Pete St John
Folk singer whose widely covered Irish anthem Fields of Athenry rings out in football stadiums
PETE ST JOHN, who has died aged 90, was a singer and songwriter forever held dear in the heart of Irish culture as the creator of one of its most memorable songs,
Fields of Athenry.
Embodying so many emotional sentiments deeply embedded in the psyche of Ireland – a sense of injustice, rebellion, emigration, tragic love and a great singalong chorus – the anthemic ballad has been recorded more than 300 times and translated into 50 different languages.
It features in five films (including
Dead Poets Society), is regularly performed by pub singers and buskers all over the country, has been covered by everyone from punk groups to steel bands, and still rings out at stadiums in Liverpool, Glasgow and wherever the Irish rugby and football teams play.
In 2019, more than 5,000 singers and musicians – including 118 tin whistle players – gathered in Athenry, the small East Galway town where the song is set, to perform it in what was claimed to be the world’s biggest street performance.
An electrical engineer, St John discovered Athenry in the late 1970s during a visit to Galway researching material on the Great Hunger, the Irish potato famine of the 1840s and 1850s. Returning to Dublin, he wrote the heart-wrenching story of a man called Michael sentenced to transportation to Australia for attempting to steal corn from Charles Trevelyan, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, to feed his wife and child.
Some claimed he adapted the lyric from an old Broadside ballad, but St John strongly denied this.
His friend Danny Doyle was the first to record it in 1979, but it was another Dublin folk singer, Paddy Reilly, who launched it into the mainstream three years later, his version remaining in the Irish charts for 72 weeks. It has been a hit four times over in Ireland, yet never by St John himself, always a reluctant performer.
However, after it was adopted by Celtic supporters as their matchday anthem after their Irish goalkeeper Packie Bonner sang it at a party, St John was persuaded to go on the pitch and sing Athenry – unaccompanied – before a game at Celtic’s Parkhead Stadium.
With 60,000 backing singers he was accused of inciting the sectarianism that has always been endemic in the bitter rivalry with Rangers, something he detested, pointing out his lifelong hatred of bigotry and his commitment to peace movements and civil rights. “It’s just a song about poor innocents being caught up in disaster,” he said. “It’s as sectarian as I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles’. ”
He was born Peter Mooney on January 31 1932, the eldest of six children growing up in Inchicore, Dublin, in what he described as an “upper working-class” family. His father Thomas was director of Smithfield Motor Company, while his mother Lotte played piano and encouraged his interest in music.
He learnt Gaelic at school and had a deep interest in history and a natural aptitude for words, even becoming friendly in his teens with the likes of Brendan Behan and J P Donleavy.
He trained as an electrician but became something of a wanderer, spending around 20 years away from Ireland, living at different times in Washington, Alaska, Canada, Central America and the West Indies, working variously as a professional athlete, a truck driver, a logging camp labourer, PR man, salesman and an electrical contracting executive. It was in America that he became an active and vocal campaigner for international civil rights and the peace movement.
Returning to Dublin in the late 1970s with his wife and two sons, he was shocked to discover the changes in the city. He was appalled by the poor social conditions, the number of old buildings torn down to be replaced by blocks of flats, and the vast unemployment.
His response was to write a story song deploring the decline – Dublin in the Rare Auld Times. He had set up in business as an electrician, but sold up after injuring himself falling from a roof on a construction site, after which – by then in his 40s – he concentrated on music, adopting the name St John.
He did not regard himself as a performer and had no wish to be one, but Dublin in the Rare Auld Times had found influential currency among artists such as the Dublin City Ramblers and the Dubliners, its poignant message resonating deeply with audiences.
It set him off on a new path writing songs inspired by and vividly depicting the sights, sounds and stories of Dublin, including The Ferryman, Rosie up in Moore Street, Ringsend Rose, Dreamers and Believers and Train Workers, invariably imbued with a compelling story, a strong message, clever lyricism and a persuasive chorus.
Danny Farrell tells of a tinker who descends into alcoholism, Johnny Mcgory celebrates an old war hero and The Mero recalls a 1940s Dublin cinema and the street characters of the day. St John saw nothing heroic in his work: “I just crystallise what is out there.”
The inherent poignancy at the core of Fields of Athenry was increasingly bulldozed by the inappropriate gusto with which the chorus was sung in pubs; the inevitable backlash was invited by over-familiarity with plenty of satirical adaptations.
It was a hit in Ireland for four different artists, but St John was not one of them, maintaining a low profile away from the spotlight, rarely giving interviews, and recoiling at the suggestion of being a national treasure, saying that he found the whole Athenry
phenomenon “ridiculous”.
Yet he was an engaging character and a superb storyteller, taking delight in relating tales reflecting the wit and humour of ordinary Dubliners. Mixing music and stories, his stage show An Evening with Pete St John played on Broadway. He recorded a CD celebrating James Joyce and wrote a book, The Beggar at the Window.
Through it all, he continued to be passionate about social injustice and causes close to his heart. He wrote Song For Omagh to raise money for victims of the 1998 bombing, wrote The Never Drink and Drive Song in support of road safety and campaigned about climate change. In 2019, aged 88, he got up at a presidential gala in front of 800 people in Dublin and sang a new song, Waltzing on Borrowed Time
– written, he said, with the intention of it becoming the international anthem of climate change. He received a standing ovation and a fan letter from Ireland’s president, Michael D Higgins.
Pete St John was predeceased by his wife Susan, and is survived by their two sons.