Johnnie and me... and the road from Castlebar

CASTLEBAR is almost as far west as one can go in Europe – famous for its international song festival and as the home place of our ex-Taoiseach, Enda Kenny – in that order.

I don’t know when Enda Kenny started but I know that the Castlebar Song Contest and Song Festival began in 1966, right in the middle of the showband era and the ballad boom.

It was a great wheeze in the making, with the idea of making a song about Castlebar to promote the town as a tourist destination and a home of music.

In the beginning things backfired a bit – people were invited to write a song about Castlebar and so when the jury sat down, by the time they heard six songs about Castlebar, the town had been stripped of all of its mystique.

It’s a good job Enda wasn’t consulted, or the festival may have had to pay him €22,000!

This history of the song contest has at last been written by Paddy McGuinness, one of the chief organisers of the festival. Paddy says: ‘I think it is important that it is properly recorded for future generations’.

The Traveller’s Friend hotel played host to the contest in the early days and it is no surprise that the bestknown songwriters, composers and journalists in the country turned up unfailingly for a prolonged festival of music, with an unspoken covenant between press and performers that what happened in Castlebar, stayed in Castlebar.

If the truth be told, Castlebar was three days of craic unlimited. The Traveller’s Friend gave way to Breaffy House as the place to be after the show. Inevitably we sang until dawn and wallowed in the company of fellow musicians.

Some great friendships were forged in the crucible of Castlebar, none more so than my own when, in 1979, I got a promise from Johnny Logan that if I got a song in to the Eurovision, he would sing it. There was no doubt about his voice, but in those days personality was as important. He had buckets of charisma when he sang a song called Angie by Liam Hurley. He made a fine job of it too, even though he didn’t win. He drove me back to Dublin when the contest was over and it was such a hairy ride that I swore to him that I wouldn’t mind sharing a limo, but making it very clear that whilst I was a fan of his music, the tempo of his driving was at variance with my song, which is in the key of ‘life’. We all know what happened the following year, 1980, when Johnny won the Eurovision singing my ballad What’s Another Year and Castlebar was left red-faced when it subsequently emerged that the local selection jury had turned the song down the previous year. The people of Castlebar were apologetic and thrilled on my behalf. In 1992, Aileen Pringle sang my song Absence of Romance, but we were pipped at the post by Barry Mason, the writer of Delilah and The Last Waltz. His win showed how attractive the festival had become to big songwriters worldwide. Being the stubborn git I am, I entered again in 1983 and I scooped the first prize, with Linda Martin singing Edge of the Universe.

SINGING was not my only connection with Castlebar. On Monday night I might be the compere. On Tuesday I might be a member of the jury. And on Wednesday I would take the stage as the guest artist.

This history by Paddy McGuinness is a gem of a book and is bound to stir great memories for Paddy has shown indomitable spirit in keeping the memory alive, long after the band has gone home.

It is a great piece of research, with the names of every singer and every song for each of the years all there to be savoured again.

The book is called Castlebar International Song Festival 1966-1988 and it’s in a shop near you right now!