Red Roses for Thee

In New York last week, the Irish music community mourned for Johnny Byrne, who died at the weekend in Manhattan's Bellevue Hospital Intensive Care Unit. After a tragic slip where Johnny fell five flights from the fire escape of his home in the East Village, he lay in Intensive Care for three weeks, under the constant vigil of close friends. We sat at his bedside and talked, sang, read and rambled on to Johnny, in the hope that he might hear us even sit up and tell us to get up the yard.
With visiting restricted, people were only allowed in two at a time, and only if they were one of ten names constituting permitted visitors. This bothered both those waiting to get in to see Johnny, and the Bellevue receptionists, who had never experienced such a huge volume of people. Friends called in from London and Dublin daily to check on how he was doing. We told him that his gig had the most exclusive guest list in town, but sadly he never regained consciousness to appreciate this. For the last week or so, when the hospital lifted the restrictions, there was a constant stream of visitors to the Intensive Care Unit. That John Byrne he must be a helluva guy, one security guard remarked as he tried to negotiate the flow. He was right.
Johnny finally left the console quite peacefully, around four o'clock on Saturday afternoon, just one week before his fortieth birthday.
Two days later, family, friends and a host of figures from the Irish music community in the US packed into the Bellevue Hospital Chapel to attend a special commemorative mass in his honour. On the altar, a beautiful arrangement of lilies was complimented by another styled after a New Orleans Jazz funeral spray, with his photo placed at the centre. It was made of lilies for mourning, but also deep red roses for the passion that Johnny always had for life.
Music was heard throughout the ceremony, which, in his absence, underwent the chapel's natural amplification. Susan McKeown of Chanting House sang Amazing Grace , Helena Mulkerns rendered the Our Father from Sean O'Rmada's Irish mass, Alice Farrell sang Ave Maria and when Tommy Walsh of The Tain played out the mass with an extraordinarily beautiful tune on the accordion called St. Brendan's Voyage , it would have been hard to find a dry eye in the house.
One unique aspect of the event was that instead of a lengthy sermon, Father Campbell (originally from Belfast), invited those present to remember Johnny Byrne in their own words, and several moving testimonies were given. Those who had worked with Johnny praised his outstanding talents as a craftsman in the recording studio. Others remembered a big-hearted man whose humour and lust for life made the pleasure of his company a very special one, whether in business or play. He was the kindest, gentlest and most generous member of the Black 47 family, said Larry Kirwan. So long, Johnny, we'll never see the likes of you again.
Known in New York largely for his work with Irish bands here, Johnny originally started in the music business as a musician himself, playing bass with The New Versions. He began working as a sound engineer at the Keystone and Windmill Lane studios in the early eighties, and subsequently worked with many Dublin bands, including Philip Chevron and the Radiators from Space, Horslips, Thin Lizzy, U2, The Boomtown Rats, Chisty Moore and Paul Brady, among others.
Since his arrival in the United States in 1985, Johnny had been at the cutting edge of New York's music scene. He was the first engineer to work with Black 47, and had since produced and recorded with Rogue's March, Paddy-A-Go-Go, The Rascals, Ploughman's Lunch, Eileen Ivers, Pat McGuire, Pat Kilbride, Pierce Turner, Susan McKeown, Kevin Delaney and The Tain. Before his accident he had just finished a special new children's record by Larry Kirwan of Black 47. Members or friends of almost each of these bands were present on Monday night. From the music community across the Atlantic, others sent messages. Even at a distance, Johnny was the most supportive and closest of friends, said Philip Chevron in London. He really taught me a lot about friendship, miles never seemed to matter.
Johnny Byrne loved New York, and his time spent in the city touched many lives and helped many talents to develop and prosper. In honour of this, at a get-together in Paddy Reilly's bar nearby after the mass, the large floral altar arrangement was given a new place of honour in the sound box of the venue where Johnny used to sit as he worked with live performances there. On the jukebox, we played an extended Johnny Set , people reminisced and attempted to address loss as deeply in the crowded, smokey bar as anywhere else. As we left the premises, we each took a red rose as a momento of a much-missed friend.
Johnny's funeral was held last Thursday in Dublin, at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Churchtown. n