The Smiths’ Dundalk bow
QUESTION The Smiths once played The Fairways Hotel in Dundalk. Did this concert sell out, and is the hotel still in operation? WHEN The Smiths played their gig at The Fairways Hotel in Dundalk, Co. Louth in 1986, it was to be the band’s last appearance in the Republic of Ireland and drew a large, enthusiastic audience.
The hotel itself is no longer in existence, having been demolished last year to make way for a massive redevelopment, including a SuperValu supermarket.
Formed in the Salford area of Manchester in 1982, The Smiths were an indie rock band, whose members all claimed Irish descent – thus they played here a number of times.
In their short time, together, they enjoyed spectacular success, both commercially and critically, with their charismatic and eccentric frontman Morrissey quickly becoming an icon to lonely teenagers worldwide.
Although they were only together for five years, acres of newsprint and indeed many university modules still lovingly dissect their legacy.
In 1984, The Smiths came to Ireland for a 12-gig tour, which included concerts in Coleraine and Belfast. Later in February of 1986, the band came to Ireland for a mini-tour of three gigs.
The first was at the National Stadium in Dublin on February 10, followed by The Fairways Hotel in Dundalk the next day, February 11, while there was a third gig at the Whitla Hall in Queen’s University, Belfast, on February 12.
The Dundalk gig was the last performed by the band in the Republic, while the Belfast gig turned out to be the last appearance the band would ever make on the island of Ireland, as the following year, the band broke up and never reformed.
Speaking much later, in 2006, Morrissey said that he would rather eat his testicles than reform The Smiths, adding ‘that’s saying something for a vegetarian’.
The reason The Smiths came to Dundalk because the owner of the hotel knew the band’s manager. Needless to say, a large, close-tocapacity crowd turned up at The Fairways to see them in the flesh.
The set-list for that night ran to 13 numbers, starting with Shakespeare’s Sister and ending with Meat Is Murder. A further three songs made up the band’s encores: William, It Was Really Nothing, Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now and Miserable Lie.
So much in demand were The Smiths that at the concert, several bootleg recordings were made. Just two years ago, an old audio file turned up of a song that The Smiths had sung that night as a soundcheck. It was said that this clip ‘wasn’t quite Panic and wasn’t quite Sheila Take A Bow, but was somewhere in between’. That song was never given a title and was never recorded.
As for The Fairways Hotel, it lasted rather longer than The Smiths. First developed the 1960s, it started off with 33 bedrooms.
A substantial extension in 2000 saw bedroom capacity go close to 100. Another artist who frequently appeared at the hotel was comedian Brendan Grace.
Sadly, in January of 2015, the hotel was forced to close down, after unsuccessful attempts to renew its drinks licence. The hotel and its site were bought for €2.5million by a company called East Coast Catering (Ireland), run by a Dundalk-born but Canadianbased entrepreneur, Patrick O’Callaghan. Many people thought the old hotel would be used as a refugee accommodation centre – but in the end wasn’t.
In December 2016, the hotel was finally demolished and the site cleared to make way for a massive new development (including the SuperValu), with opening scheduled for later this autumn.
So while The Smiths live on in rock enthusiasts’ memories, so too does their appearance at the now-vanished Fairways Hotel.
Eamon Kennedy, Dublin 7. QUESTION Who invented the dialysis machine? FURTHER to the earlier answer, although Willem Kolff invented the first dialysis machine in 1943, dialysis itself (the process of separating colloids from crystalloids) was discovered by Glasgow-born chemist Thomas Graham (180569). In 1861, he demonstrated the separation of suspended colloidal particles from dissolved ions (crystalloids) by means of their unequal rates of diffusion through semi-permeable membranes.
He used a parchment sack suspended in water, whereby the ions and small molecules passed through the membrane, leaving the colloidal particles in the sack.
His ‘dialyser’ was a forerunner of modern dialysis machines. Graham went on to become Professor of Chemistry at University College, London, and Master of the Royal Mint. John Buxton, Chesterfield, Derbyshire.
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