SLANE Castle legend Lord Henry Mount Charles has been remembered as the man who put Ireland on the music map.
The 8th Marquess Conyngham passed away on Wednesday, aged 74, after a long battle with cancer.
And Peter Aiken — who staged some of the biggest shows at the iconic Co Meath venue — said that his pal never bothered with formality.
The famed music promoter told The Irish Sun: “No one called him Lord, he was just Henry.
“We met him when he was still a young man and through the years Henry was such a hugely positive thing for music in Ireland.
“What helped was Henry’s huge interest in music. He understood it and he was a great frontman for the Slane concerts.
“He enjoyed the fame and the media loved him. When he stood up at the front gates of Slane, all the punters going in all knew him.”
The Belfast man and his late father Jim put on Slane gigs including the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Queen, David Bowie and Bruce Springsteen.
And Peter said his dad’s decision to team up with Henry to host the Rolling Stones at Slane in front of 70,000 fans in 1982 was a “game changer”.
Peter told us: “Back then, no one had done gigs of this scale in Ireland. People like Henry and my father had to make it up as they went along.
“The Rolling Stones doing Slane was a game changer — they were coming off a huge tour and the place went crazy. That turned Slane Castle into an iconic venue very quickly.”
He also recalled how Henry’s warm personality and charm helped to get big acts over to play in Ireland as the IRA brought their bombing campaign to the British mainland.
Peter said: “They were tricky times when you think about the Hyde Park bombs, which happened before the Stones played.
“But we got the big acts over and Henry was positive and charming. He always got on and liked musicians.”
Lord Henry previously recalled the time Stones frontman Mick Jagger turned up to recce the castle a year before they played there in 1982.
The Castle owner remembered: “I got a call from my father, who was still in residence, saying, ‘I’ve got some chap coming to dinner. A Mick Jigger? I think he might be a musician.’ I was like, ‘Do you mean THE Mick Jagger?’ It turned out it was.
‘I TOOK HIM FOR A FEW JARS’
“I took him for a few jars in the nightclub we used to have at Slane and one of the locals, spotting him in his white suit, went up and said to Mick, ‘Has anyone told you you’re the spit of that Rolling Stones fella!’”
Henry’s ancestral home has played host to everyone from Helena Christensen to Johnny Depp.
And those who made it over saw some bizarre sights — including the Rolling Stones playing table tennis, or David Bowie typing on an old fashioned typewriter before his concert in 1987 on his Glass Spider tour.
While massive names like Bruce Springsteen headlined his huge stage, other rock royalty would jet in to sneak a peek at their music rivals, sometimes to the shock of locals.
DRIVE WITH PETE
Henry recalled: “When Bruce Springsteen played in 1985, Pete Townsend from The Who arrived over to stay with me.
“The day after the concert we went out for a drive in my car.
“I can remember the two of us picking up a hitchhiker. The poor guy was still a little worse for wear and thought he was dreaming when he got into the car and found I was driving and Pete was in the back seat. All he could say was, ‘Jaysus’.
“And he still looked a bit shook when we left him up the road in the village of Slane.”
SPRINGSTEEN NERVOUS
Henry recalled Springsteen was so nervous performing his show for the crowd in 1985, he insisted on everyone coming in to watch rehearsals.
He said: “Bruce had played to big crowds before, but none as massive as the 80,000 attending Slane — and he was nervous.
“To alleviate those nerves, he rehearsed his entire set — it must have been heading towards 30 songs — in the dining-room to a small gang of us, which was every bit as extraordinary as it sounds.
“Rather touchingly, he came back a few years ago with his family to revisit what turned out to be the scene of his triumph. After Slane, it just got bigger and bigger for him.”
GALLAGHER CONVENTION
Oasis turned out to have local roots when the Gallagher brothers showed up to support REM in 1995.
Henry said: “Everyone knows about their connection to Mayo, but the Gallaghers’ roots are actually from up the road in Duleek.
“A few days before Oasis came back and headlined Slane in 2009, we had an event in the castle nightclub, and every Gallagher in Ireland must have been there.
“I had to go out and when I returned there was a plastic bag hanging off the door, and inside it a bottle of whiskey and a note from one of the family saying, ‘Thank you!’
TOUGH TIMES TOO
“They were crawling out of the woodwork that night.”
There were tough times for Henry through the years as well.
The dad of three told The Irish Sun last December how U2 star Adam Clayton helped him overcome his fight with alcohol addiction.
The concert boss told us how he had stayed sober for the past decade after a long battle with booze, which he admits was triggered by the brutal death suffered by Tim Kidman, a gamekeeper at Slane Castle in September 1989, which was followed by watching his home go up in smoke in 1991.
BOOZE BATTLE
Henry told us: “The thing about alcohol is that it can be used to numb pain and I was in a lot of pain back then.
“There is a history of drinking in my family. I was a binge drinker more than anything.
“There is nothing wrong with admitting you had some good times but I knew I was damaging myself and it had to stop.”
The landowner recalled how he had “hit rock bottom” drinking alone in London and sought the help of one time fellow hellraiser Adam Clayton who he became friends with when U2 recorded their Unforgettable Fire album at Slane Castle in 1984.
‘SOMETHING HAD TO BE DONE’
Henry said: “There is nothing in admitting you had some good times (drinking), that was one of the things that Adam and I used to discuss.
“But we both knew something had to be done and Adam, having been through this himself, put me in touch with a good friend who is in AA.
“I’d been through rehab before and it hadn’t worked, but I was so determined that when I attended an AA meeting Adam’s friend later told me that ‘I got it’, (both in acknowledging I was an alcoholic and I had to stop).
Henry revealed he hadn’t had a drink for a decade or more, adding: “Adam says the fact that I could set up a whiskey company in my home, was proof of how well I had done (recovering from alcoholism).”
THE MAN WHO SAVED SLANE CASTLE
Henry will be remembered as the man who saved Slane Castle after the devastating fire at his home in 1991.
During the blaze, he attempted to save priceless family heirlooms as his home burned, and staff later feared Henry might abandon the ruined castle and sell up.
However, the feisty owner said: “I was determined, come hell or high water, I was going to have to find a way to rebuild Slane.”
