Parallel lives in Ireland’s musical tradition

Crazy Dreams
Paul Brady
Merrion Press
2022
336 pages
ISBN: 978-1785374296

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The Road to Riverdance
Bill Whelan
Lilliput
2022
352 pages
ISBN: 978-1843518525

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Next to its writers and missionaries, Ireland’s greatest cultural ambassadors are its songwriters and musicians. Think of artists such as U2, the Cranberries, Enya, and the Chieftains. They might form a front line of Irish musical celebrities. In addition, there are a host of less well known musicians such as Paul Brady and Bill Whelan whose songs or arrangements have been covered or commissioned by stars who are household names (eg, Richard Harris, Elmer Bernstein and Kate Bush; Eric Clapton, Tina Turner, and Bob Dylan). Brady was born in Belfast, grew up in Ulster and, though he travelled a lot, settled in Dublin. Whelan, who was born and reared in Limerick, studied law in UCD and also settled in Dublin. Both men’s autobiographies offer rich insights into the life of a musician, the passion that inspires them, the difficulty in earning a steady income, the tension of combining family life with an unpredictable work schedule and the intense yet passing moments of fame.

Bill Whelan’s family ran a shop in William Street, Limerick. His dad, Dave, as a hobby, experimented with photography. Later Bill would experiment with amateur musical recording. His first moment of fame came when actor Richard Harris (also from Limerick) commissioned him at twenty – and friend Niall Connery –  to write the theme music for a film called Bloomfield which had its premiere in the Savoy Cinema in Limerick in November 1970. However, the film wasn’t a commercial success. Whelan’s mum, Irene, while immensely proud of him, told him to get his degree.

Paradoxically, Paul Brady’s parents, who were both teachers, were less insistent on his academic success. His dad, Sean, as a hobby, played music and operated a one-man-band. Summers in Bundoran, Co. Donegal, gave Paul the chance to develop his own natural music-playing ability. Bookish, he wasn’t. When in 1967 a chance came to join the nationally famous band, the Johnstons, he didn’t hesitate to abandon his studies at UCD. His dad, Sean, was “quietly supportive. [His mum] Mollie, in spite of her fears, was not immune to the attractions of having a son in a nationally celebrated group.” Brady travelled to London where the Johnstons signed a record deal and later to the US, where after some initial success (eg supporting Joan Baez on a huge open-air concert on Boston Common), he left the group. In January 1973 he met his future wife Mary Elliott at the funeral of famous traditional piper Willie Clancy. Playing guitar once with Clancy and another famed piper, Seamus Ennis, Brady “felt like I’d died and gone to heaven to be sitting and playing with the two of them and no one else around but us.”

Religious language and ritual was not foreign to their mental universe. Whelan’s early memories of childhood include saying a prayer to his guardian angel to fight off sporadic nightmares about eternity! His father was a daily Mass goer, his mother’s younger sister, Flo, a Presentation nun. When Whelan met Denise Quinn they fell in love, but “there was no question of living together, at least not if our parents had anything to do with it.” After a five-year courtship they decided to get married and “tied the knot” in September 1975. Brady, after spending some years abroad, where his future wife Mary joined him, married his sweetheart in March of the same year in a ceremony conducted by his “uncle Joseph McElholm in the University Church in Dublin’s St Stephen’s Green”.

Both books are well written. They feature fascinating encounters with Christy Moore, Bono, the Edge and many others. Whelan gives a detailed account of the background to the composition and staging in 1994 of Riverdance, arguably the best known interval act performed at a Eurovision Song Contest. Brady recounts how covers by international artists of his original compositions eventually allowed him to earn a comfortable income. For anyone interested in contemporary Irish music and culture, these two books will repay the modest effort required to read them.