Why we've got the pill to thank for our showbands
Thursday, 10 January 2008
Derek turns the conventional narrative on its head - or,
rather, on its feet. He dismisses the notion that a sudden,
magical efflorescence of cover-bands in spangle suits summoned a
repressed generation to sweat and romance in breeze-block
ballrooms at the edge of town.
What happened instead, he insists, is that the pill became
available: " Women, equipped with their little secret, silent
partner-in-joy, decided that it was time to let rip. They headed
out in their thousands and where they went the men followed."
And, everywhere, troupes of fellas who fancied themselves as
technicolour dreamboats, formed showbands to meet the demand.
Some were dreadful, some were decent, the best were brilliant,
and the Freshmen were the best of them all.
Behind lead singer Derek, from Strabane, there was Sean Mahon,
who "played the trombone like a man making love to his adoring
wife," Davy McKnight, a boogaloo drummer from Belfast who laid
down such rhythms you'd believe " pagan demons would be abroad
looking for new converts," Ballymena man Torrance Megahy, bass,
playing "'keep your feet on the floor because I'm lighting a
fire with these b*stard notes' sort of stuff," Damian McIlroy,
guitar, from Downpatrick, who took melody lines on flights of
insanity that crash-landed into the amps, Maurice Henry from
Ballymena, bandleader (hence the designated hometown), who kept
order and "blew with soft lips" into sax and euphonium, and
Billy Brown from Larne.
Each one could have filled in as lead singer, and sometimes did.
Their speciality was three-part, four-part, five-part harmonies,
a blast of voices ranged across octaves, that weaved and meshed
into beautiful noise. They were the only band anywhere which
routinely took on the Four Seasons, the Fifth Dimension, even
the daunting intricacies of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys, and
came out triumphant. I recall standing under the stage at
Borderland and marvelling that that was Big Derek McMenamin (his
prose name) from the same class as me in St Columb's in Derry.
The school gets a fair touch here, and by fair I mean totally
justified. Derek ditched Catholicism on the sound basis that a
religion represented by some of the sad brutes we had for
teachers couldn't be worth staying part of. 'Unzipped' - a
reference to trousers - killer doses of alcohol and wanton and
then wanting more sex were the orders of the day (don't believe
the official line of ham sandwiches after the gig and a decade
of the rosary from Fr Brian Darcy to bring all home safe.) The
book is eloquent on the tightening of the times leading into the
Troubles and on the tragedies, some very close-up, which
followed.
Most of all, it's a song of praise and a soft lament for Billy
Brown.
One day there will be a monument to Billy in Larne. Not that
only Larne can claim him: "He was out of the north-eastern port,
but his spirit wafted across the oceans from New York's East
Side, or maybe Basin Street, New Orleans. Somewhere in the ether
it encountered a Celtic upswing from the Scottish Highlands and
lingered with it a while ... "
Billy played piano - "Music jumped from the belly of the piano
and you could feel the breeze as it danced past your face and
climbed up the walls and walked across the ceiling" - as well as
guitar, clarinet and sax.
He was a singer, a songwriter, a painter, an artist in stained
glass, a writer on nature and conservation, a family man, a
genial companion, sharp as a razor, wildly funny, generous to a
fault. He wrote in every style.
His punk anthem, Never Seen Anything Like It, was John Peel's
and the NME's record of the week. He created one of the great
masterpieces of popular music, Cinderella. Released as a single
on some obscure label 30 years ago, it was given half a dozen
plays on Radio Eireann, and then disappeared.
Billy wrote it towards the end of his time performing, sang it
reflectively, voice caressing the melody, like a man who knew
that he had been blessed by being bound for greatness but had
somehow allowed the world to short-change his soul.
It was about a fellow from a band, in Larne, or maybe Drumshanbo,
who's offered a ticket for a production of Cenerentola, the
Cinderella story.
"I'm a one-finger piano player/Never had much time for music's
heavy side/Might have listened to Beethoven/Or played some
Chopin in my time ... I wish you coulda seen me/Diggin' Rossini
... I fell in love with Cinderella/Magic princess really stole
my heart/Well, maybe not exactly in love with Cinderella/But
with the girl who sang the coloratura mezzo-soprano part ... "
"If you die before hearing Cinderella, you have lived in vain,"
writes Derek. Which might be a little extravagant.
A little.
Billy died in 1999, and is buried in Glasnevin cemetery