The Battle for the Soul of De Dannan

“Basically I suppose what I want to say is that I’m extremely pissed off about this! It’s just a pity that it’s all happened in the first place. Why can’t people live peacefully, as they say, you know?”

Alec Finn is not a happy man. At least, he hasn’t been for the past couple of weeks. Ordinarily, the co-founder of legendary Irish trad supergroup De Dannan (who, with his shock of long white curly hair, resembles a more rustic Robert Plant) leads a relatively charmed and stress-free existence. Semi-retired from the music business, he still plays the occasional gig, but mostly he and his wife, respected artist Leonie King, divide their time between a dilapidated French chateau and an impressive 800-year-old castle on the outskirts of the Galway town of Oranmore, where Finn indulges his twin interest in painting and carpentry.

It’s to the latter residence that Hot Press has been summoned to discuss the matter that’s been disturbing Alec’s peace of mind of late. Three or four weeks ago, somebody rang Finn up to congratulate him on the fact that De Dannan had reformed and were about to set out on the comeback trail, kicking off with a ‘special appearance’ at the World Fleadh in Castlebar at the end of this month.

It was the first Finn had heard about it. As far as he was concerned, after a career spanning more than a quarter of a century and 14 acclaimed albums (their eponymous debut was released in 1975), De Dannan had officially disbanded for good back in 2003.

Further investigation revealed that band co-founder Frankie Gavin is the only original member of the new incarnation. So can this really be described as De Dannan at all? Replicating what was a kind of tradition with the original group, vocal duties in the new ensemble will be assumed by a woman – in this case Michelle Lally – with Mike Galvin on guitars and bouzouki, Eric Cunningham on percussion, flutes and whistles, and Damien Mullane on accordion. For the World Fleadh show, former members Mary Black, Dolores Keane and Mairtin O’Connor will also be performing. Further dates already lined-up include shows at Carnegie Hall, the Emirates Palace in Dubai and the Hollywood Bowl.

Will a group calling itself De Dannan be doing those gigs? Not if Finn has his way.
“I don’t want to come off as a cranky, bitter old bollox, or anything like that,” he says. “But when the band disbanded, I decided it would be a good idea – on someone’s advice, I can’t remember who – that I should ‘copyright’ the name to stop anyone else using it, even if we weren’t going to use it again.”

In fact, Finn registered De Dannan as a business name, which – according to legal sources – does not provide complete protection against a third party using it.
“Frankie was, at that time, living in America with his wife and family, and it just wasn’t possible to carry on. It cost too much for him to come over, and for us to go there, and the gigs were all getting all messed up, and communications and whatnot. So, we decided to disband – and disband is what we did. That, being the end of the story, and all live happily ever after, basically, you know. Frankie carried on with his own career. I didn’t really. I just sort of gave it up. I just did the odd gig. Colm Murphy went back to Cork, where he is a painter.”

Finn’s a little sketchy on when exactly De Dannan played their final gig. There was a festival gig in Norway, after which they all shook hands and said goodbye.
“And then,” Alec explains, “our agent at the time, over here, said to us, ‘Look, you booked this thing in North Carolina, and you’ve never actually not turned up for anything. You shouldn’t spoil the record, you should actually go’. Even though things weren’t too happy among the chickens, kind of thing. So we went and did that last one in North Carolina, and that was the last time we were all together. After that, people went their various ways.”

Initially, he says he was simply bemused by the news that De Dannan were reforming. “I just thought, ‘Well, nobody told me; I wonder who’s in it?’ This was three or four weeks ago. And I decided originally that it doesn’t matter, you know, blah blah blah. But then we started getting all these enquiries off different members of the band, and we discovered that this collection of people have got nothing whatsoever to do with De Dannan, using that name, which is 30 years old. It’s got quite a good reputation around the world… and, of course, it’s a very good selling point. But I don’t like it happening. And nobody else from the band, that I’ve been in touch with, does either.”

He hasn’t discussed the situation with Frankie Gavin. “We’re not in touch. We last spoke a couple of years ago, just sort of bumped into each other in town. We were on good terms, but he’s on a different wavelength than I am. What am I going to say to him? I’m not going to have an argument on the phone. He knows perfectly well he shouldn’t be doing it, you know what I mean? But whatever happens, the main reason I invited you here is to inform people that De Dannan are not reuniting. That is the main message.

“Whoever is calling themselves ‘De Dannan’, and I genuinely don’t know who it is, are not De Dannan, have nothing to do with it, and therefore it cannot be a reunification. A reunification is like, you know, I think Horslips have just done it. That is what people go to see. They want to see Horslips, they don’t want to see one of Horslips and three strangers. In my book they don’t anyway!”

De Dannan has always been something of a moveable feast in terms of people coming and going over the years. So who would Finn say is at the core of the band?
“Me and Frankie. I mean, when it split up a long time ago after, jeez what album? It was after a world tour, which wasn’t too successfully managed, I think Martin O’Connor and Ringo decided to leave and then we split it up. Subsequently we re-formed again.”
Finn lists a number of musicians who were in and out of the group: Colm Murphy, Aidan Coffey (an accordion player from Cork), Derek Hickey (“a fabulous accordion player from Adare,” Alec says) and Eleanor Shanley.

“You’re correct,” he adds. “It was a sort of a moveable feast, to a certain extent, but not that moveable; I mean, people were there for three and four years. And they were reasonably well-known people in the folk world. You’d stick the names on the posters and people would know who they were. And it kept quite a high standard of music. And although our singers were all entirely different, they were all very high quality singers.

“And that should have been it, we had a nice finish without any problems. People should have formed their own bands, like Johnny McDonagh did with Arcady. I mean, Johnny McDonagh couldn’t go away and call himself ‘Johnny McDonagh & De Dannan’, otherwise Frankie would go through the roof, you know [laughs]. But Frankie does not own the band. He is a frontman for the band for the latter years. He does not own the band. He is a member of the band, same as any other member of any rock band you would care to mention.

“This is not De Danann!” Finn adds. “If you want to go and spend your money on something that is not De Danann, go. But don’t be taken in that you are actually going to see a reunion of old members of De Danann. You aren’t.”

This, of course, may be disputed by Frankie Gavin. The master fiddler himself registered “Frankie Gavin and De Dannan” as a business name on November 1, 2008 with an address at Ardnasillagh, Oughterrard, Co.Galway and a reference number, 372591. Is Alec considering taking out an injunction to stop them from printing posters?

“I don’t know – it depends how tenacious they… If they decide to actually continue with it, I shall certainly have to do something. Hopefully they’ll have the sense to realise that this isn’t the way to go… because I don’t think it’s going to work with the public either. As I said, if I went to the Eagles’ gig in Dublin and there was only one of the Eagles and three strangers, I’d want my money back. So I imagine that will probably happen anyway. I don’t know. Maybe people don’t care who’s in it.”

Finn emphasises that he is not claiming ownership of the name for himself. It is the integrity of the band’s legacy and the goodwill they established that he wants to protect. So what does De Dannan mean to him personally?

“Well, it means about 25 years of lovely fun, travelling around different parts of the world, meeting interesting people. Same as any musician, really, that did reasonably well out of it. And mainly the travelling and all the people we met en route. We had the chance to play in Hong Kong and Beijing and Australia. Normally you would never get there. And you’re paid for going there which is very nice. And it was very enjoyable.

“Of course, like any other band or any other business you get problems from time to time. They just became a bit too much in the end, and it was impossible to carry on. So that was it. And you wouldn’t be hearing from me at all if it wasn’t that I suddenly see myself advertised at a Castlebar festival, or something. And, no doubt, other places.”

From a legal perspective, Finn’s options remain uncertain. While registering the name De Dannan as a business name is unlikely to carry much weight, one lawyer expressed the view that he might succeed with a case based on the concept of “passing off”, given that the new outfit could be seen to be trading on the goodwill and reputation of the original group, in which Finn was a partner. The more Finn talks about it, the more obviously agitated he gets.

“It’s not a nice thing to have to try to stop the name being used, but people will go to the concert and see that it’s not what’s written on the tin. I mean, who wants to be in that position? I certainly wouldn’t take De Dannan on the road without Frankie. So I’m hoping that they’ll see sense and stop doing it, and advertise it as ‘The Frankie Gavin Band’, same as Sharon Shannon does. There’s nothing wrong with that. People may go to it, people may not go to it, you know. But you can’t advertise yourself as something that you’re not. Particularly if someone else’s name is involved in it, you know.

“I don’t have any particular axe to grind. My view is that it is a very stupid thing to do. That’s the feeling I get from any musicians I meet, anyway, who know about it, and say, ‘Jesus, what are you going to do about it?’ And I hear this all the time, so I’m getting a bit tired of that.”
What would you like to say to Frankie Gavin right now?

“I’d say, you don’t need to use the name De Dannan, particularly if you haven’t got De Dannan. Have ‘The Frankie Gavin Band’ or ‘Hibernian Rhapsody’, or whatever you like. Be happy with that. Ringo was perfectly happy with Arcady. You don’t have to use someone else’s name for a band.”

As Alec Finn walks me to the metal gates of his castle, he expresses further worries. “What if they get booked for a big show somewhere and break the contract by not showing up? Since I registered the business name, I’m potentially the one who’ll get sued. I’m trying to stay away from being, sort of, as I said earlier, being sort of nasty and bitter about it, because I’m not bitter about it. I’m just pissed-off about it. It’s a pain in the ass.”

*Frankie Gavin could not be contacted at the time of going to press.