Starting All Over

Some people grow old without ever growing up. Certainly, rock music is full of such emotional retards. Worst of all are the wannabes who become has-beens without even touching the rim of the possibility of turning the experience into a learning process. Leslie Dowdall, on the other hand, is not one of these people. Though, of course, there are many commentators in this begrudger-ridden city called Dublin, who have been only too eager to write Leslie off as one of the great forgotten figures of Irish rock, a woman whose career collapsed with the demise of her former band, In Tua Nua. Happily, the pop historians will now have to put that kind of too-easy reading of her life on hold.

Not that this means that Leslie Dowdall is a model of psychological or emotional maturity. Not at all. As with the last time I talked with her for Hot Press, nine years ago, Leslie still fidgets endlessly, moves back and forth in her chair and visibly recoils from questions she may perceive as imprudent. In fact, the most telling gesture she exhibited the last time round was the need to hold a cushion to her chest throughout much of the interview, as though she believed that would somehow deflect any attempt to pierce or probe into her closely guarded heart. And so, this time, before we began, I threw her a cushion from one of the sofas in the Conrad Hilton Hotel. She threw it back but jokingly reached for it again when it was suggested we start with her filling in the “obvious gaps” in the last interview. “The little lies” she told. And what really happened to In Tua Nua, a band once described as “the next” you-know-who.

“To tell you the truth, I really feel I’m starting from scratch again and I don’t want to go over all that old ground again,” she says. “It’s not that I’m not proud of In Tua Nua, I am. And it’s not something I want to write out of my life. How can I? It was the whole of my twenties! But now, a lot of it seems like another lifetime and irrelevant, though I understand why people are interested.

“But what people basically ask me is why it did all end. And what happened was we went to America in 1989 and the record company wanted this big hits album, with loads of heavyweight writers. So they sent us over to meet Billy Steinberg, the guy who wrote ‘Like A Virgin’ and we were to stay there two weeks and come back with a big hit! But we ended up staying there six months, making an album. But by that time we’d fallen out with our manager and there was a split in the band: seven members, two different camps. The album was never released and they’d spent an awful lot of money, so the whole thing just fell apart, which was very disillusioning. We’d really put so much work into that album, then it was left on a shelf.”

So, what about the friendships and love affairs in In Tua Nua. Have those been patched up or finally severed?

“Finally severed,” says Leslie. “I’ve seen Paul and Martin and spoken to them, but haven’t seen Jack. But there were so many rows like ‘I want to record my song’ or ‘who started this band? I did!’ It even ended with ‘I’m going to arrive in the airport and knock your fuckin’ block off’ – Goodfellas ! All they were short of getting were sawn off shotguns! It was ludicrous. And though it all sounds funny now, at the time, it knocked me for six, for about a year. Because litigation went on for a year, anyway. And that was heartbreaking. So, one day, I woke up and said, ‘that’s it. I’ve had enough’ and cut all the ties. And then it was basically a thing of working my way back to making my own music, like this album. Very slowly.”

In the interview nine years ago, Leslie assured this reporter that she’d had “no experience of drugs at all”, which, as it turns out, was a little white lie.

“All that was simply me being protective, thinking, ‘oh, my mother is going to be reading this’, even though she knows,” Leslie says now. “And also I would have been thinking, it’s my business and maybe I don’t want people to know my business. But the band thought, because of this, in the last interview I came across too ‘safe’, too un-rock ‘n’ roll, but I said ‘fuck that, I don’t care’.”

But how big an issue was drugs in In Tua Nua? Did cocaine lines contribute to the split, add to paranoia among certain band members, for example?

“No, not at all,” she says. “It was mostly just smoking dope. But not so much as a band. We’d go out, socially, say, and do our own individual thing.”

Smoking dope? That’s not doing drugs, Leslie. Come on!.

“Oh, okay, we tried the old rock-n-roll stuff as well! And it was a great buzz. In fact, I remember my father saying, driving me home to Wexford, ‘have you ever tried coke?’. And I thought, ‘will I say yes or no, he’s a pretty open man’. So I said ‘yeah’ and we’re driving along and he said ‘how does it make you feel?’ And I said ‘it makes you feel euphoric. It gives you this buzz, blah,blah, blah.’ So then there was silence and he said ‘have you got any?’ But I didn’t! (laughs). But with me it was very occasional indulgences. And it wasn’t used for any kind of creative thing or on stage, because you would be paranoid, afraid you might not be able to sing, whatever.”

Did Leslie Dowdall feel that smoking dope and doing coke was simply part of being a rock star in Ireland in the 1980s.

“Well, I knew it was part of the territory but when I did it it was, as I say, more socially than anything else. Nothing to do with the band. But I do remember, earlier, going to meet an old friend from school and she said ‘try this’ and I said ‘I’m not into drugs’ and I wasn’t then because of that fear of losing control, falling round all over the place in public, whatever. I always had a thing, even in the band, I could drink as much as the lads, and still hold it together and drag them home. And I just never liked the idea of people seeing me out-of-it. But now, no better woman to get drunk with! I don’t care, because I don’t give a damn what people think.”

Okay, so what else was Leslie “secretive” about, in that last interview? Relationships? Love? Sex? As in claiming she was loyal to her half-way-across-the-world-lover who happened to be a lifeguard?

“John? Yes I was straight with you. And when I said, then, that I was always more interested in relationships than one-night-stands that, too, was true. I still do.”

This from the woman who was voted “Love of the Year” in Hot Press and did, after all, become Ireland’s first bona-fide female rock sex symbol?

“‘Love of the Year’ – isn’t that really stupid!” she says, laughing. “But I still meet people who say, ‘I used to really fancy you’. Now, if guys who were eighteen at the time, did fantasise about me, good luck to them. But nothing really went over the line, as far as fans like that would be concerned. Though I did meet at least one freak. He wrote me this letter, in London in 1987, and his name was Tony and he said ‘I’ve seen all your videos, I’ve got them on freeze-frame and I think you’re one of the tastiest females in rock.’ Then we were doing a rehearsal in the Riverside just after I’d read that letter to the guys and who’s there? This big bloke with ‘Tony’ tattooed on his arm! And he said ‘I sent you a letter’ and I said ‘oh, really, I never got it’ and I legged it out of there! But no, I never did really carry on like a rock chick.”

So, is Leslie still a romantic? Is she currently in love, with John, whoever?

“John? No, he’s long gone! And I had another relationship for five years. But, yes, I am on the cusp of a relationship at the moment, though where it will lead, God knows. But looking back nine years I remember thinking even then, ‘I’m bound to be married in a few years, have a baby’. But I definitely am still a romantic, in terms of love, the world, in general, though if you get too many kicks in the face romance can go out the window. And going into this relationship I still have the same romantic notions I had a decade ago, still love those old romantic black and white movies, see Cary Grant as my ideal man, or Gregory Peck. So, obviously, some things never change!”

But doesn’t believing in ’40s celluloid icons like Gregory Peck and Cary Grant suggest a view of love that is relatively one-dimensional, all flowers and roses and quotations from Shakespeare?

“No, but that is a part of it, a tiny part,” says Leslie. “What I see as romantic is believing you can find your soul-mate, meet someone you connect with, on every level.”

Has Leslie known this kind of metaphysical connection?

“Yes.”

So why didn’t it stay?

“Because I’ve only just found it now. I thought I had it before but now I realise there are all these aspects of myself that no-one had ever drawn out before. And it’s blown me away! But I don’t agree with friends who, when they meet someone new, or break up with someone, look back and say ‘I’ve wasted five years of my life’ with so-and-so. Some women do feel that when they hear the biological clock ticking away, but not me, I’ve still a few years left! And I have gotten over that yearning for a baby, which lasted a few months, about a year ago.”

Whatever about babies, does Leslie really love men. Or, like Alanis Morissette, does she secretly feel that most are dickheads?

“Well, you do have to ask what does that say, when someone like Alanis does turn out to be one of the best selling acts of the year,” Leslie responds. “But she is so young. And though I understand where all that rage is coming from, be it from men, alcohol, society, I’ve always managed to rise above those feelings. It’s the same when it comes to the feeling of cynicism, bitterness, which is a huge thing here in Dublin. People I knew, way back in the beginning of my career, are still hanging out in ‘The Pink Elephant’, though it’s now called ‘Reynards.’ And they’re all weighed down with chips on both shoulders. So, I’ve really done my best to steer clear of all those kind of feelings.”

It was about a music industry manager that Alanis wrote her great line about a guy who wanted to “wine, dine, 69 me” but didn’t listen to a word she had to say. Surely Leslie must also have encountered that kind of shit?

“Of course, it’s there, but it depends on how you handle yourself,” she muses. “If you leave yourself open for that, you get it. And I did, once, one person saying ‘I’d like to manage the band’ then the next minute, ‘would you like to marry me?’”

Marry or fuck?

“He was saying the same thing. But, apart from that, no-one was ever so sexist, or stupid, as to say ‘give to me what I want, sexually, or you don’t get a deal.’ But I do understand the rage in Alanis Morisette’s work, and like what she does. Whereas someone like Dolores O’Riordan I just don’t agree with. That song, ‘coke, don’t do it’ was trite. Because it wasn’t coming from the heart. It’s like someone just made up the words and said, ‘sing this’. Dolores is just not believable at all. Whereas Alanis sing from the soul.”

Surely more important still is the fact that Morissette also sings from the soul of other women, as does Joan Osborne in sexually assertive songs such as ‘Right Hand Man’ with its legendary image of a woman, in a state of post-coital bliss, walking home early in the morning with her “panties in a wad” at the end of her purse?

“That’s true,” says Leslie, somewhat tentatively. “But, it’s funny, people ask me if I’m ‘reserved’ and I must be because I don’t feel I have to talk about that kind of stuff. My sex life is my own and when I close my doors, what I do, is my own business. I don’t feel it’s something I have to express in a song, unless it’s something that really knocked me for six and feel I must express.”

Has Leslie ever written such a song?

“One, called ‘Damage’ but it was about rape. Not me, I’ve never been, but of a friend, and I wrote about that. Yet I never released it because I thought it was too explicit, though I love that Tori Amos song on the same subject, ‘A Man and A Gun’. It’s brilliant. But I felt uncomfortable singing my own song, just like I wouldn’t write about an explicit sexual experience. I just don’t feel the need to display such things.”

But is all this part of the tedious old problem we Irish have, when it comes to self expression, in a sexual sense?

“Yes,” she agrees. “And I recently said to a friend of mine from America, ‘the one thing we’re still guilty about is sex.’ And talking about it. We still don’t feel comfortable talking about sex. I don’t. I’ve never sat down with friends and had this kind of conversation. It’s not an Irish thing, though, on the other hand, I really dislike the way the Americans, say, just lay everything on the line. Although things are getting a little better here in Ireland. I remember the last time I talked to you I said it was disgraceful the way they didn’t have condom machines in night clubs, but now we do! Now, you can go into the jacks in a place like Renards and buy a condom! And you see girls walking down Grafton Street and they’re sexy and fully aware of it and it’s great!”

Leslie Dowdall’s re-emergence into the public spotlight has coincided with the revelation that, during her absence from the music scene, she contracted and survived cancer. But much of the coverage of this inevitably traumatic experience has left her distinctly unimpressed.

“I have to say that I hate the way certain papers have presented this story, with one particular evening paper having a banner headline this week, something about ‘Singer Wins Her Cancer Nightmare Battle’,” she says. “That’s bullshit, sensationalist and insulting. Not just to me but to countless people who have cancer, and to their families. Tabloid crap. And I really don’t want the sympathy vote, at all.

“But how the whole experience affected me was that, going back to In Tua Nua, after that year of litigation I really thought I was going to get a record deal, no problem. But I didn’t, and that was a real kick in the face. Because I had to accept that, well, In Tua Nua didn’t sell tons of records, I didn’t write the songs and though I had a profile I had to accept it when they said, ‘so what are we going to do with you?’ That was a real let-down. Then, after that, I spent loads of time songwriting with different people, but found I’d totally lost my musical direction, didn’t know whether I wanted to do a blues album, rock, or whatever. Let’s not forget that for years I had been with sixteen people, making decisions for me, now here I was on my own. That threw me, too. So I was waiting for the next person I worked with to just say, ‘Leslie, write a gospel album’, or, whatever. But the net result of all this was that I was stressed-out, completely.”

Does Leslie believe that this brought on cancer?

“Definitely, yes, though they can never tell you, for sure. But my best friend, James Dolan, died as a result of cancer, and we were sick within the same week of each other. He was an architect. At the time, I was meant to meet him, rang up his wife, she said ‘he’s in hospital.’ And then a week after that I rang and said ‘I’m just down the road from you, having an operation tomorrow!’. But then he died, in March, last year. He was 37. Three friends died in one week. Lisa [wife of Eamonn Ryan from Something Happens] died from cancer. And then Mick Russell.”

Did Leslie fear she too would die?

“You always have that fear. And the doctor told me I was being very brave about it, not really showing any emotion. But then, that’s me. All I was telling myself was that I was going to get better. But, like a dark cloud, it hung over my life for at least twelve months. What had happened, originally, was that I, literally, collapsed in the flat one night and screamed at my flat mate to get a doctor. And they brought me straight into hospital, did tests on Friday and operated, on the Monday. It was cancer of the kidney. But they took out one kidney, so it was contained. Yet then you have to wait for months, ‘till you find out if you’re clear. And I spent all that time with my family. But my father, for example, was great. He has a brilliant sense of humour and said at one point, ‘you have one day to cry your eyes out, and that’s it!’ And that’s what I did!

“Yet the lowest of all were those moments in the beginning, going back home, not even being able to walk. And being in so much pain, after they wean you off the drugs, like morphine, that I’d been given from the outset. But all that made me look, again, at the whole rock ‘n’ roll thing and at my life in general. And it was precisely at that point that I started to write songs on this album, like ‘Wanted’.”

Writing songs at this particular point in her life must have made Leslie Dowdall realise she sincerely did need music to express herself, rather than simply use it to make her a rock star.

“That’s exactly what I realised,” she reflects. “And the whole thing did deepen my need to write and make me see that all this was in my blood. But the best thing was that I suddenly realised I could do it on my own, which really helped bring back my confidence. And helped me get over the dark feelings that arose because of the illness, like having to look straight in the face of death, like when you come that close to it. It’s hard to describe, hard to put into words.”

But did Leslie put these specific feelings into any songs on the new album, No Guilt No Guile?

“There’s one called ‘Deeper’ and though it’s not very descriptive, it does articulate those feelings, for me. But even here with you, today, I’m nervous talking about such things. Yet, in terms of cancer itself what I’d really love to tell people – because this is a really sensitive issue – is that although people lose their parents, children, lovers to cancer, some do beat it. Where I felt cheated was that I lost my best friend, James, and I was left thinking, ‘why didn’t it take me?’ I really felt that. But you can come through it and not everyone is taken away by cancer.”

So how does this experience colour No Guilt No Guile overall?

“Well I’ve certainly learned not to take life for granted, that’s for sure. And the songs show me looking at life, reassessing it, in different ways. The album also probably shows up how, these days, I’ve no time at all for trivialities. Like, the whole rock ‘n’ roll social circle, rock culture, in general, which I keep as far away from as possible.

“So, the whole thing also made me more grown-up, which comes across in many of the songs. But, then even when it came to going back out and performing again, I felt much stronger than before. Then I wrote the single ‘Wonderful Thing’, which is, I know, just a light-hearted pop song. But the fact was that I wrote it after I went through all that other stuff, so that’s my victory, I believe. And from there Denis Desmond stepped in, offered me a deal and that’s how this album came about. Especially after John Dunford, Sharon Shannon’s manager, came on board. So everything really turned around, at a certain point.”

But, of course, it wasn’t quite that simple, really, was it?

“No, not at all!” she says. “And for ages it seems I’d be walking around, saying ‘one of these days I’ll see a poster up there advertising my album’ and that’s only happened this week! In fact I nearly dropped dead when I saw all those posters in the window of HMV on Grafton Street!”

So during all those years of waiting for her second break, how did Leslie pay the bills, live?

“You name it, I’ve done it! For example, I was waitressing in La Scala,” she says, smiling. “In the beginning I hated it, because that’s exactly what some people were thinking. Like, ‘oh, is this what you’re doing now? How awful!’ But, at one level, I didn’t give a damn because it was paying my rent. Though one night someone said, in a really condescending manner, ‘so this is what you’re doing now’ and I said, ‘well, it’s a toss-up between this and cleaning out the toilets!’ You have to have a sense of humour about these things!

“To tell you the truth, though, there were nights, waitressing, when I just wanted to throw a meal over certain people. Like, there was an English guy one night, clicking the fingers, shouting across the restaurant, ‘oi, Blondie, where’s my steak?’ And I said ‘in the oven, big nose!’ and walked away! And he complained, but George said, ‘she’s my best waitress, sorry about that, she’s a bit hot-tempered’. And I just said ‘I’m not putting up with any of that crap’. And I didn’t. I couldn’t. And there were plenty of music industry people who came into that restaurant and they’d stick their noses in the air, pretend they didn’t know me. Even though I’d known these people for years! It was like ‘you’re not hot, so I don’t need to know you anymore’. Total rubbish.”

But were there times when Leslie herself felt, ‘maybe they’re right, maybe my moment has passed?’

“Absolutely. And I remember someone saying, ‘if you don’t do it in the next year, you’re finished’ – which is a load of bollix. And even though it did take a long time for the album to come out, I still believe I’m singing and writing better than ever before. Certainly better than I ever was with In Tua Nua! And the core of the band on the album were really great: Trevor Hutchinson, Peter McKinney, Jimmy Smith and Graham Henderson. I honestly think we did a damn fine version of ‘Saturday Night’ and I don’t care if Paul Buchanan hates it! There’s a lovely feel to it, which is like the feel I wanted for the album. I didn’t want any clutter. I wanted it to be like the albums I’ve been listening to for years, like the Blue Nile, Portishead, Everything But The Girl. I love the space on those albums, the voice in the foreground, which is something I never had.

“I was always screaming over ten amps, and uileann pipes, or whatever. Roaring, not singing. So I just wanted to totally strip back the music on this album. And I’m really proud of what we’ve done. And I love tracks like ‘I Can’t Take Anymore’ because it totally encapsulates what I was feeling, like ‘I’ve had enough, I’m moving on’ which could be about a lover, a friend, someone you walk by, on the street and you don’t even acknowledge each other and you wonder ‘so, what was all that all about?’”

Did Leslie Dowdall ever feel that this was the way the Irish music industry responded to her?

“Yeah,” she says. “I remember wondering why I wasn’t asked to do A Woman’s Heart, though now, if that was supposed to represent what Irish women are all about, I’m glad I didn’t! But then Mary Coughlan wasn’t on it either, and she is totally an Irish woman, has a wonderful voice. And, to tell you the truth, there is one other Irish female vocalist on that album, who has this nasally voice I hate, and she has no soul at all. But when I saw her making it as a singer and making money from her career, I realised ‘if she can make it, I can bloody well fucking make it!’ But then I’m not bitter about any of this. I’m just delighted to have been given a second chance and hope this will be the start of the next part of my career. And my life.”