john l murphy horslips in irish musical

7/29/2019 John L Murphy Horslips in Irish Musical

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promotion. They composed music for TheAbbey Theatre which exp anded into a conceptalbum, The Tin. They worked with PaulMuldoon and have been featured in novels byJohn Kelly and Patrick McCabe.

Their albums in the 1970s adapted legendaryand historic texts, as they interpreted the Bookof Invasions, Turlough OCarolan, the Famine,and emigration.

This essay will explore the band's musicallegacy through their appropriation of Irishmotifs. Horslips blended the energy of thehippie movement with the glitz of glam-rock.They mixed progressive arrangements withtraditional tunes. They issued concept albumsthat explained the Irish past to an internationalaudience eager for amplified narratives that

took forty minutes to hear rather than fourweeks of class to memorize. For many youngpeople in the 1970s, Horslips energized Irishidentity. In the words of bassist Barry Devlin:"There was something aboutHorslips that Irishkids recognised as being theirs. We getlambasted regularly for loads of stuff-- andrightly so for much of it-- but the one thing thatis undeniable is that we really did change forever [sic] how people felt about their ownculture. And the place where people reallywent bat-shit was the North" (Kelly 2004: 43).

This quote from an factual interview by Irishrock radio personality John Kelly comes fromhis fictional take on growing up in Fermanagh,during the height of the Troubles. This was aband that challenged territorial limitations ofwho, what, or where could be considered Irish.

Horslips drew its members from Ireland andbeyond, as it represented an Irish identitytranscending political boundaries. Devlinhailed from Tyrone; keyboardist Jim Lockhartcame from Dublin. Percussionist amon Carrwas born in Kells in Co. Meath, guitaristJohnny Fean grew up near Shannon, andfiddler Charles O'Connor emigrated to Dublinfrom Middlesbrough in the North of England.Three of the band earned master's degrees, fourworked in public relations and advertising, andthey began playing only after posing asmusicians for a beer commercial.

From these eclectic backgrounds, Ireland'sfirst homegrown success became not only arock band but a cultural force.Horslips alsoupstaged and satirized rock and folk traditions.

This send-up led, in turn, to three literarytreatments by writers who came of age in the

1960s and 70s. Two novels feature the band ina cameo role: John Kelly's Sophisticated

Boom-Boom (2003), and Patrick McCabe's TheDead School (1995). Paul Muldoon,contributing to an 2007 anthology of writers

recalling their favorite concerts, chooses theband's penultimate Belfast gig at Whitla Hall inApril 1980 to muse upon on his fan worshipand eventual friendship with the band. I willexamine how Kelly, McCabe, and Muldoon'sincorporate Horslips into their owninterpretation of Irish identities as transformedby the musical and cultural changes of the latertwentieth century. Taken as a harbinger of Irishcultural change, Horslips pioneered today'sCeltic Revival within the realms of the mediaand entertainment. Without the band's example

as a creative force who controlled their image,managed their promotion, and collaboratedwith other Irish writers and artists, the rockyroad to success within and beyond Dublinwould have proven even more jolting forrecent Irish performers.

Horslips began in hippie Dublin. Onetraveling revue, Tara Telephone, connected thepotential of Irish heritage with the power ofliberation movements. Schooled in the Beats,fresh from the Liverpool poetry scene, amonCarr worked with Peter Fallon on a 1969

magazine, Capella. Allen Ginsberg, T. Rex'sMarc Bolan, King Crimson's Pete Sinfield, and

Horslips bassist Barry Devlin's sister Marieshusband, Seamus Heaney, contributed. (Harperand Hodgett 2005: 215-6) The project thatbecame the band Horslips coalesced aroundFallon and Carr's experimentation. JimFitzpatrick illustrated a broadsheet, Book ofInvasions, in 1969. As drummer and lyricistfor Tara Telephone and then Horslips, Carrplayed a pivotal role in merging media.Carr explains that the success of The ClancyBrothers and The Dubliners had not brought toyounger Irish in the later 1960s a sense ofcultural pride. He felt betrayed and believedthat "it was important to express oneself in away that helped establish an identity".(Cunningham 1999: 192) Carr grew up aroundKells. In Newgrange's shadow, he pored over1950s American comic books. He merged StanLee's superheroes with Irish myth. Carr relatedduring the band's later tours of America howhe chatted with rock radio d.j.'s about C

Chulainn as if he was a fullback for the Meathminors hurling squad. Carr mixed Celtic with


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countercultural. He elaborates: "The mergingof the two cultures was the kind of stuff youused to see in Oz and it only took a simple leapof the imagination to visualise how theselegendary tales might be placed into a musical

format. The parallel was there between Celticand Marvel comic heroes. But it wasn't a glibthing and you couldn't treat it lightly", hecautions (Cunningham 1999: 192). "It had tobe approached properly and fittingly. I hadstudied Old Irish at college, so it was a case ofdelving back into these subjects and doing a lotof research, like preparing a thesis. Gettingdeeper into the story behind The Tain, I beganto discover things that they never taught us atschool. There had been elements of Easternphilosophy infiltrating into rock 'n' roll,

possibly through George Harrison's interest inthe Maharishi, but now I was examiningWestern mystery traditions and it was taking

Horslips on a new journey".This journey spiralled off into the mystical

but its musical grounding remained plugged inand eager for electrification. Although the bandbegan opening for British folk-rock stalwartssuch as Fairport Convention and SteeleyeSpan, its later career paralleled more thefolkish flourishes of harder rocking Jethro Tull.However, while the British bands remained

content largely with reviving or imitatingearlier indigenous sounds, the training ofO'Connor and Fean as traditional players, ofLockhart in jazz and classical arrangement, andof Devlin and Carr in rock amplified the livingIrish musical legacy itself. Joe Clearycharacterizes the band's aesthetic as"essentially a Celtic version of progressiverock, with the latter's high art or rock-symphonic ambitions" (2007: 273). However,as Devlin's remark to John Kelly implies, theband never took itself too seriously amidst itspomp and stomp.While British progressive andfolk bands struggled to merge aggressive rockinto their repertoire,Horslips slipped back andforth between folk and rock teasingly yetadeptly.

Carr served as the lyricist and researchedarchives for his narratives that structured theband's concept albums. His poetic and eclecticbackground deepened the group's commitmentto their inventive campaign to raise the volumeon a musical narrative combination to awaken

Irish youth to their heritage. The band emergedduring widespread malaise and indifference,

if not frequent hostility, towards what theRepublic manufactured as an Irish imagemeant for tourists more than natives.Horslips,like their fellow artists who established suchefforts as the Dolmen and Gallery Presses,

determined to reclaim Celtic stories and Irishimages for a restless younger audience. Theband also vowed not to move to London. This"grassroots capitalism", thanks to the decisionby Horslips to remain in Ireland to controltheir music, catalyzed their mid-1970s revivalof folk themes played with rock energy. JimLockhart emphasizes that Horslips nevermeant to be a "hippie novelty act. 1972'sdebut LP presented "tunes that had been passeddown through the generations". Lockhartdistinguishes novelty from innovation. "No one

had ever given Irish music this treatment wewanted to take the melodies that wereinherently Irish or Celtic, put them in adifferent form of music" (Cunningham 1999:192).

Horslips style echoes their sound. Lockhartand his wife took garish fabric swaths fromClery's for the band's outlandish stage attire,shown to typical contrast on the inner sleeve oftheir first LP. Its outside sleeve, bycomparison, came in an accordion-shaped die-cut jacket that cost, Eamon Carr lamented, as

much as "Happy to Meet, Sorry to Part" itselfdid to record. Gerry Smyth suggests Horslips"presented a direct visual challenge to themusic's associated iconography" (2005: 44).

The cover of the band's third LP, 1974's"Dancehall Sweethearts", symbolizes this. PaulMuldoon views the five as "still hairy, fur-flaunting Horslips reflected in a smoked-glasstabletop suggesting the shotgun wedding ofTerence Conran and Conan the Barbarian"(2007: 138). Nuala O'Connor defines theircampaign: "The 'mythic' and portentous wereimportant visual and conceptual elements inthe band's presentation, which ran to highcamp in set design, costume, and theatricalgrandiosity" (2001: 130). This look jumbled,for Tara Telephone and fellow minstrels, JimFitzpatricks graphic style evoking AlphonseMucha, Hokusai, Aubrey Beardsley, Stan Lee,and the Cuala Press. Fitzpatrick interwoveflorid embellishment and lysergic hues into afunky Pop Art Celtic Revival that gracedalbum covers by hard rockers Thin Lizzy, folk

innovators Planxty, and the band that blendedthese two genres,Horslips.


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Mixing flair with literacy,Horslips had been

preceded in Dublin counterculture by TaraTelephone. According to Carr, this "poetryworkshop" grew a "musical wing". (Clayton-Lea 2004: 56) The revue's name, as Muldoonputs it, "deftly connected the Major Old Heap

with the Major New Hip". (2007: 137) Havingknown Fallon and Carr then, Muldoon reflectshow Tara Telephone proved "partly Ireland'sanswer to the Liverpool poets, partly to aquestion no one had ever thought to ask, evenin an age of matching suits and ties". (2007:137) Nuala O'Connor imagines their heirsHorslips as compounding hornpipes withslipjigs, but the band's true derivation definesits own shotgun wedding. (2001: 129)

Paul Muldoon recalls how his motherbecame besotted with the band's sex appeal. He

credits the surname of their first guitarist,Declan Sinnott, as embodying their image."The idea of sinning or not sinning wassomehow in the air, particularly since theband's name itself seemed, in one intellection,to be a pun on 'whore's lips'" (2007: 136). Healso compares them to cowslips and oxlips,"but, again, in a perverse way". Their realorigin? Drinking at a Chinese restaurant,bandmembers mangled "Four Horsemen of theApocalypse". This spoonerism stuck, and theband found its curious name.

Horslips challenged the norm not only innomenclature. Dynamism characterized theirorganization. Three of them met ascopywriters; they could better Leopold Bloomas, in Muldoon's phrase, "the literaryembodiment of the newfangled Irishadvertising man" (2007:137). They supervisedillustration, production, promotion, anddistribution. Tom Sherlock explains the band'simpact. With a strong background inadvertising and graphic design, members of theband brought a visual awareness and strongstage presentation to their work and werepioneers in bringing what was identified as anIrish form of popular culture to a youngaudience not previously exposed to rockculture (Sherlock 2003: 503). In 1972,

Horslips' singles and dbut album from theirhomegrown OATS label topped nationalcharts.

Happy to Meet, Sorry to Part set Irish salesrecords. Its shaped in a die-cut cover templateof Charles O'Connor's concertina. This

instrument, once disparaged for being awoman's form of accompaniment to traditionaltunes, packaged the contradiction thatHorslips

conveyed. Inside the sleeve, five longhairslounged in Clery's curtains and tapestries, inglam-rag glory. They mug around a cartoonprop of a bartender slickly drawn byOConnor in mid-century Guinness admancaricature who pours them drinks. This

glossy interior offers the unexpected, disguisedwithin a vintage Irish squeeze box. But theconcertina once was an exotic import. Now, itblends into many traditional arrangements.Similarly,Horslips presents what at the drop ofthe record needle and just before its rise soundas if sluggish standbys. The album begins andends with an accordion's wheeze and gruntinggents, but the swirling textures of what theseinstrumental snippets frame as the album'smain tracks inject bold psychedelic electronics,immersed in Irish tradition.

The record's hexagonal design replicatedstones that Finn McCool trod at his giantcauseway. The concept of the inner vs. theouter sleeve combines glam and folk,progressive rock and venerable reels. Thisblossomed into a full-fledged concept sequel,enriching urban-rural, amplified-acousticclashes. They added to their musical mix bothhistorical inspiration and mythopoeic vision.The apparent roots of the second album, "TheTin", tap into a 1972 proposal to back aproduction of the Tin B Cualnge at the

Abbey Theatre. This remained a stillbornproject, apparently. But,Horslips generated aninterlinked sequence of instrumental and sungpassages about the Ulster Cycle.

Whether or not the Abbey meant to presentthe Tin in modern setting or medieval dress,

Horslips premiered the tale on vinyl and inconcert. Their 1973 LP, titled The Tin,begins with textured whirlwinds as time andspace collapse. Framed in synthesized mist andprocessed miasma, production phasingrecreates a parting of the present curtain thatallows listeners to enter the realm of past myth.

The LP cover glowered with metallic,monochrome contrasts. Muldoon describes thefront of "The Tin" with its iconic image of "asomewhat anachronistic mailed fist argent on afield sable that owed something to" Louis deBrocquy's Tin illustrations for ThomasKinsellas translation, but also displayed "theregalia of early-onset punk" (2007: 137-138;see Kinsella 1970). In album art designed byCharles OConnor, each of the ten Horslips

studio LPs issued between 1972 and 1979peddled a different artifact that delighted inoverlapping Irish influences not only


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musically and lyrically, but graphically.

Artwork for their 1975 LP "The UnfortunateCup of Tea" expresses the band's sonicpredicament, and their cultural manifesto. Theinside photo featured the five musicianscrouched beneath the window of a

whitewashed cabin trying to hoist a giant greenmonster, as if pasted from a Marvel comic,through its tiny window. The album's covermanipulates a stereoscopic image of a courtingcouple from a sub-Dion Boucicaultmelodrama. Behind the gurning pair, the greenmonster's outraged face grimaces as he spiesthem through the window. The interior sleeveshows the stereotype, doubling message andmedium, of traditional Ireland. The outer coversituates the band eavesdropping, ready formischief. They upend a pulp icon into a prop to

satirize audience expectations of Irishperformers. The LP's music, less fortunately,favored mainstream, slightly progressive butless overtly Irish, rock fusion.

This direction met with less critical acclaim,as had the previous year's aborted conceptalbum "Dancehall Sweethearts" alluding toTurlough O'Carolans travels. (Prendergast1990: 83) Sparking a necessary rejuvenation,Paul Muldoon, producing in 1974 for BBC-Northern Ireland, recruited Horslips tocompose twenty minutes of theme music for

what Muldoon calls "a souped-up version ofthe Agallamh na Senorach", the fifteenth-century Colloquoy of the Ancients (2007:138). After an acoustic Christmas record, theband in 1976 bettered their first entry intoCeltic tales told in the rock idiom. A moreassured 1976 LP, "The Book of Invasions",presented aspects of Irish legend within, as thesubtitle of the album indicates, "A CelticSymphony". This comprises three movements:Geantra, joyous sounds of the Tuatha DeDananns triumph over Fir Bolg, goltra, sadsongs of Diarmaid and Grainne, and suantra,sleeping strains after the Tuathas Tailteanndefeat.

Sen Campbell and Gerry Smyth select itssong Trouble with a Capital T as that Irishhit best representative of 1976. Examining itstitle, they aver that the word "trouble" wasused neither by Tuatha de Danann nor Fir Bolg"when referring to problems encountered inIreland two and half millennia ago" (2005: 58).This criticism remains true if to the point of

pedantry. ButHorslips, as Muldoon hints in hisessay, meant The Troubles too. The LPfeatured imperialism, resistance, and

betrayal. This 1976 concept album provesrelevant to an Irish audience drawn, as theband themselves, from multiple allegiancesthat two waves of troops killed to defend. Theparallels appear obvious even as the narrativeremains far in the past: Fir Bolg or Tuatha,

British or Irish, Republican or Loyalist, nativeor settler.The band, Campbell and Smyth explain,

eschews "a gloss of 'Celtic' authenticity ontheir music by deploying some specious heroiclanguage. Rather the epic imagery ('High on amountain stands a boat') is set against a level ofquotidian experience ('Can't see the fire but wesmell the smoke') which attempts to render theessence of the narrative. It is in every sense a'translation' of one world, and the mind-setwhich sustained it, into another a sort of

dialogue between late twentieth-centuryIreland and a number of possible Irelands fromthe past" (2005: 58). While critics repeat how

Horslips stirs folk with rock, observers neglectto find the recipe for this blend. I trace theiringredients to the post-conciliar decline ofCatholicism in the later 1960s, the loss ofpatriotism in the guise of its 1916 martyrs, andthe significant groundswell of opposition tocompulsory Irish. Horslips whirls at an urban-rural crossroads: au courant with media, pop,and international fads, manipulating their

presentation under a Celtic guise, which wouldseem to tug backwards. Yet, the band resistsromanticism. They favor subversion.

Horslips, in Campbell and Smythsformulation, offers a "representation ofa worldundergoing change (ancient Ireland) from aworld (modern Ireland) undergoing its own setof troubles and transformation" (2005: 59).Cleary insists that the band's radical musiclacked a corresponding political message.Smyth inNoisy Islandseparates the band fromthe Troubles. I argue that the removal in time

from the contentions of the Knights of the RedBranch or the Tuatha de Danaan allows

Horslips to comment upon their fellow Irishmen and women locked in mortal combat as ifepic heroes mirroring ourselves.Horslips doesnot praise such struggle, but they evoke itsstrife. Unable to deny its presence, they reportit as would a herald, a chronicler, or a bard.

Horslips emphasizes mortal frailty overseenby cosmic detachment. Horslips, obliquelycommenting in my reading of their albums

upon the tensions in the North, refuses to fleefrom Irish soil into Tr-na-ng. Muldoonreflects that the band appeared at a moment


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when young Northern Irish students such ashimself associated Paisley more with fashionthan the Reverend Ian, and Pandemonium withthe action on the dancefloor, not at barricades.Yet, Horslips weathered the escalation of theTroubles with the 1970s while refusing faction

fighting or fleeing into escapist fantasy.The representative cover of "The UnfortunateCup of Tea", with its green comic book figureshoved by the band up against a cabin windowto gawp at a couple of stagy Irish from astereoscopic stereotype, stylizes the band'sintention. They controlled representation oftheir hybrid 1970s Irish identity. Thecounterculture as Carr himself recalls beinginspired by the underground London paper Oz allowed participants to choose their varietyof Irishness. Horslips liberated their audience

from allegiance to sectarian shibboleths. Thisfreedom animates John Kelly's account,Sophisticated Boom-Boom, about coming ofage while metal battled with punk, and popwith disco, for the attentions of 1970steenagers. Growing up in the garrison town ofEnniskillen, twelve-year-old Declan Lydonseeks escape into music. But, he remains tooyoung to enter the venues whereHorslips playsacross the border in Bundoran. The bandrepresents a vision of Irish culture that liberates1970s youth from political antagonism or

sectarian restrictions. Kelly, through his alterego Declan, describes howHorslips opened thedoor for his exit out of the Troubles into themusical counterculture.

Cheryl Herr interprets the gendering of themusic scene in the 1950s, alter to lift aphrase from the Vtales the English Armyhad just won the war. British and Irishadolescent boys, Herr argues, suddenly grasppop music as if by a benign physicalcompulsion. They become grounded in localand cultural placement by dislocatingthemselves. Growing up, boys abandon theirroots. They seek an alternative way to inhabitthe self. Often, this quest locks them up in theirbedroom, where they listen obsessively tomusic so as to create their own stories forboys (Herr 2007).

Kellys novel, cited in passing by Herr,devotes attention to Horslips. My analysisdeepens her reading of rock music as asubversive, defiantly sub-cultural, anddecidedly detached arena of contest for

younger Irish. Sophisticated Boom-Boomfollows the antics of one such rock-addledyouth , in late-1970s and early-1980s

Enniskillen. The narrator loves both Horslipsand punk, Irish traditional and heavy metalmusic. Tellingly named combining the Irishsaint's name given the son of a Liverpool-bornIrish immigrant, known as Elvis Costello, withthe Connemara-originated surname of another

musician known as Johnny Rotten DeclanLydon even christens what he calls a bedroomrock band which would never actually leavethe house. He baptises himself and his pal,the only two members, as Furniture. Declanexplains: Not only was this the title of a verylong Horslips song that we would never beable to play, but it was also an in-joke aboutthe wardrobe that only our fans would everget (2004: 94-95).

Later, at Queens University, Declan placesa framed photo ofHorslips on the nightstand

of his lonely Belfast bedsit. He hopes to usethe picture to seduce a girl, if one ever entershis room. He imagines she can name the wholeband, and that her favorite record would betheir dbut, Happy to Meet. He will lie to herabout seeing them on long summer nights atthe Astoria Ballroom in Bundoran (2004:154). This contrasts with reality. Earlier, suchreveries resulted in failure in his hometowndisco; the girl liked neitherHorslips nor him.

Earlier, supporting Herrs thesis about themovement from exterior exposure to new

music followed by interior introspection thatleads to compulsive disc-spinning and air-guitar posing before the bedroom mirror,Declan at twelve attended a Jamborora 77 atMount Melleray monastery in CountyWaterford. This musical festival marked the(fictional) centennial of the Irish Boy Scouts.In a chapter called The Book of Invasions,Declan anticipates his first glimpse of theband, as he has been too young to see themduring their regular cross-border gigs atBundoran. For too long, he has heard theprefects at his school boast of hearing the band.

The conjunction of Scout jamboree andopen-air concert allows Declan his chance tomeet the band. And so it happened that along-haired glam band calledHorslips becamean actual presence in my life and really didchange everything for the better (2004: 34).Perched at the lip of the stage, I was asgrateful as a boy could be. And Horslips didnot laugh or put me down, they smiled backand welcomed me to their glamorous Celtic

world. This entry into an imaginative identity,rooted in yet removed from the everydaytedium felt by every adolescent and heightened


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by the constant tension of his Northern Irishtown near the divided border, detaches Declanfrom his environment. It frees him to findsolace and gain energy from earlier inspirationsbased on legend and language. Horslipsenlivens his heritage and quickens his own

quest to find his allegiances outside theconquests attempted near his occupiedhometown, near the contested frontier.

Declan Lydon when travelling on the bus toQueen's will be interrogated as a suspectrepublican based solely on his name and hisbirthplace. While he does not deny these facts,he, like Horslips, attempts to transcendreligious identification or superficial links to asurname or a school. Instead of badges basedon chapel or church, Declan and his fellowstudents display buttons boasting bands. These

fans will enter a "bubble", that in the mid-1980s allows them to leave Belfast behind.They create an alternative Ulster, one loyal to arepublic of song and dance rather than crownor clergy.

Sophisticated Boom-Boom mingles theorigin myths of Enniskillen with Declans ownfamily tree. His maturity parallels that of anIrish generation able to form its own musicallyexpansive and artistically generated bubblewithin which, at Queens, to live outside theNorthern sectarian barriers. While the Troubles

do not diminish, Declan speaks for a vision ofanother island, separatist in its own CelticRevival. Declan quotes amon Carrsannotations within the album copy for TheBook of Invasions, released the year before"Jamborora '77". Honourable in defeat, wentthe sleeve notes, the Tuatha retired to a hiddenworld parallel to ours where life, immortal,goes on as before. (2004: 35) Similarly,Declan will grow up to find music thatnourishes his own complex Irish identity,whether a local ballad, free jazz imported fromAmerica, Van Morrisons Celtic soul, theLondon Irish punk sung by John Lydon andElvis Costello (ne Declan Patrick McManus),or Dublin rockers such as Thin Lizzy, whoseiconic album covers illustrated by JimFitzpatrick trace their roots back in turn to hiswork for the broadsheet co-edited by EamonCarr, itself titled The Book of Invasions. Outof such spirals, stories emerge.

Within such encounters, Declan forges hisloyalty, not to contemporary political causes,

but ancient tales enlivened by electricity andbravado. Such a quest began when Horslipsentertained a crowd of ten thousand Scoutsfrom all over the world. Joe Clearydistinguishes the band's "undoubtablyaesthetically radical" music from "any

corresponding political radicalism". (2007:274). This entry into a non-sectarian field, Iargue, allows their triumph for Declan and hisfellow Scouts. The band toured throughout therural North of Ireland even at the time of theMiami Showband massacre, yet foundthemselves far less often threatened thanwelcomed accordingly. Their conquest stayspeaceful, while their music remains a raucousrecital of earlier bloodshed but now glossedand polished by the passage of millennia. Andso, at twilight Jamborora 77, with punk raging

in London and Elvis about to die in Memphis,our battlefield landscape of tents, flags, andsmoking fires began to boom with the sound offunked-up, rocked-up reels, jigs, set dances,and marches. The Troubles with a Capital Treturn, but this invasion thunders far from thecontemporary strife, as the scouts gatheredassemble in uniforms for adolescent orderrather than martial mayhem.

The music releases Declan from hisinhibitions as he begins to enter manhood,revamping a key signifier of his scout uniform

into a sign of his fanatical membership inanother mass movement, but one claimed bymen rather than boys. I faced into the settingsun, tied my neckerchief around my head andopened my arms wide to Barry Devlins spine-trembling bass as it rumbled like escaping fearinto my own guts. It was glorious (2004: 35).The play-acting of the boys in the crowdmerges with the five men on stage. Declandescribes each member of the band as theyperformed, including the skeletal Eamonn[sic] Carr, scary like one of the living dead,thundering behind the silvery kit.

Such revels lead to Declans own ambitions.True to the pattern charted by Herr, however,the boy must pursue his rock star dreams inprivate and in poverty. The postwar austeritythat characterized Britain still pinches Ireland,so the Lydon family has little money. He mustsettle for a tin whistle, yet it allows him tochirp out Dearg Doom and that meant youcould play a Horslips tune and that was thecoolest thing I could ever imagine (2004: 36).


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The chapter concludes as soon my bedroom

was the Astoria Ballroom itself, and I was upthere throwing shapes with Barry, Charles andJohnny beside me, Jim in the distance to myleft and, behind me, Eamon in his black stringvest, hammering away at the kit. Declan joins

the band, and enters stardom from behind hisbedrooms closed door. I was suddenly,finally, able to leave, to travel, to escape as faras Bundoran and back and sometimes evenfurther than that as I played along with recordsbought at Gannons a musical pharmacywhich smelled of a million perfumes,aftershaves and rubbery hot-water bottles(2004: 36). The mundane mingles with themusical. Declan can elevate another warebought at the corner chemist into the mystiqueof identity that crosses borders, transcends the

ordinary, and traffics in the mystery shared byfragrances. Even rubber bottles, like vinyl LPs,transform the quotidian into the mythical, or atleast the familiar made strange, as the musicalartifacts and the chemist's sundries blend in analmost Joycean collision of everydayEnniskillen with enchanted but lesscommodified Araby.

1970s tension between Troubles reaction ormusical retreat entered cultural as well aspolitical debate. Paul Muldoon situatesHorslips where bodhran-lined boreen

crossed the rocky road to Dublin that seemedlikely to run into Route 66 (2007: 139). Theroad from the North into Dublin lures theprotagonist of Patrick McCabe's 1995 novelThe Dead School. Malachy Dudgeon in 1973,around the time of "The Tins release,attends a gig. The omniscient but indirectlyfirst-person narrator informs us how: "Horslipswere jigs and reels on speed as you boogied allnight long and went half-crazy shaking yourhead and Kevin Connolly yelled over at you'Shakin' All Over!' and man were you shoutingall over or what!" (1995: 58). This passageduring what Malachy calls the Summer ofDreams reveals the intoxicating potential ofrock music for Irish youth.

Eamon Carr's remark that the Sixties camelate to Dublin jibes with Kelly, McCabe andMuldoon. All four writers celebrateHorslips inconcert. Malachy in 1975 imaginesHorslips onstage. "He thought of them sitting together inThe Stadium, the crowd going wild as EamonCarr appeared with the shamrock on his

backside and Barry Devlin the bass playershouting "Hi! It's good to be here we're TheHorslips!" (1995: 244-245). McCabe spells out

by adding a definite article what precedes theband's noun in that curious coinage favored bymany fans. Yet, as long as nobody knows whata Horslips may be, making a collective orplural entity out of five musicians underscorestheir ambiguity in Irish musical culture.

Horslips hints at apocrypha but eludesdefinition.This playful quality in the band delighted

concertgoers, but it weakened studiorecordings. Malachy sees them in Carrick (asmall venue perhaps near Waterford); twoyears later, they play Dublins NationalStadium.Horslips shot from showband misfitsto arena strutters. Paul Muldoon finds in TheTins mailed fist a proto-punk image. But, asthree-chord 45s replaced arena epics, longhairsshrieking over dungeons and druids turned

risible. Progressive rock fell from criticalfavor.Pat McCabes Malachy Dudgeon, down and

out in Dublin then London, shuffles about.Booted from his schoolteacher post, on thedole, stoned, he wanders Piccadilly Circus:"Punk music blared from the jukebox and allabout Malachy orange-haired youths in tartanstruck poses and snarled at nothing. Malachyfelt the warm, comforting arms of four pintsaround him and smiled as he looked at himselfin the mirror. His long, lank, greasy hair was

way past his shoulders. Sure it was crazy to bewearing a green army surplus greatcoat on ahot summer's day, blazing or otherwise, as heordered another pint and said to the punkbeside him 'The Clash, that's not music, man.Horslips now there's a band, there's a fuckingband, man!'" (1995: 244-245). Horslips, whohad like Malachy begun the decade filled withradical dreams, and who along with the bandleft humble origins in Dublin for mid-decadeprofessional success, declined by decade's end.Malachy's once revolutionary appearance in1970 by 1980 looks anachronistic. Youth whoflocked to Horslips at a club in Summer ofDreams 1973, or National Stadium 1975, bysummer 1980 tended to be, as with Muldoon orMalachy, fans who had grown up with theband. Many in Declan Lydon's generationraised to denigrate hippies and pose as punksaped not stone idols but Billy Idol. While

Horslips adapted new waves of music andfashion, their time had passed and, albeit inbetter shape than Malachy, they too entered

early retirement.As with Malachy, the band endured abuse.Rolling Stone and the Village Voice excoriated


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American releases of later albums. Folkfiligrees soured rock purists; electric deliveryrepelled traditional players. Ciaran Carson,poet and musician, in 1986 mocked: Otherspersisted in tinkering with the basic structuresof the music, most noticeably when their

traditional experience was minimal (Horslips,for example); bastardised genres like folk-rock were announced as inspired creativeachievements (1986: 53). During the punkand new-wave era, Horslips languished aspass.

By the end of the 1990s,Horslips reputationrecovered. Legal battles over unapprovedrecordings ended. The band controlled theirown records, as they had in the early 1970s. Ateen musician back then, Philip Chevron,founded Dublin's first punk-era success, The

Radiators from Space. He hated "ballads andIrish music generally", but hearing Horslips,his attitude changed (O'Connor, 2001: 131).Critical convention may have for two decadesdismissed them, but recent players, fans, andcritics joined stalwart supporters. RemasteredCDs and the rise of Internet fan sites around2000 widened their appeal across the diaspora.In Spring 2004, an exhibition of memorabiliaappeared at Derry's Orchard Gallery. That sameyear, the Belfast Telegraph reported that "localpeople are being urged to take part in an intense

series of peace building workshops based aroundthe legend of ChuChulainn [sic]. The crosscommunity workshops will examine the Celtictale of the Ulster folklore hero and the Tain, in abid to explore the relevance and lessons ofancient local myth for people today". The projectaimed to show the madness of war and thebenefits of healing through creativity". ("PeaceBuilding") According to its organizer, JohnDonaghey: "This is a very powerful workshopexamining the demands of the tribe versus theauthority of the heart. ChuChulainn is someonewho has been hailed as a hero and an icon byboth republicans and loyalists". This cross-borderappeal lured fans from all over Ireland to venuesas disparate and scattered as Bundoran or MountMelleray or Whitla Hall to see the band play.

Horslips sang of an Irish identity where all fanscould share a homegrown sense of Irish pride,send-up Oirish stereotypes as did Carr with theshamrock on his backside, and cheer togetherthe lusts and combats of ancient superheroes.This embrace of an audience beyond

conventional spectators of Irish traditional musicin turn extends into the cyberspace venue openedup forHorslips during this current decade.

In 2005 a fan site, Come Back Horslips,debuted. Here, electric and acoustic folk androck musicians enlarge Horslips invention ofIrish dchas as fusion. CBH as social networklinks fans, broadcasts film and musical clips,and updates the craic. Virtual and real lives

merge. Encouraged by such attention,Horslipsreleased an unplugged album, "Roll Back".They reunited for the first time on stage.

Horslips pioneering diversity encourages andexemplifies current Irish postcolonial identity.From around the world, sound files, press kits,video, discussion lists, and publicity campaignsblend multimedia enriching this bands legacy.In 2007, HorsLit, a discussion list of literaryinfluences, began on Yahoo Groups. CBH andHorsLit, under Lora Lee Templeton's directionfrom San Francisco, draw fans of Irish music,

Celtic culture, and medieval lore. Horslipsonce mashed folk and rock into a fresh recipe.Social networking and user-generated contentdrive todays mixers. Bands post files of

Horslips songs; musicians recover traditionaltunes that Horslips arranged. The exchange ofideas, lyrics, and commentary brings at leastone band member into the Guestbook chat for acryptic allusion or witty aside. Three-dozenyears later, Horslips revives virtually throughelectronic hybrids.

Electronics resonate when charting the

band's impact. Maurice Linnane, DeclanLydons real-life doppelganger at twelve, heard"The Tin". When the band sang: "My love iscolder than black marble by the sea", Linnanerecognized the landscape that until then hadbeen Christian Brothers history class and"confusingly part fable and part scripture". Herecalled basalt, and imagined the Giant'sCauseway as "Dearg Doom" rumbled on. Afamiliar schoolroom story gained intensity."This was something far deeper", Linnanerecalls. "This was something raw, somethingprimitive, something primordial". Even more,Horslips bettered a dull class in Irish, for"Sweet Jesus this was actually cool!" (Linnane2005). His recollections introduce liner notesfor his 2005 DVD "Return of the DancehallSweethearts". This combines vintage footagewith a documentary in which Bono, The Edge,John Kelly, Pat McCabe, Joe O'Connor, andJohn Waters, among other prominent Dublin-based writers and musicians, credit the bandfor sketching the blueprint for today's Celtic

revival of art and culture.Horslips allowed young audiences toappreciate the power of old tales, as had Sen


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Riada before and the Pogues after them.Muldoon concludes his essay on the BelfastGigs, waiting for their 1980 Whitla Hallconcert in the band's final year. Muldoonconjures Milton, Yeats, and Scripture as hetells us: "There was a howling that came close

to Pandemonium in its strictest sense. Anymoment there'd be a great disclosure. Somerevelation was at hand. We'd see ifHorslipswere indeed 'gods or real folk'. Yes . . . one byone they came on stage, each with a followingspot. Just as we'd expected () gods" (2007:140).

The final LP, titled "The Belfast Gigs'",captured what would have happened next atWhitla Hall. The live album opened with thesong "Trouble with a Capital 'T'", and endedwith "Dearg Doom". These two songs were

promoted off the LP for radio play, along withthe one that dragged Malachy Dudgeon andKevin Connolly onto the dance floor in PatrickMcCabe's novel. The choice that Declan Lydonwould have played tin whistle and air guitar to,of one-hit wonder Johnny Kidd and the Pirates'"Shakin' All Over", matched the other songsfrom the concept albums as a crowd favorite.Whether singing of the Ulster Cycle or abeloved throwaway dance number from theband's teenaged years, Horslips to the endconveyed Irish themes through rock's thunder.

The song, "King of the Fairies", whosebastardization would earn disdain fromMuldoon's fellow poet, Ciaran Carson,

appeared alongside "Blindman," a tunecelebrating harpist Turlough O'Carolan, andanother recounting Frank O'Connor's "Guestsof the Nation".

The band's literary and cultural influencesshared the Belfast stage with their musical and

lyrical invention. The band in its ten yearsspanning the Seventies played over twothousand concerts. They opened among hippiesand closed for headbangers. But their finestalbums matched the sway of accessible rockmusic with the grace of traditional motifs.

Horslips reminded Irish listeners how ancienttales and medieval narratives kept a magicalpower of their own, within the simmeringSouth or the fractured North. Wherever

Horslips played, Celtic variety and Irishidentity energized them.

Portions of this research were presented at the

Twenty-First Conference of Irish Medievalists,

Mary Immaculate College, University of

Limerick, 28 June 2007, and the International

Association for the Study of Irish Literatures

(IASIL), University College Dublin, 19 July

2007. Acknowledgements for archival

assistance and interviews to a member of

Horslips, Dorrie Finan, Ian Hennessy of

Crashed Music, Cheryl Herr, Matt Hunt,

Brona n Ghallchobhair, Cathy Swift, Carrie

Twomey, HorsLit Yahoo discussion list,www.Horslips.ie, ComeBackHorslips.com and

the indefatigable Lora Lee Templeton.

Works Cited

Campbell, Sen, and Gerry Smyth. 2005.Beautiful Day: Forty Years of Irish Rock. Cork: Atrium-Cork UP.

Carson, Ciaran.1986.Irish Traditional Music. 1986. Belfast: Appletree.

Clayton-Lea, Tony. 2004. Lips Service. Cara. August. 56-60.Cleary, Joe. 2007. Outrageous Fortune: Capital and Culture in Modern Ireland. Field Day Files 1.Dublin: Field Day.

Cunningham, Mark. 1999. Good Vibrations: A History of Record Production. London: Sanctuary.

Harper, Colin, and Trevor Hodgett. 2004.Irish Folk, Trad and Blues: A Secret History. London:Cherry Red.

Herr, Cheryl. 2007. Stories for Boys. Keynote Lecture. International Association for the Study ofIrish Literatures. University College Dublin. 20 July.

Kelly, John. Sophisticated Boom-Boom. 2004 (2003). London: Vintage.

Kinsella, Thomas, tr. The Tin. 1970. Oxford: Oxford UP.

Linnane, Maurice. 2005. The Return of the Dancehall Sweethearts. Liner notes. DVD.HorslipsRecords.


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McCabe, Patrick. 1995. The Dead School. New York: Dial.

Muldoon, Paul. 2007. TheHorslips at the Whitla Hall, Belfast, Ireland, April 1980. The Show IllNever Forget. Ed. Sen Manning. New York: Da Capo. 135-140.

OConnor, Nuala. 2001.Bringing It All Back Home: The Influence of Irish Music. 2nd ed. Dublin:

Merlin."Peace Building Workshops Are Based on Legend". 2004.Belfast Telegraph. 30 June.

ComeBackHorslips Digital Archive.http://comebackHorslips.com/media/Belfast_Telegraph_Digital___Peace_Workshop.htm[retrieved 18 September 2007]

Prendergast, Mark J. 1990. The Isle of Noises. New York: St. Martins.

Sherlock, Tom. 2003. Horslips. The Encyclopedia of Ireland. Ed. Brian Lalor. Dublin: Gill &Macmillan/ New Haven: Yale UP.

Smyth, Gerry. 2005.Noisy Island: A Short History of Irish Popular Music.Cork: Cork UP.

john l murphy horslips in irish musical

Documents