Speaker 1: can't play other gigs in Ireland, and you say, I'm done,
Speaker 1: I'm firing the agent. I'm gonna do it differently now.
Speaker 1: Tell us about that.
Speaker 2: You know, that's just I mean, people have, you know,
Speaker 2: relationships that work for a certain period in your life
Speaker 2: and then they don't work, you know, and that's natural.
Speaker 2: It's just changed as I see it. It's partly that
Speaker 2: I just felt that that I was neglecting my fan
Speaker 2: base in my own country by only playing in it
Speaker 2: once or twice a year, and you know, according to
Speaker 2: a logic that that would make sense if you were
Speaker 2: an international act coming to Ireland, you know, and I
Speaker 2: just that didn't suit me any longer, and I felt
Speaker 2: I was I wanted to play my home country a
Speaker 2: lot more and That's what I'm doing and I'm having
Speaker 2: a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: So you're doing your own thing? Do you have still
Speaker 1: have a hunger? Well, I want to get another song covered.
Speaker 1: I still want to be part of the action. Or
Speaker 1: are you saying I'm just doing my own thing and
Speaker 1: I don't care about the rest?
Speaker 2: Well, the second, the latter. Really, I mean, I'm I'm
Speaker 2: not you know, I I don't want to break into
Speaker 2: new territories. I'm I'm. I'm very happy with the dynamic
Speaker 2: that that exists in my career at the moment. I'm
Speaker 2: happy enough. I'm comfortable enough. I'm I'm. I was very
Speaker 2: lucky in my career. So yeah, I'm I'm happy with
Speaker 2: where I am and you know, I will make another
Speaker 2: record when it seems right.
Speaker 1: Okay. For those people who aren't aware of you, you're
Speaker 1: an icon in Ireland and they've gotten many awards, titles,
Speaker 1: So let's say somebody says I want Paul Brady and
Speaker 1: you're unavailable, then do who do they call?
Speaker 2: Wow? Well, you see, that's a hard one to answer,
Speaker 2: because Paul, there are two or three Paul Brady's as
Speaker 2: far as Irish people are concerned. There's the there's the
Speaker 2: fella that sang Irish folk music throughout the whole seventies.
Speaker 2: There's the there's the fella that wrote the song Crazy
Speaker 2: Dreams and wrote the song Nobody Knows. And there's a
Speaker 2: fella you know that that you know plays live on stage.
Speaker 2: I'm a sort of an unusual article altogether. You know,
Speaker 2: there's that there are few. There aren't too many musicians
Speaker 2: who have covered as many musical basis as me, and
Speaker 2: and you know, made a little bit of an impact
Speaker 2: in each one of them. So if somebody was looking
Speaker 2: for me, it would depend on what to say to
Speaker 2: me they were looking for as to who they'd ask next.
Speaker 1: And in Ireland, if you're walking down the street, if
Speaker 1: you're going to dinner, are you recognized?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, all the time, but in a nice way.
Speaker 2: I'm never hassled, you know, it's nice. I just want
Speaker 2: to get to get my card tested. Today. You know,
Speaker 2: you know, you have a three year test for your
Speaker 2: car's roadworthiness. You know, right, it's called the National you know.
Speaker 2: And I'm sitting there waiting and it comes this call
Speaker 2: BMW and I look around. I says, yeah, ask me,
Speaker 2: and the guy says, Paul, really, I'm a big fan
Speaker 2: of yours. I'm coming to your shows next April. You passed,
Speaker 2: we'll leavenute that. Paul.
Speaker 1: I want to thank you for taking so much time
Speaker 1: talk to my audience.
Speaker 2: Can I just add the last thing here? There's no
Speaker 2: suggestion that the only reason I passed my car past
Speaker 2: was because he was a fan of mine.
Speaker 1: Well, well we'll be the judge of that.
Speaker 2: Bob. Great talking to you, man, and thank you for
Speaker 2: all your your nods in my direction over the years.
Speaker 1: Thank you absolutely, you're a real talent. Hopefully more people
Speaker 1: will connect the songs with the man after this. Until
Speaker 1: next time, This is Bob left six
Speaker 2: Sh