‘They brought a bit of home to London – and you wouldn’t miss it for the world’
THEY were the entertainment icons of a generation. In the course of the greatest social change in Ireland – between the late 1950s and the late 1970s – Big Tom, Joe Dolan, Brendan Bowyer, Margo O’Donnell and dozens more became forces of nature to a dance-mad public during the halcyon days of the showband era.
The country was coming out from underneath the religious crozier and the cultural ritual of céilís to strut its stuff to a different form of entertainment entirely.
And not just here in Ireland. The showband spell was cast in London and right around the UK. The Galtymore Ballroom and scores of others across the Irish Sea became a home-from-home for the many forced to emigrate in search of employment.
Kilkenny native Joe Kearney shovelled earth around Cricklewood by day and danced by night in the heady days of the late 1960s. He recalls: “It was mindnumbing work but what kept you going was you knew you would be all spruced up going to hear Big Tom or Larry Cunningham or Dickie
Rock at the Galty. That shortened the working week.”
It might have shortened time on the job, but he also knew those big names lengthened the queues. “I had the (mis)fortune to have to queue halfway down Cricklewood Broadway such was the crowd on the nights Larry or Big Tom were playing. But they brought a bit of ‘home’ to London and you wouldn’t miss that for the world,” he added. In the recently released book, ‘From The Candy Store To The Galtymore’, Margo recalled many poignant moments watching the young Irish in England seeking their roots on those dancing nights. “They came to hear Big Tom, Philomena Begley, Brian Coll and myself and dozens of other bands who were a link between them and home. We reflected emotion for them in the words of the songs we sang at that time – tales of hardship and heartache, loneliness and loss, of demons and drink, of life and death.” In Ireland, the mid-to-late 1960s represented the zenith of the showband era. Back then it was calculated that as many as 800 professional and semi-professional showbands crisscrossed the country supplying sounds for music-hungry audiences every weekend.
The venues ranged from parochial halls to dance halls, sports halls to marquees. There were approximately 1,000 such establishments across the 32 counties and quite often the biggest bands played the smallest venues. This new culture came courtesy of the government’s decision to bring power to every corner of the country under the ‘rural electrification’ scheme.
At the throw of a switch, the guitar amp replaced the accordion and the booming sound of the showbands replaced the traditional lilt of the fiddle and tin whistle céilí group. Then the radio brought new musical influences from across the Atlantic and the Irish Sea into the homes which had upgraded to this magically new electric device.
Imperceptibly, the choreography that had marked the tempo of Irish life for decades began to change, a generation was emerging into a new light. Men’s hairstyles got longer as their dance partners’ hemlines shrank. Fashions were changing with the influence of the showbands. Drapery stores displayed bright shirts and kipper ties, bell-bottoms, hipster trousers and wide-collared jackets.
The fledgling RTÉ of the early 1960s saw the attraction of what was happening nationwide and created its own unmissable programme for the time called ‘The Showband Show’. Newsagents stocked ‘Spotlight’ magazine and national papers devoted columns to reports from ‘dance correspondents’.
Radio was a tremendous outlet of reminder, and in Paschal Mooney, RTÉ had an enthusiast of the industry; whenever he turned a disc, it was always Irish and more often than not it was Big Tom or many of the emerging country singers from Ray Lynam to Declan Nerney. Music was finding new forms with all the cross-fertilisation of ideas. None could compare in popularity with Country and Irish.
In an Ireland that is no more, around the marquee carnivals of a hot August night, there were none bigger than Big Tom and The Mainliners – although Larry Cunningham and the Mighty Avons, Margo, Philomena Begley and Brendan Shine had their massive loyal band of followers too.
There was a ritual to it all for the bands. Out every night of the week during the summer and then during Lent, off to the UK to keep the few bob flowing in.
London was the Mecca for touring bands, and their audiences, hungry for their own culture, were often out dancing seven nights a week in this period.
Venues such as The Galty, The Garryowen, The Banba, The National, The 32 Club, The Buffalo were happy to host bands who would have been unemployed back home because of local parish priest
Tales of hardship and heartache, loneliness and loss, of demons and drink, of life and death
edicts about fast and abstinence in this holy time.
At one point in its exponential growth it seemed as if the showband craze would last forever. It appeared unstoppable. But times change. In the late 1970s bands began to split and new attractions emerged. Lounge bars offered more comfort to many of the older fans. The folk music scene and the Saturday Night Fever for disco began to dilute the traditional showband audience.
The 1980s witnessed the closing stages of the once vibrant ballroom scene where Big Tom was king. Even though the era had passed, the memories and music still echo down the years.
It is testament to Big Tom McBride and the other stars of that time that their names have lived on undimmed for the generation that looked up at the stage and swayed to the sounds they played and the sentiments they sang.
And yet it is hardly surprising – after all, those figures were part of our first dance, our first kiss and our first dates with growing up.