ASLAN ignored pleas from record company bosses to stay together at the height of Christy Dignam’s heroin addiction, believing that doing so would risk his life.
The Dublin group were on the brink of superstardom when their frontman succumbed to the drug which had Ireland in its grip in the 1980s.
Guitarist Joe Jewell has opened up on the Irish Sun’s Fields of Dreams podcast about the crisis that tore them apart just after they went gold with their album Feel No Shame.
Joe had already suffered his own family tragedy when they felt they had to sack his former school mate Christy.
He said: “During the early Eighties, the devil came to Ireland and it killed a lot of people, a lot of kids, including my own kid brother.
“So I had a lot of experience of it, and it devastated families.”
Listen to Fields Of Dreams on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts
Dignam was busted during a garda raid on a drug dealer, and his band were forced to let him go despite knowing it would be the end of their dreams.
Joe said: “Sometimes I ask, did I try hard enough? But we did. We did everything, absolutely everything.
“We’re signed by EMI, the biggest record company in in the world, and if you sack the singer it’s suicide for the band, and we knew that.
“So we didn’t do it for us, because you would have said, ‘Look, it’s grand!’. We were offered like, ‘Oh, he can travel differently, and we can put him on a bus’.
“At the time Chris Thomas was a big producer who I adored, and Bob Clearmountain was the big mixer at the time. He did all the INXS stuff.
“Capital (EMI’s US subsidiary) promised us, ‘If you get back together we’ll get you Chris Thomas to produce the album and Bob Clearmountain to mix it’, and even then we refused.
“We didn’t do it for us. I think that’s proof enough.
“He would have killed himself — not through his own fault, but just the demon. The devil would have taken complete hold.”
The band would go on to reform and release their best-known hit, Crazy World, in the 1990s. Christy died in 2023, aged 63.
DIZZYING RISE
Elsewhere, Hothouse Flowers star Fiachna O’Braonain has told how his band went from busking, to impressing Bono, to the brink of global superstardom over the course of a few wild months.
In a dizzying rise to fame, the Dublin band’s singer, Liam O’Maonlai, went from paying his rent with his Grafton Street busking to performing to millions in the US on David Letterman’s show.
Fiachna said: “I was still living at home, and the phone call came through to my parents’ landline number. Rolling Stone magazine want to do this feature on you.
“That also coincided with both Melody Maker and NME being in Dublin doing a profile with Bono on Dublin bands, and we were featured in that.
‘HOTTEST UNSIGNED ACT IN THE WORLD’
“And that’s when we first met, and then Rolling Stone magazine picked up on that, and we were called the hottest unsigned act in the world.”
In episode three of the Fields of Dreams podcast, we chart U2’s rise to become the biggest band in the world by the time they released The Joshua Tree in 1987.
It was a long way from when they were schoolboys in the 1970s and their manager asked ex-Horslips star Barry Devlin to help them put together a demo.
Devlin said: “Larry Mullen’s dad arrived at about one o’clock in the morning and said, ‘I have to take this lad home, he has exams in the morning’.
‘NEVER FORGIVEN THEM’
“And I went pleading, ‘But, Mr Mullen, I haven’t finished with Larry’s bass drum yet’.
And he said, ‘Ah you have’, and took Larry away.”
“He would have killed himself — not through his own fault, but just the demon. The devil would have taken complete hold.”
Joe Jewell
Devlin went on to work closely with the band for decades and was the brains behind the video for I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For — even if he did miss out on a gong for it.
He said: “The only thing I’ve never forgiven them for was the first MTV Awards, and they weren’t interested. They got rung up by MTV where they had five nominations, including People’s Choice for Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.
MTV AWARDS
“They rang up and said, ‘If you come over, if you are given the award, we’re thinking of giving you the award. Will you come over?’. They decided not to go.
“Michael Hutchence (from INXS) had four nominations. INXS said ‘Yeah, we’d love to come over and pick them up’.
“So they came over and picked them up, and the next year, you know, U2 would have done anything to get the MTV Award.
“In fact, I think they got their MTV awards. But I’m deeply resentful of the fact that I don’t have a funny white spaceman (on my mantlepiece).”
INTERNATIONAL BUZZ
U2’s global domination created an enormous international buzz around what was happening in Ireland, which had thriving music scenes in Cork, Dublin and Galway.
The US media were always looking for the next U2, and in 1988 thought they had found it with Hothouse Flowers.
Liam and Fiachna met at a bus stop in south Dublin as nine-year-olds and honed their extraordinary talents throughout their teens.
By 1985/86 they were drawing in huge crowds on Dublin’s Grafton Street.
BUSKING FAME
Fiachna said: “We kind of quickly realised that the way to make a few quid busking is to attract as big a crowd as you can, and then pass the hat around to everybody.
“And that’s literally the economics of busking. Or get as much attention as you can.
“We used to dance together and move around each other and create this big audience very quickly before we got moved on. This was before busking became regulated. So then we’d be moved.
“Back up to Grafton Street at around five o’clock to get the people going home and build up a big crowd again. The gardai would come. They’d watch for a while, and then eventually go ‘Right, lads, come on’, because the crowd literally would block the street quite often.
‘WE CERTAINLY MADE ENOUGH’
“And then we’d take ourselves and our big bucket of change off to Tobin’s or to the Coffee Inn and get a bowl of pasta and go for a pint afterwards.”
He added: “We certainly made enough to be fed and watered, and for Liam to put a roof over his head.
“There was times where he’d go, ‘God, the rent is due tomorrow. We really need to do a bit more busking today’. And we would.”
All the club bosses wanted them to play, and they took a Sunday night slot at Risk nightclub, where they were spotted by Bono, who invited them to do a single with U2’s Mother Records.
Not long after, they were number 2 in the Irish singles charts with Don’t Go, which became an international smash on the equally huge People album.
“We kind of quickly realised that the way to make a few quid busking is to attract as big a crowd as you can, and then pass the hat around to everybody.”
Fiachna O’Braonain
Letterman, Saturday Night Live and Arsenio Hall followed as the band, for a time, threatened to follow in the footsteps of Bono, Adam, Larry and The Edge.
Elsewhere, promoter Peter Aiken opens up about seeing some serious stars up close thanks to his dad Jim, even if Jim didn’t quite understand how one of the biggest ones might be gay. Peter said:
“Elton John came in in ’83, ’84, did four nights in the King’s Hall. Incredible.
ELTON’S GIFT
“He came to our house for dinner and mum made these steaks.
“He gave the auld fella a Cartier watch that was flown in from England. And then somebody told the auld fella that he only gave it to his boyfriends.”
“It came with an inscription – ‘To Jim, love Elton’.
“And the auld fella, being from Jonesborough in Co Armagh, 6ft 1in, big, it took him 20 years to get his head round that.”
- The first three episodes of Fields Of Dreams are available on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts
