Irish blood, English heart

IT was a grim week of news: murder, maiming, mayhem and the desecration of churches. So the cheery news of The Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr’s visit to Athy on Friday was a welcome bit of cheer. The guitarist who defined the sound of Indie music was home to unveil a plaque honouring his Athy roots, and heartwarming wasn’t in it. Marr/ Maher was clearly delighted to be there, and pronounced himself overwhelmed by all the faces that turned out, many of whom looked like him. Athy was equally pleased to see him. One local youngster talked about reading Marr’s book and discovering that both of Marr’s parents, John Maher and Francis Doyle, were from Athy: “I flipped my lid,” he said. Other delighted Smiths fans reminded me of those Smiths fans who came to college in the 1980s from small, humdrum towns where the rain fell down, towns where every day was like Sunday. They were the ones who were different in their culchie towns and The Smiths was their lifeline, the thing that made them feel less alone. And when you saw them here in Athy and you saw Marr here, you realised that it was no small wonder they connected with this band, ostensibly from Manchester but actually with a culchie Irish heart to it. Although Smiths singer Steven Patrick Morrissey, who looks increasingly like a farmer from the west of Ireland as he gets older, was actually, as he once put it, nine parts Crumlin.

With the relationship between Ireland and Britain gone so crabby recently, and with our politicians scoring populist points by portraying the Brits as the enemy, it was, to use the word Marr used about his visit to Athy, “beautiful” to be reminded that we’re not that different, that four guys with seven Irish parents between them formed the most quintessentially British band of the age, The Smiths. And we were reminded too of how everyone from John Lennon, to Johnny Rotten, via Kevin Rowland and the Gallaghers, were all as Irish as they were English. Brexit or not, we will always be bound up with our British brethren by ties of blood and emigration and memories of home, and by things like the textures and melodies of Johnny Marr’s guitar, heavily influenced, he admits himself, by the ‘spooky, other worldy’ Irish music he grew up with.

Amazingly, next Saturday, Mani from the Stone Roses and Primal Scream, whose bass playing was as important in defining an era as Marr’s guitar, will be home to Athy celebrating his roots.

And as a clearly delighted Marr reiterated his wish to get an Irish passport, “if they’ll take me”, you remembered how warm most English people feel towards Ireland. As sour as things might feel between us right now, it’s good to reminded that they are human and they need to be loved, just like everybody else does.