GAVIN FRIDAY the Light and Dark

GAVIN FRIDAY The Light and Dark

I by Caroline van Oosten de Boer II 1 CAROLINE VAN OOSTEN DE BOER

GAVIN FRIDAY THE LIGHT AND DARK

Von B Press

2003 (original publication 1991)

II 1 Von B Press P.O. Box 92087 1090 AB Amsterdam The Netherlands

First edition published 1991 © Copyright Von B Press 1991 Revised edition published 2003 © Copyright Von B Press 2003 Cover photo by Lex van Rossen Design, lay-out by C.C. van Oosten de Boer

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the permission of the author, except for a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

2 3 Question: Who are you? Gavin: Who the fuck could answer that?

for Dave-id and all my friends

2 3 4 5 4 5 Preface

THE LIGHT AND DARK is not a biography, but seeks to document a few years in Gavin Friday’s artistic life. I believe in documenting music: a musicians’s work should be recorded on tape, on film or video, with photos — in words, lest it be forgotten. I feel there is a lack of documentation of Gavin’s work, so I started on this book hoping to capture something of that part of his career which captured me. I first met Gavin one very hot summer afternoon in Amsterdam, outside the Roxy, one of the city’s hot dance clubs, where he was playing a try-out gig. It was a low-key affair which had only vaguely been announced a few days in advance. I had set my mind on meeting him ever since I had seen him perform on television. I remember watching it, nailed to my chair in a room full of people that had ceased to exist. Never before had anything on a TV screen hit me that hard. So, I went down to the soundcheck to say: ‘Hello, thanks for a brilliant album.’ Which is exactly what I said when he got out of the car, late, due to the recording of a radio session. He was slightly overdressed considering the heat. He wore a suit and tie and had sunglasses dangling from a cord around his neck. His hair was waxed shiny and he was carrying a handbag. ‘Oh, do you like it?’ he asked, apparently pleasantly surprised someone actually liked his work. He had a friendly smile and inquisitive eyes that looked straight into mine. Later I found myself a witness to a hellish soundcheck. It was hot, the band were tired, and working out the sound of a cello, clarinets, a piano, vocals and monitors is not an easy task, let alone if you are working with a soundman you have never met before. There was a lot of tension building up in that small place. I sort of crept into a corner trying to be inconspicuous. I knew very little about Gavin, being at that stage largely unfamiliar with his musical past. So I did not quite understand what he meant when he sat down and started telling me he was nervous about what the audience would make of his ‘new’ show. (Later, much later, a friend asked me whether Gavin had laid the ‘being nervous’ line on me yet!) I watched him as he instructed the guy doing the lights. He walked about, frustrated with the sound. At one point Maurice, his pianist, lost his cool and burst out in a ‘What is it now, Gavin?’, to which no reply was given. I watched as he arranged flowers; creating the right atmosphere for himself. I was amused when he sat down biting his nails. I listened to the four musicians arguing. And I watched him sing. I was in awe of his stage-presence, even then at a soundcheck. I was smitten with the whole thing. The voice, the act, the lillies, the cigarettes, the cello. Next to me two guys were joking about it, going ‘Look at him!’ They found him affected, his cigarette

6 7 a gimmick. Maybe so, but it all seemed very real to me at that time. First impressions are important, and although from what I saw that afternoon I gathered this guy could be a right bitch if he set his mind to it, I warmed to his charm. The concert that followed blew my mind. A man in a white suit; a blend of Bowie, Sinatra and Elvis; neither rock nor roll but seductive as hell. I got tangled up in it and wanted to see and know more. That same summer in Ireland, I saw a couple more of his shows and somewhere up in Donegal I decided I was going to see him perform as many times as possible and follow him through Europe, simply because I never got bored with it and happened to be in a position where I was able to undertake such a thing. One European tour later my good friend Patrick Lynch suggested I should do something with the many photos that I had taken and this was just the spark I needed. It was not easy getting this book done, having had no previous experience in the art of making a book. But then, nothing is easy in life Gavin would say and did say one day as I complained about the amount of bullshit I had to wade through in trying to get to where I wanted. The man himself did not make it any easier. There were no restrictions... apart from one ‘little’ thing: he did not want his musical past, the Virgin Prunes, mentioned. I agreed that this was the best thing to do, but avoiding the subject proved to be difficult. He insisted that it should be my book, not his, which meant he wanted no great involvement. He had agreed to help where he could, but communication was slow, to say the least. And so it is my book, my views and my ideas only. Gavin had absolutely no say in the choice of photos and illustrations, and played only a minor part in the writing of the text. In April 1990, Gavin and I were walking down Portobello Road in London, on our way to the Electric Cinema. The sun had come out and I was babbling away when we were stopped by an elderly woman in a crimson coat. Would Gavin see her across the street, she asked. Putting on his biggest smile, he took her arm and slowly helped her cross the street, the black of his coat clashing wildly with the red of hers. I fumbled for my camera, but the moment had already passed. ‘She would have had me walk her all the way home,’ he said after untangling himself from her. I mention this incident because it somehow ties in with his music and live performances. Maybe because he seems to be performing, even in the street, as if the whole world is his stage. Or maybe because of the colours that so dominate the scene. Whatever, it was a strong image that planted itself in my memory. Part of Gavin Friday’s appeal for me lies in the fact that he is a visually compelling artist. Agnes Bernelle has said that she does not sing with her voice alone, and I think this holds true for Gavin as well. On a good night, he is his song incarnate and not even film can capture that, let alone a book full of words. I hope for those of you who did not have the opportunity of seeing Gavin Friday play live on the EACH MAN KILLS tours, that this book will show you what you have missed out on so far and give you some indication of what to expect.

6 7 Acknowledgements

I am indebted to my friends, who believed when I doubted: Pimm Jal de la Parra for setting an example and Sandra ‘Fastpint’ van der Laan for companionship on a musical journey, thanks for holding up the mirror in time. Fair play to my campaign manager Dave-id B. Scott who never failed to encourage me and my Dublin anchorman Patrick Lynch and Alison McDonnell for a home away from home, Caren Czwikla and Jörg Lipinski, Eleanor ‘Tomato Mike’ Simmonds, Kerstin Wögler, Guido Kaptijn, Loes Siewertsen, Carolyn Adams, The Megamen, Sarah Dawn Jones, Mr and Mrs Von B., Mr and Mrs Lynch, Leinster Square R.I.P., 109-II, Disk Doctors: J.D. and Annemiek, Paddy, Padhraigh, James and all at the Docker’s, Angela Kelleher, The Wailing Wall: Maurice Roycroft, Sarah Homer, Julia Palmer, Agnes Bernelle, Bill Graham, Simon Carmody, Charlie Whisker, The Benzini Brothers, Johnny Lappin, Paul Tiernan, Charades in a darkroom: Strongman — well sussed but unquoted; Mary; Cölm Bölm and Justin Valley Limberg, Mick Quinlan — D.A.A., Klaus Maeck, Het Gebeuren: Maarten Slagboom, Ruth Jäger, Twist and Shout: Marcel, Werner Kok, Ed Jansen, Scott Hickey for spit & polish, Monica Schindler, Sigrid and Dirk, fans and pen-pals world-wide, Bernard Rübsamen, Carole Egan — In Dublin, Dr David Nowlan — The Irish Times, The Irish Independent, Nial Stokes — Hot Press, The Dublin Grapevine, Regine Moylett — RMP, Tony Orchudesch, Anton Corbijn, Stefano Giovannini, Lex van Rossen, Huw Thomas, Dolph Cantrijn, Steye Raviez, Roy Tee, Rob Verhorst, Inge Bekkers, Conny Slegers. Information, quotations etc. taken from: NME, Melody Maker, Sounds, Q, The Face, Reflex, B-Side, Alternative Press, Hot Press, The Irish Echo, The New York Press, In Dublin, The Irish Times, OOR, De Telegraaf, De Volkskrant, Propaganda, Island Press Department, Silver & Gold, New Life Soundmagazine, Cabaret -- The First Hundred Years by Lisa Appignanesi, Bertold Brecht -- Eine Biographie by Klaus Völker, Oscar Wilde by Richard Ellman, Who's been sleeping in my brain? by Judith Ammann, Swiss TV, VPRO Onrust, VARA radio, RTE radio, Transmission, Def II.

Caroline van Oosten de Boer Utrecht , 1991

8 9 8 9 s

10 11 Fair City, Dirty Old Town

10 11 DUBLIN? Dublin is a place where the taxi driver asks me where I’m from and gives me poetry for breakfast, recites an ancient lore of kings that were and battles fought and I fix my eyes on the greyness of it all until he says ‘Now, three pounds’ and ‘God bless ya, love’. And underneath a blanket of coal-burnt smog and smell of Guinness that makes the stomach turn, Dublin City awakens to the sound of raging cars and try to cross the street and never mind the traffic lights, they make no sense at all and Moore Street is all greens and reds and oranges and alive with selling fruit and smell of fish and mutton and little kids that call ya ‘Fuggin queer! Yer fuggin mad!’ and men and women shouting ‘Cigarette lighters, four for a pound’ top of Henry Street. Oh, this is where the people are, the rough, the ragged and the real. Go on, across O’Connell Bridge, where in the midst of all I’m neither North- nor Southside bound and beggars stretch their arms to catch the penny dropping as the water flows and flows beneath. And they’ve two kinds of rain, sir: ‘Ah yes, soft and wet,’ but the pubs are warm and dry except for coffee coloured creamy pints. The black stuff doesn’t travel well and nowhere as good as in Mulligan’s, but I don’t know, I’ve never been. On the bus the women chit-chat ‘Ah, she’s a lovely child and so and so got married and have ya heard about yer man, ach Jesus, Josef and Mary!’ Then I walk along the Liffey, across Ha’penny Bridge to find the blackclad young ones in that recordshop that sells pop-rock-new wave and U2 and next door I will deviate for shoes and every long-haired paisley-shirted hippie fronts a band and all these girls I meet that smile and bitch and know someone that knows someone who’s in and who is out and will put you on the guestlist for tonight and crash the aftershow, some have a pass, have you? And in the afternoon you meet in Bewley’s, steam and cling-clang, far too many people, soggy chips and coffee weak as water. On Grafton Street the buskers pull a crowd, they’re gonna make it, make it big and gigs are there to meet and talk and talk and love that latenight bar, Olympia, the gods reside on Dame Street now and in the pub the longlashed, freckled drunken football fan says that my country got a lucky goal but at least we beat the Brits and would I marry an Irishman? He’d take good care of me. ‘D’ya want another drink? Are ye sure? Ah go on! Won’t ya come with me, I can put you up for the night, ah no, I mean no harm, no, the wife wouldn’t like it!’ Oh god, that charm that makes you swallow worse and normally I’d slap his face, but when Irish eyes are smiling, the tough go soft and mellow and they promise this and that and I believe and get stood up and never trust again and the old man is too drunk to fiddle but his voice is strong and his girlfriend smiles as he sings he kissed a gal, and there’s another famous face and no one cares, but for the tourists and ain’t it grand, yer man’s a normal bloke and in that packed and smoky snug where Paddy rules and Padhraigh pours my pint, I talk with locals, aul’ wans, yuppies, drummers, dimheads until the barman shouts it’s time to go ‘Drink up now, ladies and gents, drink up’ and James’s wife is worried sick, ‘Take care now, pet!’, she says to me, I will, I will. So I stumble out the door and I’m out of place and out of my face and I walk the quays where the darkness of the Liffey beckons with a tempting hand, and under Clery’s Clock the couples mess like they’ve no homes to go to, and I wait for taxis till the rain comes down, that’s Dublin for ya now.

12 13 The Vibe, The Scene, The Crack

‘I’VE SEEN A LOT OF THE WORLD. But the roughness, the frugality of Ireland will always pull me back. In the evening in the city there’s always this scene. Artists, bands, media people, hanging out in pubs and at concerts. That aspect of Dublin is brilliant. At night, there’s nothing going on and nobody in the street cares who you are. It’s anything but modern, I like that.’ Gavin Friday on Dublin, his hometown. The international acclaim that Irish bands have recently received have resulted in Dublin becoming a new centre of popular music. Ireland, once such an isolated country, can no longer be ignored. Musicians from outside Ireland come to record their albums in one of the many Dublin studios and some even decide to stay. Once a safe haven for artistic tax-exiles, primarily writers, Ireland has now become a residency for musicians such as Terence Trent D’Arby, Maria McKee and Marianne Faithful. They have been attracted by the charm of the city and its people, the easy-going atmosphere, the so-called ‘vibe’. Or as Maria McKee puts it, without making too big a fuss about it: ‘Came here, liked it, stayed.’ For fans, Dublin is near heaven because the ‘stars’ are reasonably accessible. From all over the world, they have found their way to the city in search of their heroes. The sport is to try to crash parties or get into gigs for free, sometimes by faking employment with music magazines. They wait tables to earn a living, hoping eventually to land a job in the music business, preferably with their favourite band. Bands there are a-plenty! There are rows of them lined up, working their way to fame or obscurity. Million dollar contracts are on offer and young bands are hyped and bombarded into fame before they know or have earned it. Both record companies and bands are to blame for offering and signing contracts too soon. Consequently, some bands are dropped almost as quickly as they are signed. A lot of the bands seem to indulge in laziness and, quite frankly, they lack balls. Gavin has said that there are too many Bob Dylans and Mike Scotts in Dublin. ‘Actually, there are too many bands, full-stop.’ There is no competition, no real clash of styles or opinions and not enough honest feed-back from either peers or the media. It might just be that, in this scene, things are a little bit too nice and easy. Everybody knows everybody and all are related in some way or another; there seems to be a fear of offending one’s friends and relatives. Meanwhile, ‘Irish’ acts are in. Bands like the Hothouse Flowers, Something Happens, The Pogues and An Emotional Fish are doing quite well for themselves. They are seen as the exponents of ‘Irish’ music. What is Gavin’s own place in all this? Has he influenced the scene at all? Where does he fit in in the current Irish scene that is so preoccupied with 60’s guitars and folk roots? For Gerard Whelan of An Emotional Fish, he is ‘just someone from Dublin doing his own thing’ . For Maria McKee he is her metal guru, advising her on things like the cover for her solo album. For the older Dublin inhabitants he might still be ‘young Fionan’ from Ballymun.

12 13 He is a well-known figure within the scene, having been around since he very beginning of it all. One magazine once dubbed him the Granddada of Irish decadence. He is spoken of with respect, but few seem to know what it is that he does and even fewer have sat down to listen to his music. Oh, yer man from the Virgin Prunes, yes. He's gay, isn't he?, is a common reaction on mentioning Gavin, which apart from displaying misinformation and a lack of understanding also says a lot about the country's seemingly ineradicable homophobia. He has been around since the mid-Seventies, yet still the music press describes what he does as avant-garde, simply because they don't know what else to call it. Avant-garde is an easy tag to hang on somebody you don't understand. He seems to be the only one in the entire country to be on the route he has taken. If he is the 'Granddada of Irish decadence', then where is his offspring? Has any Irish band ever mentioned Gavin Friday as an influence? At one time there was a young trash outfit that paid hommage, calling themselves Gavin is God, but it seems that most have neither the talent nor the courage to follow in his footsteps. or, as someone put it: They see there's more money in singing Four Roads to Glenamaddy.' Bill Graham is probably Ireland’s best known rock publicist. In an article for Hot Press in 1990 he stated that Irish rock is becoming a middle-class leisure pursuit with little content. He feels there is a lack of good lyricists and a need for more colloquial lyrics in a country where ‘homosexuality is still criminal; abortion and divorce are constitutionally banned while contraception is still controlled.’ Musically, he sees lack of innovation as a major problem. ‘We stay at home and wait for new trends to lap on our shores just when the tide is going out elsewhere.’ Bill: ‘I definitely have a certain disenchantment with what is going on here musically in the last two or three years. That isn’t that I don’t like chart music, I like good chart music. Gavin has this sort of notion, he uses this term ‘painters & decorators’. Basically all those people are painters and decorators — it’s all hard-working, but there is a difference between a painter & decorator and er... a sculptor. And it is all second-hand ideas. People actually don’t think of themselves as artists in this sort of sense. Obviously that can be very pretentious and it can lead to all sorts of... crap, but there is a sort of easy going — a certain kind of artistic complacency, which is the current climate, which you don’t find challenging or stimulating. So someone like Gavin, whatever kind of music he is playing, even if he isn’t playing in a ‘rock’ style — there isn’t that sense where you have a sort of 1990’s version of a band like the Virgin Prunes. Not necessarily doing the same, but a band who are just kicking over the traces and trying to do something a bit different. Who are challenging the general consensus. I don’t think someone who takes a few guitar licks from Johnny Marr and goes around like Morrissey is challenging any longer, and I don’t think taking anything from New Order is particularly challenging either. O.K., someone like Sinead O’Connor — but she’s out of the country! ‘If you don’t have the sort of climate which is producing interesting, stimulating bands, solo artists or whatever, it is obviously going to be a bit more difficult for someone like Gavin.

14 15 He needs something like that to stimulate him, to have someone who is four or five years younger doing something interesting, so he can go ‘I’ve found a soulmate here’ to talk to and so forth. That leaves him terribly isolated. He is dealing with his peers — Bono, Maria McKee, Simon Carmody or people outside the country — but not anybody who is coming up. I can’t think of anybody in the last four or five years that Gavin would feel more or less on the same wave-length with. If you can’t have the 1990’s version of the Virgin Prunes, the only other choice you have left is ‘No Sweat’ (Dublin based Def Leppard-style band), whoare painters & decorators, but at least they are good at it and they know what they are. When you have so many other bands who are half-assedly trying to be arty and get caught between art and commerce in the worst sort of way.’ Gavin has his fans in the country, but there are an awful lot of people who dislike him, too; who seem to be frightened at the sight of him on stage. He is always one step beyond, removed from what everybody else is doing. Ireland is quite conservative in its taste in music, which makes it difficult for someone like Gavin to achieve mass-appeal. The country is cut off from musical influences from the UK and Europe. 1992 is unlikely to change that. Irish musicians maintain closer ties with American rock and roll, more so even than with their own folk-roots. Young Irish bands like The Dixons and The Coletranes find inspiration in Hendrix or The Doors. The Hothouse Flowers, commonly regarded as the ultimate in Celtic soul, lean heavily on American examples. The Pogues, Something Happens, The Four Of Us and honorary Irishman Mike Scott and his Waterboys top the Irish polls. Gavin: ‘Irish people are into a communal thing. That’s why everybody wants to be The Waterboys and nobody the Virgin Prunes. The hippy thing is endemic to the culture — a pint, a joint and a bit of folk- music. It’s very easy on the head.’ In general, Irish bands are very good at getting a crowd going. Singers clasp their audiences to their bosom, building a party for all. People dance and sweat together, and go out of control for the duration of the gig. They are offered some kind of escape. Friday is different in many ways. He does not look, sing nor perform like most of his countrymen, which is only natural for a man who spent the first part of his career singing: ‘Why should I be like you?!’ He does connect with his audience while he is on stage, but rather than hold hands with them or offer an escape, he confronts them with his view of the world. He will spend part of his show apparently sucking up to his audience only to make them look ridiculous the next moment, imitating their behaviour. He is off-beat, and just as you think you have caught on, you will be wrong-footed. He will get you to sing along to Death Is Not the End and laugh in his sleeve because you are singing the words without realizing what they mean. And there is nothing cosy about the anguish he portrays in Dazzle and Delight. In Ireland, his performances induce audience reactions like: ‘Get off the stage you bastard!’ or ‘Jaysus, he’s weird. You wouldn’t want to meet that guy in the street!’, or ‘That pretentious little wanker!’. Or worse, they will spend the concert talking, avoiding confrontation with the unknown by simply ignoring what

14 15 is going on on stage. Paradoxically, despite the fact that he has little in common with the musicians who are generally seen as the exponents of Irish music, there is more Irishness to Gavin’s music than one would suspect. Bill Graham: ‘What’s Dublin about Gavin? There is this little bit of a pub on the Northside kind of women bawling out their out-of-tune ballad situation. I think Gavin has a lot of his vocal style somewhere from there. You can hear the sort of mimicry, a little bit of a folk "nyah", taken a little into an absurd area — you can hear that in his vocals. And he has a way of looking at "stars", fairly impious. I am not so certain it comes out on EACH MAN KILLS THE THING HE LOVES. I thought the album was lyrically a bit personal — very much about himself. And musically cosmopolitan, a bit too cosmopolitan, and maybe you could say there are certain Dublin things that could come out more in his music. The lyrics could relate a little bit more directly to the city. ‘The Oscar Wilde background is very Irish. I have a personal theory. You’ll find within a lot of Irish musicians, songwriters and so forth a definite sense of: the people who precede them are the writers. If you are involved in American music, you say: "The Ramones preceded me or Elvis or Blondie, Patti Smith, Dylan or whatever". Since you don’t have that sort of musical heritage — we have folk-heritage but no rock and roll or pop-heritage — you’ll see Van Morrison relating himself to Yeats, you see it in Shane McGowan, also. You’ll see a lot of people identifying with Flann O’Brien, you’ll see it in the Radiators. Phillip Chevron has all sorts of references to Joyce and O’Casey and Behan and so forth. There is that sense: if you are Irish you go measure yourself a little bit against those people. You will never see an English musician taking anything from T.S. Elliot or Auden.’ Simon Carmody fronts the Golden Horde, a Dublin hardcore rock and roll outfit. Talking about their live gigs Carmody has said: ‘You can’t explain it, only experience it. It’s not about philosophy, only experience. I never know what’s going to happen. It’s like going out for the night, whether you’ve got money in your pocket or not, and meeting a beautiful girl at a party.’ Gavin used to be regular guest at their gigs, sometimes sharing the stage with them for covers of ABBA or Hot Chocolate songs. Simon is tall and talkative, someone you cannot miss. He is always there where it is happening, where ‘the craic’ (Irish for 'fun') is. Simon: ‘If you want to understand anything about Gavin, you got to understand he is coming from Dublin. He might deny that in a way, but I think it is very true. It isn’t detracting from his spirit, his personality, his uniqueness as an artist, but all of that has been tempered with the fact of that spirit and uniqueness and personality growing up within the society that it did grow up in and being such a maverick spirit. The way he had to deal with things, you have to deal with that with humour and with heaviness. You should suss out the scene he grew up with, the scene of the Late Late Show being the big thing. And Joe Dolan and the Wolfetones, Gay Byrne and Maxi, Dick and Twink (an all girl group of the 70’s) — and all of that kind of thing coming in and being in Dublin. I was the same on another level when I was a kid,

16 17 growing up and getting turned on to American rock and roll and punk-rock and not knowing anybody else who was into it. And having to deal with that within an Irish context. And that gives you a certain unique perspective on things as opposed to an American kid who grew up on rock and roll, or a German kid who grew up listening to Lotte Lenya and being aware of the whole Brecht/Weill scene. It’s not like that here, the culture didn’t exist for that. You don’t deny your own culture, you transmute your own culture. Which is why Gavin is still in Ireland, that’s why I am still in Ireland, involved in a process of transmutation of this culture. Not necessarily conciously, but that’s what’s happening. We’re not in London or New York, where we’d fit in. We are trying to turn lead into gold here.’ When Gavin plays in Ireland, he has to spend the first half-hour just trying to break through a blanket of mistrust, he says. In a 1989 interview with a Dutch newspaper Gavin claimed he sometimes thinks of leaving Ireland because he feels he is an exile in his own country and people abroad appreciate him much more. Commenting on the lack of appreciation in his country he said, perhaps with a tiny bit of envy: ‘If the Hothouse Flowers had recordedGot What He Wanted, it would have gone to number one’. Yet he finds his inspiration in the place he grew up in: ‘The words come from me, how I see things, the world according to me. One of my main influences in life is the Catholic Church... football, boot-boys, racism, macho-ism, you know, all the things that hurt you and mess you up when you’re a kid.’ Performing might be easier for him in, say, Holland where the audience is both familiar with the music and styles that have influenced his music and more susceptible to his vibe. Dutch artists are more likely to look upon Gavin for inspiration. Frank Boeyen, for instance, was once asked what he thought of people comparing him to Jaqcues Brel and he answered ‘I would rather be compared to Gavin Friday.’ Freek de Jonge, one of the foremost exponents of Holland’s new-wave of cabaret, used Friday’s music in his one-man show DE VOLGENDE (Next ). Although a gig in those circumstances can be highly successful and a big ego-boost, the complacency of a society as ‘liberal’ as the Dutch would not benefit his art. The idea of living in a country that is not suffocated by the Catholic church appeals to him greatly. He says he can ‘breathe’ in a city like Amsterdam. But he adds he would not be able to write or paint or sing in such a place. And, in a way, the apprehension with which he is met by an Irish audience must be stimulating in itself, keeping him on edge. It might just be more interesting, and ultimately more rewarding to convert rather than preach to the already converted. Friday could never leave Ireland, he is as much an integral part of the community as he is an outsider. He needs the country for his art, and the country is in need of people like him, people who are unafraid to speak their minds, who can put things in perspective. While everybody is raving about the great Irish scene Friday comments: ‘I’m cynical about this cultural mysticism, Irish singers growing their hair and wearing ponchos. I think it’s getting a little too nice for everyone. I never related to this hippy thing. I think all this about holding hands and looking at the sky so it will all work out is wrong.’ If anyone should accuse him

16 17 of knocking his own, Friday does know where his loyalties lie. He has said that you can put him on a stage, or Sinead O’Connor, or Liam O Maonlaí and give them a kick in the arse and they would still be singing, whereas anyone from a certain Manchester band would not. It has something to do with a Celtic arrogance. Ireland is in need of people that annoy and shake things up a bit. Too many voices have been forced to find room to roam outside the country already. Ireland could not hold on to the talents of people like Oscar Wilde and Joyce. Sinead O’Connor left as well. She has said that she thinks ‘Ireland needs to be dragged behind a bush and get fucked.’ Gavin seems the man to do just that. Wouldn’t it be great if a few others would come forward and make it a gang-bang?

Expelled Three Times For Long Hair and Earrings by John Waters

GAVIN, OR FIONAN HANVEY AS HE WAS THEN, being a Catholic from a workingclass background, went to St Kevin’s Christian Brothers’ School on the Ballygall Road, in Finglas. Gavin’s most abiding memory of that time is of alienation. ‘The area that I was coming from was pretty much workingclass. I decided when I was 11 or 12 that I liked music and wanted to look like Marc Bolan. But the cost of looking like that is a kick in the face when you’re going to school. I wasn’t rebellious. I wasn’t like, a lad. Never was. But I was rebellious in how I would look and in what I wanted to do. I had very long hair and earrings at a very young age. I don’t go for the Bob Geldof, "Christian Brothers were bastards" type of rant, but I’m not going to say it wasn’t true. The humiliation of making a 15-year-old boy queue up and the brother to walk up and say, "What are you wearing those jeans for?", or "Get that hair cut", before you went into the first class. That has very little to do with education. I was expelled three times for having long hair and earrings, and the thing was that you couldn’t get back unless your mother came down. My mother would come down and say, "Well, if he wants to grow his hair long, then let him grow his hair, and if I’ve no problem with him wearing earrings, why should you?" This sartorial divergence between Gavin and the system was just one manifestation of difference at a much deeper level. Gavin has few memories of his time at the Sacred Heart National School in Ballygall Road — apart, that is, from the ubiquitous corporal punishment — but he does remember that he learned very little. His earliest learning experiences were at his father’s knee, having the newspaper read to him, or being asked to provide a summary of the television news of an evening. This concept of parallel education would become ingrained and, much later, when at the CBS, his reading habits would be defined not by the Leaving Cert curriculum but by references in music press interviews by rock stars like David Bowie to writers whom they admired. Bowie would drop the name of William Burroughs or Jean

18 19 Cocteau and the would-be Gavin Friday would take himself off to the bookshop to check out what it was all about. Gavin was into music, but it was with Irish writers, more than rock musicians that he identified. Oscar Wilde had been a hero since childhood, and he knew that, at least where literature was concerned, the Irish boys came in at the top of the charts. Music, literature and Gavin’s other great love, painting, had very little place in St. Kevin’s. The role of the school within the educational system was essentially that of a conveyor belt turning out boys for the traditional trades.Gavin does not recall the word "university" ever being used in his hearing. ‘There would be one row where you would have six guys who were doing honours, and then there’d be the slops. The blackboard would be cut in half — the rest of us would be "doing something". Basically, most of the fellas wanted to get out as soon as they did the Group or the Inter, get a job, a motorbike, buy some clothes, go out with a mot. And that suited the system as well. With me the attitude was "Oh, he’s arty. There’s no jobs for arty. Who do you think you are? Get into line!" That was never said, but it was the undercurrent. "What d’ya mean you want to paint?" And I found the constant harassment of Gaelic football huge. I’m a very unphysical person. I like walking. I like to leave it at that. I can’t relate to football. I have a fear of a football. It was compulsory to play Gaelic or hurling. Every Wednesday at two o’clock you were made to get into togs. It was humiliating for me: I wouldn’t know how to run after a ball. And the hurl! It was the strangest thing in my life. What could I do with this stick?’ The overall experience has left a bad taste with Gavin right into his thirties. ‘I think the latent homosexual thing was very dominant in the Christian Brothers. It’s quite heavy when you’re going for a piss when you’re 13 or 14 and you’re being watched by the brother. It’s there. And the whole way sex was handled. I got no sex education at all, even from my parents. It was never, ever mentioned in school. You learned from the street. I think that teachers should be the people who understand the vulnerability of children, and I firmly believe that people who suppress their own sexuality shouldn’t be allowed near young people. ‘I escaped, but I think that was totally me. There was some wild streak in me. But it was definitely a conveyor belt: get them in, make them look like men, act like men. They can read, they can write. What’ll he be? An electrician. I have talents. I think we all have something in there. After that it’s vision, school wasn’t important. I had a big picture of what I wanted to be from a very early age. It started off being a defensive thing — I felt alienated. But the music I was listening to was be yourself: if you go out there man, show them!’ The educational experience of young Fionan Hanvey, with its tales of the leather, the constant humiliation, the enforced athleticism, is one with which many of us who emerged in the same era have much in common. What makes Gavin Friday different, perhaps, is that he had something to compare it with unfavourably: Mount Temple, the non-denominational and mixed school where most of his music-oriented friends attended, was a source of fascination and envy. ‘You could actually bring your tapes after class and play them. Or rehearse your

18 19 20 21 band. I couldn’t believe that that was going down, but I look at certain people who went to Mount Temple who are settled now, married with kids, and who are fairly well educated. But they don’t read. There was a different sort of emphasis in Mount Temple to what went down in Kevin’s — they weren’t going to be painters and decorators; they were going to be doctors, or run their fathers’ businesses. But they were being pushed into that. They were never told to ask — any more than we were — who are you? They were being conditioned on another level. It’s like, they’ll talk about the Gulf, they’ll watch the TV News. But don’t go any deeper. It’s like, "I’m educated, but what are you gettin’ weird for?"’

reproduced by kind permission of Dr David Nowlan/The Irish Times

He’s Not The Best Singer In The World

DAVE-ID BUSARUS SCOTT, 13 years a singer, first with the Virgin Prunes and now The Prunes, has known Gavin Friday since childhood, growing up in the same area on the Northside of Dublin. I first met him by chance in December ’89 in a pub on the Dublin quays. He was the first person I asked for a contribution to this book, and the first to say yes. During the course of this interview, I asked him whether he would ever write a song about Gavin and he said: One of these days, I probably will. When I met him again, four months later, he handed me the lyrics to his song Goodbye Mr. Friday. ‘When you say Gavin Friday, the first thing I think of is when we first met, a very long time ago. I was very shy when I was young and I wouldn’t talk to anyone. Gavin had very long hair and he hung out with my brother and he came into the house one evening. I was just sitting there sort of listening to records or something and they all went out of the room and left Gavin there on his own with me and he kept on saying things to me and I wouldn’t answer him because I was too shy and I didn’t know him. And then he was good friends with Bono and I got to meet him again and then we became friends, that was sort of the first meeting. In those days, you wouldn’t believe, he was a hippie. When I got to know him, he always wanted to be in a band, so we decided to get the band together. We were in the same neighbourhood, we all got together, most of the time we used to go out together, we socialised together. It was just a lot of boys with crazy ideas and we’d a sense of humour a lot of people could never dream of. Like ride up on a horse and knock on the door, say: ‘Are ya coming out, pal?’ His name was Fionan Hanvey and Guggi gave him his name: Gavin Friday. It does suit him better, Gavin Friday was made for him. ‘The good thing about him is, he’s always been different, like in the Virgin Prunes he wordresses to make a statement and he always had that thing of sticking out: ‘I’m not the same as everyone else.’ And he is the only one who really stuck to his guns in that way. He will do what he wants, he will always change, every musician has to keep on changing, that’s

20 21 one thing I learnt from Gavin very early on, if you don’t keep on changing, you go under really. You can only take something so far, and then you must! He’s said he reckons he’ll never be a rockstar, but he’ll be quite sort of... he’ll survive. I don’t think he’ll ever sell out and do what people want him to do, he might compromise a little bit, but in the end he’ll do what he wants to do. ‘The best performer in the world I’ve ever seen is Gavin. He’s not the best singer in the world, but from the very first day he walked on stage, I could always see he had something really special. Just standing in front of the mike, he had this feeling about it that other singers don’t have. I think at times he’s a performer even when he is not on stage, just walking in the street. He believes strongly in what he does, and when he goes out on stage he doesn’t go out: ‘Oh, I’m not feeling too good tonight, I’ll sing these songs and just get by.’ He always puts his heart into it. He went for singing lessons for a while and every time he’d make a mistake, his teacher had a cane, and she used to hit him with the cane. He could only take that for two weeks and then he gave up. ‘I don’t think he’ll ever make a great painter, his paintings are different, a treasure that only Gavin could do, very special. Guggi is a great artist, but I get more fun out of... I’d rather buy one of Gavin’s. Having it on the wall would be more amusing to me than one of Guggi’s would be. His picture THE FLYING MICKEYS is just so funny. A lot of people who’d buy one of his would probably hide them, but I think I’d have them for all to see. I’d say: I know where this guy, I can understand where these paintings are coming from. ‘There is one thing I want you to quote me on: He’s a great showman!’

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