Record Breaker: The Paul Brady Interview

After more than thirty years as a singer, songwriter, musician and performer, Paul Brady is now busier than ever, with his own new record label, a live album set for release, and a plan to re-release all his back catalogue. He is also about to embark on the most ambitious single-venue series of gigs ever in Ireland.

Paul Brady recently shared a breakfast table at the Morrison Hotel with Hot Press and, among other things, explained how he learned to stop beating himself up.

JACKIE HAYDEN: From October 1st you’re doing 23 nights at Vicar St. Why do a series of gigs in one comparatively small venue, rather than, say, two nights at the Point?

PAUL BRADY: It gives me a better chance to touch on basically everything I’ve done over the past thirty years or so. I couldn’t do that in an hour and a half or even three hours. There are so many songs that I didn’t do any more because I just don’t have time when I’m promoting the new album or whatever. I used to enjoy singing those songs. Audiences used to love hearing them.

So it gives you more flexibility?

Yeah. The band I’ve been working with for over a decade have done pretty much all of my material so we can change the set around and revisit lots of stuff as the mood takes us. The only alternative would be to book a rehearsal room for five days and just play to ourselves! It’s a lot more fun to do it with people there!

So what songs have you had to leave out that you now fancy having a shot at?

Oh, God! (pauses). ‘Back To The Centre’. ‘Follow On’. ‘Hard Station’. ‘Helpless Heart’. If you gave me five minutes I could give you twenty songs.

It’s quite novel, doing such a long stint at one venue, rather than a tour.

No one has really done it this way before, as far as I know. I was asked to do it a year ago by Peter Aiken, but I didn’t want to do it then because I had just put out two albums in quick succession and I was focusing on promoting those. But with those records out of the way I thought about it for about a week and reflected on what I might do with an opportunity like this and I began to get really excited by the idea, especially when I thought that I could go right back to the songs of the ’70s. It all coincided with me finding these tapes of a Liberty Hall concert I did in 1978 which turned up in the attic last November. When I decided to put out a CD of it I then thought why not try to get the band who played that gig together again, you know, Andy Irvine, Donal Lunny, Liam O Floinn, Matt Molloy, Paddy Glackin and Noel Hill. So I decided to do some nights with that band as part of the series of gigs.

Will they all be there?

Unfortunately the other day Matt Molloy had to pull out because the Chieftains seem to have conflicting dates. For reasons I suppose he could best explain he didn’t seem to be able to make it. I had him locked into those dates. I don’t know how many times I rang Matt. “Are you sure Matt?” “No problem, no problem”. So now I have to find a way round that. At the moment I think I might go ahead without replacing him.

Were you not tempted to go back to anything from the ’60s?

No. In a way I see that period as me learning my trade and singing other peoples’ songs. I feel I’ve absorbed The Kult period into my overall career.

What memories do you have of that time?

(laughs). The whole world was different for me then. I was just down from Tyrone for the first time. I’d lead a very localised existence up to then, hadn’t really strayed much beyond Donegal, Tyrone and Derry. I’d been living music in my head and my own living room up to then. So the chance to see live bands in Dublin, which wasn’t showband material, was exciting. The main thing I remember from back then was a gig in the Crystal Ballroom, later McGonagle's, which was a four band extravaganza with The Greenbeats, Bluesville, The Inmates and The Semi-Tones. That was like dying and going to heaven, to see rhythm and blues, soul and rock music played live on a stage right in front of me!

Were gigs much harder to come by then for rock bands – or beat groups as they were then called – compared to today?

No. Not in 1964. But by the time 1965 and ‘66 came along, yes. There was a huge growth in beat clubs around the city, with the Five Club at the bottom of Harcourt Street, Sound City on Burgh Quay, The Carousel in Glasthule, and The Cavalier. It expanded suddenly for about three or four city centre clubs to about twenty clubs. You had tennis clubs and rugby clubs which also used bands. There seemed to be about fifty bands in Dublin, including The Black Eagles, The Gnumphs, all mostly doing covers.

Apart from the Five Club in Harcourt Street, wasn’t there a Ninety Five Club for folk and blues just across the street?

Yes. It was run by Cecil Frew near where the Green Tureen restaurant was.

Do you remember a row centred on you in the Ninety Five Club because you were playing with a plectrum much to the disapproval of the purists?

(laughs) I don’t recall that. But knowing the capabilities of the folk scene to focus on the most anal things I’m not surprised. I’d come in from rock and roll with a bad smell!

Was there a similar reaction from the same types when you started to rock it up with stuff like ‘Crazy Dreams’ after being such a part of the trad scene?

There’s always an element who know better than everybody else as to how things should be. There was a minority like that around. But then the media tend to look for that sort of conflict and build it up into something much greater than it actually is. There were a few people grumbling. I’ve never felt that the general public give two shits whether something is folk, rock or anything, if it’s good and they like it. My fans like what I did, whether I was singing ‘I Am A Youth That’s Inclined To Ramble’ or ‘Dancer In The Fire’. My audience knew the way I was going for years. I’d started writing songs in 1979. Hard Station didn’t come out until 1981. So there were eighteen months when I was playing all over Ireland in places like Bolger's Hotel In Tullamore where they ran a regular folk club. I’d start off with ‘Paddy’s Green Shamrock Shore’ and straight into ‘Trouble Round The Bend’ which is a blues song I recorded on True For You in 1983. It was no big deal. They thought that, yes, da dee dah, whatever he does is fine.

I was present at a conversation between you and Eamon Carr of Horslips in the late ’70s when you seemed to be expressing some disillusion with the folk scene. You seemed to see that moving into rock was a substantial risk.

Well, yeah. It was a huge risk. Everything I’ve done in my career has been kinda risky. I didn’t want it to be a risk. I love security, crave it in a way. I don’t want any grief or to wake up worrying in the middle of the night. But yet I didn’t seem to have any choice. I never ever saw my role as an entertainer. I saw my role only as someone who had been given a fairly unusual gift in that I could play lots of different types of music and get to the heart of different types of music and play them for people and also write. This was the central driving thing that I had, this box of these different things. I also knew I had to fit it into some concept of marketing, direction or style, which was something I never wanted to deal with. So my decisions were always based on what seemed interesting musically and that’s very risky.

Is there a mischievous part of you where you know that if, say, you – Paul Brady – collaborate with someone like Ronan Keating, it’s going to irritate a few people?

Well, when I do something like that, yes, after it’s over I go ‘wow, that’ll annoy some people’ but it’s not my fundamental reason for doing it. I do it because I want to find something out, like what would it be like to do that?

At what point in your life did you decide that this is what I want to do and it’s going to be my life?

I probably started to say it to myself in The Johnstons, around ‘71. We had moved in a lateral way from the traditional world into contemporary folk, recording songs by Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Gordon Lightfoot, Jacques Brel, Ewan McColl. We were doing that stuff from 1969! We put out two albums on one day, in January 1969. Give A Damn, which was contemporary and The Barleycorn which was traditional. To my knowledge, no other Irish artists have put out two albums at the same time.

But even back then I was equally interested in the two different type of music and I did write songs, like ‘Continental Trailways Bus’, ‘December Windows’, ‘Brightness She Came’, ‘You Oughta Know’. But when I look back on those songs I think (laughs) maybe I shouldn’t have written that bit, you know! I was looking to be a songwriter back then, but the direction of my career changed completely for the whole ’70s through events I had no control over.

What events?

For one, The Johnstons imploded in America, so I had no band. Number two, I was asked to join Planxty to replace Christy Moore. If you were sitting in a bedsitter in New York in 1973/4 and you’ve been in New York for a few years and the band you were with has fallen apart and you can’t get a deal, in the middle of the energy crisis and you’re invited to join the biggest Irish band, what decision would you make? It was partly clutching at a lifeline. But there was equally the excitement at the chance of working with Andy Irvine and Donal Lunny. I used to be a secret admirer of both of them. I used to love Andy with Sweeney’s Men. I fact I gigged one night with Sweeney’s Men. I depped, I think, for Terry Woods. I admired that they were into Woody Guthrie and the blues, I loved the mandolin and Andy could play that cool harmonica. I was a great admirer of Donal since before I joined The Johnstons. He was at art college in Kildare Street when I was at UCD in Earlsfort Terrace and we used to do gigs together in the Exam Hall.

Were you surrounded by music from an early age?

Yes, there was a musical tradition in my family. My grandmother on my father’s side was a very accomplished singer and pianist and would have been a winner at the Sligo feis. My father grew up in a house with lots of music in a more formal sense. He was a very gifted performer. When they first moved to Strabane he was involved in local drama societies, producing revues and he’d appear himself. He was a gifted artist and he sang. My mother grew up in a house with more traditional music in rural, nationalist Fermanagh as small farmers. Her brother played the fiddle. They would have been fairly Republican in their tradition. When our family went to Bundoran for the holidays they would go out in the evening to singing hotels and my father was a regular at sing-songs.

He interrupts his breakfast of scrambled egg to ask the waitress “If it’s not a mortal sin, could I have some ketchup?”

Hard Station is rumoured to have been remixed three times.

No, just once.

Were there technical problems or just you demanding a higher standard of yourself and is that reflective of you generally?

Emm, a bit of both. And it was probably reflective of me at the time. Now, with the benefit of hindsight and being easy and kind to myself (laughs) I think it was a real sharp lesson that it’s very, very hard to realise what’s in your head, particularly when you need other people to help you make it. I wasn’t really good at the time at communicating what I wanted. I was a lot further on in my head than I was in my fingers. I was very inexperienced and very nervous playing the piano. I was much more ambitious beyond what my hands could do, so when the red light went on I would play very tightly. I then got somebody else to play the piano but they would never play the way I wanted.

So it was difficult?

Yes, it was very difficult. I came out of a long period of preparing for the album. It was very important to me that it was as good as it could be. Everybody, when you’re doing something like that, thinks this is their last chance and with that attitude you sometimes get frustrated because it’s not what you wanted. But there were technical difficulties too.

A lot of the material was autobiographical, wasn’t it, or is that reading too much into it?

It is reading too much into it. I employed a trick which I spotted my father doing when he would recite monologues. He could relate a story that hadn’t happened to him but he could make you feel it had. With ‘Nothing But The Same Old Story’ it didn’t all happen to me. Yes, I was living in London largely within a ghetto Irish mentality, so I knew a lot of people who ended up like the character in that song. But it wasn’t just me, only partly me.

Is it disconcerting for you as a writer that somebody might read something in a lyric, maybe something that refers to private matters, and assume that it refers to you personally?

It probably is more disconcerting to the people I have relationships with than it is to me. They could feel exposed in some way if people assume it’s them I’m talking about when it mightn’t be. For every person in a relationship with a writer, that’s the deal.

Are you ultimately saying that people shouldn’t take lyrics as being personal?

I’m not saying that at all. But who cares? Why is it so important whether it’s about me or not? The song will live long after me. Other people have sung my songs, delivering lyrics the listener thinks happened to them!

You seem sometimes to be hard on yourself. What do you beat yourself up over?

(long pause, laughs, then further long pause) That I can’t do everything, I suppose.

What do you most regret not being able to do?

I regret not being able to get outside my music when I’m in the process of producing it, to be able to see it totally objectively. I’m not really good at mixing my own music, because I’m too attached to it. Things become more important to me than they should be, but I can’t see that until much later. I didn’t mix my last album and I try not to mix them myself now.

Are you a hard worker? Do you work at this in some way every day?

Yeah. I’ve been preparing for the Vicar Street gigs since last February. I’ve been working on devising what they should be about, planning for it logistically, budgeting, trying to involve the people I’ve worked with over the past 30 years, approaching them about getting involved, changing dates around. I’ve also discovered that with something as big as this there’s no way you can have total control. This week things were falling apart, especially when Matt Molloy pulled out.

Do you have a particular process for writing? Do you sit down at particular times, and say, ‘right I’m going to write a song today’, or do you need some impetus?

It used to be like that, but the way it works for me now is that I have to plan out a period to write. Right now it’s going to be next January or February. I won’t even think about writing until then. I’ll have a cut-off point then and I’ll say, don’t ask me to do anything else for the next two months.

Would a deadline help?

Help in terms of producing what result?

If you’re set to do an album say in April, might that deadline concentrate the mind?

I don’t see it like that any more. I don’t see that I have to have an album out in April. I don’t even see that I have to write songs. I could stop right now. I’ve spent my whole life trying to get myself into this situation where I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to, so why should I revert to situations of pressure? I’ve worked really hard for the last three years. I remastered my entire back catalogue. I put out a Best Of, did a new album and I have a live album coming out. I’ve never worked as hard as that in my life before. I used to put out an album once every three years! Now I’ve got three albums in two years!

Have you ever been tempted to give it up and do something else?

Yeah.

When?

In the mid to late ’90s. Between Spirits Colliding and the Best Of there was a four-year period which is when I started to co-write around the world and I found that hugely enjoyable.

What made you want to pack in your work as Paul Brady, performing artist?

I was getting sick of the record business.

Had something gone wrong?

My long-term relationship with my manager Paul Cummins came to an end in 1995 That was quite traumatic and left a sour taste in my mouth for a long time. Also, my relationship with Mercury Records came to an end. It just seemed an awful lot of hard work, to spend a couple of years writing the songs, another year recording the album and another year promoting it and at the end of it not to feel some sense of achievement.

Apart from the co-writing, were their other factors that got you back into it?

I think it gradually came to me that I was always going to want to perform and make records. The switch I had to make in my mind was not to be concerned anymore about breaking into new territories. That is the carrot that leads most artists to grief. It’s a hard thing to do and only a few achieve it. I thought, OK, if I can make records and put them out and not give a shit and not have grandiose expectations for them then I would have so much more energy to devote to other aspects, like just having fun. I made that switch in my head in the late ’90s. Instead of feeling that I had to keep bludgeoning ahead I just decided that I’m here, this is fine and it’s wonderful! I never actually stopped before and looked at what I’d achieved. I’d felt I had to keep justifying myself and proving more and more, and suddenly I felt I don’t have to prove anything.

Not even to yourself?

I realise it was myself I’d been trying to prove stuff to anyway and I gave myself permission to stop. The minute I did that I was able to realise how much I’d actually done and to enjoy it. That’s partly what’s at the root of the Vicar Street thing, me saying to myself: “Look, Paul. You’ve done all this, now enjoy it.”

Have you seen changes in the Irish media over the years?

The media has gone through huge changes over the last thirty years. When we were all starting off there was a general and collective and massive inferiority complex within Irish music. We all felt that we’d never be able to beat the Brits. Top Of The Pops was where it was at. But post-U2 the pendulum has swung to the opposite extreme where in the media we’ve turned from being no hopers to being complete losers if we’re not number one all over the world! Those extremes are equally weird.

Do they reflect some kind of immaturity in the Irish psyche?

I do think so. It’s healthy when it’s applied to creation and art, the feeling that we can do anything. Even myself starting off, I couldn’t have done it unless I thought “I’m bloody good” or “I’m at least as good as him”. That’s the fuel that drives you along. But when you begin to devour your own because they don’t match up to your obsessive hopes for them, that’s all wrong. I don’t know how many bands have come out of this country and been given the big treatment. I remember I think it was The Lookalikes on the front of the Evening Herald with a story about signing a three-million pound deal. You and I know that’s all bullshit. But you build these people up and they turn out to be human. There’s too much obsession with the “top five” of the world. People forget there are thousands and thousands in the business outside the top who are doing very, very well.

Are there artists you think are under-appreciated, who you’d like to see getting a bit more attention?

(pauses) Too many to mention. (pauses) I’ve got a very short-term memory. David Kitt’s interesting. There’s a young guy called Stephen Hodd from Killarney I heard recently. Declan O’Rourke, a really good writer and singer. Relish are exceptionally good.

You’re on the board of IMRO. Some feel that musicians shouldn’t have to get involved in the minutiae of the business. How do you feel about it?

Well I’ve just started my own record label and my objective is ultimately to have all my product on my own label. Musicians have always been exploited by the record industry. It makes sense that they should learn not to be exploited. If we don’t get involved then someone else will grow fat on our talents. I don’t see any long-term future in the head-in-the-sand attitude. I’ve had a long and successful career and I try to put something back. Normally I’ve been non-aligned in my career. I don’t get involved with movements or campaigns, so this is my way of passing on some of what I’ve learned.

How do you deal with rejection, say, Paul Brady getting dropped by a record label?

Well that hasn’t happened since 1996. But I’ve never had anything but total grief from the A&R departments of record companies.

What kind of grief?

Almost the price you had to pay for getting their commitment was to surrender what you were! The only way you could get their interest in your work was if you allowed it to become their baby. Most A&R people see the artist as an extension of themselves, and they’re only content to exist within that relationship as long as the artist doesn’t deviate from the image they have of themselves, which they get by association with you. It happens in theatre and in the film business too.

Would it work better if people in the music business went with the artist’s instinct?

Not always. But it’s important to make the distinction that when the media and others in Ireland talk of the music business they mean the record business, whereas for me it’s the people who make instruments and rent out studios. The music business is not about making music, it’s about selling music. The more depth and complexity there is to something the fewer people will be able to deal with it. This creates a conflict and most artists never resolve that conflict. I’m only getting close now! I’d hate to be back at the start.

Is it harder for artists starting out now than it was?

It’s easier from some points, in that you can make a record yourself. The mystique there used to be about the record company, that bubble’s burst. If I can have my own record company anybody can.

In your own song ‘Dancer In The Fire’ there’s a line about being scared to walk the wire. Are there things you’re still scared of?

I think that was a reference to me being frightened to leave the position I had and jumping off one heap onto the bottom of another heap. Eamon Carr was right, it was a risky thing to do. But I’m not scared any more.

Is there something you look back on and think that’s where I really screwed up?

(pause) Yeah. It’s a characteristic of mine that every time I come to the end of an album I’m so exhausted, emotionally and mentally and every way and so concerned that it mightn’t work that I lose all confidence in it. So I keep adding more and more and it doesn’t really help.

Can you give me an example?

Well, Back To The Centre, although it was very successful for me. The hardest thing for me is believing that it’s OK the way it is and you don’t have to turn yourself into something else for it to be good. There’s a point where you have to walk away and you go (feigns panic) that’s not what I really meant!

What stands out as a highlight?

I look back on a lot of my output and feel that a lot of it actually worked and I realise now that my reaction to it at the time was so much bound up with what other people thought, so I couldn’t have an honest emotional relationship with my own work. I look back on the Primitive Dance album which came out in 1987 and pretty much disappeared without any ceremony. But now I think it’s one of my best albums.

Is it demoralising when that happens after so much sweat and toil?

It’s hugely demoralising. If I envy anybody I really envy artists who have been given that bolt of lightning, like U2, David Gray, whoever, because they’re getting this massive vote of confidence, a massive inrush of energy all the time. I fantasise that in that environment it must be awfully easy to feel good about what you do and to produce your best.

But you’ve had that vote of confidence from the artists who’ve recorded your songs. Does that not compensate?

Well, yes it does. But you get infected with this thing where, if it’s not No.1 it’s worthless.

Isn’t that just insecurity?

Yeah. Of course. But I fantasise about jumping back 20 years and not having to keep proving stuff all the time and wondering what not having to work at breaking into new territories all the time would have done for my work. What songs might I have written in that kind of climate, what kind of person would I be and so on? I think everybody fantasises like that.

Is there a pessimistic streak running through both you and your work or is that a misreading?

It’s more complex than that. I’m an optimist and a pessimist in the same breath. Through most of my life I’ve been an optimist. I’ve always believed that even if it’s not working out right now it will tomorrow.

But even if it is working out, do you have a sense that it still might go horribly wrong?

I have a slight feeling all the time that because what I’m doing isn’t immediately sexy or in your face, that it won’t get noticed. But that’s who I am. I’m never going to be the sort of person who gets into Hello! magazine and I’m exactly the sort of person who doesn’t want to be in Hello! or VIP magazine.

Do you like who you are?

Me, yeah. I like who I am a lot more than I used to.

What did you not like before?

I felt probably that there was something in me that was making me make mistakes all the time and that it was somehow my fault that the whole world wasn’t taking me in their arms and loving me. It’s an obsessive thing that an artist goes through, but it’s unreal. Now I don’t feel there’s anything wrong with anything I’ve done. I feel that the work I’ve done was done for the right reasons and achieved the results they were destined to achieve.

So what comes after Vicar St.?

There’s nothing I can think of. I got a lot of things right on the Oh What A World album. I was able to get out of me a lot of the stuff that was in me and I can say, there’s eight or nine albums there, if you don’t like it, that’s cool, but I feel good about what I’ve achieved.

And the new album?

It’s a live traditional album, The Liberty Tapes, of one concert recorded on 21st July 1978 on my own label called, with stunning originality, Pee Bee, distributed here by Universal Records. My long-term goal is to have all my own albums on my own label.

• Paul Brady was interviewed for Hot Press by Jackie Hayden