Imelda’s trip from rockabilly to blues ...and all that jazz
IMELDA MAY once gave birth to eight babies in an afternoon. The news electrified Twitter and made a million women wince. “It wasn’t me,” the former rockabilly rebel assures me. “Everybody got excited but I can explain. I’ve had a couple of babies named after me and I’ve had also a hamster… and it was the hamster that gave birth, honestly. I definitely didn’t have eight babies.”
Dublin-born Imelda, 46, has one daughter, Violet, from her former marriage to guitarist Darrel Higham – and some surprisingly hardcore followers. “I’ve had people come with tattoos of my face on their arm and ask me to sign under it, and then they have my signature tattooed too.”
More famous admirers include Bob Dylan, Bono, Jools Holland and Noel Gallagher. Even at 16, playing Dublin blues bar Bruxelles, Imelda’s magnetic qualities attracted stars into her orbit.
“That tiny basement club was my education,” she says. “That’s where I met Ronnie Wood. I was singing and he just jumped up and jammed on Rollin’ And Tumblin’,” – a Delta blues standard popularised by Muddy Waters.
“Years later I was at Classic Rock awards with Jeff Beck and he said, ‘I want to introduce you to my friend Ronnie’. I said, ‘We’ve met before.’ He said, ‘Oh my god, you’re that kid...’
“Ronnie likes to tell people, ‘I discovered her’,” she laughs. “I say, ‘Yeah, you discovered me but you never told anyone about it!’
“He’s so lovely, so vibrant. He sings and plays guitar on my new album. I think the world of Ronnie. In the studio everything just stopped when he arrived, everyone’s jaws dropped.”
SHE was 34 when her second album, Love Tattoo, shot to number one in Ireland. Her next three – Mayhem, Tribal and Life Love Flesh Blood – went Top Ten in the UK.
The latest, 11 Past The Hour, is “about love in all its forms”, she tells me. “Not just romantic love, but love of your fellow human beings and love of yourself and your mental health. I didn’t realise that when I started. I just wrote what I felt. But lockdown has made us see the importance of a lot of things we probably take for granted.
“Love has seen us through it. Love is the winner. In lockdown, you realise how much you miss family and friends and who you miss most. It’s also made us realise all the things you don’t need to be doing and to value all the right things.”
For Imelda, seeing her mother in December was “the best Christmas present I could have had”.
Born Imelda Mary Clabby, the youngest child of painter and decorator Tony and seamstress Madge, the singer grew up poor but happy in The Liberties, a working-class area of central Dublin.
“It was a noisy household full of music and laughter,” she recalls. “We had one record player between seven of us so we all had to wait our turn. There was no locking yourself in your room.
“We all had to listen to each other’s music from Glen Miller to the Rolling Stones, via Bowie, the Carpenters, Nat King Cole and trad Irish music like Christy Moore And The Dubliners. It got beautifully argumentative at times.
“In The Liberties, rebellion was in our blood,” she adds. “The expression ‘beyond the pale’ originates from Dublin.”
Imelda’s rebellion started young. She performed in Bruxelles two years below the club’s admission age. “My brothers and sisters used to sneak me in,” she admits. “They’d distract the bouncers, and smuggle me through under their coats.”
She’d jam with Van Morrison’s band and the Hot House Flowers. “I learnt from the best,” says Imelda. “They’d tell me, ‘You’re singing beautifully but you need a bit of grit...’”
Next was Dublin’s Jazz Café. “You can’t sell yourself there unless you’ve got gigs under your belt. I was 17 and playing with wonderful musicians for £35, a free dinner and a bottle of wine.”
Would you still play for that? “Every week! I’d have a different band every time.”
Her late uncle Paddy, a noted saxophone player, performed with her too. “He died a while ago; it was a nice relationship being in a band together.
“I loved the jazz and the blues they played, and I also loved my mum’s favourite Judy Garland – I watched The Wizard Of Oz a lot. Then I watched the Motown version, The Wiz, and fell madly in love with Diana Ross.
“That’s how I got to Billie Holliday. The first record I bought was The Best Of Billie and I played it over and over. Good Morning Heartache – it floored me!
“I was on a roll. Our local record shop was getting rid of vinyl, so I’d go down with my pocket money and buy up boxes – they were selling classic LPS on Chess, Capitol, Decca… I discovered it for myself.”
Imelda’s 2017 album Life Love Flesh Blood saw her jettison rockabilly – and her peroxide quiff. She wears her jet-black hair shoulder length these days, resembling a sawn-off Chrissie Hynde. “I was known for rockabilly, but I started with blues and jazz,” she explains. “My first album – 2003’s No Turning Back – was a good mixture of rockabilly, rock’n’roll, blues and jazz.”
She’d been advised to ditch rockabilly sooner but refused. “I was a big fan of the Ramones, the Cramps and The Clash. And as I got into punk I realised how much it was influenced by rockabilly.
“Ian Dury was a fan of Gene Vincent. The Pistols loved Eddie Cochran. The Clash loved rockabilly… it’s all connected. I was confused about why rockabilly was snubbed.”
When she did move on, she says, “I had to do it my own way. As a writer I did as much as I could. I like to keep moving, I have a very curious mind.”
She admires Noel Gallagher, who sings with her on new song Just One Kiss.
“I know Noel and his wife Sara and I knew the song would work best as a duet. He sounds amazing.”
In Dublin Imelda has played to 18,000 over three sold-out nights. She supported The Who at Wembley Stadium, opened for Clapton at the O2 and for Bruce Springsteen in Kilkenny but had less joy in the States.
“I went down brilliantly on US TV, so I