Music
21 Jun 17

Waterboys fiddler Steve Wickham reflects on an extraordinary career and performing with U2, REM and Bob Dylan

Having recently released his new album Beekeeper, fiddle player Steve Wickham reflects on an extraordinary 40-year career that’s seen him perform with rock legends such as U2, REM and Bob Dylan. Interview: Colm O’Hare
He’s a Waterboy, a solo artist, and has played with U2, REM and Bob Dylan, among many others. Along the way, he’s been a professional soccer player and a fish farmer. As he tours with his new band and album, Beekeeper, we thought we’d ask the Dublin-born, Sligo-based fiddler to look back on 40 years of making music.
“What was I doing in 1977?” he ponders. “I was 17 and I had a couple of bands at school – including one with you! [True – CO’H] There was Rob Campbell on drums with his accounting degree, Jack Dublin on bass, Mick Birch on rhythm guitar, and you on lead. We were called Synergy and I can remember it like it was yesterday – we all came out onstage in school with these sunglasses on, and we did ‘High Reel’, ‘King of Ireland’s Daughter’ and Lizzy’s ‘Dancing In The Moonlight’. That was exactly 40 years ago!
“And then I was playing football for Home Farm. My uncle was Joe Wickham, who had been head of the FAI in the 1950s. So I must have had a shoe-in with the name and all that, but I wasn’t a bad footballer.”
While most of his contemporaries picked up guitars, Wickham had been playing the fiddle from a very early age, mainly classical and trad. “It was very uncool to be a fiddle player,” he smiles. “I used to get slagged off – there was a thing on the telly called Brogeen the Magic Fiddle; a puppet show thing. When I went into school I’d hear them saying, ‘Here comes Brogeen the Magic Fiddler.’”
When Steve saw Charles O’Connor of Horslips with his ‘plugged-in’ fiddle, it convinced him he was on the right track. “‘The Story Of The Hurricane’ by Bob Dylan was another one that caught my ear,” he reflects. “But the thing that really took me was Van Morrison had a girl called Toni Marcus – she’s all over Into The Music and she was a kind of maverick player. When I heard that, the possibilities struck me – I thought, ‘I could be that person.’”
More local bands followed: “There was a kind of a scene in Howth with Rocky De Valera, and The Spies with Gerry Leonard. I’ve been working with Gerry recently on the music for a play about the only Irish/Jewish person who ended up in the concentration camps.”
In the early ’80s, Wickham found himself in the studio and onstage with U2. Indeed, his soaring, sustained fiddle is the second instrument heard on ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ – the song U2 are opening their current shows with.
“I’d seen Bono at that gig in school in Fintan’s in Sutton,” recalls Steve. “They did ‘Nights In White Satin’ and an Eagles song. I ho-hummed but Bono had that swagger. I wrote them off and didn’t think much of them, but I was in a flat at a party and someone put on Boy and I thought, ‘This really is very good.’
“I met Edge at a bus stop and said, ‘Hey, if you need a fiddle on your next record, I’m your man.’ He said ‘Sure’ and took my number, and then he got on the bus to Malahide while I went home to Bayside. Soon after, I went into the studio and we all got on great – I mean we were all northsiders. Steve Lillywhite was producing, a cool guy. I spent about three or four hours doing the fiddle for ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ and this other song, ‘Drowning Man’. I went on the road for the Irish gigs at the SFX, Galway, Cork and Belfast – I remember them being nervous about that.”
Subsequently, Steve ended up playing with REM on their Irish debut at the SFX in 1984. “I met Peter Buck who was a friend of Barbara [Steve’s then wife]. I’d heard the first record, a five-track EP called Chronic Town, which I thought was cool. They said why don’t you come up and play with us?”
After a spell with In Tua Nua, where he ended up onstage with Dylan at Slane, Wickham joined the Waterboys in 1985, where he stayed until the early 1990s. “After I left The Waterboys for a period I had to figure out what to do. I was in The Texas Kellys for a couple of years, then I started the Connaught Ramblers – we did a couple of records and toured the folk clubs of England and Ireland. That lasted a few years and I started playing with a girl called Deirdre Cunningham.
“I found it difficult to make a living for a while so I started a fish farm. Then I got a call to do the music for a couple of plays for the Abbey Theatre. About 1999 myself and Mike Scott got back together after an eight or nine year hiatus. I’ve been doing that ever since. We do a hundred gigs a year but there are 365 days in the year, so I started another little band called No Crows to keep me occupied. I write my own tunes all the time and they couldn’t find their way into the Crows or The Waterboys, so that’s why Beekeeper is out.”