A CONCERT promoter has told of the huge battle to convince terrified global stars to come to Ireland during the brutal 1970s.
While Northern Ireland was devastated by The Troubles, violence in the Republic — including the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings — also persuaded many to stay away.
A new podcast from The Irish Sun details Ireland’s extraordinary journey from a cultural gigging backwater to a live entertainment juggernaut in just 25 years — and how major music festivals became a crucial part of the calendar.
The first episode of Fields of Dreams reveals how Ireland’s huge 1970s youth population started to turn their backs on the stifling Church/State combo which had ruled their parents’ lives.
Promoter Peter Aiken has brought the likes of Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen to Dublin, but his father Jim was on a one-man mission in the 1970s to open Ireland — north and south — up to huge international acts.
But he was certainly up against it.
Listen to Fields Of Dreams on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts
Peter said: “In the north at that time, which was the nearest thing you could get to civil war, without it actually being civil war — and in a lot of people’s eyes, it was — an awful lot of very, very innocent people died for nothing.
“There was very little scene in Belfast because everything closed there at five o’clock. Like when he put on Rory Gallagher — Rory came every Christmas.
“But when Rory came in 1972, the concerts were at 11 o’clock in the day, so people would be home by 4pm. People were terrified. The whole of Belfast, there was a ring of steel all around it.
“You got searched getting into the town. And at five o’clock, that all shut down. So anything that was inside the city was shut.
“All the cinemas were gone at that time too. We had Willie Nelson coming one time and he read something in his local paper and he actually rang the office himself and said, ‘I can’t come over to this bloodbath’.
“You had to have power of persuasion, and he’d been with the manager of Don McLean and he said, ‘You have to come to Belfast’.
‘THERE’S A WAR UP THERE’
“But he said, ‘I don’t want to go to Belfast, there’s a war up there’.”
American Pie singer McLean did come under Aiken’s watch, as did Elton John, Rod Stewart and many others.
But when it came to going north of the border, there were often obstacles and headaches.
He said: “I remember Dad telling me that he was bringing in Merle Haggard one time, I think 1978, and I happened to be there in the Europa Hotel in Belfast.
‘AT LEAST WE’RE TOP OF SOMETHING’
“I wouldn’t say it was with pride, but you’re saying, ‘Do you know the hotel you’re staying in is the most bombed hotel in the world?’ At least we’re top of something!”
In the course of our podcast, future musicians, including Tom Dunne from Something Happens, Steve Wall from The Stunning, The Radiators from Space star Pete Holidai, Sharon Shannon and Fiachna O’Braonain from the Hothouse Flowers, outline their first steps into music in a country that was then rooted firmly in the past.
Dunne said: “The early Seventies, there was nothing. A combination of the Church and the State, and a lack of radio had really kept the Sixties out of Ireland.
“It’s really remarkable that when bands like the Beatles and the Stones were having number ones worldwide, we were getting ‘Limerick, You’re A Lady’ and really weird songs about funerals. Ireland was like this sad nation.”
GROWING REBELLION
The whiff of growing rebellion was inspired by folk, punk and rock music.
The Showbands era was coming to an end by the mid-70s as new technologies began opening the country up to outside influences.
Dunne said: “I wouldn’t have given them the time of day. I couldn’t see any real distinction between the worst of country and western and the showbands. It was just all palaver, you know, men dressed as Indians.
“It was just a pile of sh*te, and it never, even for a second, beeped on my radar.
‘PART OF SOME MAD VISION’
“It was part of some mad vision of Ireland that had got nothing to do with me whatsoever.”
Dunne was among those who credited Celtic rock band The Horslips with saving Ireland’s youth during a decade which slowly began to take shape.
“In the north at that time, which was the nearest thing you could get to civil war, without it actually being civil war — and in a lot of people’s eyes, it was — an awful lot of very, very innocent people died for nothing.”
Peter Aiken
Horslips were the first Irish band to really take control of their own affairs, from album covers to production, and blazed a trail for others to follow. But they went further than that.
Bass player and singer Barry Devlin said: “There was a funky fun club where you got a joke record at Christmas. And you know, if you wrote in to the lovely ‘Samantha’, who was the secretary who took care of all these things, you would get a reply.
LETTER WRITERS
“You always got a reply. But the lovely ‘Samantha’, unfortunately, was me and Eamon Carr.
“And so we spent a lot of time writing return letters to lovesick teenage boys!”
The Fields of Dreams podcast is presented by Irish singer-songwriter Róisín O, who introduces her iconic mother Mary Black in episode one.
Mary, who thought everybody could sing until she went to school and realised she might have real talent, said: “On a Sunday afternoon, after the pubs closed and Daddy had come over, and all the men and the neighbours had come in, singing sessions and musicians all — Daddy always had instruments in our house.
‘PUSHED AT THE FRONT’
“We didn’t have a lot, but we always had plenty of instruments.
“I was always the one pushed at the front to sing.”
Promoter Philip Flynn put on Ireland’s first weekend outdoor folk festival in a field in Co Sligo, an event that was copied all over the country in the years to follow.
“The early Seventies, there was nothing. A combination of the Church and the State, and a lack of radio had really kept the Sixties out of Ireland.”
Tom Dunne
It was an early template for the major events of the future which would become summer staples, like Forbidden Fruit and Electric Picnic.
‘THERE WAS NOTHING’
The Boys of Ballisodare Festival founder said of his 1977 event: “We didn’t need planning permission, we didn’t need a licence, we needed nothing because there was nothing.
“What you did need in Ireland at the time was a dance licence, but that only applied if you wanted to do dancing.
“I have a significant memory of Christy Moore standing on the hill in Ballisodare with myself and my brother Kevin on the Monday after the first festival, just saying how great it was.
“He said every parish will be at this now. And he was right.
“People, when they see something, think they can replicate it. And they have an overblown view. People thought I was a millionaire.”
- The first two episodes of Fields Of Dreams are available on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts
