IT’S SHOWBAND TIME!
Riveting first-hand tales of the heyday of Irish music and how Elvis and The Beatles looked on with envy...
From The Candy Store To The Galtymore Edited by Joe Kearney and PJ Cunningham B allpoint Press €14.99 ★★★★★
At a graveside in London, Margo O’Donnell could see her potential fate mirrored back at her. The Irish country music star, and elder sister of Daniel O’Donnell, had come to the rescue of one of the many Irish lost in London in a myriad of ways; lost to his home country, to alcohol and to himself.
It was too late to save the man whom she had once met in an alleyway near a music venue where she was due on stage and where he had been sleeping rough.
She had seen others like him, men who had ‘fallen on hard times’, but on this occasion a connection struck.
He had been trying to gain access to her concert but had no money and was refused admission. All he wanted was to hear her sing A Gra Mo Chroi and At The Close Of The Irish Day. She vouched for him, and he was brought up to a little balcony where she left a glass of Guinness for him.
The bonds formed with showbands weren’t just confined to Irish shores; associations with them touched the lives of Ireland’s diaspora far from home, and indeed, brought home that little bit closer to them.
The temptation to look back over Ireland’s halcyon showband era through rose-tinted glasses looms large in this new account of the time. Sentimentality and nostalgia are often dog-eared in the pages of history, but it isn’t allowed to rest in the petridish of this social and cultural examination of Irish life for too long.
For modern youths, this period of cultural entertainment and exuberance, and seen through once innocent eyes, would seem incongruous with the social life of today.
But that makes it all the more precious for readers more familiar with Dickie Rock, Joe Dolan and Brendan Bowyer to name but a few.
From The Candy Store To The Galtymore chronicles life on the road, behind the curtain and on the dancefloor over three decades, with tales of how the paths of stars in an off-the-beaten-track dancehall criss-crossed with others then unaware that they were on their own journey to international stardom.
Featuring 70 contributions from those who were there, at the edge of the dancefloor and at the epicentre of Ireland’s new awakening before it was thrust into the 21st century, some tales are told with much hilarity.
Others recall the girls who would never dance with them, and some recount the dance with that particular someone.
It was a time when The Beatles dreamt of owning a ‘luxury’ tour bus like that owned by The Royal Showband, while Elvis Presley loved their frontman’s Brendan Bowyer’s impression of him.
Then, there was the time that Taoiseach-to-be Albert Reynolds came to the rescue of a duo after their car overturned following a New Year’s Eve party in Westmeath in 1963, and dropped them home in the early hours.
Dance-hall managers throughout the country have cautionary tales of failing to see the potential of an early U2, but one in Offaly reveals he had the temerity to warn manager Paul McGuinness in the 1970s that they’d never play in Tullamore again.
While U2 played their first gig together as a band in Limerick, one of their other forays outside the capital was to the Garden of Eden in Tullamore, where bands were paid some £500 to £600 per gig.
Ricey Scully, a former Offaly footballer and hurler in the ’60s, who also organised bands for the local stage, reckoned that over time he had become ‘astute at knowing which bands would make a profit for all concerned and which ones might be borderline cases, or worse still, loss-makers.’
Approached to see if he would book a group called U2, he felt he would be ‘taking a chance as they weren’t that big a draw’.
‘In fact, no-one down our way had heard of them,’ he wrote. ‘It was with a little reluctance that finally I agreed, but instead of giving them the normal fee, I said I would pay them £100 less.’
Unfortunately, on the night, U2 only attracted a ‘fair to middlingsize crowd’ – even though the admission price had been halved.
His over-riding memory of the performance was when the bouncers approached him halfway through the night to complain that the band was so loud they were going out for a while ‘to give their ears a rest’.
Mr McGuinness was there with them that night, and was quietly assured that stardom lay ahead. Mr Scully was less sure.
‘These guys are destined for the very top,’ said Mr McGuinness, adding they would soon be playing the world’s biggest venues.
‘Yeah, that might very well be the case,’ responded Scully, ‘but I can guarantee you one thing: they won’t be playing the Garden of Eden again.’
Years on, Scully still laughs at the story. An American TV interviewer, he notes, would later ask Bono where U2 might be today if they hadn’t made it big. ‘Well, if we hadn’t made it the way we did, I think we’d still be in the Garden of Eden,’ Bono replied.
For many, the showband era continues to hold a sentimental attraction and Fr Brian D’Arcy is among them.
‘Like most things in life I didn’t appreciate them when they were in their heyday,’ writes Fr D’Arcy in the book.
‘I can guarantee you one thing: U2 won’t be playing the Garden of Eden in Tullamore again – no-one has heard of them...’