WEBVTT - Paul Brady 0:00:08.600 --> 0:00:12.400 Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Search podcast. 0:00:13.000 --> 0:00:18.599 My guest today is singer songwriter Paul Brady. Paul, last year, 0:00:18.640 --> 0:00:22.599 you put out an autobiography, Crazy Dreams. What inspired you 0:00:22.680 --> 0:00:24.479 to lay down your story at this point? 0:00:26.800 --> 0:00:29.440 Well, I suppose it was to try and remember what 0:00:29.600 --> 0:00:34.159 happened to me. It's so easy to forget what goes on, 0:00:34.280 --> 0:00:37.720 and I spent you know, I used to take notes 0:00:37.800 --> 0:00:40.199 all the time, not a diary per se, but I 0:00:40.240 --> 0:00:43.880 would always sort of when anything exciting happened, I would 0:00:43.920 --> 0:00:45.600 sort of write it up. So I just wanted to 0:00:45.640 --> 0:00:48.720 keep a record and as much to try and understand 0:00:49.120 --> 0:00:50.360 myself as anything else. 0:00:52.000 --> 0:00:53.880 What did you learn about yourself writing the. 0:00:53.880 --> 0:00:58.200 Book That I'm a bit of a lone wolf. I 0:00:58.240 --> 0:01:03.480 guess that that that I sort of dabbled in and 0:01:03.480 --> 0:01:06.480 out of everything. I was kind of a multi lingual 0:01:07.640 --> 0:01:13.680 musically speaking, and you know, not everybody that I knew 0:01:13.840 --> 0:01:16.560 in the music business was like that. I mean, I 0:01:16.640 --> 0:01:19.880 came through three or four different types of music in 0:01:19.920 --> 0:01:24.800 my career. But all the time, I suppose I felt 0:01:25.160 --> 0:01:28.080 that I was a bit of a lone wolf. And 0:01:30.120 --> 0:01:30.800 for better. 0:01:30.680 --> 0:01:33.920 Or for worse, tell me more about being a lone wolf, 0:01:34.120 --> 0:01:36.119 not only in the music business, but in life. 0:01:37.600 --> 0:01:43.720 Hmmm, well, I suppose you're happy in your own company 0:01:43.720 --> 0:01:51.840 for a start, you're happier. I suppose listening and talking 0:01:52.560 --> 0:01:59.440 and a lot of what passes for the mainstream you 0:01:59.520 --> 0:02:04.559 tend to sort of worry about and see through, and 0:02:05.080 --> 0:02:06.640 you tend to want to be I'm sort of on 0:02:06.680 --> 0:02:09.320 the on the periphery of everything, you know, And that's 0:02:09.360 --> 0:02:12.560 the way I've always been. I've never I've been terminally 0:02:12.600 --> 0:02:18.680 non aligned in terms of politics, in terms of musical tastes, 0:02:19.440 --> 0:02:24.040 in terms of social morays. You know, I've just been 0:02:24.960 --> 0:02:29.120 someone who's you know, I've plowed my own furrow. 0:02:29.240 --> 0:02:32.880 I guess. Well, in the book, you're constantly calling on 0:02:33.080 --> 0:02:36.919 friends to play on the records, to go on the road. 0:02:37.840 --> 0:02:39.880 You know, you talk about being a lone wolf. Is 0:02:39.919 --> 0:02:42.680 that difficult for you to have social anxiety? Or it's 0:02:42.840 --> 0:02:45.760 just in your views and lifestyle that you're a lone wolf. 0:02:46.960 --> 0:02:48.920 I think it's just in my views and lifestyle. I mean, 0:02:48.919 --> 0:02:51.840 I'm a sociable animal, you know. I like a bit 0:02:51.880 --> 0:02:58.799 of crack like everybody else. And you know, I tour solo. 0:02:58.880 --> 0:03:01.239 I play solo quite a bit. But I also love 0:03:01.320 --> 0:03:04.160 playing with the band, and you know, I'll go through 0:03:04.200 --> 0:03:06.920 like a year playing solo and then I'll miss the 0:03:06.960 --> 0:03:10.560 camaraderie and and the kickoff the ass of the band, 0:03:10.600 --> 0:03:13.280 you know, and so I'll spend a year doing that. 0:03:13.440 --> 0:03:18.280 And I mean again, I'm fortunate in that that I 0:03:18.320 --> 0:03:22.799 found it easy to do both and saw the beauty 0:03:22.840 --> 0:03:23.440 in both. You know. 0:03:24.560 --> 0:03:29.560 Okay, there's a lot in the book about Ireland, in 0:03:29.720 --> 0:03:34.760 Northern Ireland, and I just read a book called The 0:03:34.760 --> 0:03:38.200 Beasting by Paul Murray, very highly reviewed, and you realize, 0:03:38.400 --> 0:03:41.280 as much as we think outside of Ireland we know 0:03:41.360 --> 0:03:45.480 what's going on, we really don't. So explain to my 0:03:45.720 --> 0:03:50.880 audience the difference between Northern Ireland and the Republic of 0:03:50.920 --> 0:03:52.800 Ireland where you sit on that. 0:03:54.080 --> 0:04:04.080 Oh, dear, dear, dear, well, Well, Northern Ireland is part 0:04:04.120 --> 0:04:08.520 of the United Kingdom, and a lot of people think 0:04:08.560 --> 0:04:10.080 that's a good thing, and a lot of people think 0:04:10.120 --> 0:04:13.320 it's not. And that has sort of been at the 0:04:13.400 --> 0:04:20.760 route of a lot of antagonism and over the last 0:04:21.200 --> 0:04:26.000 one hundred couple of years. But you know, in the 0:04:26.040 --> 0:04:29.280 last couple of decades things have quite done quite a bit. 0:04:29.320 --> 0:04:33.040 People are much more accepting of each other. And whereas 0:04:33.080 --> 0:04:36.679 it's not like walk in the park, the relationship between 0:04:36.680 --> 0:04:41.000 the two parts of the country. You know, things are 0:04:41.040 --> 0:04:45.159 a lot better than they wear. I mean, it's as 0:04:45.279 --> 0:04:51.320 much connected with the United Kingdom the problems as anything 0:04:51.320 --> 0:04:53.160 else than I mean, and the United Kingdom is having 0:04:53.200 --> 0:04:55.560 their own problems at the moment. A lot of people 0:04:55.560 --> 0:05:00.320 in Northern Ireland think that England doesn't really care about 0:05:00.360 --> 0:05:04.159 them and just to soon see them go. And but 0:05:04.320 --> 0:05:06.440 that's that's this is a very long one. You know, 0:05:07.960 --> 0:05:10.599 you might as well try and talk to me about 0:05:10.600 --> 0:05:13.720 the Middle East diabob because it's that complicated. 0:05:14.160 --> 0:05:17.080 Okay, so you're talking to a American. We're ignorant. Let's 0:05:17.080 --> 0:05:19.919 start a little bit back. Tell me about the Irish 0:05:19.960 --> 0:05:21.160 War of Independence. 0:05:24.200 --> 0:05:28.840 Oh, dear, well, the Irish War of Independence was the 0:05:29.800 --> 0:05:35.400 next in a whole many series of revolutions, failed revolutions 0:05:35.440 --> 0:05:40.960 since the arrival of Britain. And you know, in the 0:05:41.120 --> 0:05:50.039 fifteen hundred and sixteen hundreds, and of course, you know, 0:05:53.640 --> 0:05:57.320 it never really left the public imagination, the notion that 0:05:58.800 --> 0:06:01.920 we wanted to be Ireland, to be for the Irish. 0:06:02.720 --> 0:06:08.360 And you know, the nineteen sixteen Revolution was just the 0:06:08.400 --> 0:06:15.680 most recent one of all those attempts, and you know, 0:06:15.800 --> 0:06:18.560 in one way failed it failed, but in another way 0:06:18.720 --> 0:06:25.680 it it heralded in independence of a sort up until 0:06:25.720 --> 0:06:28.320 the mid forties, when Ireland became a republic, or the 0:06:30.200 --> 0:06:32.040 south of Ireland became a republic. 0:06:33.120 --> 0:06:37.400 Okay, when did the division of Northern and Southern Ireland 0:06:37.800 --> 0:06:38.440 take place? 0:06:40.279 --> 0:06:47.039 Nineteen twenty two? I think yeah, round about you know, 0:06:47.839 --> 0:06:50.840 the revolution was in the nineteen sixteen, and then the 0:06:50.880 --> 0:06:54.760 War of Independence was it sort of grumbled along for 0:06:54.760 --> 0:06:57.279 a couple of years, but blew out right into the 0:06:57.279 --> 0:07:02.320 open in nineteen nineteen. It went on and on until 0:07:02.440 --> 0:07:06.279 twenty two, and that's as far as I can recall 0:07:06.320 --> 0:07:10.280 when on Northern Ireland the statelet was kind of invented. 0:07:11.960 --> 0:07:14.080 And then of course there was the Irish Civil War 0:07:14.160 --> 0:07:19.560 because that invention was on foot of a treaty that 0:07:19.640 --> 0:07:24.320 was signed and half the people in the Republic of 0:07:24.360 --> 0:07:28.120 Ireland agreed with the treaty and the other half didn't, 0:07:28.240 --> 0:07:32.400 and so that ushered in the Irish Civil War nineteen 0:07:32.440 --> 0:07:38.040 twenty two twenty three, and that was pretty gruesome. But 0:07:38.440 --> 0:07:43.920 you know, since then there haven't been any outright wars. 0:07:44.000 --> 0:07:47.880 But you know, it's only in the last decade or 0:07:47.880 --> 0:07:53.200 so that things have kind of settled down to, you know, 0:07:53.480 --> 0:07:56.840 a state were not everybody's terrified all the time. 0:07:57.640 --> 0:08:02.800 Okay, you grow up in Derry, which to my understanding 0:08:02.920 --> 0:08:06.040 is Northern Ireland. I grew up in Connecticut. You spend 0:08:06.080 --> 0:08:08.040 time in Norwalk, which is not far from where I 0:08:08.040 --> 0:08:11.440 grew up. But I'm not in Connecticut thinking about I 0:08:11.480 --> 0:08:14.120 was thinking about the Vietnam War, but I'm not thinking 0:08:14.160 --> 0:08:17.200 about whether Connecticut is part of the United States or something. 0:08:17.920 --> 0:08:21.160 You're growing up in Northern Ireland. To what degree is 0:08:21.280 --> 0:08:24.920 politics of presence in your mind and going around. 0:08:26.600 --> 0:08:28.960 Well, it's I mean, it's it's there all the time, 0:08:29.040 --> 0:08:36.480 because you know, politics dictates the social fabric and. 0:08:38.960 --> 0:08:39.160 You know. 0:08:40.720 --> 0:08:43.040 But the other upside of it was that, you know, 0:08:43.120 --> 0:08:46.160 I lived on the border. I lived in Straban actually, 0:08:46.200 --> 0:08:48.880 which was a few miles south of Derry. I went 0:08:48.880 --> 0:08:52.880 to school in Derry. But one of the upsides was 0:08:52.920 --> 0:08:55.680 that that you had two cultures you could share, you know, 0:08:55.800 --> 0:08:59.240 I mean, living right on the border, I was able 0:08:59.280 --> 0:09:02.920 to share in the culture of Ireland and the Republic, 0:09:03.400 --> 0:09:08.240 and also in the culture of Britain and the BBC 0:09:08.520 --> 0:09:13.360 and pop radio from England and all that, and so 0:09:14.000 --> 0:09:17.840 you know it wasn't all a black and white thing. 0:09:18.360 --> 0:09:19.679 There were ups and downs. 0:09:20.559 --> 0:09:24.880 And tell me what the friction is between the Protestants 0:09:24.880 --> 0:09:25.800 and the Catholics. 0:09:29.320 --> 0:09:38.480 Well, it's, oh, well, it's about different, it's about it's tribal, 0:09:38.920 --> 0:09:44.800 simple as that. You know, it's simply tribal. It's a 0:09:44.800 --> 0:09:49.600 different tribe. You see, when Britain conquered Ireland in the 0:09:49.679 --> 0:09:55.080 seventeenth century, they ushered in hundreds of thousands of people 0:09:55.200 --> 0:09:58.320 from from across the water and took the land of 0:09:58.360 --> 0:10:03.000 the Irish people and and in what was called the plantations, 0:10:03.600 --> 0:10:08.880 the plantations of Ulster. So basically that was a whole 0:10:08.920 --> 0:10:12.720 tribe coming in and throwing another tribe on the scrap heap. 0:10:13.480 --> 0:10:16.679 And you know, as we all know when we look 0:10:16.720 --> 0:10:22.000 around the world, even in the contemporary scene, you know, 0:10:22.600 --> 0:10:24.240 tribalism is still very much alive. 0:10:25.920 --> 0:10:31.960 Okay. So we know that subsequent to World War two, 0:10:32.559 --> 0:10:36.319 things were in black and white in the UK and 0:10:36.360 --> 0:10:39.160 there were you know, lack of certain things, etc. What 0:10:39.240 --> 0:10:41.800 does the average American know about Ireland? There was a 0:10:41.840 --> 0:10:45.959 potato famine in the eighteen hundreds, and then you read 0:10:46.080 --> 0:10:50.040 books about our houses in the twentieth century. What was 0:10:50.040 --> 0:10:52.199 the standard of life when you were growing up. 0:10:54.480 --> 0:11:01.840 Well, you know, my parents were school teachers, uh primary 0:11:01.840 --> 0:11:06.360 school teachers, and so they both had had a kind 0:11:06.360 --> 0:11:11.400 of an annual salary. So like whereas we weren't sort 0:11:11.400 --> 0:11:15.400 of rich or anything, you know, we didn't want, we 0:11:15.400 --> 0:11:19.000 were comfortable enough. We could take take a vacation, you know, 0:11:19.800 --> 0:11:26.320 a couple of times a year, and you know, but 0:11:26.320 --> 0:11:28.480 but people were a lot poorer than that than they 0:11:28.480 --> 0:11:35.800 are now. There wasn't as much opportunity to to make money, 0:11:36.080 --> 0:11:42.400 and it was a lot more primitive times. You know, 0:11:43.040 --> 0:11:46.040 Ireland was just a new state, you know, only a 0:11:46.040 --> 0:11:50.560 couple of decades by that stage, and we were it 0:11:50.640 --> 0:11:56.360 was a very poor country and so people didn't have 0:11:56.400 --> 0:12:02.320 a lot to throw around and it was a struggle. 0:12:02.720 --> 0:12:07.280 But you know, I was one of the fortunate generations 0:12:07.280 --> 0:12:14.480 because in the late forties Britain decreed that anybody that 0:12:14.640 --> 0:12:19.439 was had got a certain degree of privss in school exams, 0:12:19.760 --> 0:12:25.400 got a free got a free education, college scholarship to university. 0:12:26.640 --> 0:12:31.480 So that gave a whole generation me included of the 0:12:31.559 --> 0:12:35.000 forty somethings, the fifty somethings, the chance to go to 0:12:35.040 --> 0:12:40.760 third level education which utterly changed the social and educational 0:12:40.800 --> 0:12:46.600 and political map of Northern Ireland. And so I always 0:12:46.640 --> 0:12:47.559 feel grateful for that. 0:12:48.320 --> 0:12:50.199 Okay, I don't want to harp on this issue, but 0:12:50.280 --> 0:12:54.280 you're going to elementary school, primary school. To all the 0:12:54.400 --> 0:12:57.440 kids you're going to school with, do they all have 0:12:57.640 --> 0:12:58.600 indoor plumbing? 0:13:01.760 --> 0:13:05.520 Well yeah, yeah, you know, there might have been a 0:13:05.520 --> 0:13:08.760 couple of toilets out the back, you know, But but 0:13:08.840 --> 0:13:12.800 people had electricity and running water of course, yeah, and 0:13:13.160 --> 0:13:18.840 you know, and food and heat. You know, it's you know, 0:13:18.920 --> 0:13:26.640 it's just it wasn't a rich society. I was unique 0:13:26.760 --> 0:13:31.880 in a way. Most education, even to this day, both 0:13:31.880 --> 0:13:34.680 in Northern Ireland and the Republic, is segregated into first 0:13:35.080 --> 0:13:43.480 first of all gender segregation and secondly religious Catholic schools 0:13:45.400 --> 0:13:51.000 Protestant schools. You know, that was the way it was 0:13:51.040 --> 0:13:54.240 all the time. But I went to a school which 0:13:54.360 --> 0:13:58.520 was mixed religion and mixed gender. And because it was 0:13:58.559 --> 0:14:01.960 a school set up by Quakers in the nineteenth century 0:14:02.520 --> 0:14:05.480 who owned a linen mill in the in the village 0:14:05.480 --> 0:14:09.840 of Sian Mills, which was three miles south of where 0:14:09.880 --> 0:14:12.280 I lived in Straban, and my mother was one of 0:14:12.280 --> 0:14:17.160 the teachers there. So I went to school with girls 0:14:17.160 --> 0:14:21.480 and boys, elementary school with girls and boys, and with 0:14:22.080 --> 0:14:27.160 all religions, and of course, like all children, you think 0:14:27.480 --> 0:14:29.640 that's the way everybody is. And it was only until 0:14:29.680 --> 0:14:32.120 I got a lot older that I realized that that 0:14:32.240 --> 0:14:37.000 was a very unusual thing to happen. And I again, 0:14:37.080 --> 0:14:41.480 I'm extremely grateful for that, because I grew up not 0:14:41.600 --> 0:14:44.440 thinking that the other tribe had two heads. 0:14:44.480 --> 0:14:56.000 You know, Okay, you're growing up. How much television is 0:14:56.040 --> 0:14:58.000 there and how much radio is there? 0:14:59.240 --> 0:15:04.160 Well, there's a lot of We didn't get a television 0:15:04.320 --> 0:15:10.200 until nineteen fifty eight, I think it was I was 0:15:10.280 --> 0:15:13.040 just going to boarding school, and the whole thing at 0:15:13.040 --> 0:15:16.160 the time was, oh, television will distract the kids from 0:15:16.200 --> 0:15:22.720 their education, and it's you know, it's a big intrusion 0:15:22.760 --> 0:15:27.920 into into the life. So but but I said, when 0:15:27.960 --> 0:15:31.480 I came home from for Christmas holidays that that year, 0:15:32.320 --> 0:15:36.680 my first year in boarding school, there was a television 0:15:36.680 --> 0:15:41.760 in the house, a black and white television which had 0:15:41.800 --> 0:15:45.160 Irish Television one or two stations, and also had the BBC, 0:15:46.160 --> 0:15:49.200 so we were able to see all the all the 0:15:49.280 --> 0:15:51.840 music that came from the BBC in the sixties, you know, 0:15:51.920 --> 0:15:57.200 the fifties, sixties, Top of the Pops, you know, all 0:15:57.240 --> 0:16:00.600 the big you know, when the when the British pop 0:16:00.680 --> 0:16:05.960 music booms started in the late fifties earliest sixties. We 0:16:05.960 --> 0:16:10.040 were able to see all that on television in Northern Ireland, 0:16:10.040 --> 0:16:12.680 whereas in the Republic they didn't get to see that 0:16:12.760 --> 0:16:16.320 because they didn't get the BBC there. So we you know, 0:16:16.480 --> 0:16:21.840 I mean, there was a broad multicultural feel growing up 0:16:22.760 --> 0:16:23.520 where I grew up. 0:16:23.760 --> 0:16:26.440 Just so I understand is Northern Ireland is controlled by 0:16:26.440 --> 0:16:30.640 the UK. They didn't get BBC. They did get BBC 0:16:30.760 --> 0:16:33.560 Northern Ireland. Oh, the Republic of Ireland didn't, right right, 0:16:33.600 --> 0:16:35.880 I want to make sure that I had that clear, Okay. 0:16:36.200 --> 0:16:40.760 So throughout your book there's a long discussion and emphasis 0:16:40.760 --> 0:16:45.560 of traditional Irish music. In America, we don't really have that. 0:16:45.640 --> 0:16:50.360 Maybe country in Western but you're listening to the radio 0:16:50.520 --> 0:16:53.200 growing up, what are you listening to? 0:16:55.640 --> 0:16:57.880 Well, I would dispute that you don't have it in America. 0:16:58.120 --> 0:17:01.840 In every single hamlet in America, in every single town 0:17:02.160 --> 0:17:06.160 and city amid the Irish community, there is a hugely 0:17:07.440 --> 0:17:11.840 healthy Irish music scene and there are festivals all over 0:17:12.119 --> 0:17:16.800 the States all summer long, large festivals that deal with 0:17:16.840 --> 0:17:21.600 Irish music. But that said, I mean, Irish music was 0:17:21.760 --> 0:17:24.280 just a part of the music that I heard when 0:17:24.320 --> 0:17:26.800 I was growing up. I mean, like I said, it 0:17:26.880 --> 0:17:31.760 was British and American pop music. You know. We used 0:17:31.760 --> 0:17:35.960 to listen to Radio Luxembourg, which was originally a European 0:17:36.080 --> 0:17:42.080 station which then started to broadcast out of London. And 0:17:43.800 --> 0:17:47.560 what happened was that a lot of the American soldiers 0:17:48.000 --> 0:17:53.959 who were stationed in Germany would have all these records 0:17:53.960 --> 0:17:56.760 that were coming out in the States in the late fifties, 0:17:57.400 --> 0:18:05.800 you know, Elvis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochrane, Jean Vincent, 0:18:05.920 --> 0:18:09.240 all that kind of stuff was was coming into Germany 0:18:09.640 --> 0:18:14.080 with an American serviceman and that ended up on Radio Luxembourg, 0:18:14.600 --> 0:18:16.600 and so we heard I heard all this kind of 0:18:16.640 --> 0:18:21.479 stuff well, you know, in the late fifties, and so 0:18:21.560 --> 0:18:23.960 I was totally I was like a blotting paper. I 0:18:24.040 --> 0:18:29.960 just soaked, soaked it all in and all kinds of 0:18:30.000 --> 0:18:32.560 music I listened to, you know, I mean, I didn't 0:18:32.600 --> 0:18:37.040 sort of differentiate between genres of music. It didn't make 0:18:37.040 --> 0:18:38.679 any sense to me to do that it was just 0:18:39.280 --> 0:18:41.280 is it good or is it bad? Is it fun 0:18:41.359 --> 0:18:44.560 or is it awful to listen to? I just took 0:18:44.600 --> 0:18:48.400 it all on board and found, like as I said earlier, 0:18:48.640 --> 0:18:52.200 that I was multi lingual. I was I was able 0:18:52.320 --> 0:18:56.760 easy to be fluent and a vast and a big, 0:18:56.800 --> 0:18:59.600 big variety of music. 0:19:00.920 --> 0:19:05.119 Okay, so I'm a little younger than you. I was. 0:19:05.160 --> 0:19:08.760 Certainly I'm a little late for Elvis, but I remember 0:19:08.800 --> 0:19:11.040 the Beach Boys in the Four Seasons. But when the 0:19:11.040 --> 0:19:15.480 Beatles hit, it was literally a revolution in America. What 0:19:15.720 --> 0:19:20.639 was the bug that got you going on popular music 0:19:20.720 --> 0:19:22.399 that you said, Wow, this is something I have to 0:19:22.480 --> 0:19:23.720 dedicate all my time to. 0:19:25.320 --> 0:19:27.960 Well, it was just totally visceral. I mean, I mean 0:19:28.040 --> 0:19:30.120 the first time you hear little Richard singing long, tall 0:19:30.240 --> 0:19:36.199 sally like, I mean, you're going what you know, I 0:19:36.240 --> 0:19:39.360 have never heard anything like this before, and by god, 0:19:39.440 --> 0:19:47.520 is it exciting. And it was just hugely exciting and inspiring. 0:19:47.800 --> 0:19:53.239 And you know, I felt, hey, I want a bit 0:19:53.280 --> 0:19:55.560 of that. I want to I want to open my 0:19:55.600 --> 0:19:57.720 mouth and let I yell out and see what comes out. 0:19:57.760 --> 0:20:02.800 And so I started singing, and you know, just for fun, 0:20:02.840 --> 0:20:06.200 and I got a guitar from the eleventh birthday, and 0:20:06.320 --> 0:20:10.399 I taught myself because there were no other guitar players 0:20:10.440 --> 0:20:14.159 near me, and the only lesson you could get was 0:20:14.160 --> 0:20:16.719 classical music, and that's not really what I was into. 0:20:17.160 --> 0:20:20.360 So I kind of taught myself three or four cards, 0:20:20.400 --> 0:20:25.600 and I just kept learning through my teens and and 0:20:25.840 --> 0:20:29.880 playing at parties and you know, and it wasn't really 0:20:29.960 --> 0:20:33.159 until I went to college in nineteen sixty four that 0:20:33.320 --> 0:20:38.440 I you know, Harbard sort of seditious thoughts about being 0:20:38.440 --> 0:20:40.040 a musician rather than a teacher. 0:20:41.560 --> 0:20:45.000 So you say your parents were teachers, how did they 0:20:45.040 --> 0:20:47.679 afford for you to go to boarding school? And what 0:20:47.760 --> 0:20:49.560 was your experience at boarding school? 0:20:52.359 --> 0:20:56.920 Well, the education at boarding school was free. They had 0:20:56.960 --> 0:21:00.320 to pay for the accommodation, and you know, they just 0:21:00.440 --> 0:21:04.119 made that sacrifice because it was an opportunity that they 0:21:04.160 --> 0:21:08.720 didn't have, and so I'm grateful to them for that. 0:21:09.600 --> 0:21:14.879 But I hated boarding school for a start. As I 0:21:14.880 --> 0:21:19.000 said earlier, I'd come from an elementary school of mixed 0:21:19.000 --> 0:21:23.080 religions and mixed gender. This boarding school was was a 0:21:23.119 --> 0:21:29.600 Catholic boarding school, and it was all boys, and I saw, 0:21:29.680 --> 0:21:32.280 I mean, it was just immediately to me how stupid 0:21:32.359 --> 0:21:34.280 this is. You know, where's the other half of that 0:21:34.640 --> 0:21:36.040 of humanity? 0:21:36.160 --> 0:21:36.359 You know? 0:21:38.400 --> 0:21:41.639 And I just I didn't like being in a school. 0:21:41.640 --> 0:21:45.880 It was all just one one sex and one religion. 0:21:46.640 --> 0:21:53.400 And you know, there wasn't an awful lot of interest 0:21:53.480 --> 0:21:55.600 in the arts in this school. It was it had 0:21:55.640 --> 0:22:01.000 a good reputation for academia for you know, mathematics, in English, poetry, 0:22:03.080 --> 0:22:05.520 all the sort of the basic things, but they didn't 0:22:05.560 --> 0:22:10.720 really value music. And I just felt that, you know, 0:22:10.720 --> 0:22:14.399 I wasn't even allowed to bring a guitar to boarding school, 0:22:14.920 --> 0:22:18.320 you know, because guitar means rock and roll music, which 0:22:18.359 --> 0:22:23.400 is bad, you know. So I mean that was ridiculous, 0:22:23.920 --> 0:22:28.720 and so I just basically didn't like boarding school. I 0:22:28.760 --> 0:22:29.760 couldn't wait to get out of it. 0:22:30.520 --> 0:22:33.320 Okay. In the book, you talk about going for summer 0:22:33.400 --> 0:22:37.200 vacation with your parents at the beach and they're being 0:22:37.320 --> 0:22:41.240 show bands and then ultimately playing with the showbands. What 0:22:41.359 --> 0:22:42.919 exactly is a show band. 0:22:44.720 --> 0:22:46.960 Show band is a bunch of musicians, you know, maybe 0:22:47.000 --> 0:22:51.000 an eight piece band. You might have a drums, bass, keyboard, 0:22:52.200 --> 0:22:57.439 tenor sacks, trumpet, trombone, a couple of guitars, and a 0:22:57.480 --> 0:23:01.439 singer and well maybe three or four singers maybe the 0:23:01.480 --> 0:23:07.760 other instrumentalists would would sing backups. And you know, they 0:23:07.760 --> 0:23:12.360 would do all the hits today, you know, they they 0:23:12.440 --> 0:23:16.280 would whatever was on top of the pops English television 0:23:16.320 --> 0:23:19.159 the week before, the show band would learn it, and 0:23:19.359 --> 0:23:22.480 the following weekend at the dances they'd be playing cover 0:23:22.600 --> 0:23:27.560 versions of the British and American hits and and some 0:23:27.600 --> 0:23:29.640 Irish hits too. I mean, people were starting to write 0:23:29.640 --> 0:23:34.800 songs in Ireland and so there wasn't much of an 0:23:34.800 --> 0:23:42.720 infrastructure for musicians to write their own songs at the time. 0:23:44.440 --> 0:23:49.360 And there was a huge dancing culture in Ireland. Every 0:23:49.440 --> 0:23:54.240 weekend and every town in Ireland there were dance halls 0:23:54.240 --> 0:23:56.760 where all the young people would go and meet, meet 0:23:56.840 --> 0:23:59.960 up and and that, and that's for the show bands play. 0:24:00.920 --> 0:24:03.800 And there were like hundreds of show bands in Ireland 0:24:03.800 --> 0:24:06.360 at the time, and you know, some of them were 0:24:06.400 --> 0:24:09.119 extremely good. In fact, a few of them went to 0:24:09.359 --> 0:24:14.399 Las Vegas and the Royal show Band played in I 0:24:14.440 --> 0:24:18.199 see a couple of seasons in Las Vegas, and you know, 0:24:18.240 --> 0:24:22.080 and the Tour of America. But they were essentially an 0:24:22.080 --> 0:24:23.120 Irish phenomenon. 0:24:23.800 --> 0:24:25.879 And how did you end up playing in a show band. 0:24:27.119 --> 0:24:29.960 I didn't play in a show band. I played in 0:24:30.000 --> 0:24:33.560 a hotel, just a sort of a little cabaret band 0:24:33.600 --> 0:24:37.280 in a hotel in nineteen sixty two sixty three, when 0:24:37.280 --> 0:24:42.680 I was like my early teens and I was too 0:24:42.720 --> 0:24:47.199 young to play in a show band. It was only like, 0:24:47.240 --> 0:24:48.840 as I said, when I went to Dublin later in 0:24:48.880 --> 0:24:52.800 the decade. I was seventeen years old, eighteen years old 0:24:52.920 --> 0:24:56.040 when I went to UCD in Dublin, and that's when 0:24:56.080 --> 0:25:01.080 I started to play in serio music outfits. But I 0:25:01.160 --> 0:25:02.560 know I didn't play in the show band, just a 0:25:02.560 --> 0:25:03.879 little cabarety band. 0:25:04.240 --> 0:25:07.360 Okay, how do you end up going to college in Dublin. 0:25:09.560 --> 0:25:14.119 Well, that's an interesting question. My sister, three years older 0:25:14.160 --> 0:25:18.919 than me, went to Queen's University in Belfast, which was 0:25:19.800 --> 0:25:23.479 I suppose where logically I should have gone if I 0:25:23.480 --> 0:25:28.120 got to if I passed my exams. But I did 0:25:28.160 --> 0:25:30.239 pass my exams, and the year I applied to go 0:25:30.280 --> 0:25:37.359 to Belfast to Queen's Universities in Belfast, there was a 0:25:37.400 --> 0:25:42.199 superfluity of people applying for the arts faculty. There were 0:25:42.240 --> 0:25:45.600 too many applicants for the number of places, so the 0:25:45.880 --> 0:25:51.000 college in hisst wisdom declared that people born after a 0:25:51.040 --> 0:25:56.320 certain date in the late forties would have to go 0:25:56.400 --> 0:26:00.880 back to high school, boarding school for a and repeat 0:26:00.920 --> 0:26:06.359 their final year again. And there was no way I 0:26:06.400 --> 0:26:09.280 was going to go back to boarding school to repeat 0:26:09.320 --> 0:26:15.560 my last year. So we started looking around and my 0:26:15.680 --> 0:26:18.560 parents said, well, let's try Dublin. Let's try UCD in Dublin. 0:26:19.280 --> 0:26:24.880 So I applied to UCD and I got in. So 0:26:25.160 --> 0:26:30.119 in October nineteen sixty four, I ended up in Dublin City, 0:26:30.480 --> 0:26:33.200 first time I had ever been in Dublin. I'd never 0:26:33.240 --> 0:26:36.600 been more than seventy miles from my home until then, 0:26:37.680 --> 0:26:41.880 and I was on my own in Dublin as a student. 0:26:43.000 --> 0:26:49.160 And that was, you know, intimidating, but also extremely exciting. 0:26:49.920 --> 0:26:52.800 And that's where I first started to listen to rhythm 0:26:52.800 --> 0:26:55.119 and blues bands, and because there was loads of them 0:26:55.119 --> 0:26:58.560 in Dublin, and that's how I started to play music 0:26:58.560 --> 0:26:59.040 in a band. 0:27:00.240 --> 0:27:03.679 Okay, so you're going to school. Tell me about you 0:27:03.720 --> 0:27:08.000 start joining bands and playing out in venues. Tell me 0:27:08.040 --> 0:27:08.520 about that. 0:27:10.800 --> 0:27:12.600 Well, I mean, like there's a small time, you know, 0:27:12.640 --> 0:27:16.080 we were semipro. I mean a lot of the people 0:27:16.080 --> 0:27:18.560 in the bands had daytime jobs. I mean, I was 0:27:18.560 --> 0:27:20.480 supposed to be a student. I wasn't doing and he's 0:27:20.560 --> 0:27:23.320 just studying, to be honest, because as soon as I 0:27:23.320 --> 0:27:25.159 got to university, I kind of went, what am I 0:27:25.200 --> 0:27:28.560 doing here? You know? I was doing an arts degree 0:27:28.880 --> 0:27:36.600 studying French Irish language and archaeology, and I wasn't more 0:27:36.680 --> 0:27:40.440 interested than that than well, I just wasn't interested, And 0:27:41.800 --> 0:27:45.920 so I started going to what was that question again? 0:27:47.280 --> 0:27:52.080 Well, you're in college, and to what degree are you 0:27:52.359 --> 0:27:56.280 playing out in clubs in other venues? And does that 0:27:56.359 --> 0:27:58.200 become your life and how does that happen? 0:28:00.240 --> 0:28:05.119 Well, yes, I I joined the band, and, like a 0:28:05.160 --> 0:28:08.040 lot of bands in those areas, you know, we lasted 0:28:08.080 --> 0:28:11.320 six months and then I went. Then we all imploded 0:28:11.359 --> 0:28:14.640 and became another band and called ourselves a different name. 0:28:14.760 --> 0:28:17.720