The Goo 1
Interview patchy, there were bits which could hav
e been done with a bit more loving care and attention. But the good bits, I think, were really good. But to come back to what you were saying, I think it’s great that the canonical traditional music is going from strength to strength. The quality of playing among kids at the fleadhs these days is astonishing, and they’re all playing twelve instruments. Anybody who plays concertina also plays harp and fiddle and banjo. And because Ireland is a fairly compact society musically, the rockers and the trad players and the jazzers and the classical players all know each other, and they intermingle, and they’ve all done a bit of everything else as they were learning. So if you go to a night like Kaleidoscope in the Bello Bar, you’ll see the classical players and the trad players and the jazzers playing each other’s stuff. I think musicians from different genres in Ireland crosspollinate in a way that I don’t think is easy for people in other countries to do. None of that feels in any way forced or fake, it’s all completely organic and natural, because the Irish music tradition is a live tradition. It pulses in and out, and other stuff gravitates around it. And so the boundaries of those fusion areas that we were trying to navigate for ourselves back then have now proliferated to such a degree. And it’s not only Lankum … There’s the Lankum offshoot bands, Øxn, Poor Creature, Landless, One Eye One Leg and Imbibe. 34 Yeah, there’s really exciting explorations going on all over the place. When the band broke up after your initial ten years, how did that feel? Was it scary? Or did you all know you’d be okay? It was ultra scary. Because we were doing a huge amount of gigs. One of the reasons we broke up was because we were working too hard for too long. The business model that we had set up involved us financing everything ourselves, which meant that we were running our own setup financially, as opposed to depending on a record company for input, so we were kind of washed out. We really should have figured out a way to take six months or a year off and then come back. It didn’t work out like that. And because we didn’t want to be doing an endless farewell tour, we said we’re just going to stop. We didn’t announce that we were stopping, we just vanished, and that was a complete falling off a cliff. Personally, for us, it was really difficult for a year or two. Because you’ve been ten years in a band, living in each other’s pockets. You’re a family. We were actually very close. We were very much a band of brothers. That sounds like a horrendously romantic cliche, but we were. Then, like any family or relationship, when you start to grow apart, not only did we lose the band, we lost our mates, our family. And when you’re on the road for 250 nights a year, you lose touch with your other mates, because they’ve gone off and started having families, and they’re working in accounting, and they’re living in a three-bed semi in Portlaoise or whatever. So, psychologically, it was very difficult. I had the great good luck to find myself in RTE studios, where I was behind a mixing desk, and I suddenly felt completely at home again. I was really, really pleased to get that. It all seems to have been very friendly as well. There aren’t stories about fractious fall outs. We didn’t have that kind of vicious hand-to-hand fighting like a lot of bands, for which I’m very grateful. I don’t think any of us could have handled it. I think, in a way, we were all pretty much quiet, retiring souls, you know? We were all pretty shy and retiring, as well as extroverts, because we were the kind of introverts who need applause and who therefore get up on a table and dance. I don’t know about ‘shy and retiring’, Jim. Shy and retired. So, looking back, a life well spent? I’ve had a blessed life, I really have. I mean, I hope it’s not over. But it’s been going pretty well so far. Horslips At The BBC, a 5 disc set (4cd + dvd set) comprising live performances, BBC tv footage and rare archival material, is out now.