Return To Paradise

Great bands never die, they only stage reunions. To some readers, the name The Stunning might mean little more than a relic from a by-gone age, a throwback to Irish rock in the eighties which we’ve supposedly outgrown and are far too cool to appreciate or acknowledge now. But a little context please. In the summer of 2003, The Thrills top the Irish album charts for what seems the duration of the summer. In the heady summer of Jackie’s Army and Italia ’90, The Stunning ruled from the perch of the top ten for five weeks with Paradise In The Picturehouse.

Thirteen years on from that giddy summer, The Stunning will unite this month for a jaunt around the country to jog such happy memories and create brand new ones.
“The Stunning’s career came to an abrupt end,” Steve Wall explains. “There was no trickling out or false endings with more tours before we called it a day. The reason we decided to re-release the album in the first place is because we’ve been getting a steady stream of emails from all around the world looking for Paradise in the Picturehouse. There is an audience alive and well out there waiting for it. The first Vicar St. gig sold out even before the posters went up, same with the Radisson in Galway. It’s reassuring that there is an audience there, and it’s shown us that it is a valid thing to do.”
Rather than getting the hasty re-release treatment, great care and attention has been taken to make this edition of Paradise as good as possible. “Marc Carolan mixed four tracks on it such as ‘Brewing Up a Storm’,” Steve reveals. “It sounds way better than the original because everything was shrouded in reverb, it being the fashion at the time in the late ’80s. It sounds much more contemporary, and the other stuff like ‘Half Past Two’ hasn’t dated because it’s not a rocker and seems to be a timeless tune. We stripped all the reverb off and brought it down to basics. Funny thing is, fashions change and it will probably be all the rage in five years time.”
Given that Paradise dates from an era just before the advent of affordable compact discs, the re-release affords a unique opportunity to issue something special in the “new” format. “Seventy-five per cent of the original sales were on cassette, so we wanted to give people something a bit more for the re-release so they are not just buying the exact same thing on CD,” Joe Wall believes. “There are four extra tracks on what was an eight-track album, and we’ve done an elaborate digipack for it, with a 20-page booklet, and the story of the band’s background and loads of photographs that people will not have seen before .
“We’ve also tried to set the record straight because so many people have presumed, because we formed in Galway, that we were Galwegians. Of the four of us, Steve and myself are from Ennis, Co. Clare, and Derek Murray and Cormac Dunne are from Donegal.”
Indeed, The Stunning story begins in Dublin. “We were reared around Kimmage and Harold’s Cross up to about the age of thirteen,” Steve recalls. “Our dad used to work in the furniture department in Arnotts, but he was handed a shoe shop in Co. Clare in his mother’s will. So we moved to the West and got out of the rat race. Then myself and Joe went to Galway to college and Joe went on to do rt in Limerick. I moved to Dublin and played in The New Testament with a guy called Eamon Dowd who went on to form the Swinging Swine and another band called The Racketeers. I had notions of becoming an actor and he (Joe) had ideas about doing another band. The whole thing purely came from going to the Underground and seeing all these bands there. It was fantastic and it was rough and ready.”
The now deceased Underground was a tiny basement venue on Dame Street, in a space that now hosts Lapello’s lap-dancing club and where Something Happens, The Golden Horde, The Swinging Swine, the first incarnation of My Bloody Valentine and a host of others first tread the boards to hone their early live craft. Steve was a regular back in the day, mingling in “a packed house of biker jackets, donkey jackets, pierced ears, quiffs and outsized suits”.
Steve decided to start a band and placed a Musicians Wanted ad in hotpress. Auditions were held in Aidan Walsh’s Temple Bar rehearsal rooms. But it was in Galway that the Stunning really kickstarted with Cormac Dunne and Derek Murray. A brass section comprising of Jim Higgins, Donal Duggan and Paddy Schutte gave The Stunning that big, beefy sound, or as Steve puts it, “nouveau showband.”
“We weren’t signed to any major label, though at the time we did want to, because that was the way to conquer the world,” Steve recalls. “In retrospect, because we were left to our own devices we were never channelled into one area. We were a very diverse band that confounded certain critics because we were very difficult to categorise. Even when we came up to Dublin to record our first single, we were arguing in the van about what we were going to record. There was nobody telling us what we should or should not sound like.
“Every single we did was different. ‘Got To Get Away’ was inspired by listening to Steve Earle so that was country driven. ‘Half Past Two’ was Burt Bacharach – I’ve no idea where ‘Romeo’s On Fire’ came from. We had just seen Los Lobos in the Olympia, so I think there was a little bit of that in there. Then you had ‘Brewing Up A Storm’, which was kind of Doors-y.
“In many ways, it’s not surprising that The Stunning were never offered a major deal. Any record company would think, ‘This band don’t have a clue where they are going musically!’ Years later, you see bands like Gomez and The Coral getting signed. Musically, those bands remind me of us.”
Without the assistance or push of a major record company, The Stunning enjoyed a formidable heyday playing all around the country and at every Feile festival. “We used to do so many shows that we’d think nothing of doing seven nights in a row,” Steve remembers. “One of the all time best was Féile. We were going on at midnight after Bryan Adams and were expecting everyone to leave, but they all stayed for The Stunning. I think it was ‘92. It seems like a long time ago, but in some ways it doesn’t because we haven’t stopped doing music. All these things become dates and memories.
“We had some crazy shows,” Steve continues. “We played in Ballybunion and it was mental. There was no security, and some guy hopped up on the stage to do a stage dive, and stopped to give me a hug. So I went back to sing the next verse and he’d robbed the microphone. The PA was owned by our guitarist Derek, and the minute he saw the mic was gone he dropped the guitar and flew down through the crowd, tearing after him down the main street in Ballybunion.
“One of the real highlights was the first gig we played and sold out in the National Stadium,” Steve reminisces. “We were so nervous in the dressing room. We were really into putting on a show, so we had the Macnas set from Treasure Island – a show in Galway where they filled the Leisureland with sand and did Long John Silver and the whole bit. They had this 360 degrees set up, right around the room, of the sea and the sky, so we had kitted out the Stadium with all this stuff. We were trying to turn the venue into some kind of Paradise. Everyone afterwards was raving about it, saying they’d never seen the National Stadium look so amazing.
“We also did a stripped down show called At Home with The Stunning in the acoustic room in the Warwick in Galway. We basically turned the stage into a lad’s flat with a couch and TV and of course, a fridge full of beer. There was a door and bell, so what would happen was somebody would ring it and one of the lads would get up and they’d be the guest for the next song. Martín O’Connor the box player came in, and Sinéad O’Connor did the last song. It ended up being acclaimed as one of highlights of the Galway Arts Festival.”
But there are no plans to turn The Stunning into an ongoing concern again. “This isn’t open-ended,” Steve states. “Once it comes to October, everyone goes back to what they were doing. Derek and Jimmy have a Sawdoctors tour in the States that brings them right up to Christmas. Our priority is The Walls and the next album. 2004 is a crucial year for us.
“Hi-Lo was so long coming. We spent two years in London. In some ways that was a waste of time, but in others it was great as regards to learning about the workings of record companies. The album was dragged out, so the next one should be quick and very live and immediate.
“We’ve been listening to Dylan and the Band,” says Steve, “so it’s back to the organic stuff – try and get that gutsy soul. I’ve become obsessed with Desire recently. The sound on it is brilliant. Ollie Cole was telling me that Polly Harvey’s album Is This Desire? comes from being besotted with that album as well. Amidst all the hustle and bustle with The Stunning we’re writing away. Myself and Joe rented a house in Achill last week and recorded a couple of ideas. We have to keep that on the go.”
Some Walls fans haven’t been too enthusiastic about the reunion. “There has been a debate going on The Walls forum on whether this is a good or bad thing to do,” Steve reflects. “The way we see it is that the busier you are as a musician, the better. The more you keep yourself active and stimulated has to help. It’s really good when you then come back to your number one thing.
“Earshot Records isn’t bankrolled by anything. It’s the logo on the back of a CD. It doesn’t have an office with a secretary. We have our own studio and a couple of mobile phones and that’s it. We have no marketing budget, so the perfect marketing campaign is to reform the band for the month of September. Tours sell records. We know that from The Stunning days.
“Sure, we’ve had to weigh up the negative and positive aspects. The Stunning were never perceived as a cool band – we were something of a people’s band. I’m sure you would have had people at a party going ‘Can we put on The Stunning?’ and there would be some cool existentialist going, ‘Can we not put on The Fall?’. I’d probably be the same!
“Everybody who was in The Stunning has stayed in music, which is fantastic,” Steve concludes. “Myself and Ollie Cole did this gig in Cork about three weeks ago. We went to a bar afterwards and somebody who was a huge Stunning fan recognised me. He asked me if I had a day job and he was shocked that I didn’t and had survived since The Stunning. In his mind, music was a hobby which you did for the love of it, but didn’t make a living out of. Mind you, it’s a dubious living and it’s so up and down. That’s the awkward thing about being a musician. You’re trying to get a mortgage or something and you just don’t know what your income is because it varies so much. I stopped thinking about that years ago.”
“Isn’t music gas?” Joe laughs. “You either spend your final years in a mansion or else under a bridge somewhere!”

Paradise In The Picturehouse is out now on Earshot Records. The Stunning play September 7 – Garavogue, Sligo; 11 – West County Hotel, Ennis; 12 – Vicar St., Dublin; 13 – Forum, Waterford; 14 – Vicar St, Dublin; 18 – Royal Theatre, Castlebar; 19 – Savoy Theatre, Cork; 20 – INEC, Killarney; 21 – Trinity Rooms, Limerick; 25 & 26 – Radisson, Galway. A different support band will play each night including Stanley Super 800, Bronco Billy, Ten Speed Racer, Berkeley and many others. See wwww.the_walls.ie for details