ONE FROM THE HEART

It was this very magazine that brought me and Joe and Marian together and it wasn't via the classified personals either. Living in Cork I was dispatched to Blarney Road, on the peace line between Knocknaheeny and Shanakiel, to interview a small fat man with a long beard.

Joe O'Herlihy remembers the first time I visited his house and not surprisingly his memory is of a sound, the low painful whine of a Yamaha 80 attempting the hills of Cork's Northside and giving itself up with about 800 metres to go. Phut, phut, phut . . . bang . . . screech . . . whine . . . stop!

Joe and Marian came to the door to inspect the commotion outside, Mark and Damian peered out of their bedroom window, who could sleep with that racket? Joe and Marian took me in and gave me shelter, consoled me on my mechanical loss and filled me with whiskey and cheer.

The warmth of that welcome has stayed with me in the eight years since and our friendship has developed along similarly happy lines . . .

In the beginning it was music that kept us together. We were on different rungs of the rock and roll ladder . . . I was about to become the manager of Cypress Mine! although they hadn't told me yet and Joe was sound engineer for a band that were becoming the biggest in the world, U2. On second thoughts maybe we were on different ladders . . .

Joe was quickly roped in to produce and engineer for my own band whenever his touring schedules would allow and Cypress Mine!'s finest moment 'Sugar Beet God' was a magnificent production achievement in an eight track studio that owed as much to Joe's ten hands and twelve ears as to Ian's screaming guitars, Skoda's throbbing member, Mark's timing (he came in to studio that day) and Ciaran's grungy vocals that were years ahead of their time (you were right all along, Pug!).

Joe never took a penny for all the work he did for us either in the studio or even on the road.

Yes, Cypress Mine! and U2 shared the same sound man on a few memorable occasions.

The band were asked to support Echo and the Bunnymen in the Ulster Hall in Belfast which was great except for the six hundred mile round trip in a van with no windows.

On the way up from Cork we stopped off in the O'Herlihy's new Dublin residence in Terenure and got tea, sandwiches and sympathy. Then I hit Joe with the 'we can't afford a sound engineer but it's a very important gig and anyway I couldn't bear the van anymore' routine so he drove up to Belfast and did the gig.

And what a difference that made . . . I can't remember how it sounded but that was irrelevant anyway . . . the difference was respect.

You know how it is . . . a sad but true fact of the rock hierarchy is that support bands get treated like shit the world over. When the band arrived early there were eight channels allocated for the whole backline, sorry mate. When Joe arrived and asked for twelve channels for the drums to start with, the crew quickly asked what else he required and what about lights?

Outside music Joe, like me,

has a passionate interest in sport and that has seen us travel widely from the exotic Carlisle Grounds in Bray to last week's journey to the East, to the Ali Sami Yen Stadium in Istanbul, for Cork City's match against the Turkish Champions Galatasaray.

We have travelled from Semple Stadium to Old Trafford together and one day Joe revealed to me his weakness. "I'm a complete soccer groupie . . . y'know the way people are into U2 and all that? Well for me it's soccer players and Manchester United in particular, I love the whole vibe."

I can vouch for this because at the time we were on the way to meet Denis Irwin and Roy Keane and Joe didn't arrive empty handed. He had plenty of U2 swag for the lads who were absolutely thrilled to get it. And each member of their Cork City team and their partners were given laminates for the band's show in Cork recently, which were almost as precious to them as their league championship medals . . .

Joe loves the vibe alright, forever taking the piss and winding people up with his good Cork humour and charm. On the way back from Turkey last week he got each of the Cork players to wind up their shoelace around their finger and as the stewardess demonstrated the safety features of the aircraft, including the oxygen mask, twenty odd trainers fell in front of players' faces to the huge delight of the rest of the aircraft.

Believe me it's a visual joke that has been working a treat on many rock and roll tours for the last twenty years.

The O'Herlihy household has been my home in Dublin for six years and since I made the move to the big smoke has been a sanctuary of sorts as well although Sarah and Louise and Julie and Mark and Damian are hardly peace and tranquillity personified. The O'Herlihys have been there for me.

Last Christmas my mother was involved in a serious car accident and Joe in the middle of his tour insisted on driving with me to Cork to talk me down.

Any crisis in my life and Joe seems to turn up and now he and Marian are busy planning my wedding - although Mary and I are quite happy living in sin just beyond Dalkey . . .

When he eventually comes off the road I'll miss the calls at three or four in the morning from Los Angeles or Sydney . . . "Hello Tone, did I wake you? How did City get on today? What about United? Who won the Hurling . . . ? Tony, are you there . . . Tone?"

Joe, you're a sound man, a sound man altogether.

• Tony O'Donoghue