Far from a Swan song for the Ma Park man who conquered the world as Led Zeppelin tribute
FROM RUBBING SHOULDERS WITH ROCK GODS, TO SETTLING DOWN IN SUNNY LA, DAVID ‘SWAN ‘ MONTGOMERY TELLS ALISON COMYN IT WOULD HAVE BEEN SO DIFFERENT IF HE’D KEPT HIS GLOVES ON!
WITHIN minutes of talking with Swan Montgomery, his slow Californian drawl starts to get punctuated with hints of his Drogheda roots. And by the time he’s talking about growing up in ‘Ma Paak’, you know for certain where
he’s from!
Born David Montgomery in Marian Park in 1955, he has gone on to front the most successful Led Zeppelin tribute band in the world – with Jimmy Page himself endorsing Led Zepagain – sharing the stage with Roger Daltry amongst others.
A resident of LA for over 30 years, his life could have been very different if it was his talented hands and not his talented voice which shone brightest.
‘Yeah not a lot of people might know that I was a goalkeeper for Lourdes Boys Club and for the Drogs – just like my dad’ says Swan, who went to school in St Mary’s in Congress Avenue and St Joseph’s CBS. ‘ I was an okay student, but for me, it was all about becoming a soccer player. In the CBS, they wanted us to play Gaelic, and that’s alright, but soccer was my thing, and I started with a popular team in the 70s called Lourdes boys, and I was the goalkeeper.
‘ Then I elevated to the Drogheda football team, as a reserve goalkeeper, and had a few shining moments on the first team. But unfortunately, back then, it was all about who you know, and not how good you were, and even though I was getting a lot of great write- ups after every Saturday match in Dublin against Shamrocks Rovers and Shelbourne. I was doing very well, but it was just politics. My father was disappointed about that because he was a hardcore soccer player, and a great player himself, and I got disillusioned with the whole thing.
‘I worked very hard at the soccer – Manchester United and Chelsea scouts were looking at me – but it just wasn’t to be.’
Nevertheless, David has great memories of growing up in Drogheda - playing out in the street, usually soccer, and very fond memories of playing Star Trek and Captain Scarlett with his pals.
‘My best mate was a man called Martin Kirwin, and also Francis Pentony (council official Frank Pentony), and I remember, at the top of the street was a lane, and we used to go to meet girls and do some courtin’, but I’m not telling any tales on anyone,’ he says with a cheeky laugh. ‘Mam was Susan Kelly from Congress Avenue, and Dad was Lawrence Montgomery from the Faa Side – Windmill Road – and it was just me and my sister Yvonne, who now lives in Dundalk, but it’s okay, I forgive her for being a traitor.
It was around this time that a friend – the later
Stephen McCann – introduced David to music, and the rest, as they say, is history.
‘He was also Marian Park, and he played stuff for me by Led Zeppelin, Cream, James Taylor, Carol King; it was that point I started to think I was done with soccer and I let the hair grow long, grew a beard, bought some bell-bottoms and the hippy look arrived. My dad didn’t like it at all, but he understood it was time to move on,’ he explains.
It was then, he picked up a guitar, and began his journey to be a full-time musician.
‘I wanted to play guitar not be a singer – the singer was an accident. Me and my sister had a band called Argus and it was just a duo – she was singing, I was playing – and we opened for Ronnie Drew one night, but then started playing with others local bands – Wicked Chicken was one – and one night, the lead singer got laryngitis, and once I started, people were telling me I was a better singer than guitar player, which hurt a bit!’
He says after a while, he ended up playing the Cellers and the Central, and was the only one in the history of Drogheda to be banned from playing two places because of the crowd he was attracting!
‘I was drawing the wrong element, and even though it was packed out, the hippies were coming in and smoking stuff, and I had to find other places to play,’ he says with a hearty chuckle.
By 1979, Drogheda could no longer contain
David’s talent and ambition, and he went in search of fame and fortune.
‘I went to London, and turned up at the door of Melody Maker, the famous magazine for funding bands, and started playing in a band called Dervish (not the trad band from Sligo!) and then moved onto Tilt, who were very successful. It was just as you would imagine - up the M1 in a van – just like Spinal Tap – and I really got a taste of the Rock and Roll life style.
‘It was fairly rough – we were all packed in a van heading around the country, but it still didn’t deter me, we were full of energy and enthusiasm, and I even survived a stage dive (a swan dive?!) where he slipped and ‘fell on his ass’.
‘Groupies and divilment were all part of the game – it was crazy, there were girls every night and they all wanted to be with the singer – but even in all the craziness, I’ve never fallen into the drug scene, it’s strange for an Irishman, I’ve never taken a drink in my life, but the ladies were my weakness,’ he admits.
It’s every musician’s dream to ‘ break America’ and David, or Swan as he became known by then, was no different. That came from his Celtic roots and his love of the Children of Lir, and of course, you couldn’t have a dull name, so Swan appeared!
‘ There was a band called Carrera in 1989, and they were about to be signed to Capitol Records in the States, but the singer had a breakdown, and the manager said they needed a singer im
mediately to complete the deal, so called me, and it was a tough decision, as Tilt was doing great, but the lure of Hollywood was so strong, and that was it.’
He said he went from a big fish in a small pond, to a small fish in a big pond overnight but would have regretted not trying, and he ended up in LA.
‘It was a culture shock, with everyone looking out for themselves – I came from Ireland where everyone knows each other – and the weather maybe hot in LA, but it’s also cold, and I learned that very quick. You had to be strong, and be sure of yourself and ignore the hangers-on.’
Everything started to fall apart, and he says he found himself alone in America, like ‘Robinson Crusoe on an island’.
‘It was a lonely life, surrounded by hollow people and I couldn’t go home with my tail between my legs, so at 35, I had to start again. I worked as a studio engineer, and played with a few bands, but it was a chance meeting with a manager in 1992 that would change my life forever’.
He ran a tribute band, which as the time ‘weren’t a thing’ and they needed a vocalist.
‘ There were only two or three in the States at the time, and unheard of in Europe, and he asked me to join a tribute to Led Zeppelin, and I had no idea what he was talking about, but he was offering me a lot of money to portray Robert Plant, whom I’ve loved since an early age, so I said I was in.’
A few months doing this grabbed the attention of Led Zepagain, the most famous tribute band in the world and over 30 years – and almost every continent – later, they are still the gold standard of Lez Zeppelin tributes, with Jimmy Page quoted as saying ‘It’s amazing how much you sound like us… I can tell you guys really love our music. You are the real deal!’
‘We are like the respected forefathers of tribute bands and Jimmy (Page) came to our show and loved the sound, and I’ve met Robert Plant three times, and he’s such a cool guy,’ says Swan. ‘I feel very blessed to have played with some of the best musicians in the world, as well as meeting the crème of rock and roll, like Kiss, Brian May, and even singing with Roger Daltry of The Who.
It might seem strange then that when he’s not being Robert Plant, his won interest lies in World Music, and in particular, his Celtic Roots.
‘I love African and Indian music and formulated my own style of music but blending them with Celtic music, and my album two years ago, Newgrange’ got great reviews, and I also worked with my two good friends Richard Moore and Anthony Moore in Drogheda on the High Man project.’
‘You have to have your own identity – I’ve been Robert Plant for 33 years – and I have to let people know I can sing and write my own thing.’
The groupies made way for family life along the way and Swan is well settled in a quiet suburb of LA with his Native American wife Elaina Montgomery and sons Ohannes and Suiltra, while between them they have six children between the ages of seven and 40 years old, as well as nine grandchildren who live in Ireland and Europe.
‘We try to get back to Ireland as much as possible – my sons love the town and Elaina loves the rain - but I see so many changes and miss the likes of the Bull Ring, John Street and the Marsh, all gone, and not necessarily for the better,’ he says. ‘I hope to get back again, as soon as all this madness is over, and we can get back on the road with the band.’
It would take a book to fit in all the other things David ‘Swan’ Montgomery has squeezed into his 65 years and counting, like his appearance in two films, one as an FBI agent, and his attendance at the funeral of screen goddess Maureen O’Hara, as well as making a fortune on Spotify before Led Zeppelin caved to selling their rights to the platform.
‘Yeah, I’ll have to get round to writing it someday, but I’m still too busy writing music,’ he says with a laugh. ‘ My latest project Ogham