Bill Fuller, the man behind the showbands, inspired this author. Small wonder as his life was an astonishing mix of...
HE MATCHED the might of the Mafia in Las Vegas promotions, one of his ballrooms was the scene of a spectacular riot that mounted police were called in to clear, and in later life he paid the legal fees for a stripper accused of murdering a casino owner. In short, Bill Fuller’s life was anything but dull.
The Kerry businessman — who was instrumental in the rise of the Irish showband scene in the 1960s — had a colourful presence that impacted on 70 years of the music business in Britain, Ireland and the US.
He managed most of the big showbands, including the legendary Big Tom, whose Las Vegas run propelled him to international fame. At one point, he also owned 23 ballrooms, including City Center Ballroom in New York, the still famous Electric Ballroom in Camden Town and San Francisco’s legendary Fillmore West.
He was no slouch back home either. In Dublin, he owned the Town and Country Club, the Crystal Ballroom (later McGonagle’s), and the Old Shieling Hotel, plus the Atlantic Ballroom in Tramore, Co. Waterford, and Teach Furbo in Spiddal, Co. Galway.
Aside from his venues and Irish showbands, Bill’s management and promotions company made him one of the most powerful figures in the music industry of that era.
He also promoted jazz concerts — including several by Billie Holiday — at New York’s Carnegie Hall, and brought Patsy Cline to American east coast audiences for the first time.
His booking agency also looked after the affairs of heavyweights such as Frank Sinatra, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Willie Nelson. I came across Bill while researching the 1960s showband scene for my new novel. I found myself in the McWilliam Park Hotel in Claremorris, my nearest dancing venue.
‘Social dancing’ — the largely sober, country music phenomenon currently taking over the country — is reminiscent of the showband craze of the 1950s and 1960s, the era in which my new novel is set.
After a night spent jiving, foxtrotting and waltzing the night away, I felt transported back to another, more innocent time, when women wore skirts and men wore Pioneer pins.
Delving deeper into that time, my research brought me to Bill Fuller, a man who was to become the inspiration behind one of the central characters in my book.
Born in 1917 in Kilflynn, Co. Kerry, Bill got the boat and train to London as a teenager in the 1930s and worked on building sites, like so many of his peers. From those humble beginnings, he developed his own construction business.
But in a short time, he had set his sights on the entertainment industry, taking over a rundown Irish ballroom on Camden High Street when he was just 20.
A notoriously rough spot, The Buffalo Rooms had been forcibly closed down, but Bill — whose keen amateur boxing skills gave him a hardman reputation — persuaded the local police chief to let him reopen it, promising that if he ever needed to call the constabulary he would personally close the hall down for good. Bill manned the door himself and transformed The Buffalo into one of the most popular Irish ballrooms in the country.
‘It was a small little place then. It was rough and ready because I was breaking it in to see if I could handle the fights, but I handled them with these two fists, these two fellas handled it all,’ he said of it.
The Buffalo was a well-run venue and visiting bands were made to feel at home. But when Jim Reeves arrived to appear in 1964, things didn’t quite go to plan.
Reeves, idolised by Irish country and western fans, arrived at the sold-out venue but then refused to go on stage because the piano was not properly tuned, as was guaranteed in his contract. The venue’s management hid the night’s takings in a manhole in a nearby street, removed as much of the fittings and fixtures as they could and then announced the news.
One of the most spectacular riots in the Buffalo’s history ensued, and legend has it that mounted police entered the ballroom to clear the crowd.
Despite this knockback, Bill knew that his fellow rural Irish immigrants were looking for a place where they could meet, dance and find romance. He extended The Buffalo and built a new ballroom that could hold 2,000 people. He also established the Astoria Ballroom in Manchester.
This, incidentally, is rumoured to be the place where Liam and Noel Gallagher’s parents met — so without Bill Fuller, it’s quite possible that Oasis would never have existed.
By the late 1950s, Bill also owned venues in Dublin and New York. His pan-Atlantic chain of venues were funded by his successful demolition business in England. There was a saying about him in Camden Town at that time: ‘What Hitler didn’t knock down, Bill Fuller did.’
One of the great mysteries about Bill was how he managed to run such a huge empire more or less single-handedly.
The key to this — I discovered through talking to showband leaders who knew him at that time — was that nobody knew where Bill was at any given time. His diary was a closely guarded secret.
Other ballroom owners were astonished that he managed to juggle all of these venues. Dancehalls, they all knew, were a hands-on business — the owner needed to be on site to make sure that nobody was pilfering from the till or slacking.
Bill’s trick for keeping absolute control over his empire was a combination of well-paid, loyal managers and eccentric unpredictability.
Nobody, often including his family, knew where Bill Fuller was, so at any given time he might swoop down on one of his businesses without warning.
This kept all his managers on their toes and his staff on red alert at all
‘He said: “Eff Elvis, I want to meet the Colonel”’ ‘Everyone was obsessed with where he was’
times. He had a loyal secretary, who was sworn to secrecy.
One day he could be in London, the next, New York. His venue managers knew they could never slack because they never knew when he would arrive in for a spot-check.
‘When we arrived at a venue to play, the first question people would ask was, “Have you seen him?” — meaning Bill,’ a band leader tells me. ‘Everyone was obsessed with where he was — and nobody ever seemed to know. He was constantly on the move.’
In September 1956, Bill unveiled his global ambitions at Manhattan’s City Center ballroom, which soon became the leading Irish dance hall in New York City. He later opened ballrooms in Boston, Chicago and San Francisco.
Bill was based in Dublin for much of the late 1960s and early 1970s. As well as his entertainment interests, he tried his hand as a developer.
But his ambitious plans to develop a luxury marina in Galway Bay came to nothing — he blamed ‘bad friends’ in the government.
In the 1970s he acted as bailsman for several IRA men who were brought before the courts, including Anthony ‘Dutch’ Doherty, a prominent IRA leader who was arrested following a gun battle on the Louth-Armagh border.
During this time, Fuller sold off many of his ballrooms while converting others into rock venues.
The Buffalo was renamed the Electric Ballroom in July 1978 and became a cult rock music venue hosting, among others, Iggy Pop, the Clash, U2, The Smiths and Thin Lizzy.
In fact, Phil Lynott once named a supergroup he was part of The Greedies after they demanded 75 per cent of the door and Bill called them ‘a crowd of greedy b ****** s’.
Regularly commuting an average of 6,000 miles a week between his many properties, Bill found himself increasingly drawn to Las Vegas.
In 1966, he managed to get one of his acts, the Royal Showband, a big break in the city.
‘I remember Bill telling me about the day someone offered to introduce him to Elvis Presley,’ recalls his friend, Frank Murray, who would later manage the Electric Ballroom and Fuller’s favourite band, The Pogues.
‘He turned around and said: “Eff Elvis, I want to meet the Colonel.”’
Fuller was clearly a player, and Vegas became home for the rest of his life.
Later in life, Bill turned his attention to prospecting for gold and silver in western Nevada. In 1988, aged 82 and after a lifetime avoiding publicity, Bill