Testing their metal

“Crikey! Er, let me think. There have been about 70 shows with, gosh, um, between 10,000 and 20,000 each night. Which adds up to, er, lots!”

The Answer’s Cormac Neeson has been given serious mathematical brainache by me asking him how many people his band have played to supporting AC/DC on their box-office demolishing Black Ice tour. Having used all our fingers and toes to count, we reckon it’s not far short of the million mark. 50,000 will be added to that tally on June 28 when AC/DC and The Answer are joined at Punchestown by those other senior citizens of rock, Thin Lizzy.
“We’re going to have every family member, person we went to school with and bloke we met in the pub wanting guest-list for that,” laughs the luxuriantly tressed singer in a quiet corner of the Dublin O2. “It’s just been one amazing experience after the other. Usually with Angus you get a quick, ‘Hi, how you doing?’ which is fine because he’s a busy guy, but the other day in Frankfurt he stopped me and Mickey in one of the hallways for a chat about Rory Gallagher,” Cormac, who’s a ringer for the young Mr. Gallagher, beams. “He really respects him as a guitar-player. I’ve got Donegal connections – actually I’m just back from a wedding there – so I was able to tell him stories about the Going To My Hometown festival, which takes place every summer in Ballyshannon and is wall to wall Rory tribute bands. AC/DC are obviously on the road this year, but I wouldn’t be surprised in 2010 if Angus turns up in Owen Roe’s Bar – he loved the idea of hanging out with loads of other Rory fans.”
Is Cormac aware that Rory’s brother, Donal Gallagher, is currently talking to various movie people about making a biopic of the legendary Fender-bender’s life?
“God, that’s a film I’d really like to see!”
And perhaps be in. One of the things they’ll be looking for if the project gets green-lighted is a hirsute young chap who knows his way around a fretboard to play the young Rory.
“I’m your man! Joking apart, I’d be totally up for that though I’d feel guilty because I can hardly string three chords together. Rory Gallagher’s a massive hero of mine – and the band’s. ‘Walk On Hot Coals’ is the song we play every night in the dressing-room before going on stage. There’s a 12-minute version from Irish Tour ’74, which we jump around the room and fucking knock our heads off the wall to! It’s the perfect song to get the blood pumping.”
Another recent highlight was getting to spend some quality time with one of Phoenix, Arizona’s most famous residents.
“I was in the catering area when this journalist I know came over and said, ‘Cormac, I’d like to introduce you to a friend of mine.’ I thought it was going to be another writer or somebody from the record company maybe. Anyway, I get taken over and, fuck me, it’s Alice Cooper tucking into his dinner! If you’re psyched up to meet somebody legendary like that it’s okay, but I just stood there doing my goldfish impression – the mouth was opening but the words weren’t coming out. Among the things I learned is that the nubile young lady he whips on stage every night is his daughter! It’s very much a family business. Anyway, he was a lovely bloke.”
Like most rock ‘n’ rollers, Cormac whiles away the time between gigs by chain-watching DVDs. What’s been his AC/DC tour favourite? Flight Of The Conchords? Family Guy? The Wire?
“Er, Hunger, which is the polar opposite of Spinal Tap, but has blown me away each of the four or five times I’ve watched it. I love the use of silence in the film – it says more than any dialogue could. You get a cold, hard vision of what it must have been like when the previously healthy, almost George Best-looking Bobby Sands has his long hair lopped off by a prison guard.
“I was born in March 1981, which was smack bang in the middle of the hunger strikes,” Neeson continues. “My parents had a house right down the Falls Road, and when my ma got pregnant – I was their first – they wanted to move away from all the shit, but couldn’t because the value of the property went down to zero. You weren’t going to buy somewhere that had marches going past the front door every day. A couple of years later the market recovered, and they were able to get a place in Newcastle, County Down where The Troubles were still there, but not quite so overtly in your face.”
Hunger also resonates strongly with James Heatley, The Answer’s Animal from The Muppets drummer who’s currently sidelined – former Relish man Carl Papenfus has been depping for him – because of a hand injury.
“Cormac and I watched it together on a night off in Germany – everyone else had blagged tickets to see Pink, but we thought Hunger would be less heavy going!” James deadpans. “I lived in Belfast until I was 11 or 12. My da owned a garage between Andersonstown and the Falls Road, and got sick of people coming in and demanding money off him all the time.”
All of which is an extremely long way from blasting out ‘Never Too Late’ on The Late Show With David Letterman as The Answer did last November in their thermals.
“Cormac had a scarf on to save his voice!” guitarist Paul Mahon reminisces. “Letterman insists on the temperature being kept close to freezing, apparently so that his make-up doesn’t run. We were in the nice warm Green Room, but friends of ours who were sitting in the audience almost got hypothermia. It really is that cold.”
“Being in the make-up room and having Bill Cosby sit down beside you is by far and away the most bizarre thing that’s ever happened to me,” Heatley resumes. “Jimmy Nail was in the London O2 the other night, which was a bit surreal too. I imagine he’s an old Newcastle mate of Brian Johnson’s whose main topic of conversation is vintage cars. He’s got his own racing team, which he loves only marginally less than AC/DC!”
If you’ve been scratching your head for the past 1,063 words and thinking, “What the fuck has all this got to do with indie rock in Ireland?” I ought to point out that The Answer have eschewed major labeldom in favour of a deal with the Aussie imprint, Albert Music, run by AC/DC’s management company.
“Albert Music started life in 1885 as a clock, watch and occasional violin repair shop,” Cormac reveals. “It’s funny, some people sneer at hard rock because they see it as being this big corporate money-making machine, but we were complete DIY outsiders when we started. I remember a friend of mine saying, ‘Fucking bring your demo down to Terri Hooley’s shop and he’ll see you right’, which we did. The first record store The Answer were in was Good Vibrations.”
Before ‘Walk On Hot Coals’ gets slapped on the dressing-room ghetto-blaster again and The Answer go off to bang 14,500 more heads, has Cormac learned anything from being around AC/DC?
“Aye,” he nods. “That you can be pushing 60 and still totally in love with making music. You can’t fake what those boys do every night on stage. They’ve got their families on tour with them now, but the focus is still 100% on the show. If I’m doing what they’re doing 30 years from now, I’ll be fucking delighted!”

The Answer give their Everyday Demons album a live airing at AC/DC’s Punchestown show (June 26) and Oxegen (July 10). They also pay their own headlining visits to Mandela Hall, Belfast (June 29) and The Academy, Dublin (December 12)