Ahead of tomorrow’s BBC Northern Ireland documentary to mark the 10th anniversary of the death of film director and singer David Hammond, composer and musician Neil Martin pays a personal tribute to his most extraordinary friend
His zeal for life and art was a force that couldn’t be ignored... I got fired up by it
Iwas aware of David Hammond before I ever met him — he was that sort of a presence. Somehow he was just there. An individual colour. I knew his singing of I Wish My Love Was a Red, Red Rose from the radio, with his unique vibrato timbre and himself fully committed to the song… that caught my ear as a teenager interested in traditional music.
I was also aware of him via Field Day Theatre Company, that extraordinary gathering of artists and thinkers which emerged in 1980. Founded by Stephen Rea and Brian Friel, the other board members were Seamus Heaney, Seamus Deane, Tom Paulin and David Hammond — as a student at Queen’s back then I can remember the excitement and anticipation of what they might collectively bring.
Then, at a concert in the Arts Theatre, I remember seeing Davey for the first time. He was in the audience close by to where we were sat, and the singer, Maura O’Connell, thanked him for a song and he stood to take a bow — a big man, tweed cap, sideburns and yellow boots with Cuban heels... an individual colour.
A few years after that, in 1986, I was having a drink with the guitarist Arty McGlynn in Belfast — he had just come off the Grand Opera House stage where he’d been performing with the legendary Makem and Clancy. I was coming from a band rehearsal, uilleann pipes with me. We sat in The Crown for an hour and as last orders were called, Arty asked me to come up to David Hammond’s house. I quite naturally refused, not having been invited by the man himself.
McGlynn insisted, I caved in. We arrived up and David and his wife Eileen could not have been more welcoming. Eileen offered me my first-ever sloe gin that night — I’m forever grateful to her. It was only at this point that I discovered that Makem and Clancy were in the house too… those now mounting gate-crasher feelings were, however, simply banished by the Hammonds’ genuine hospitality.
As then often happens when musicians sit down together, we all of us played music and sang songs late into that night, and some bond sparked between Davey and myself.
We stayed in touch through many hilarious phone calls and would meet occasionally and then, in 1988, Davey invited me to join him on stage at the Guildhall in Derry for a Field Day evening.
The honour was inexplicable — I was to share a stage with Deane, Friel, Hammond, Heaney, Paulin and Rea. Davey’s invite introduced me to that array of world-class artists and from then on, everything changed. My perspective shifted, I was able to think about theatre and music and poetry and literature in a different way. And that was what Davey did so genuinely and so caringly — he opened up the world, he tried to make things better for people. His zeal for life and art was a force that couldn’t be ignored. I got fired up by it and loved it.
In 1990, Davey asked me to do some research for a film he was making, The Magic Fiddle, a film that celebrated the fraternity of fiddle music from various parts of the world — you can imagine my delight at the prospect of that travel and engagement.
What initially started out as a three-month contract gracefully morphed into a 15-year working relationship with his independent film company, Flying Fox Films.
Along with his daughter and